When I saw this site, icaughtsanta.com, I smiled. What a fun, original idea! Best yet, I have a discount code for my readers. But more about this later.

Our girls, despite their being four-footed, got to see Santa. See for yourselves!

Santa was just reaching into his bag of toys when he heard a low growl...

Santa likes his reindeer well enough, but he had to pet the sleeping puppies before heading back up the chimney.

Time’s a wastin’….Head over to icaughtsanta.com, upload your photo, and watch St. Nick appear. I have a coupon code for you, too: SANTA50 will get you half off your order. This is great fun!

You have to click the green “Create Mine Now” button on the page to get to the design app. The app is a little clunky, but fairly intuitive. I experimented with it tonight, uploading some retro kitchen advertisements for fun.

It’s great fun to be able to customize an appliance. I participated in a market research focus group several years ago where participants were asked if they would pay extra to have the ability to somewhat personalize their major appliances with custom inserts and knobs. I’ve not seen it happen, unless I’ve missed it. Still, people are all about personalization now. Skins are in, for everything from cell phones to iPods to laptops and tablets.

But back to the app. Once a user’s designed her dream Crock-Pot and clicks to add it to her cart, a message comes up warning the user, “This is the final time you will be able to view your customized Create-A-Crock™ Slow Cooker.”

When I saw this, I realized the flaw in the campaign.

Kudos to Crock-Pot for putting this idea out there. However, they missed a huge opportunity when they didn’t also provide a means for users to share their designs with others. I’m not talking about sharing as in buying a Crock-Pot to give as a gift, though that is the company’s goal. I’m talking about letting users share pictures of their creations with friends and family via social networks, mobile MMS, and e-mail. Users might have created profiles in order to save their designs, providing Crock-Pot with fresh prospective customers’ information for their database.

Viral marketing involving personalization pops up everywhere (think OfficeMax and ElfYourself) and yet it’s nowhere to be found with this product. It’s a shame, because I think it could have driven a lot of traffic to their site. People like to play with apps like that. The longer a user stays on your site, the more they buy in to what you’re selling. These users might have created their own designs or, if allowed, ordered duplicates of their friends’ creations.

Then, when their meal is within striking distance, they pounce! They can take down prey several times larger than themselves, big insects like bees and wasps are common snacks.

A little while ago, I glanced down at the Fiberglas table next to me in the gazebo and spied a crab spider hanging on the side. Seeing how it was sporting its yellow camouflage to match it, I had to laugh. I suppose she might have found a meal there, but I still shuffled her onto a piece of paper and deposited her in the mulch by the plants. You can see her better there.

The pictures were taken with my camera phone, so they’re not very good quality. I haven’t identified which specific crab spider this is, and likely won’t. I just wanted to grab some quick pictures of the spider to share.

Here’s another photo I took of one some time ago. This one was hiding beneath the bloom on one of my coneflowers (echinacea purpurea).

I love spiders, as long as they’re not crawling on me.

When we arrived home this evening, everything seemed to be in its correct place. There were no disemboweled couch cushions or chewed houseslippers. Score! After dinner, I went to the office to do some paperwork.

Not long after this, I heard Howie’s voice. “Hon”, my hubby queried from the other room, “did Stella get into something? Her breath smells minty.”

Minty? I was preoccupied with a project and told him I couldn’t imagine what she could have found.

Twenty minutes later, he walked into the office and deposited this on the desk.

Evidently, Stella prefers C.O. Bigelow's spearmint, just like I do.

Fortunately, there wasn’t much left in the tube. It had been on our bookshelf headboard in the bedroom. The dogs were closed out of the bedroom while we were gone, so she must have sneaked it out of there at some earlier point and stashed it. While we were gone, she got her chance to really enjoy it.

Granted, her breath does smell better than the usual butt breath. However, I was concerned with the ingredients. I learned last year that Xylitol, an ingredient common to just about every sugar-free gum, is highly toxic to dogs. I looked on the tube and saw that saccharin is listed, but not Xylitol. Saccharin is not poisonous, at least not in the amount she received from the leftovers in that tube. Whew!

I’m more concerned about that tube’s petroleum jelly and its possible gastronomic after effects.

Nylabones FTW!

But yesterday, I noticed both Nylabones in our possession look like they have flesh attached to them. Yeah, ewwwwww.

