Another Sweet Sketch

This week was the reveal for the lovely and talented Sketch #71.  Isn't this fun?

Being the graphic, linear scrapper that I am, I wasn't sure I could love the circle.  Enter sewing machine....

How fun is it to just sew big imperfect circles? I started out with a mixing bowl as guide for the first lap, then went to town. I was going to put some bling on the circles, but it's such a boy-page that I opted for the brads instead.  The papers come from Backporch Memories here in Fairbanks. 

And on a hoppy note(groan), I hope the Easter Bunny was good to you!

Afterglow

Jenny and I had so much fun this past weekend at the Tanana Valley Kennel Club agility trial! She finished her Novice Jumpers with Weaves title and earned two more legs on her Open titles...and all before she turns two.  Kind of dulls the pain of not trialing with Chena. My friend Patty had a good weekend with her labs, and I confess I had a little retriever envy. Oh, well...

Here's a video of Jenny's last run of the weekend.  On Sunday I remembered to bring my camcorder - film courtesy of Andrew Walsh. I used to write down the stats of each run, but I do enough paper work at the clinic.  I've dumped the "record book" for video files. Watching these is way more helpful (and fun).

Today Jack, Brian and I took in a matinee after kindergarten.  We took Jack to see "Hop."  He said he enjoyed it but it was kind of long. We can't wait for the new "Cars" movie to come out this summer!  I think talking cars will once again trump talking animals...though the bunny was pretty cute.

Inspired Blueprints News..

This week Inspired Blueprints introduced their new design team for May - September...and yours truly is on it! This is my "design team" debut, so I'm pretty excited. A new sketch will be introduced each week, and I'll be adding mine to the mix twice monthly.

Here's the lovely and versatile Sketch 69:

And here's my take on it: 

Thankfully, most of that snow has melted.  Yay, spring!

In other news, Jenny and I have been competing in the Tanana Valley Kennel Club agility trial this weekend. She earned her second leg in open standard yesterday and finished her novice jumpers with weaves title today. She's running beautifully and would be qualifying on all runs if she had a better handler!  I couldn't be more pleased with my little fireball.

Have  a great week!

Such a Slacker!

I've totally fallen down on my blog-upkeep duties!  My excuse was another busy week.  We're enjoying a lovely spring...the temperatures are toasty but the ice makes playing outside a little dicey. We did have a fun weekend - PAWS training with Chena on Saturday morning and agility run-thrus with Jenny and Jack in the afternoon, then Yukon Quest raffle and dinner at the Badger Den. Jack spent the evening with his favorite sitter Sarah.  On Sunday we went to church, hit the grocery store then came home for some quality time with the washer, dryer, and vacuum cleaner. Sunday afternoon Chena and I joined Susan and her sweet golden Sam for some day-old trails.  Didn't those girls do a nice job!  Now another work week has begun...

Another layout to share...

Our RV trip to Kenai last Labor Day was so much fun - with the price of gasoline we will likely stay closer to home this summer...but maybe not. Fingers crossed!

Thursday nights with Jenny...

After a long day at work (and I mean L-O-N-G), nothing is more fun than running agility courses with Jenny. We're in the advanced group from the kennel club that trains at Camp Li-Wa.  It's a small group, and Joelle designed a lovely fast jumpers course for this evening.

Jenny did best on the first run, then started improvising and running her own sequences.  Apparently she thinks she can read numbers.  She had some brilliant moments (nice weaves), but I see we're going to need to work on control a bit.

In any case, it was big fun...and helping with the intermediate class following our class is always a treat.  What a nice group of handlers and dogs!

So this brings to mind this layout I did for Jen as a puppy. For the record, this is my first and only layout published in a national magazine.  You may have seen it in Scapbooks Etc. "Reader Gallery" in the October 2010 issue.  Yup, I'm "rdagdag."  Not really. I'm not sure where that came from.  In any case, back for an encore...

Doesn't she just look like she's going to be trouble? At nearly two, she's turned out to be a fun little dog...quite a handful, but a joyful little thing.

And a second layout -

After a heart-to-heart with Dr. vonPfeil at Veterinary Specialists of Alaska, I decided it was time to retire Chena from agility last month. She still does well at the search work, but in that discipline I'm not asking her to "jump this, then turn that way."  She can direct her own movement and do what's comfortable. We did a trail with John and Jane Aspnes on Tuesday and she was great. Hard to believe she has a compressed disk in her neck.  But as I said to Dirsko - she's doing too well for surgery, but she's not sound enough for agility. So I did this layout using a photo Pat Randall took at Chena's last trial last summer.  She double-Qed that day. Just training Jenny in agility now is easier on my brain and pocket book, but I do miss running Chena.  We had an awful lot of fun.

Rites of Spring in Fairbanks

Today Jack and spent the afternoon at Ice Alaska in Fairbanks...locally known simply as the "ice park." Jack wasn't sure he wanted to go, but opted for the outing rather than take a nap.  Do I know how to negotiate or what?

For the first time he was willing to look at the magnificent sculptures with me. The warm weather has taken it's toll on several, but they were still amazing.

It didn't take much convincing to get Jack onto the "big kid" ice slides.  I've been waiting for this all winter, so poor Jack really didn't have a choice. We did the first few runs together in the little plastic sled (my hips are still bruised). Then, miracle of miracles, Jack decided to go it alone. He had a blast!

Check out that grin! Pure little boy bliss -

The winters are long, but the spring is so worth it. Until next year...good-bye Ice Park.