Where Did It Go?

When we were busy stuffing Pinniped into various objects this fall, I decided to test if this year's Christmas photo prop would work with the pigs.  So I plopped Pinni in the candy tin, gave her a tomato, and got the following result.  What a dope.

Pinni is just so darn curious.  We love how animated her nose is when she's been picked up or placed in an unfamiliar spot.  After all, it's that nose that made me fall in love with her in the first place.

A Matter of Taste

Peas & carrots, Critical Care, and pureed spinach

Critical Care seems to be a love or hate thing with guinea pigs.  I've seen this myself and heard it from others.  Willow could never get enough of it.  Bertie would be happy if she never touched it again.  In an effort to make the Critical Care more palatable, I've tried mixing it with baby food.  I thought banana would be a hit, but Bertie wasn't impressed.  However, peas and carrots seemed to be at least somewhat edible.

Whenever I've fed Bertie, I would let Pinniped slurp up whatever Bertie wouldn't eat.  Pinni would often try to pull the syringe out of my hand because she wasn't getting it fast enough.  But the first time I tried feeding her the leftover peas and carrots mixture?  Pinni took one whiff and gave me a look like I was trying to poison her.  What the heck is this stuff?

Fur, Fins and Feathers

I've been making ornaments of people for years, because the clothing is interesting to design.  But when it comes down to making an ornament that is just plain fun to make, it tends to be something cute and fuzzy (and occasionally scaly).  Animal ornaments can take just as much research as my human ones.  However, the work tends to go a bit faster once I know what I want to construct.  They don't have the intricacies of miniature clothing.  They also tend to be a bit more whimsical (like the pig, sheep and bunny on a toboggan) than their human counterparts.

Solo Shots

Bertie and Pinniped survived our annual Christmas card photo shoot last Friday.  The holiday cards go out with a group photo, but every year we manage to get one or two nice single shots, too. 

Bertie was so well behaved during the initial set of photos.  She didn't like the tin at first, but changed her mind the second time we put her in.  She's patiently waiting for the fuss to be done and over with.  There will be extra treats, right?

We were unable to get a good solo photo of Pinni in the first series, unless you count a beautiful bum shot.  However, Pinni calmed down a bit when we put her on stage the second time and managed to pose nicely for the camera. 

It's so nice when they behave!

The Christmas Photo Shoot

This year's set

Black Friday, for us, is a day of sleeping in, eating Thanksgiving leftovers, wrangling guinea pigs and taking lots of photos.

This year was easier than past years for a number of reasons.  There were only two pigs to herd and bribe.  What a different dynamic that is!  As an added bonus, using the grids to hold up the backdrop allowed me to work with the pigs and keep my hands out of many of the shots.  There was one drawback with that: Pinniped kept facing me for treats and we got a number of her bodacious butt.  Bertie wasn't feeling terrific, so she was fairly tractable.  It was mostly Pinni that I had to chase around when she wasn't in the tin.

Pumpkin-Chocolate Pie

I wanted to try a new recipe for Thanksgiving dessert.  I spent some time this week flipping through a number of bookmarked websites, drooling over the possibilities.  Then I came across a pie I had bookmarked over a year ago from Kriplau:  Pumpkin-Chocolate Pie.  Graham cracker crust followed by a chocolate cream cheese maple syrup layer, then topped with traditional pumpkin pie.  The ingredients certainly looked delicious.

Nothing like trying something new at a big family event.  I had feared that I had overcooked the pie, but it turned out great.  Everyone deemed it delicious.  I managed to bring only a single fat slice home.  The rest had disappeared.

That one slice of pie got a lot of attention.  I wanted a nice shot of the pie, but I also wanted to prepare for our annual guinea pig Christmas card shoot later in the day.   We took this chance to calibrate our cameras, check the lighting and try various settings.
  

And then, of course, that slice of pie met it's demise.  Alas, gone too soon.  Yum.

Storybook Characters

I have started work on this year's ornaments.  Well... maybe not physically working on them.  I have ideas of what I want to do, and I'm doing the research to see how feasible my ideas are.  As usual, I can't post too much about what I'm working on, since I don't want my recipients to know what they're getting.  So I figured I'd display some of my past ornaments.

I am struggling over what to make my nephew this year.  He is currently fixated with Mario Kart, but he got an ornament based on that last year, so it's time to move on to something else.

His Christmas ornaments are mostly based on storybook characters.  They dovetailed nicely with the set of fantasy characters I made for my sister.  I have been trying to stick with that goal, but I suspect I'll deviate from it more and more as he gets older.

It's quite a collection so far.  It started with the cat and the fiddle, and the cow jumping over the moon.  I stayed with nursery rhymes the following year and made the owl and the pussy cat in their pea-green boat.  It was a tricky ornament for such a simple concept.  I had a hard time balancing the boat.

Shoe Sacks

The Concord Scout House is having a benefit contra dance on the Saturday after Thanksgiving (less than a week away!).  They're no longer having the silent auction, but when I inquired about donating items, I was asked if I could make shoe bags.  Sure!  That seems to be my specialty.

It's been a year or two since I last made dance shoe bags.  I dug through my extra fabric the other night to see what was available.  I came across a chili pepper print I had bought specifically for shoe bags.  The musical mice fabric seemed appropriate.  I found a Christmas print that I have no memory of buying.  It made a pretty bag, although it's terribly seasonal.  Lastly, I found a western print leftover from another project.  There was just enough to make a small bag, but I'm sure someone will like it.  Quite a hodgepodge.

That makes six bags all stitched up and looking for new homes.  Come support the Concord Scout House!