Let me back up a little bit first. Follow me, here. Friends of ours bought a new crib mattress for their American bulldog to use as a dog bed. Well, Crazy (yeah, the bulldog) didn’t like it, so our friends gave it to us. The girls, even the Pointy One with her skinny frame, didn’t want anything to do with it the first night we bedded them down on it.

They whined so pitifully, we let them up in bed with us. We sometimes let them up in bed with us even when they don’t whine pitifully, but we were really tired and it was especially irritating that night. We thought the mattress was a lost cause, so I propped it up along the bedroom wall to get it out of the way.

Fast forward a few weeks. We had friends coming over and knew the couch needed to be a people-space, not the dog bed. So, I brought the crib mattress out into the living room and covered it with a fleece Cleveland Indians blanket my husband bought at Jacobs Progressive Field during that freezing, April home opener we went to a few years back.

Miracle of miracles, with a few treats and her toys, I convinced Stella to lie down on the bed. At first, she high stepped on it or just leaped over it rather than walking on it. I think the feel of it is what freaked them out at first. Eventually, with lots of praise, she settled down on it and took a nap. Emma followed suit. It’s a keeper.  As usual around here, we kind of run our household around the dogs. So, we re-arranged the furniture so the mattress took center stage by the picture window.

When it became obvious that the blanket would not stay tucked neatly around and under the mattress when the dogs dug around on it to make a nest, I had the idea to use some old suspenders to hold the blanket in place underneath. Howie fine-tuned the process and the blanket is now tight-fitting and able to withstand the most energetic digging.

Now that I’ve given you the back story, you’ll have a sphere of reference with which you can understand how the Nylabones appear gore-tipped. You thought I forgot about the bones, didn’t you? We haven’t!

Now that they have prime comfy real estate from which to survey their hilltop domain, the dogs spend a lot of time on that mattress and that blanket. They flop down on the bed, prop the bones up between their front paws, and happily chew away. In the process, the fleece fuzzes and sticks to the rough, chewed edges of the bones. They end up looking like this:

Our year ended on a sad note as we said goodbye to our sweet old girl, Sarah. She was our coffee-loving, bean crunching girl. We got her in 1999, the same year we bought our house. Howie and I both grew up with dogs and loved them, but as renters we’d not been able to own one the first seven years we were married. So, with the new house came the decision to add a dog to our family.

We found her by way of a classified ad offering her puppies. When we got to the house, Sarah greeted us enthusiastically, wagging her tail and rolling over for belly rubs. Her pups were four months old and still nursing her in addition to eating puppy food. Unlike their mother, however, they were shy and fearful. We asked if they were trying to find a home for Sarah and they said yes.

Her owners said she was born in 1997 or 1998, offspring of one of their beagles (which they raised for hunting) and a chow. The beagle genes were readily apparent, but the chow didn’t contribute much. If her daddy even was a chow.

She had a strong prey drive and a busy beagle nose. She was fine with our indoor cats, but woe to any animals she encountered outside! I think the only animal to ever stand her down was an opossum who turned to face her. Suddenly Sarah had other pressing business.

What she really lived for was squirrels. If she saw one, she’d chase it to a tree and sit at the tree’s base, staring up, as long as you’d let her. If you clicked your tongue in a vague mimicry of a squirrel, she’d perk up, whine and go to the nearest window to look for one. She never tired of this! She knew squirrels lived in trees, so when we’d go by trees while out driving, she would get very excited. Yes, she was just a little obsessed with them.

We even had one particularly cheeky squirrel who would come right up to the front window and tease her. At times, they’d be staring each other down, nose-to-nose, with only a double-paned window between them. She also loved to watch the fish in our pond. And she was very interested in the large pleco fish in our aquarium.

But she was also the most obedient dog we’d ever had — and no thanks to us! From the day we brought her home, she stayed right by us and came when called. She routinely dashed out the back door and made a circle through the neighbor’s yard when we let her out (scouting for squirrels), but she came right back when we called her. We wished we could take credit for her manners!

She was our constant companion in the garden, our “moley dog” who burrowed beneath the covers every night, and our fearless watchdog. Actually, the only person she guarded us against was the mailman; she really hated the mail carriers and pitched a fit whenever one would come and dare to drop mail through the slot in our front door.

Sarah had her fifteen minutes of fame in this video:

She won second place in the contest. My photos of her and our other dogs were also pictured on Innova Pet’s line of Karma organic dog food promotional materials. That story is here.

