Holiday Portrait Outtakes

It had been a couple of years since we took a photo of all three of us at Christmastime, and we decided to do that on Christmas Eve, when we would be taking photos of me with my Christmas goat anyway. It was a fairly nice day that warmed up to -2 degrees by the time we trooped out to the front yard, sans coats and hats, for our photo.

D'aaaaaawwww. How cute are we?!?!

But then... I got this great and dastardly idea. When the blinky light on the camera stops blinking, that means the photo is about to be taken. So I waited until the light stopped blinking and pushed my unsuspecting husband into the snowbank. I almost made it back into "innocent" position before the shutter released.

Then JAMES got a dastardly idea of his own. "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You pushed my father. Prepare to freeze." Okay, that's probably not how it worked out in his mind, but I got a snowball to the back of my neck.

This is something that cannot go unpunished, so I tried to push James into the snowbank, too, but alas, he was prepared for it.

Best. Holiday. Portrait. Session. EVER.

The Six Sillies

James the Storyteller performs "The Six Sillies" at Winterfeast 2011 at Grove City College.

The first few seconds of the story were cut off by the camera, and go as follows:

"Once upon a time, there was a young girl who reached the age of thirty-seven without getting married, for she was so foolish that no man would take her. 

But one day, a traveler arrived to court her, and her mother sent her down to the cellar to fetch him a jug of beer. So the traveler and the girl's parents sat down upstairs and began planning and preparing...  "

Turn up the volume and enjoy!

Back to school, back to work...

Let me start by saying it was a perfect Christmas vacation. I can't think of anything I would change if I could, except possibly making it last longer.

Last Saturday, we packed up the dogs and took all three to the kennel in Sterling. You should have seen how crowded it was in Jim's truck, with James and three big dogs in the back seat. Tate had on her "giddy idiot" face and was just glad to be going somewhere like a "real" dog. Moya hogged most of the room and Belle stood where she could fit. In the bed of the truck were James' suitcases and two boxes of fur slippers and hats to be delivered to Alaska Fur Exchange when we got to Anchorage. 

The roads were nice and clear on the way to The Big City. The weather was sunny and bright, and the drive in was uneventful. We considered stopping at the barbecue place at Turnagain Arm just south of Anchorage, but they weren't quite ready to open when we got there. We'll stop in another day. How could people with a sense of humor like ours *not* support a place with a name like this?

 Our first stop in town was at Alaska Fur Exchange to drop off the completed items and pick up more materials for myself and for Lee. If we thought the truck was full on the way up, well, it was sure full now. I've got job security for a while longer!

Next we drove to Wasilla to look at some saunas. Jim and I had been talking about getting one for a few months, and he found a place in Wasilla that was selling some affordable ones that would fit indoors and were easy to assemble. We picked out one, and hope it will be delivered sometime this week.

With time to kill before heading to the airport with James, we decided to explore one of the big malls. Finally, a mall like the ones in Texas! The "mall" in Soldotna has a GNC and a Payless Shoes as the anchor stores, so that should tell you something about the shopping we have out here on the Peninsula. While at the mall in Anchorage, we found a store that sells nice hats for men, and of course James went in to have a look. James looks good in most things he puts on his head, but oh how cute is he in a bowler!

After the mall we ate dinner at Outback Steakhouse and then took James to the airport. I managed not to cry until James checked his baggage. Hey, I can only suck it up for so long! Here's James at the airport with a Kodiak bear mount. I think the bear would like to try on the new bowler.

 Even making a crazy face, he is so cute!

Jim and I drove home that night, got home around 1:30 a.m. and tried to get some sleep before we needed to go to Sterling on Sunday to pick up the dogs. It was -18 degrees when we got up. Did you know that the foam seats in the car will get really hard when it's that cold? Yep, they do.

The kennel owners keep Tate indoors because she's so old, but the other two dogs stay in an outdoor run with a heated doghouse at one end. They share one run to help keep each other warm. We asked how cold it got in Sterling overnight (it's colder inland) and they weren't sure, but it was -22 when they got up. That may not have been the coldest night Belle's stayed outside in, but it was certainly the coldest Moya's been out for. All the dogs were so happy to be back in the warm car and they slept most of the rest of the day.

