Today, our beautiful dog, Kila, turned 10. We adopted Kila in 2003. We were just finishing up high school and Sean said to me, “We should get a puppy.” We planned for Kila to live with at home with Sean and his parents because I would be going further away to college in the fall. What were Sean’s parents thinking?! Whatever it was, we are so grateful. We could not have done it all without Sean’s mom, Renee, and his stepmom, Janet. To this day, they are 2 of Kila’s favorite people. I remember the day so well. Kila and her 2 brothers were being fostered by a family in Detroit for the Humane Society. Sean and I walked in and were greeted by 2 of the fuzziest, roly poly Husky/German Shepherd puppies. Sean eventually found Kila underneath the dining room table and decided she was the one. When she was a baby she would flatten her tiny body across the air vent in Sean’s bedroom and soak up all the cold air. She still does that to this day in our room, but it’s only her head that fits on the vent. She has been the best dog we could have asked for. So smart (a little too smart, actually), sensitive, and the most patient big sister to Charlie. Did I mention she is also bilingual? Sean retaught her all her commands in Hebrew a few years back.
For her birthday, we barbequed. Kila got her very own burger. And of course, a special birthday hat picked out by Sean.
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Sean’s sister, Rachel, and I have been running together since last Summer. We decided to run a 5k together last October and took turns going to each others houses to run together. I like running but having someone who is planning to run with you, and relying on that schedule, is even more motivation to keep going. Plus, we get to spend time chatting and catching up, which is a great distraction, and fun! We plan for different events throughout the year to keep us motivated. Running in Hawai’i last Christmas was a great reward for all the treadmill and cold weather training we did all Fall. Our latest event was the Color Me Rad 5k in Detroit. I had seen an ad for it online and it was a couple days after my birthday. I sent an email to Rachel to see if she was interested in doing it and she replied almost immediately, “We’re doing this for your birthday. It’s my gift to you. I just signed us up.” So there was no backing out! The race is simply for, “The love of running.” Throughout the course runners get blasted with neon-colored cornstarch, and by the end, everyone is covered in rainbow splatter! This was the first year Color Me Rad came to Detroit and it had a great turnout – over 5000 runners! The run was absolutely beautiful. It took place downtown on Atwater St. – right at the Detroit River waterfront. The weather had been amazing all week, but in true MI spirit, we woke up to 40 degrees and overcast skies on race day. A little adjusting to our outfits and we were off. Sean miraculously had the day off – he wasn’t sure he would and didn’t actually find out until a couple days before – and drove us downtown. I know he would have rather loafed around at home but he said he had fun. Despite the cold weather, it was such a fun morning! We will definitely be running it again next year; we already have plans to volunteer and a team of people who want to do it with us!
Our clean, white shirts, ready for the race!
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I was really excited for my birthday this year. Sean and I haven’t bought each other gifts for a few years now in lieu of making each other something and/or going to do something fun together. A couple months ago, I happened to see on Facebook that Zoe Keating was going to be coming to MI. Sean and I have been listening to her for a few years now and absolutely love her. Every so often I’d see that she was touring but never around us. She just happened to be performing in Ann Arbor at the Ark for 1 night! The Ark is an awesome non profit performance space for acoustic music. They present over 300 nights of music throughout the year. She also happened to be performing the week of my birthday! Sean and I decided to buy tickets for one another since his birthday is coming up in June. It was such a great night. We ate at Seva – my favorite restaurant – and shared a piece of my favorite dessert: vegan orange cake. It takes like a creamsicle!
Woke up to this birthday card from Sean.
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Sean: For your next challenge, you will take the cut-outs of Kila & Charlie and integrate them each into 2 separate images to create a scene where you wouldn’t expect to find them!
Sean: For your next challenge, you must perform the following tasks.
- Cut out a full body image of Charlie in your favorite posture. Make sure you can see all of Charlie, ie: He is not being held or has part of his body obstructed by a blanket.
- Cut out a full body image of Kila. Same rules apply as for Charlie.
Make sure you keep these points in mind:
- Start with as large of an image as you possibly and/or reasonably can so you are not limited by size. ie: cutting out Charlie from an iPhone photo wont allow you to use him in the next cover of Chihuahua Lately because he will not be high enough resolution to fit on a 300 DPI 8.5×11 inch cover.
- Spend some time trimming their furry outline, they wont really look like they are part of a new scene if their fur does not blend with the new background.
Good luck, red panda.
