Oh bear...

So last week turned out to be one of those weeks! It all started out with my oldest son Sam losing half of one of his permanent teeth playing flag football at Summer school. In the grand scheme of things, not a huge deal. Especially knowing Sam - he is a very active, not all that careful 9 year old. Tuesday evening my husband left for a few days for training for work. When I got up Wednesday morning, I let our dogs outside. They immediately took off barking. I looked outside to a black bear eating our garbage! He was in no big hurry to leave either. The dogs barked at him for nearly 20 minutes before he finally left. I do daycare in my home and had parents dropping off their kids shortly - so I was glad to see him go, but jumpy all morning. I finally had relaxed a bit by early afternoon only to see him back AGAIN!! Because my husband was gone, I called a friend of ours to see if he could come over and get him to leave. He came over and began throwing things at the bear and making noise, which only made the bear climb up a tree. He borrowed my son's be-be gun and shot at the bear for nearly 15 minutes....the bear sat in the tree fairly unfazed. The bear sat in the tree for nearly 10 minutes after he left and finally came down. My very brave dog chased him down our yard a little ways only to have him go up another tree. Finally he came down from there and left. I called the DNR and had to beg to get them to set up a trap to catch the bear. They delivered that the next day and of course now the bear hasn't been seen. 3 more days of the trap and I am quite sure he will come back on the 4th day!

After all this, I was a little excited to show off my pictures of our friend the bear. I went to upload them to our computer only to have the computer die....would not even turn on! It was a 10 year old computer, so I really can't complain too much - but at least it could have waited one more week. So after 2 days of no computer, I made the trip to Best Buy to get a new one. I had been a little slow in backing up my pictures. Being the scrapbooker I am, I couldn't just leave them on the old computer. So for a mere $149 the Geek squad took them off my hard drive and put them on my new computer. So here I sit with my fabulous new computer (it really is fabulous and even turns on and off when I want it too) and can show off my friend the bear - hope you all had a much less hectic week than I did. Isn't summer supposed to be the season of lazy, quiet days....maybe next week:)

The bear is about 15 feet from my front door!

Anxiously awaiting (again)

Sassy Lil Sketches is searching for design team members again. I thought I would give it another go...here is my page I submitted based on their sketch. The team is supposed to be picked by Sunday, so keep your fingers crossed for me. I love the photo of Grace at T-ball, I think her helmet is nearly as big as she is. She looked so tiny playing, but absolutely loved it! Enjoy

My girl...

I absolutely LOVE this photo of Grace, my youngest daughter. It is one of those pictures that I look at and can't help but smile. It wasn't taken for any real reason. She had found her shirt in the hand-me-down box from her cousins and absolutely loved it. The picture had been sitting on my desk waiting to be scrapped for almost a year. I was just waiting for the perfect paper and idea. The paper I finally used seemed to match perfectly - the print in the pattern paper matched the print on her shirt and the colors were great! The paper is from my latest scrap-room kit - love that place! It is actually based on a sketch from their site as well. The Scrap-room has a blog with great weekly challenges (fabulous prizes too). Every Monday on their blog a new challenge is posted. You don't have to be a kit club member to play along, you just have to be a member of their message board which takes about 1 minute to get signed up. Check it out if you get the chance.


The picture isn't as bright as I would have hoped for, but after a week of rain I finally decided that partly sunny would have to do to take the photo. Enjoy

Here it is...

So I have been waiting all day to post this LO and blogger has been down. For the 5 of you following me (yeah - I have a new follower), here is my guest design LO for the Sassy site. For any of you scrappers who haven't checked our their site - I must say they have wonderful sketches - I even used their card sketch to make some beautiful cards and I am horrible at making cards. Anyways, on to the big reveal....drum roll please:) Enjoy!!

Don't miss it!

So excited to remind all of my followers (all 4 of you) that I am the guest designer for the month of June at the Sassy Lil Sketches site. The new sketch comes out on the 7th of June....so check back to see my creation - and by the way, to the 4 of you who are my faithful following - THANKS!!

New sassy...

Here's the latest sketch from Sassy's lil sketches. Another fabulous sketch to work with, but I really struggled with the page. I loved the beach pictures, but could not (in my 419 pages of paper) find the right paper to match the photos. What does anyone else do when they get stuck - my solution is to keep adding things! I added the flower on the lower left and that seemed left out, so I added the bigger one in the right corner. That wasn't in the magical number of embellies in 3s - so I added the 2 little ones. Doing the math that makes 4 - I guess that's what threw the whole LO off (nothing to do with the person scrapping it). Anyways, once I got my title on, it seemed a little better, but then I probably should have used journaling strips instead of one block. I guess I can't love every page I scrap - maybe tomorrow!! Hope you enjoy it anyway.

Boys, boys, boys

I have such a tough time getting a picture of my oldest! He should be used to the camera and having his mother trying to get a picture or 2 (or 20). But it never fails, all I ask for is a smile on one picture - I really don't think that is asking for too much. Although I must admit sometimes the goofy ones tell the story so much better. These pictures were from 4th of July last summer. We spend the day with our wonderful family and I try every year to get a picture of each of the kids in my mother-in-laws' beautiful gardens. I tried to get Sam to stand in amongst the flowers and that was hopeless. So we tried sitting on the deck - - he finally gave up and covered his face...giggling away under his hands. Someday I may get a smile, for now I am fine with the happy kid who can't figure out how to smile.

The LO is based on the latest fabulous sketch from Sassy Lil sketches. Enjoy!