James made it safely back to campus by midday on Sunday. We hope he has a wonderful semester, learns a lot, and makes even more fun, goofy friends. He'll be back for Easter break in April.

The moose situation in the yard has gotten annoying. They're out there most days, making a mess even three dogs can't rival. There are lots of them lining the roads, making a hazard for drivers. We came upon the aftermath of a moose strike on the way to Sterling. Evidently a snowplow hit it and killed it. Moose are really big and can total a car, so we're thankful the plow was a substantial vehicle. Speaking of moose strikes, when you hit a moose with your car, you have to call and report it. You could face a fine for hitting the moose (which I don't think is fair considering the moose run in front of cars and it's not like you're aiming for one). The moose, if it died, is butchered and the meat is distributed to the needy. If you hit a bear with your car and it dies, the skeleton goes to  museums and teaching institutes, and the hide is auctioned at the Fur Rendezvous. But I digress.

Now that the lovely vacation is over, I'll go back to nearly full-time work. James stretched a lot of furs for me and did a lot of prep work, too, so I'm good to go for a while. I'll also be working on a line of children's slippers starting this week. Jim's still chugging along at his work too, taking care of the chickens and keeping the fire going on the wood stove. So, I guess that's all the news I have for now. Stay warm!

Moya Pulls the Kicksled

Teaching a dog to pull a sled is not an easy thing.

Sled dogs start training while they're still puppies, dragging pieces of snow machine track, and then training trikes, and all sorts of steps in the process until they become contributing members of a dog team.

We, however, have no earthly idea what we're doing. And a dog that couldn't care less if she puts you in a tree, as long as she gets to run. So it's a wonder, yet again, that everyone survived and had a blast while working on more of Moya's training. She did well pulling the plastic toy sled several days ago, and today she got to pull the nice kicksled. She still gets easily distracted and therefore needs to wear not only her pulling harness but also her EasyWalk harness, with someone running alongside her to keep her focused and on the road.

You might have already seen my earlier post about the moose in the yard. Well, it's still out there, just this time it's across the street in our neighbor's yard. Here, the whole gang is in the photo, with James guiding the kicksled and Jim running with Moya. Rosie the neighbor's corgi is joining in the fun and the moose has decided he'd better leave the area. Intrepid Rosie was ready to take on the moose alone, and Moya would have been happy to help her, but the moose couldn't be bothered to "play" with the dogs, thank goodness. You'll probably want to enlarge this photo by clicking on it. 

Jim's steering the kicksled while James runs Moya up our street.

And coming back down the street. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Crazy Dog Face of Joy. She's not tired one bit. Delighted, but not tired. As our vet describes her: "Built for speed, that one."

Moya says "This is EASY. Why does there need to be eight of us to pull a sled?"

So pretty. She has frozen whiskers but they didn't show up in the picture. In case you're wondering, it was 14 degrees at the time.

 Jim takes a turn keeping Moya in the road while James has a ride. Being pulled on a sled by your own dog... awesome.

I'm taking a turn on the sled seat while James steers Moya. This is what it looks like from the passenger's viewpoint. Gosh, it was fun!

Time to call it a day and go inside to warm up.

Good dog, Moya Moo. Good dog.

James is home! Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas! James is home between semesters, and I do so love having him around.  

Christmas is a very special time of year for me, and I love it all. The lights, the music (well, okay, some of the music), the tv specials, the excuse to bake cookies, and to decorate the house as early in the year as I can feasibly talk my family into allowing. With James not arriving home until December 22, I had the perfect excuse to put up the trees a few days BEFORE Thanksgiving so we could do it as a family, rather than a hurried slap-together on Christmas Eve. 

Most of you already know I started my business, Smiling Otter Studio, earlier this fall, and that the business takes up a good portion of the main floor of the house, so the trees are upstairs in the loft this year. Here's the family tree. Minimally decorated this time around, there are pine cones, beaded icicles, white brass snowflakes and turned wood birdhouses made by our neighbor Brad. Grandma's quilt hangs over the railing behind it.

This is James' birthday tree. I always love his birthday trees. He's so creative and fun with his themes. This year, there are Beanie-baby-sized stuffed animals with an Alaskan theme all over the tree - from the otter angel on top to the beaver gnawing the trunk of the tree and the eagle carrying off a fish. Too bad they don't show up better in this pic because it was so adorable.