Challenge: ACCEPTED
Sean decided he needed a new desk for his office. He wanted to be able to have one space where he could work and study. He came up with the idea to build a long desk, spanning the width of his office, at a studio height so he could just swivel from one end down to the other. His old desk was a bit too small. And he also might have needed a new chair..
He built the desktop out of pine we bought at Home Depot that he sanded, stained, and connected and set it atop trestles from Ikea. The desk is about 7 feet long. I wish I had pictures of us trying to get it up the stairs and around our tight bungalow home’s corners. The whole project cost around $80.
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Sean reminded me the other day that our anniversary was coming up. I didn’t know what he was talking about and reminded him that our anniversary is in June. But he was referring to the anniversary of the day we got engaged! Haha, I don’t know why he remembered it, but hey, I’ll take it! Today was such a warm, beautiful day – a perfect day to celebrate! The day we got engaged in Sedona, AZ, we celebrated afterwards with pizza ( we’re pretty laid back and besides, it was a very classy pizza joint 
).
Some highlights from a magical trip
Our favorite Sedona restaurant: Mago Cafe. The best Korean food!
My beautiful, beautiful ring. We had to drive into town and search for wifi to email and call friends and family because the Sedona internet is so spotty.
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Sean: For your first Photoshop challenge, should you choose to accept it, you must create a magazine cover for the latest edition of “Chihuahua Lately”. Good luck!
Challenge: ACCEPTED
Kara: This was fun! Any excuse to play with pics of Charlie. And layer masks!
We recently tried Warby Parker‘s home try-on program.. and fell hard for it. The company has such a great business model: cutting out the middle man and getting boutique-quality, designer frames straight from the factory. Until now, I had no idea how high the markup on glasses is. Also, when you purchase a pair of glasses, Warby will donate one pair of glasses to someone in need with the non-profit organizations they’ve partnered with. One for One.
Great, clean design and philanthropy together – I don’t know that it can get much better.
These were the 5 contenders
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I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately. So many big changes going on around me, I wanted to take a minute to breathe and reflect. With the days flying by and summer quickly approaching (not quickly enough!) its so easy to get caught up in planning for the future. I have been trying lately to sit and be present and thankful for what I have. Thinking about the best day in my life is a perfect way to practice that mindfulness. A few have asked to see more pics of our wedding – 2 years ago this June.. I cannot believe it’s been 2 years already. It’s really flown by. Certain things about that day are so crisp in my memory while others are a total blur. Looking back, I can’t believe we pulled it all off. A wedding across the country with so many handmade projects. So much planning and hard work went into 1 magical day. As anyone who has planned a wedding is aware: you don’t realize how hard it is until you do it! We were so excited to learn that our wedding was featured in Arizona Bride Magazine! Our wonderful photographer, Kelsie Pinkerton’s beautiful work so perfectly captured our day. As much as Sean and I did together to prepare and create and arrange, none of it would have been possible – or worth it – without our amazing family.
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I’ve been loving all of the bright colors and fun textures for Spring. For some reason I always see a ton of neutrals all Winter long, but I think bright color can be fun all year round – and especially in the Winter when things are pretty monotone around here (and not in a good way). We may be busy with our spring cleaning and organizing, but I’m hoping for some larger changes. I love gallery walls. We have a number of things around the house that need to be framed. And a few empty frames in a gallery wall already hanging.. Here are a few favorites!
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Sean had a rare, full day off yesterday. We asked his mom and stepdad over for dinner and took the afternoon to cook together! We spent way too much time at Holiday Market – an awesome grocery store and caterer in downtown Royal Oak. We decided to make a salmon recipe from The Barefoot Contessa. We’ve had her Barefoot in Paris cookbook on the easel in our dining room for so long, it was permanently creased open to her blintzes recipe (which we haven’t made yet but we think really classes up the joint). Sadly, I didn’t get a pic of the salmon because it was cooked quickly and eaten straight away but we did get some other fun pics of the day.
We made an awesome Israeli salad as well as a feta, tomato and orzo dish we make a lot in the summer for bbq’s. It’s good year round though 
Sean also made a really yummy garlic aioli to top the salmon. He did put it on his salmon; as well as his orzo; and Isreali salad, and I’m pretty sure he ate a few spoonfuls of it by itself too. We didn’t use all of it, which means it’ll be smelling like garlic here for the rest of the week..
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A little before and after, side by side comparison. I edited out a few blemishes and evened out her skin tone. I wanted to keep everything really natural so the make up was neutral and minimal. She’s so gorgeous we could have left the photos untouched. But a little bit of Photoshop retouching made things a bit more polished.
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