Claire & Chance Meet Santa Christmas 2011

Claire's 5th Adoption Anniversary

Today is the 5th Anniversary of Claire's Adoption! In honor of the day Chance, Claire, and I tried a photo shoot in our garden. I can't imagine life without our girl!

Pet Tag Photo Labels

To continue the theme from last week, I'm re-posting a blog entry from my personal blog as I have just three more days left to finish my current freelance job. This one features Claire's brother Chance.

The ChipIn for Claire is still up and running! Please don't forget about her; I'll still need a large amount of help to care for her when or if she does end up having surgery.

the ChipIn can be found on the blog at:
http://sponsorclaire.blogspot.com

on Facebook, find Claire at:
www.facebook.com/sponsorclaire

to sponsor by check:
Ellen Rosentreter
10849 1/2 Hesby St.
North Hollywood, CA 91601

Please also re-post and share our info.

To frame Chance's baby pics, I used the tag machine at PetCo for charms just like his dog tag, instead printing them up with his name, the date of the photo, and his age at the time. I unified all the images by framing them in plain cloth frames, then sewed a tag to each frame. It turned out to be a fun, inexpensive way to memorialize his babyhood.

How do you personalize your pet's photos? If you've tried this idea, or something else creative, please leave me a comment!

Another Doggie-spired Craft

Another re-post from my personal blog featuring Claire, while I'm busy working this week. It's Friday though, so look for a fresh Claire update this weekend! This post is from December/January of this year:

I used a printable template from PetSmart to make the most adorable personalized ornament for my brother featuring his dog, Duggan.

The template allows you to upload your dog or cat's face, choose a fur color and texture, then create a downloadable pdf. Once printed, it's like origami and finished by simple folding and pasting. We did embellish the template with a little more painting to make Duggie's spots true-to-life.

Now that I finished making everyone else's presents, I had a few moments to finish my own Chance & Claire Adornments! It took a lot of help from my mom to get the painting true to life. I wish I could have taken tole painting classes from my mom in the 1970s when she used to teach. These will be even more special to me because she helped me make them.

Have you ever tried to paint your dog? Or commissioned a personal item? Please leave a comment on the blog.

Doggie Silhouettes

Since I'm busy with work this week and can't post an update to the blog, I thought I'd put up a fun re-post from my personal blog that covered a craft featuring Claire. You'll recognize Claire's silhouette if you look closely at the Favicon on the tab for this blog! I put this post up a year or two ago:

Recognize these dogs? I'm practicing making silhouettes so I can do this with my best friend's kids when I visit them in Texas next month. Cathy has three kids under five years old. This will be a fun way to thank her for her hospitality.

I read a blogger's post that mentioned she made it a family tradition to make new silhouettes of each kid every year on April first. That sounds like a great way to memorialize kids' growth, and one I'd like to incorporate if I ever have my own kids. Growing up, my family had generic silhouettes on plaques with each kid's birthdate that always hung in my parents room, but they weren't of our specific profiles.

Here's a google search that offers tutorials, both of the traditional way of printing a picture and cutting it out, and the digital way using a computer program to create the image.

Have you ever made silhouettes? Did you have a special spot in the house to note your growth as you grew up? What other fun crafts do you do about or for your pets? Tell me about it in a comment below.

Puppy School & BBQs

(Claire in the living room, June 2010)

The heat has been getting to Claire, the discomfort adding to her pain. She was making breathy pain sounds on Saturday, so I did give her a pain pill at night to ensure a good night of rest while it was cool. That meant she woke up sluggish and constipated this morning.

I left her on crate rest at home Saturday morning and took Chance to puppy school for the first time in months. It's nice to be getting back to our usual routines. Chance did great, and I felt better after putting in some training time.

Saturday began the rush of holiday BBQs, so I used the opportunity to talk up Claire's situation. I took a donation jar to my friends party just so they'd visually see the website, and her picture, in hopes that people will re-post and spread the word a little further.

Oh, and I think I forgot to report back on the application I'd put in to the Brown Dog Foundation this week. It wasn't till I got to the bottom of the application that I saw that they only serve specific states, so I knew they probably couldn't help, but since it was finished I submitted anyway. I'm glad I did, because their denial letter contained suggestions for several other sources, so I'll be following up on them during the coming week.

The Pack

It's about time I introduced you to the rest of the pack. This is me and my brother Chance. Mommy actually had him first, from the time he was seven weeks old, back in 2006. Chance was the first doggy Mommy ever adopted in her whole life--before that she was a bunny person. Mommy found me on Petfinder when Chance was ten months old, so when I came into the family I instantly had one doggy brother and two bunny brothers. Now it's just Chance and me. And Mommy of course, but she's in charge, so she's usually taking the pictures and not in them. Mommy's the boss of me, and I'm in charge of Chance, even when he doesn't know it. But I look out for him so it's all okay.