Long Beach Sandcastle Contest

I cannot believe how many great pictures I got from the sandcastle contest at Long Beach this last weekend. My husband and I just happened to be at Long Beach for the weekend. We had no idea about the Sand Castle contest. It was also a lovely weekend. Here is a selection of pictures from the contest. I really didn't have time to process any more pictures. These were from my three favorite sculptures:

The first set of pictures here is Some Maintenance Required. These guys were fantastic to watch.

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This was my favorite of all pictures. This guy was a maniac. That is sand flying as he is stomping down the sand.

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This second set of pictures is Two Scoops. This sculpture was originally supposed to have a vertical ice cream cone, but after it collapsed they made due and changed it to a two horizontal cones.

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This third set is from a sculpture called Parrots Of The Carribean.

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Here is the original mold. Fascinating how these teams made these sculptures.

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Above you see the ship and parrot emerge out of the mold.

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This was a fun thing to spend the day watching. I have a lot more pictures. The Long Beach Sand Sculpture contest had a lot of different categories, including Novice, Intermediate, and Family. Even beginning sculpters had some terrific results. More to come later.

Dogs At Sand Castle Contest

My dear husband and I went had a lovely, romantic little weekend at the beach. Surpise to us, there was a Sand Castle Building contest that weekend. I have some neat pictures to show you from that. But they will have to wait. I have never seen so many different dogs at one place, with the exception of a dog show. I really should have taken more pictures. But, I wanted to share the pictures I did take. It is amazing to me the variety of dogs that exist. Enjoy.

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An Australian Shepherd. We own an Australian Shepherd. Unfortunately, I am never able to take her to a public event like this. She would bark like crazy. I saw several Aussies at the beach, however. They come in a wide varieties of looks. I saw one that looked just like ours, but didn't get a picture of him. This one happened to have three legs. An amazingly sweet dog.

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I'm not sure on the breed of this dog. I'm thinking some kind of terrier. Really cute though.

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This is a very sweet Rat Terrier. She was a little nervous to be among so many people and dogs. She was about twice as big as the dog in the previous picture.

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Is this some sort of Pomeranian? She belonged to one of the sand castle builders and just hung out all afternoon.

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I loved this little bull dog. She's about five months, her owner told me. Isn't she just adorable? She seemed pretty calm too.

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3/4 Pyranese. I love the mellowness of these dogs. When I was looking for a dog several years ago, I shyed away from this breed because the literature said they could be defensive of their family (aggressive). They seem so mellow though.

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Weimeraners are such a beautiful color. They remind me of my parent's dogs, which are Rhodesian Ridgebacks, but just a little calmer. I think this breed tends to be quite energetic like the Ridgebacks, however. But, seemingly, a little more easily trainable.

I Heart Faces - Sports Action & Pet



Here is my Iheartfaces photo for the Sports Actions theme this week. This shot was taken a couple of years ago at my daughter's soccer practice. The girl in front is my daughter's teammate. My daughter is behind her moving much less enthusiastically.

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This week's pet photo competition mentioned the "pet" didn't have to be a pet per say. Well, here is one of my favorite animals. I think she is just beautiful. And, although, she won't let me pet her, she makes a great Momma and is a friendly, calm animal. Her name is Ruby.

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