Around the house, I got to use a lot more of my vintage items, some from my collection and some from my brother's. In the kitchen, a thrift store fiber optic tree in Dan's metal bucket, and M&Ms in his chick feeder look great. The bread box houses Jim's chickens' breakfast items, and the tin on top of it holds egg shells waiting to be made into calcium supplement to be fed back to the chickens.

And yes, those are bottle caps decorating the tree.

Another $1 thrift store bargain is the top of what was once a large artificial tree, but now is a mini tree in my brother's Karo Syrup bucket, decorated with vintage ornaments from Jim's grandparents. Copper cookie cutters given to me by my best friend hang in the kitchen window behind it.

I love decorating the Hoosier cabinet. The teddy bear and horse toys on top were Jim's childhood toys. I was trying to get a Christmas morning vibe going on here...

... Coffee and syrup and fresh eggs for Christmas breakfast, crayons with Scotch tape and tiny scissors for last-minute wrapping, and the preciously tiny egg beater and pastry crimper suggest there might be pie after dinner. The birthday balloons are in honor of James' birthday.

Speaking of James, here he is modeling his cross fox hat that I made him for Christmas. Flaps up:

 Flaps down:

We've had snow off and on this month and the temperatures here at the house have been down into the teens below. A bit too cold to want to go out and play in, but not so cold that it keeps us from doing anything we want to do. The guys successfully got Moya to pull them in a sled, and have had the snow machines out for a ride on the lake. The snow is too deep for the kicksleds unless we play with them on little-used roads in the neighborhood, so going for a sled ride on the lake is probably out of the question unless we get some more winds to blow some of the snow off. It's been a good Christmas break so far, and I expect the rest of the break will be just as lovely.

Sending you all echoes of Christmas contentment and best wishes for a fabulous New Year!

The end of summer was busy!

Hello there! Did you think I forgot about you? Um, well, I sort of did. But it's just because it's been so busy around here for the past couple months. Here, let me catch you up:

After Big Jim's visit, a college friend of ours came to visit with his son Jonathan (more on that in another post). They were here for a little more than a week, and it was so nice to see them again. 

We went to the gold panning club's claim on Crystal Creek to get some buckets of silt and dirt to sluice and pan at home. It was so lovely and lush out there, but far too mosquito-y for us to want to stay longer than we had to. Here, Jim shovels the dirt from the bank while James screens it:

James is panning:

And I'm just sitting on a fallen log hoping the bugs don't eat me entirely.

Might as well take James' picture, too.  teehee

We made a trip to Homer once the summer's unusually rainy weather cleared up enough on one of James' days off so that we could actually SEE Kachemak Bay rather than just see the rain clouds. We took Moya with us.

Moya's first time on the Homer Spit was basically just us trying to keep control of her while she pulled us all over. Moya loves the beach and going for walks and it's not easy steering a dog as strong as she is! We lost her dog tags somewhere on this beach.

Jim and James have a little Captain in them, haha, in front of the famous Salty Dawg Saloon on Homer Spit.

Just gorgeous. Just simply gorgeous.

My big summer project was helping James work on his Dagorhir costume for his college role play group. I think we did pretty well, considering that neither of us knew what we were doing but did it anyway. He's got several mix-and-match costume pieces now and he can dress according to his mood and the event he's attending. I love this picture:

The vest and boots were made with elk that was a gift from my brother. There's plenty of elk left for me to (if I have time) make myself an outfit to wear while manning my craft fair booth this fall.

A more Barbarian feel to this outfit... ghillies, and a belt made from a wolf leg and paw.

A close-up of the Awesome Boots of Awesomeness:

A close-up of the ghillies:

And, through the miracle of time travel, I can show you how James will look at his first Dagorhir event. He's the one in the brown tunic and elk boots, with his back to us.

We've been eating a lot of quail eggs this summer, too.

Before we knew it, our summer was over. James had to go on back to college, where he will expand his horizons and have a grand ol' time. Here we are at City Diner in Anchorage, having dinner before seeing him off to the airport:

Have a great semester, James. We'll see you at Thanksgiving! We love you!