Carmel Apple Cake, and a little dinner party

 

Last week when our friend, Mary, came from VA to visit and haul pups
across country to deliver for us, we threw a little dinner party.

And invited the pups of course!

Between kids and dogs and toys and all the rest, I don't know that my house will ever be cleaned up all the way again.  The floor is covered with all the critter stuff. And probably will be for a while. But, its nice to have the babies indoors again. They started out in a small crate in the living room, then moved to a child's wading pool there.  Soon, they were too big, and needed an enclosed area in the garage.

Then, that wasn't enough, and they ended up with about 75% of the garage.  Today, I took it all down, fences, panels, tables, chairs, all of the white trash bits of this and that I built the cage out of since our two pups are officially our own dogs and live in the house.  They wouldn't stand to be put in a pen out in the garage, Albie would have something very loud to say about that.

Its sad to have the rest of the babies gone, but I'm lucky to still have a couple left here with me.   In the past, I have raised pups and not kept any.  After this experience with Sugarwings, that will never happen again! It was heartbreaking for both of us and we were left sad and empty armed when the last pup was gone.

Three dogs went with Mary last Monday night. One to my sissy and he will always be family. One to Mary, who works with my husband, so that little guy will be around too. And Mary was kind enough to deliver one to my Bella friend, Heather.

 

The house seems pretty quiet without everyone, but the dogs we do have are keeping me busy.  How did I ever keep up with 9??? These were small pups, but man, could they fill up a potty pad.  At least they used them!  That was really nice, these babies were all really good about being paper trained fast. Now, the transistioin from paper to grass is the hard part. Especially with cold weather coming.  

I always said I'd never have a winter pup,  spring is so much easier for training.

But I'm glad I have Dorothy Rosebud and Albie Strong and Brave (Sugarwings kind of renamed him, she is also the one who named our cat, Sweet Sweet Sweety)

I am going to miss my Halloween decorations too.  This year, I really went over board, that isn't something I usually do. But having the family reunion and Romantic Gothic Ghosts was a good excuse to go all out.

While the place was spookily foofed up, I was happy for an opportunity to have a little dinner party.

My husband broke out the good wine for the night.  And we were given a bottle of Silver Oak as a gift from Mary thanking us for the puppy too!   We had given her a tiny girl a couple years ago and she was happy to get a baby brother for her little Lola.   But she did us such a big favor in delivering the babies across country, that was thanks enough. Plus, a free puppy really isn't all that cheap when you fly out to get it and rent a car to drive home!

It was so sweet of her to go to so much trouble for one of our babies.  We should have bought her a bottle of wine instead of her buying us one.

For dessert, I baked a carmel apple cake.  Easy to do, I used a yellow cake mix, subbed applesauce for the oil and added two large, chopped up, Honeycrisp apples.

I didn't know how to make carmel icing, so I winged it.

A whole bag of Kraft Carmels got melted in about 1/4 cup of milk, then I added a 1/4 stick of butter and started beating in powdered sugar till it turned to icing. It was almost fudgy, it was so thick.  Maybe less powdered sugar next time?  But while being very rich, it was also very tasty.

Over that, I sprinkled pecans, and drizzled melted dark and white chocolate, because the best carmel apples are those kinds with all the good toppings, not just carmel!