Clay Greys Wishlist

I desire custom ornaments! It's on the mind all the time. Maybe I can find wiggle room in the budget to get one a month until I have all the ones I want? Hah!

Here's a preliminary list of ornaments I want by pet.

Past Pets
Myriah - German Shepherd, first canine love of my life!
Flash  - Miniature Pinscher

Ally - An albino parakeet that I hand-raised
Prettybird - Blue parakeet -- first bird we ever had and Ally's mate
Alyssa - A speckled parakeet

Living Furry Friends
Phantom - Tuxedo cat

Jessie - Black/White border collie
Josie - German shepherd/lab mix
Pussycat - Domestic long hair white kitty with gray splotches

Sophie - Black domestic short hair

Booger - Black domestic short hair -- the first pet Brandon and I got together

Scout - Traditional coat shetland sheepdog


Some depictions of favorite memories:

1. Phantom laying in a pot of catnip to guard it from Booger
 
 
2. Josie sleeping in a laundry basket
 
3. Puppy Flash tugging on adult Myriah
4. Myriah chasing her tail
5. Adult Flash laying annoyed next to puppy Scout

6. Adult Scout laying next to kitten Phantom
 
7. Kitten Booger with Adult Pussycat -- assault on the cat tree

8. Josie, butt in the air, peeking under the patio fence
 
9. Flash sharing his bed with Josie -- this was a huge social issue for him
 
10. Pussycat, pink cast on paw, snuggling up to a ball post-neuter

11. Pussycat meowing over a miniature cheeseburger (although he appears to be snarling)

12. Kitten Booger covered in a thin dusting of flour -- naughty kitten!

13. Kitten Sophie hanging off a scratching post
 
14. Kitten Sophie getting the smack down by Adult Booger
 
15. Booger drinking prim and proper from a cup of water by dipping her paw
 
 
16. Kitten Phantom with a flower
 
17. Ally and Prettybird snuggling
18. Alyssa
19. Jessie looking pretty
 
 
20. Young Jessie and Young Scout snuggling

I'm starting to think I'm going to have a small tree dedicated to pets and I don't mind the thought! I'm going to have to round up photos of some of them to fulfill this. Almost two years' worth at one ornament a month, wowzers!

Christmas Gift doubling as a Etsy Review

My family is large and continues growing between the children and the significant others'. Our core family is six people large. There are now three grandchildren in the family. Three of the children (myself included) are in relationships. One of those relationships has two children which totals out to five children, nine adults.

My family opted to buy each of the children a gift and do a secret santa between the adults. This saves money at Christmas and enables each of the adults to funnel more money into a nice gift for one adult rather than a bunch of small gifts over all of the adults.

But I still wanted to get my parents small gifts so I decided to give them thoughtful gifts from my children. My dad is hard to buy for but my mom is much easier. She has a Shetland Sheepdog and she is absolutely, irrevocably obsessed with her dog. I made her a plate with his silhouette for Mother's Day years ago.

Additionally, she has a cat. The cat and dog are often cute together although less often now that they're both grown. I wanted to give her a memento now that her dog is getting much older. I stumbled upon ClayGreys etsy shop.

Emily does custom ornaments of dogs and cats. She's even done turtles and hedgehogs. I sent her the following photos.

Scout

Phantom

Them together when we first got Phantom.

And again when they were a little bit older.

The instructions I gave her was to have Scout laying down with his head up and Phantom sleeping between his paws.

This is what I received.

Isn't it just perfect?

I mean the long fluffy fur would be hard to replicate adequately, but the coloring and markings are spot on.

I couldn't be more pleased. I am especially in love with the shiny, "wet" nose.

My communication with Emily was very comfortable, professional, and friendly. Her pricing was fantastic and reasonable. I felt that the item arrived in good time given it was a custom order. I'm already itching to buy more from her and wishing I could somehow reason it away with Brandon. I'm itching to have custom ornaments made of our past pets and our current ones. It's definitely on my to do list in the near future.

You can find Emily's etsy shop here. Her facebook page is here. It has so many more photos of her work and it's always beautiful. I'm especially in love with her little Scottie.

Custom Photo Calendar

With life so busy between appointments for health maintenance, family engagements, and school across our family -- I've become a bit of a planner obsessive girl again. I'm constantly referencing my planner.

Add to that our intentionally introducing Cole to the concept of numbers and time and I wanted a calendar. I decided to print basic monthly calendars for Cole through the end of this year. I used these calendars at calendarlabs.

But for 2013, I wanted something more. Then I saw that calendarlabs has the option of making your own photo calendars. I thought that it would be pretty fun to make a photo calendar for our family using a photo from that month in the year past.

So for January 2013 I'll use a photo from January 2012. In this way I can pick a favorite photo of my children or our family and see how we looked a year ago.

