Sweet River Studios

Well another year is gone. We've lost great musicians like Prince and David Bowie and actor Alan Rickman and of course John Glen and many, many more. We went through a horrible election year. The bitterness, name calling, lies, lies and more lies makes it hard to appreciate the right to vote. On a personal note, I entered two quilts in the Ohio State Fair and one quilt got People's Choice. My parents celebrated 50 years of marriage, my husband and I celebrated our 20 year anniversary and took a vacation to Key West, Florida. River earned a total of 46 ribbons in C-WAGS scent games and earned her Level 2 Title, Level 4 Title, Level 1 ACE Title, and Level 3 ACE Title. She also earned 2 ribbons, both first place, in barn hunting and her Open Title. This year was a little slow on blogging but that's okay. I'm not competing with anyone. I had around 35 posts and the summer was really slow. Sorry, but I'm outside most of that time and not sitting at a compu...

In part 2, I posted a picture of the quilt with a piece of clear vinyl laid on top. I tested out various quilting designs by drawing on it with dry erase markers. Trying to figure out the quilting designs for this quilt has been rather hard. I guess the colored pencil drawings are making it hard. Do I quilt them or not? I'm no longer debating about it. I've decided to quilt the portraits. It'll be a challenge but I think every quilt you do you should give you at least one challenge. So far I've not really had one for this particular quilt so there it is. I just hope I have enough thread colors. I've also added a German Shepard to the quilt. Grandma really, really loved her dog and never got another shepard. She's had other dogs since then but she never talks about them, just her shepard. It's not an exact portrait of her dog but she'll love it just the same. I've been gathering some additional quilting threads this last week and I'm goin...

Last night River and I went to Anything Goes for Dogs in Marysville for scent league. We did 2 searches at level 1 and 2 searches at level 3.  River did really well and Q'd in all 4 searches. She had a little trouble on the first search but apparently a lot of dogs did. There were only 4 dogs to Q in the Level 1 search, which was really surprising giving that all of the dogs have been doing this a while. The second Level 1, went much better since all of the dogs qualified. The next 2 searches were at Level 3, which is 3 scent hides. Most of the dogs did really well at Level 3 as well, and River completed her Level 3 ACE title. The second night of the December scent league will be on the 21st. Below is a picture of River's Qualifying ribbons, her Title ribbon and her ACE medal. After a busy night like last night, River will sleep until about 3 pm today. A busy dog is a tired dog!

River and I participated in a barn hunt trial at Dogwood Agility in Ostrander, Ohio over the weekend. This was our first trial at the Senior level. River has to find 4 rats and complete the tunnel and climb requirements within 3 minute 30 seconds. We had a great time but only qualified in one run with a time of 2:09 which also got us first place. Another dog had a time of 2:03 and got High in Class but we were the only 2 dogs to qualify. Most of the time teams run out of time. Some dogs, like mine, alert very subtly and its pretty hard to figure out if they've found a rat or not. Even though we didn't qualify on most of the runs, we still enjoyed our weekend and it was great practice. It's a lot of work holding a barn hunt trial and we greatly appreciate all the people who volunteer to make each hunt run smoothly.

River and I are participating in a fall CWAGS scent league held at Anything Goes for Dogs in Marysville held in September and October. Our September trial went fairly well. The first evening, she was way too excited to search during our Level 1. She mostly just ran around and alerted to 2 boxes no where near the scent. During a level 3 search she did a perfect alert but it wasn't there and when I told her "no" she bounded 3 times across the room and tackled a small object and looked at me like, "I was just teasing it's right here!", which it was. So she was quite playful that evening. We wound up with 1 Q at Level 1 and 2 at Level 3, which she really made me work for. The second evening of scent league, we were doing Levels 1 and 3 again. River qualified in each round earning her Level 1 ACE Title! It's a small dog paw medal on a lanyard of black with hearts and stars. She was pretty calm. So calm in fact that she seemed pretty bored with the whole t...

I haven't posted about any recipes at all this year or if I have they've been few and far between. I guess over the hot summer I'm just not cooking all that much or at least not making anything post worthy. But today is different my friends. Today is about apple cobbler. My parents, especially my dad, likes pie and don't get me wrong I love pie too but I don't like making crust. My parents have that mastered but I don't make it often enough and I struggle. Besides, I don't like rolling out the dough either. So, I tend to gravitate more towards the cobbler dough. I use my Cuisinart, pulse, pulse, pulse and sprinkle it over fruit. Now, that's easy. You can use whatever apples you have on hand. You can use all Jonathan, all Winesap or mix them. Just don't use a soft apple like a Golden Delicious. You'll wind up with mostly mush but feel free to add them into another apple. Today, I had Jonagolds and Golden Delicious. I also had about 12 cups of ...

My husband and I have been married for 20 years now. We got married in 1996 on October the 5th and believe me it really doesn't seem like it's been 20 years. We don't travel much. We've gone on a cruise to the Caribbean, Las Vegas, DC, Hawaii and now Key West, FL. Seems pretty sad that we've gone to 5 places in 20 years but there you have it. I decided that our 20th should be spent somewhere else besides home. We wrestled around with a few places and decided to go to Key West. I've heard that Key West is pretty much like any other tropical island in the Caribbean but close to get to and you don't need a passport or have to live on a plane for 12 hours. Hawaii, I love you but that flight sucks. I'm glad we honeymooned there but I probably won't be going back. I can find sand elsewhere. So we booked our anniversary week, October 1 - 7, at the Tropical Inn off of Duval in the heart of Key West. We arrived in Key West, FL about 6 hours late due to ...