Sarah had some sort of episode overnight and on the morning of December 28, she appeared to have had a stroke. Her head was cocked to one side and her eyes darted rapidly back and forth (nystagmus). She could not stand and walk, but stumbled as she tried to balance. From what I looked up, strokes are rare in dogs and she most likely had canine vestibular syndrome (also called peripheral vestibular syndrome), a common ailment of the inner ear and one which she might have recovered from.

However, we had to look at the hard facts. She was fourteen years old and had recurring problems with her hind legs. No one in our household is physically capable of bending and carrying a 35-pound dog multiple times a day; considering the dizziness made her so she could barely stand, let alone walk, she would have to be carried outside to go potty. Dogs with this condition can take weeks to recover, and often must be given anti-nauseal drugs because the vertigo makes them sick to their stomachs (imagine being severely seasick all the time).

We couldn’t see putting our old girl through all of this. Our vet said it could also have been caused by a brain tumor. Given the many visible lumps and bumps all over our old girl, it well could have been a tumor causing the symptoms. It could also have been a stroke, though unlikely. Our vet advised that we’d likely be prolonging the inevitable if we tried waiting it out. So, with hearts brimming with sadness, we made the difficult decision to euthanize her.

Hopefully it will be many years before we have to face this heartache again. Those of you who have loved a pet deeply know how we feel, know that those who dismiss such grief with “it’s just a dog” don’t get it. Losing a pet is so painful, but they joy they bring to our lives fills me with gratefulness.

Our vet sent us a lovely sympathy card, one which our brindle girl Stella sniffed out of the pile of mail as soon as it hit the floor. She then tried to open for us. Having come from the vet’s office, the paper must be redolent with all kinds of interesting smells. We’re so glad we have our remaining girls to make us laugh!

This is a picture story that illustrates one such gift of laughter from Sarah:

Mom and went to Caribou Coffee last night and visited with a couple of friends. Before our friends arrived, I took some photos of the ring I got mom for Christmas. This is just a cellphone shot, but I liked how it came out. I’d like to take some really good macros of this ring.

It’s the “Pretty as a Peacock” ring by Heidi Daus. I really like her designs. They’re classic designs with lots of bling. You can see more of her designs (not just rings!) at her website and at HSN’s website. Oh, my gosh, I *love* her stuff!!

Sometimes I miss that camera. My Sony Alpha A300 is wonderful, but I don’t have the lenses yet which would allow me to get some of the shots I used to get with my Minolta or my subsequent Fuji. Still, I love my Sony! They’re a terrific line of DSLR cameras.

The music is courtesy of the generous Kevin MacLeod. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your offering this caliber of music, free. You bring life to any project I do. I want to give you props! Thanks!

Kevin also has music for sale. Amazon has a nice selection of Kevin’s music available for instant download.

She was lurking in the bag of spuds.

She, for it’s obviously a she, sports a potbelly. She even has a belly button (it’s an innie). She’s a potato with a pannus…Or a panniculus, if you’d prefer. She’s ample, delightfully rubenesque. She’s a BBT (Big Beautiful Tater).

But it gets better. While setting up my decidedly low-tech shot, I looked at the back of Miss Tater and saw this…

Yep, same potato, other side!

Not only does she have a tummy, she has a tater tush. She even has a cute little dimple at the top of her crack. You can’t tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.

I’d love it if readers would share their “produce with personality”. Post links to your own blog entries and photo streams. Rated G or PG *only*.

After I cut out the leaf images I used on the front of the card, I was left with their shapes outlined in pieces of cardstock. So, I inked around one of the cut-out leaves several times, using a white Cat’s Eye ink. Then, I used the leftover cardstock with the shapes cut out as stencils, using a cream color. I cut smaller shapes out of another stamped image (this made it easy to see where I wanted to make my cuts) and used that paper as a stencil for the dark areas you see on the cream leaves. The ribbon’s velvet. The vellum paper with the quote was part of a Die Cuts With a View quotes stack.

The quote:

“The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that outlasts it.”
– William James

The note to my friend is blurred out for privacy reasons; when will I learn to take photos before I write in cards?

Those without Cricut machines can check out stencil cutters such as these. You can trace your design onto plastic and cut it out yourself.

If you’d like to learn about similar inking techniques, there’s some great how-to videos on YouTube. Here’s a good one to get you started: