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Posts from the ‘Personal’ Category

Snapshot: Vacationing in Quebec City!

We’re back and it’s officially fall!  We had a wonderful time on vacation!  This was Victory’s second vacation and her second time visiting Quebec and it was very nice!  We began our vacation in Manchester, Vermont for a few days, and then on to our destination, Quebec City!  (We stayed further north in Quebec this year from last year.)  Doug, fortunately, drove the entire way both ways and Victory sat on my lap!  To make the 14 hour drive home go by more quickly, we listened to the entire Serial Podcast!

We were really fortunate that we had nice weather and nice temperatures during our entire vacation!  Doug and I relaxed and we did not do any work during our vacation, which was very liberating!  Thus, today’s post is a sneak peek, as I have not finished editing the images from our trip.   If you follow along on Instagram, I shared a few images from our vacation during our vacation!

We had a great time in Manchester, Vermont, which is extremely dog friendly, and Victory was able to go into all the stores with us.  We took Victory to Mount Equinox, and the views were just beautiful and it was so peaceful.  We also previously took Biscuit to Mount Equinox, and we thought a lot about our Biscuit.  We also took Victory to the Orvis Flagship Store where Victory had fun trying out (picking out — Victory now has 5 Orvis beds) the Orvis dog beds and trying on her new Orvis coat!  (Flannel is supposed to be in, so Victory is ready!)  We also went to the Vermont Country Store, where I got some goodies and Victory walked around with Doug!  We also visited Robert Frost’s home.

On the way to Quebec City, we stopped for lunch in Montreal at the Orange Julep!  The Orange Julep has the world’s best orange juice ever, and I took a half gallon to the house we rented!  Plus, you have to love that the orange juice is served from an orange!

We made it to our lake house that we rented for several weeks just outside of Quebec City located on the Saint Lawrence River.  The views were wonderful and beautiful and the sunsets were grand!  Victory had a great time and she loved looking at the water.  We left her ‘hut’ at home this year and she managed well.  We also made ample time to relax, read, and take long walks together.  We also discovered the best ice cream ever!  We walked down to the water when the tide was low and we had a lot of fun with Victory!  Also, Doug and I are now hooked on The Bridge (the original Swedish/Danish version) — we watched the first season on Netflix and we look forward to season two!

We went to the vineyards located on an island not too far from where we stayed.  It was very pretty with a real French-country feel.  The iced cider and fire cider are very popular, as there were many apple orchards located on the island!

We went to Quebec City multiple times.  On our first visit to Quebec City, we even met a native sheltie named Choco!  We ate outside with Victory in Quebec City and the food was absolutely delicious!  We also walked all over the city and did some shopping.  Quebec is probably the closest Victory will come to France!

This year, we left the Hound About at home as the streets and alleys are cobblestone, narrow, and crowded in Quebec City, making it difficult to push her in the Hound About.  As such, we purchased the Ergo Performance Carrier prior to leaving for our trip.  Just before leaving, I researched possible carriers for our vacation and the Ergo Performance Carrier seemed to be the best option for support and for its material — it has a breathable mesh material as our fur girl is covered in fur after all!  Doug was skeptical at first, but the Ergo Performance Carrier even won him over!  Victory loved it and many people took her photograph in her Ergo Performance Carrier and many people came up to us to meet our Victory!  Victory got to see the world from a whole new perspective in her Ergo Performance Carrier versus about a foot off the ground!  I am sure that the Ergo Performance Carrier will come in handy in the future as well!  We are totally smitten with our fur girl and we are more than ok with having the most beautiful, loved, and coddled sheltie girl around!

Oh, how can we forget Tim Hortons?  Doug loves Tim Horton’s; we do not have one near us; and they just are not the same in the U.S.  So, as a result, we ate way too many donuts over the course of a few weeks!  The frosted cinnamon rolls are fantastic — I’m sure I had about a half a dozen of them!

Most of all, we are grateful for our time away together.  We enjoyed spending time together; getting away; having a break; having a change of scenery; and having days where we had no plans and were able to take each day as it came!  Everyone was nice in Quebec City and the pace of everything was much slower than we are accustomed to, which is refreshing!

Even after 14 hours in the car on the ride home, Victory still spotted her exit to her house.  She was exhausted, she did not sleep a wink in the car on my lap, but she still managed to recognize her exit to her house and to the garage — one of her all time favorite activities — returning home via the garage!  She was so excited to be home in familiar surroundings!

Enjoy the snapshot of photos from our vacation below!  Once I finish editing the images from our vacation, I will put a proper blog post together to share in the next week or two, I hope.  Stay tuned.

Have a great weekend!  We are happy that it is officially fall, our favorite time of year!  We are taking Victory to the Pups in the Park on Saturday — it should be fun!  (I also have lots of catching up to do from being away, and I hope to make some headway this weekend!)

Happy Friday, Everyone!

 

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Gone Fishing…

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We are headed to Quebec for vacation for a few weeks!  This will be Victory’s second time visiting Quebec!  We are very much looking forward to our time away together!  We are visiting and staying in a different part of Quebec this year from last year, and it should be beautiful.  We are stopping in Manchester, Vermont for a few days on our way to Quebec, one of Biscuit’s and Victory’s favorite places to visit as it is very dog friendly!

In other news, we are grateful and happy to report that Victory had no issues at her recent annual exam at the vet earlier this week — the vet said that her urine “looked beautiful” after receiving the lab results of her recent urinalysis after battling persistent urinary tract infections this past spring into the summer.  The fur clipping and wiping, the supplement, and the human-grade wet food diet are all working to keep her clean and flushing out her system regularly preventing bacteria.  Thankfully, Victory is healthy and ready for her travels!

We are disconnecting during our vacation.  So I’ll be back to the blog when we return in late September, and I will share our vacation adventures at that time!  We look forward to rest, relaxing, reading good books, and spending time together!

Meanwhile, if you are in a blog-reading mood, you are warmly invited to visit the archives — the links are shown below.

Dog Related posts

Dog Rescue posts

‘Dog-Centric’ Artists Interviews

For Artists posts

Photography posts

Personal posts

Victory Related posts

Additionally, you can sign up to receive regular blog posts along with the newsletter, shown below.

1. You can receive regular blog posts straight to your inbox via entering your email address in the box located on the upper right side of the blog.

2. You can receive the periodic newsletter where you will receive information before anyone else!

We’ll see you back here in late September!  As always, thank you so very much for visiting and reading the blog!  I am most grateful for you!  Thank you!

Have a wonderful few weeks!

P.S. While we are away, I do plan to post images via Instagram (our Instagram feed is also shown on the right side of the blog!)

Around Here: August

Well, it is difficult to believe the summer is coming to an end in a few weeks.  Our pool is only open for a couple more weeks.  I can hardly believe it — the time is flying by!  Below are some items that have occurred around here in August, a busy month!

-continuing to work steadily on my project; and I have begun to draft the copy for my project.

-preparing filings with the U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress.

-finished reading this book — a good read!

-started reading this book — so far a good read — a recommendation from a blog reader.

-really loving the Magic Lessons Podcast!

-making dinner together with Doug — enjoying lots of yummy food on the Big Green Egg!

-started watching Mr. Robot — it is pretty good so far.

-started watching Power — it is pretty good thus far!

-enjoying more evenings together with our fur girl, Victory — she loves, loves her Hound About!

-enjoying weekends at the pool, catching up on all of my reading — I still have many books sitting on my nightstand!

-we gave Victory a bath and she looks and feels great!

-working on framing my images for the house — I am almost finished!

-celebrated our birthdays and enjoyed a visit from my parents!

-happy with the results of our wedding books via Artifact Uprising!  I can’t wait to share the other photo books I made!

-still enjoying my yoga class (and the gym)!

-gradually making progress on our to do list this summer.

-having date nights with Doug!  We went to Delaware and the Eastern Shore this month for some date nights with our fur girl!

-we are getting ready for our vacation in a couple of weeks!  we are really looking forward to our time away together!

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!  We are headed to the Eastern Shore this weekend with our fur girl — the weather looks like it will be gorgeous and not too hot and humid!

 

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Photo Books: Our Weddings

I recently made photo books of our wedding and my sister’s wedding, in addition to several more photo books.  (We already have albums from our wedding, but I wanted to make our own wedding photo books, creating narratives of this special day.)   I made these photo books through Artifact Uprising.  I think that they turned out really well.  Each wedding photo book is entirely black and white, keeping with the timeless, iconic, and elegant theme of each wedding.  There are roughly seventy images, 140 pages, included in each photo book, which are printed on matte art paper, with thick white boarders around each image, along with a partial exterior dust jacket.  (You can view the inside of a sample book here.)   Each book contains one image on the right side and a blank page appears on the left side.  This way, the viewer can focus on one image at a time.

It was quite an undertaking to select, prepare the images, and determine the sequence for each photo book.  However, I am very thankful that I made these books, which make wonderful heirlooms.  This item had been on my list for quite a long time, and I am really glad that this is now completed!

Now, my parents have copies of these two wedding photo books; my sister and brother-in-law have a copy of their wedding photo book; and my sister’s in-laws have a copy of my sister’s wedding photo book.  Everyone loved the photo books!  A few images of our wedding photo books are shown below!

 

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Victory: Photography Project — 69

Beginning in January 2014, I started a weekly photography project with my muse, Victory!  I will continue to share this project on the blog this year!  My goal is to document all of Victory’s changes, while preserving fleeting moments and memories, while capturing moments of our everyday.

My parents came to visit recently and we had a really nice time together and we also celebrated three birthdays — all within four days of each other!  We went to the Eastern Shore together, and we took Nick and Victory to the dog beach.  It was very crowded as compared to the last time we recently visited the beach on the Eastern Shore.  Victory still dipped her paws in the water; however, Nick really did not care for the water!  As you can see below, he is running from the waves!  After the beach, we celebrated our birthdays by going to pick crabs!  The weather was beautiful all weekend!  We spent evenings on the deck together; and I baked a cake and Doug cooked a special birthday dinner for my Dad’s birthday, and it was delicious!

Victory was even nice enough to share her Hound About with Nick so we could take some long walks in the neighborhood together!  They got along well, and Nick is getting his own Hound About, the red one, later this month, as his little legs tire easily on longer walks.  Victory had a great time and she got lots of treats and love from her Grandma and Grandpa!

Below are some images from my parents’ recent visit!

We hope that you have a great weekend.  The weather is supposed to be beautiful here this weekend and we plan to go to Delaware with our fur girl as we soak up the last weekends of the summer!

Happy Friday!

 

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A Family Reunion?

When we adopted Victory in the fall of 2013, Victory was one of many shelties living in a horrible hoarding house on the western side of Michigan.  Soon after, we discovered Chrissy, a sheltie who was also a victim of the horrible hoarding situation.  You can read and view further information about the hoarding situation here, here, here, and here.

After we adopted Victory,  we saw that Chrissy was up for adoption through the Michigan Sheltie Rescue, and Doug and I believe that Victory and Chrissy are related as they have a striking resemblance — just look at the unique coloring with a hint of Blue Merle; the snout shape; and the similar nose and ears!  Perhaps Chrissy is Victory’s sister, auntie, or cousin?  What do you think?

In the photos below, Chrissy is shown on the left, which was taken on her first night in her furever home; and Victory is shown on the right while she was in her foster home taken shortly before we met and adopted Victory.  (Both images were taken approximately at the time of adoption).

I recently contacted the Michigan Sheltie Rescue who put me in contact with Chrissy’s parents.  We discovered that Chrissy lives in Ohio, not too far from my parents who live in Michigan.  Our plan is to coordinate a reunion for the two fur girls the next time we travel to Michigan to visit family!  At that time, I will take some photographs of the two girls together, and it will be wonderful to witness both of their wonderful transformations!  We can’t wait to meet Chrissy!

We hope that you have a great weekend!  We are headed back to the Eastern Shore this weekend with Victory!  It should be a fun and beautiful weekend!

 

Chrissy and Victory

The above images are courtesy of Chrissy’s parents; and Victory’s foster family.

Snapshot: 2011 Nova Scotia Vacation

I recently finished making eight photo books, and I realized that I had not shared our trip to Nova Scotia that we took with Biscuit in 2011, which predates this blog.  (We also took Biscuit with us on vacation to Nova Scotia in 2012; and we took him to Manchester, Vermont in the spring of 2013.)  We love Nova Scotia and we had a wonderful time together.  We rented a cottage on the water in Hubbards, a quaint and charming town.  My parents also joined us for a portion of this trip.  We enjoyed several day trips to Halifax; Lunenburg; Mahone Bay; and Peggy’s Cove, to name a few.

Biscuit absolutely loved visiting Nova Scotia, and he especially enjoyed the beach and the boat ride around Peggy’s Cove.  The temperatures were perfect and it was lovely being on the water.  It was an added bonus to be surrounded by nice people — the Canadians are very friendly.  We rented the same cottage again in 2012, and each time we celebrated Biscuit’s birthday along with our birthdays!  We hope to someday return to Nova Scotia.  We have many wonderful memories together with our beloved Biscuit.

We are looking forward to returning to Canada later this summer for our vacation with our fur girl, Victory!  We also look forward to my parents coming to visit soon along with Nick!

Below is a snapshot from our trip to Nova Scotia in 2011.

 

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Around Here: July

Well, the year is already half way over.  I can hardly believe it — the time is flying by!  Below are some items that have occurred around here in July!

-received positive feedback on the first portion of my project from another reviewer.  I have begun working on the images for the second portion of the project.  The photographing portion is nearly complete after nearly three years of photographing for this project!

-preparing filings with the U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress; and getting test prints made for my project.

-finished reading this book — a good read!

-started reading this book — so far a good read.

-making dinner together with Doug — enjoying lots of yummy food on the Big Green Egg!

-finished watching the third season of Orange is the New Black, which was a bit disappointing this season.

-started watching the new seasons of Masters of Sex.

-enjoying evenings together on the deck with our fur girl, Victory — we have been enjoying the recent cooler temperatures in the mornings and evenings.

-Loving this new podcast!

-enjoying weekends at the pool, catching up on all of my reading — I still have many books sitting on my nightstand!

-finally finished selecting images (and sizes), which go to print next week, to frame and put up in our home.

-finished making eight different photo books via Artifact Uprising, which we can’t wait to receive!  It was quite time intensive to make these books, but they will be really nice to have and look back on for years to come.  I also finally finished making our wedding photo book.  Our photographer made us an album at the time of our wedding, but I wanted to make a photo book, creating a narrative of our wedding day, nearly seven years ago — better late than never!

-still enjoying my yoga class (and the gym)!

-gradually getting the items on our to do list this summer — we are slowly getting there!

-Doug purchased tickets for Pups in the Park in late September — it should be fun and hopefully Victory will like it, too!

-having date nights with Doug!  We are heading to Delaware with Victory this weekend!  The weather looks really nice!

-Lastly, Victory finished her antibiotics, which she was on for three consecutive weeks to treat her infection.  We have also been giving her a supplement and we have been wiping and clipping the fur around her ‘lady parts’ to keep this area clean.  We recently went back to the vet for a follow-up appointment, and the vet took another sterile urine sample, which was very concentrated.  Fortunately, the recent urine culture showed no bacteria indicating no infection!  The vet recommended that we change Victory to a human-grade wet food diet, two feedings a day, making a soup/chowder to get more water into her system in order to flush out her system more frequently.  Victory loves her new diet!  The vet thinks that perhaps the lack of water consumption may be contributing to these infections, which we have been battling for over two months.  We will recheck her urine in about a month, prior to leaving for vacation, to make sure she is still infection free.  Our fingers are double crossed!

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

 

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The Importance of Mornings

I love the mornings even though I was not always a proponent of the early mornings.  However, for the past couple of years, I have been getting up early and going to bed much earlier in order to get roughly seven to eight hours of sleep a night during the week.

During the morning hours, I find that I am more alert, able to focus more easily, and everything just feels easier.  So, if I need to tackle something that requires a lot of attention to detail and concentration, I will have a greater chance of being successful in the morning hours versus towards the end of the day, when I am more tired.  It is always good to know your “peak hours” in order to set yourself up for success.  I am really glad that I made the move to getting up early and going to bed a bit earlier.  Even on the weekends we are now getting up earlier, which provides more time for us to enjoy the mornings together.  I encourage you to take advantage of the early morning hours — where so much more can be accomplished and enjoyed!

 

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Celebrating 40 Years!

It was our parents’ 40th Wedding Anniversary on Sunday; and before our parents left for their trip commemorating this milestone, we gave them a surprise anniversary gift.  The three of us, including our spouses, gave our parents money to use towards taking a trip to England; and we also made a custom anniversary card along with photo cards spanning the past 40 years beginning with our parents’ honeymoon in 1975 to the Virgin Islands!

Below are a few images (courtesy of my sister), taken at my sister and brother-in-law’s house, of our parents opening their surprise gift from all of us, which they loved!


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