Dog Treats

Yesterday afternoon I found myself in a familiar predicament: we'd been to the grocer twice already and yet I was in need of another item. I hate going to the store without a list! Anyway, we needed dog treats. I figured the dogs could live without their treats for another day so I moved on to bigger and better things— like making fruit leather. If you've ever made fruit leather you know its a rather time consuming process, if you haven't just take my word for it. While my fruit purée cooked down, it struck me that I could probably make some dog treats with ingredients I had on hand saving me another trip to the store and at least $10. After a quick internet search I learned I could!

With a combination of seven wholesome ingredients and 90 minutes, we are now stocked up on dog treats. Gunther even assisted me by cleaning up the bits that fell onto the floor. He is such a helpful sous chef.  I'm hoping that the simple ingredients are kind to Gunther and don't upset his stomach. If all goes well, I will certainly be making dog treats again. I may even put the money we save into the pups' daycare fund. 

 

If you're interested in making treats for your own canine friend, the recipe from 17 Apart is simple and easily adaptable to the ingredients you have on hand: 

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 finely chopped apple (or sweet potato or banana or carrots or a mixture of them)
1 beaten egg
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 cup cold water 

Directions 
Preheat oven to 350°. Blend flour and cornmeal in large mixing bowl, then incorporate the remaining ingredients until well blended.  Flour a workspace and roll out dough to desired thickness. Cut cookies into desired shape and size (I used biscuit cutters to make 1" discs for Gunther and 1.5" discs for Lily). Place cookies on greased baking sheet and bake for 35 minutes. After baking, turn oven off and leave cookies inside for another 30-45 minutes until crisp.

Nursery: Artwork

The final project we tackled in the nursery while my mom was here was artwork. After all, she is the artist extraordinaire! The plan was to use artwork to introduce some color into the room. In my opinion, white, black, and shades of gray only look better when supporting a pop of color.

The first piece is an abstract painting on very large canvas (100% inspired by a nursery I found online). My mom used molding paste to create some texture. She used the colors to create the much needed pop. It's unreal how the colors jump off the canvas in the gray room!

 

The second piece is much smaller and pretty simple. Way back in the day, when my mom was early in her career, she often did skies for clients in their children's rooms. I thought the sky would serve as a lovely and simple background for this quote from Prince Caspian:

The final piece of artwork is actually a print from Hatch Show Print in Nashville.  Last September, I saw a tongue in cheek print that I haven't forgotten. It says: Are you from Tennessee? Cause you're the only ten I see.  When I found out that I was pregnant I thought the print would go oh-so-well in the nursery.  A few weeks ago when we were in Nashville for a wedding, I popped into Hatch Show Print and picked it up. I bought a simple black frame which Peter sprayed gold. Then I found some appropriate fancy-pants wrapping paper to use as matting.

There are still a number of projects that need to be tackled before the baby arrives but we are certainly off to a good start!

Nursery: Furniture

While Peter was painting my mom and I were by no means laying around. We were busy working on furniture for the room. We already had a shelf to put in the nursery and a few weeks ago Peter and I found a dresser on Craigslist that will serve as a storage piece and changing table.

If you read any decorating blogs, surely you have heard of Annie Sloan's chalk paint. My mom has been using the paint for a while now (she's even trained to teach others how to use it). She is always raving about how easy the paint is to use. It goes straight on without any need for priming or sanding!

By painting our two pieces of furniture the same color I like to think we created a set. For the dresser, we needed to update the hardware so my mom and I headed to Anthropologie. We found new hardware that was very sweet and very pricey.  Rather than replace all of the hardware on the dresser, we decided to only replace the hardware on the middle three drawers and simply spray paint the hardware on the other six. A fresh coat of navy spray paint freshened the hardware for just $2.50. The Craigslist dresser was completely transformed by the paint and new hardware.

As for the yellow shelf, three coats of paint drastically improved the look. I've always loved our yellow shelf so I had a hard time imagining that it would look better but man, oh man, does it ever!