Making a dog bed cushion

I think I finally completed the last of my tasks to make my dining and sitting room renovations complete! That task was to make a new cushion for my dog’s awesome window bed (which I made myself). Since I made the bed, she (and the cats) have been sleeping on an old dog bed that I made in our other house. It is a fleece cover with two bed pillows inside, covered by a layer of eggshell foam. It does the job, but the cover is the wrong color now and it has a large indent in the center from use. I bought new gray fleece and nice thick green foam from Joann Fabrics quite some time ago. I kinda can’t believe I waited this long, as it took me less than an hour to make her the new cushion. What a bad dog parent I am.

I bought one section of green foam that was the thickest they had, when it was on sale for 50% off. To make the bed thicker, I also bought two chair cushions that were about the right size. The thick foam wasn’t the right size to fit in the dog bed, so I had to cut it to size. It was so thick I had to cut the top half first and then the bottom half with my scissors.

Measuring the foam to fit:

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Molly lays on her old cushion watching me:

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After cutting the foam to size, I basically sewed a large pillow case. I wasn’t too concerned with dimensions, just that it needed to be large enough to fit.

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After sewing the fleece, I wrestled it over the foam and installed it in the dog bed. Here you can see the nice new cushion next to the old sad one:

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And Molly agreed to model for me. She’s the cutest!

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Checking out the new Southern Walnut Creek Trail

I don’t typically post about biking when I’m not training for a Bike MS event, but I still ride multiple times a week. This weekend I decided to incorporate the new Southern Walnut Creek Trail into my route, which just opened. It’s a paved 7 mile long hike and bike trail, one of a few such projects the city is working on right now, which includes the Northern Walnut Creek Trail very close to my house. I think the grand vision is for these two trail systems to connect, but it’s not funded or designed yet. 

I rode to the southern end of the trail, which begins in Govalle park, to get on the trail. It was strange – the trail head wasn’t marked at all and you couldn’t even see it from the street. It was marked by one small green bicycle sign once you were in the small park.

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The trail is unfortunately paved like a sidewalk – cracks and all – and that doesn’t make for very smooth riding on a road bike. Kathunk, kathunk, kathunk… It was worse in some places than others.

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The trail has many bridges and you ride along the creek in a number of places.

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And you go under some bridges, including this railroad bridge:

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The trail is nice and shaded in some parts, more so on the southern section of the trail. The northern end gets quite sunny.

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The trail was quite overgrown by vegetation in parts, leaving only about half of the path actually rideable. A number of places had lots of dirt and sand on the concrete, making for a slippery ride. I assume the city will soon clean those places up and maintain the trail for maximum use. Construction has only recently ended.

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The trail goes into Walter E Long park, but I turned off before then because I wasn’t sure where it went after that. Looking closer at the Walnut Creek Trail system page, I see that the Manor trail actually is partially constructed, so I could have ridden that trail instead of riding along the busy Decker lane. Next time!