It might be cheesy but it's totally us. I need to decide which are my favorite photos of the fall months and print them out already.

Printing from Calendarlabs has been super simple. The only thing I wish was different is the inability to save the calendar template with photo inserted. When you're done printing and close the window -- you lose it. Boo!

Maybe one of these days this girl will get a photoshop program and make my own calendars.

Take cake two!

Since Cole's birthday fell the day before Thanksgiving this year, we had his birthday party 11 days early. We decided to get cake for his actual birthday.

Let me tell you, do not go to the bakery voted #1 in Sacramento the day before a major holiday. I've never gone to Freeport the day before Thanksgiving before but I'm convinced that a good lot of Sacramento doesn't bake and they want something tastier than store bought pies. Not that this Freeport Bakery fan blames them at all.

We initially intended to buy slices of the Seville Marnier cake that we got for his birthday (minus the cobra decorations of course) but that was foiled when I found out that they reduce their menu for the Fall holidays and introduce specialty flavors. I had a massive line behind me and felt bad for holding up people so I made the snap decision to get their Fudge Cake in the 7" round size (serves 10 people). The cake itself cost under around $25.

The attendant was fantastic. She was very patient and nice. She asked about decorations and took the time to scrounge up the types of sprinkles they had in purples and greens to show me.

We ended up with this.

I love it. It's beautiful!

I couldn't be happier with the snap purchase and the resulting appearance, even if I was disappointed that neither of my favorite flavors were stocked. I suppose that's what I get for waiting to walk-in and order the day before a holiday. They do make them custom even when they're not on the regular menu seasonally so had I known I could have ordered it ahead of time and picked it up.

As for flavor, the Fudge Cake ranked one of the lowest for me on the cake testing. I'm not a big chocolate lover and it's certainly for the choco-holic. It could be named Death by Chocolate. There is actual fudge in the cake! Chocolate cake, chocolate fudge, and chocolate frosting = chocolate overkill for this girl. But if I did love chocolate, this cake would be amazing in my opinion.

It's very rich though. It's the type of cake you want to cut small slices for because after a few bites it's overwhelming.

Even though I'm not a big flavor fan due to my touchy relationship with chocolate, I'd call this another win for Freeport Bakery.

See some of our custom cake experiences with them here and here.

Nature's Critters Review

 
For Cole's party we had a visit from Nature's Critters. Nature's Critters is self-described as an educational live animal presentation. Cole requested a King Cobra party theme and Brandon and I felt that having live snakes would be a very entertaining prospect.

The biggest selling points for me about Lisa's company is that she adopts critters that are no longer wanted from households such as the corn snake below.

Additionally she's a biologist (not a for-profit who is uneducated). She gives her animals "vacations" from showing every so often and she lives with her pets. Her philosophy is introducing children while they're young to animals so that they can learn about them, how to interact with them, and to respect them. 

Cole loves learning and that Nature's Critters was educationally based was a big selling point for me. Talking with Lisa was very comfortable, professional, and easy. She offered her phone, text, or e-mail as ways to communicate leading up to the party.

I let her know a little bit about Cole, the theme of the party, and looked for feedback. Lisa was able to recommend the "snakes" theme that she does.

 
I requested specifically that she bring her Mexican Black Kingsnake because it is a snake that eats other snakes, much like the king cobra.

Lisa ended up bringing five snakes (of four species), a tortoise, a legless lizard, and a bearded dragon.

The children were able to handle all of the animals with the exception of the tortoise (which they were allowed to throw lettuce to) and the bearded dragon (which they were allowed to pet).

Lisa was very good at redirecting behaviors that weren't necessarily kind to her animals. One of the younger children kept trying to push in too close or ignored instructions and she was fantastic about redirecting the child in a positive way, without any negative statements.



 
The children were thrilled (as were the adults) with her lesson. She gave a lot of factual information about the animals as she introduced them and while each child took turns holding them.

Lisa was cheaper than our local zoo for what she did. She also was very entertaining to listen to.

My favorite part of our show was when she was questioning the children about what one particular snake would eat. The children answered various things but she said "Mice" and pulled a mouse out of her fanny pack. She then proceeded to pop it in her mouth without hesitation and got everyone gasping.

It turned out to be a rubber mouse but it was a brilliant way to break the ice with the group and completely unexpected.

After the forty or so long presentation, Lisa hung around to talk with one child and her mother as they were particularly interested in sharing knowledge about a mutual pet species.

I felt that we more than got our money's worth out of Lisa. She was courteous, professional, in a positive mood, light-hearted, and fantastic with children. Our group was between the ages of 4-9 and we had adults present as well.

Everyone enjoyed her show.

And we got to take pictures of the children holding the animals during the show (and after). I would absolutely recommend Lisa to anyone interested.

You can find Nature's Critters website here.
Their facebook page is here.