Wally McDreamy

He’s such a dreamboat, he could be on the cover of a romance novel for dogs.











My handsome boy.  Love.

Capturing the Moment

I knew this picture would turn out terrible, but I so loved the moment I had to capture it somehow.  The lighting, the color, the eye shine, the graininess, reflection, background, everything was awful.  Poor, sweet, adorable puppies in such a photo, tsk, tsk.  I did the best I could to take away the awful and leave the adorable in place.  I did some editing in Windows Live Photo Gallery and some in Adobe Photoshop Elements.  I wish I was better at the editing process, but I can only do the simpler retouching – applying a yellow filter, lightening shadows, smoothing out some of the graininess, correcting the eye shine by cloning a spot of the nose onto the eyes and leaving a glint.  I also added a diffuse glow to the highlighted areas and then softened the edges of the photo overall.  When you want to preserve a memory sometimes you just have to do the best you can.





Wally and LuLu had been outside playing after dinner.  It was dark, the porch light was on, and they showed up at the patio door ready to come back in.  Wally was looking at Rich through the window, and LuLu was waiting to show off the nice little selection of sticks she’d carefully gathered up.  She’ll parade around with them all proud and happy, showing them to each of us in turn – me, Rich, Wally.  The parading will go on for quite a while as we exclaim over how pretty her sticks are, then she’ll hop up on the couch and sit demurely while I love on her little dome head and silky ears and tell her how much I appreciate her bringing in her pretty sticks to share.  She’ll gradually relinquish them one at a time, dropping first one and letting me take it, then the next, and so on, as though she’d meant for me to have them all along.  She has the most incredibly sweet way about her during this ritual.  The whole time Wally will be looking from one to the other of us with his “Is she s’posed to have those?” look.  It’s okay, Wally.  She can hold them, but she can’t chew on them.

And that’s the way it goes here at Wally and LuLu’s house.  I never smiled so much till they came to live with us.  They are some very special doggies.  Sending you lots of love and a wish for a beautiful day.

Mug Shots

Hello!  Long time no blog post, but thought I would share today a couple of Shutterfly projects I recently completed.  I made a Wally coffee mug for Rich a couple of years ago (pre-LuLu) and have always meant to make a LuLu mug, as well.    Each mug has two puppy photos and one adult photo.



I never seemed to have just the right adult photo of LuLu until last month.  I was looking for a fall photo which would coordinate nicely with the puppy photos.  I would have liked more autumn leaves in her photo, but this one works okay, I think.



Also, Wally and LuLu finally have their own calendar.  Here’s Mr. November:




The calendar turned out beautifully with its 12 x 12 photos and color coordinated pages.  Throughout 2013 we had a Golden Retriever calendar on our wall and I kept thinking that should be Wally and LuLu up there.  Well, next year it will be.

I also made a 48 page 12 x 12 photo book with the year’s favorite pictures, most of which you’ve seen here on the blog.  I’ll make this an annual project.





By now I’m sure I’ve removed all doubt as to how completely over-the-top nuts we are about Wally and LuLu.  Then again, I probably did that a long time ago.

I’ve started a file on my computer with possible candidates for next year’s book or calendar.  When the time comes I’ll sort through them and only take the best of the best.  The enlarged printed photos do look much better than I anticipated.



Gosh, I’ll try to not let a whole month go by before my next post.  Our kids grow up so fast, don’t they?  Have a beautiful day!