Category Archives: Fun

My Granddaughter’s Favorite Video —

What Does the Fox Say?

At least it was back before Halloween, and dictated the costume she chose to wear for that event: a fox.

“Watch fox movie, Mommy?” she would repeatedly ask in the days leading up to Halloween. Her mom would turn it on and she would dance and sing along.

My son sent us a link to the video and of course we watched it right away. My first reaction was… wow. This is very weird. This is … just very weird…

But then, for some reason I wanted to watch it again. And then again. And, well… many more times for several days.

It’s “an electronic dance song and viral video by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis” according to Wikipedia, and was debuted on the Internet in September. It is now nearing 250 million views. The brothers have a comedy talk show in Norway, and yet are very good singers.

After you watch it a time or two, it stops being weird and starts being fun. I totally understand why Lily likes it. I would have shared it sooner, if I’d had a properly working computer and blog to do it with.

So, without further ado, I present “What does the Fox Say?:

Teach Your Dog…

Quigley doing "Show me belly"

Quigley doing “Show me belly”

“Show me belly” is one of my favorite Quigley tricks!  He so cute!  We have been working on saying grace before he eats and he’s doing well.

But that’s just fun stuff. What I really want is for him to learn to go to a place in the living room when someone knocks on the door and to lie down there and stay. As opposed to jumping all around and on the hapless guest who enters. He weighs almost 90 pounds so having him jump on people in exuberant abandon is not a pleasant experience.

So we’ve been working on it,  It’s not coming easily, especially not getting him to go to the particular spot I wished him to go to. Remembering there is a “trick” called “going to a mark” I searched the internet and came up with the following video by Zac George:  How To Teach Your Dog to Go to a Spot.

Zac’s very enthusiastic and his dog is very quick and attentive and energetic — one of those cattle herding dogs that are smart and bred to work well with people, making frequent eye contact– as opposed to hurling themselves headlong into the woods and across the hills on a scent trail,  bellowing all the while like hounds were bred to do. (They actually have a contest of who can jump up on the tree and bark the most at coonhound field trials. Quigley has potential to do quite well in that one…)

But I digress…  Quig did pretty well with the touch the towel thing that’s taught in the video and we’re moving along on the touch it and lie down part. I thought the video was so entertaining, some of you dog lovers might enjoy it as well…

Strange Characters in St. Louis

My second day in St. Louis, the day of the Christy Awards, I took a little walk looking for a place to eat lunch, and happened on some strange characters. My husband warned me about panhandlers, and my neighbor warned me about purse snatcher/pickpockets… but no one warned me of the strange beings I would find in the city park.

Like this man, for instance, a true Air Head:

airhead small

Or this one… definitely a bird brain.

birdbrain small

And then there’s this individual, and I have no idea what his problem is, but it seems to be grave…

sad sack small

I’m guessing they’re all from children’s books, since the park had lots of things for children, including a long rectangular wading pool full of fun fountains to get doused in on a hot and muggy day.

Does anyone recognize any of these figures and where they are from?

Stop It!

Bob Newhart Video from way back. I mentioned some time ago that I’d write more about leaving “rebound” behind, and I’m just about ready to do so. This video is just the teaser: it captures the gist of the new teaching in…  well… two words!  Plus it’s funny. [If the video doesn’t appear, please click on the title of this post to go to its own page. The video should show up there.]

Two Dogs Dining

A fellow dog lover sent me this. I’ve now watched it numerous times. I laugh every time.  At first I just enjoyed it for the “acting.” Now I enjoy it because it’s fun to watch the dogs being dogs, while the people try to keep them in “character.” I’m also trying to teach Quigley to eat off a fork. So far, he’s not caught on.  [If for some reason the video is not appearing below, click on the title of this post to go to the post itself and hopefully you’ll find it.]

The Mystery Project Unveiled

Over the weekend, we gathered together with my son, daughter-in-law and extremely cute granddaughter up in Pinetop, AZ, and that is why I had to finish my Big Project last week — so I could give it to her. It was a quiet book.

I got the pattern for free from a website called Modest Maven. You can see the original I worked from HERE. And you can download your own pattern and instructions there, as well. Or other things: she sews a lot of stuff for her friends and family all the time.

The book has twelve pages of different activities, several of which I’ve pictured below from the book I made.  The last picture was a substitute for Maven’s telephone because  I thought the old-style landline telephone, with its hand receiver connected by  a coiled wire to its base and rotary number dial would be something unidentifiable to today’s kids as a phone. Furthermore, I could think of no way to represent the modern-day cell phone with its number pads, or worse just the screen, in any way that would work in a quiet book. So I substituted an apple tree with hooks…

Anyway, here’s a look at a few pages:

use the velcro-attached balloons to match the colors

velcro-attached clothes dress the little girl and a mitt fits just right on a little hand

Felt buttoned on flowers and and a lace-up football.

A zippered tent with a little dog in it (who looks suspiciously like Quigley… but that was purely accidental. Really. ) and two children who can be put to bed or taken out as desired

the aforementioned apple tree

Light of Eidon Scrapbook

Continuing my series highlighting the first book in my Legends of the Guardian King series, The Light of Eidon, I thought today I’d draw your attention to the scrapbook I developed for it, similar to the one I did for Arena.

In it I put up several photos of the ancient Nabatean city of Petra, which served as inspiration for the canyons of the SaHal in which the action plays out at the end of the book. There’s even a link to a virtual tour of the area.

Also included is a picture of an LL Bean model from the late 70’s that served as the inspiration for Abramm,

some information on swords, a map of the city of Jarnek,

and a cartoon that was pinned to my bulletin board for years.   If you’ve read The Light of Eidon, you’ll probably get the connection. If not… well… as you know, it’s being offered free as an e-book this week HERE… or you can try your local library. Amazon even has a few paper copies both new and used for sale…

To visit my scrapbook for The Light of Eidon, click HERE.