stories about us

dinner (and a show)

Last night as we all sat down to dinner, a fire engine pulled up right in front of our house. As surprising and as unexpected as that was, it was immediately followed by an even larger engine and several other vehicles behind that.

Knowing that my family was all safe and sound, I was more curious about the whole affair than worried. Jack, on the other hand, was certain that smoke must have been billowing out from the back of our house unbeknownst to us. It wasn't (thank goodness).

Turns out, it was our neighbor Mark—who happens to be the chief of the volunteer fire department in our area—and about half of his crew. He had stopped by hoping that we would allow him to practice drafting water from our creek. Evidently, their tanker (which holds about 500 gallons of water) will run out of water in about five minutes. And here in the middle of nowhere, there aren't many (read = any) fire hydrants available. So, the ability to suck water directly out of a water source to fight a fire is a very desirable thing. And being that these very people were some of the ones who helped save our home during the fires last year, we had no other answer but "yes" for them!

 

The boys, of course, loved watching the whole thing unfold and so did we. Truth be told, it was one of the more entertaining dinners we've had in a while! :)

I love it when unexpected little things like that come make our day (or evening, as it were), don't you?

check it out

I was going to mention this at the end of my post yesterday, but I think it probably deserves a post of its own! :)

I'm so very excited for many of my former friends/colleagues of Simple who have banded together to create this wonderful inspiration collective. So glad there is one place to keep tabs on all my girls! I know that I will be checking in often to see what they've been up to. I hope you do too!

my life with boys

Even with part of it spinning out-of-control, I find my life with boys (more specifically, my boys) to be a pretty good one.

Even if the older one has recently decided to dabble in a bit of back-talk lately. And occasionally acts like a disinterested teenager (even though he's technically only eight and a half). When it really comes down to it, he's still awfully sweet on the inside. And that's what matters, right?

By the way, we decided to get his summer buzz cut a little early this year. He's loving it. And so am I since it requires absolutely no prep time. Hey, anything to save us a minute in the morning is golden! Though, really, we only need to worry about three more days of school...hooray! :)

Here's a better picture (or series of pictures) of Matthew (and his haircut) taken the other day. Isn't he looking so old? He started his summer swim lessons today and is excited to become a better swimmer. It's only a two-week course and if he does okay he'll advance to the next level. I think it eventually leads to a diving and guard-start class...but, honestly, I think that's a few years down the line for us. We're just looking to advance beyond the doggy-paddle here, ha! :)

Anyhow, in anticipation of summer (and making full use of it), Matthew has decided to learn how to ride a bike. Yes, ride a bike. I know for most of you with kids, this task was accomplished when they were four, five, six...possibly younger. But for Matthew, well, let's just leave it at "He's really book smart!" :) He's making up for lost time though as he rides his bike every single afternoon and has even learned to ride it on our gravel road. It was totally a big step for me but I have finally allowed him to ride by himself to grandmommie's house just down the road. Almost a half-mile trip, actually. He does have to take a walkie-talkie with him and has to check-in with me at three scheduled "stops" before he arrives at his destination (which then requires a final check in from grandmommie). Yes, I can already  envision our future when he goes off to college...checking in with me every step of the way, ha ha! :)

Anyhow, in addition to all the bike riding, the boys have really been into their scooters as well. Hoonie has his own three-wheeled scooter but prefers riding on brother's (much more dangerous for a three-year old) Razor instead. His most favorite thing of all, however, is to ride with Matthew on the Razor. So this is what I often see outside my kitchen window. Aren't they the cutest? :)

Speaking of Hoonie, he turned three last month. We celebrated outdoors on the picnic porch...his birthday and mother's day combined, as usual. I was a bit too exhausted to make a cake so I just opted for some quick cupcakes combined with these awesome treats from Costco (we love them!).

 

What else have the boys been up to? Well, it's really been warming up around here so they've been doing lots of swimming lately...either in the creek (both boys), in our inflate-a-pool (usually Hoonie) or in grandmommie's pool (usually Matthew).

We've seriously had this blow-up pool since Matthew was a baby and it has really given us our money's worth! Hoonie especially loves splashing around in it!

 

 

And of course now that the paddleboat is back in commission, there's been many an adventure taken in there as well. The boys especially love to go for a ride after school...with plenty of snacks!

And for Hoonie, it's just as fun hanging out on the paddleboat dock as it is taking an actual ride in the paddleboat! He's a monkey for sure, that one! :)

In other news, we did catch our first rattlesnake of the season and it was a fairly big one. About three feet long. See, it hasn't been all fun and games around here...

And with that, I'll end my post. Just be thankful the picture of the snake isn't at top because with the way I've been updating the blog, you'd be stuck looking at it for the next three weeks! ;P

Hope everyone is having a good week. Will try to catch up on posts (and pictures) this week as my mom has been having some serious grandkid withdrawls. Good thing she's coming for a visit next week! :)

don't look mom! really, don't look!

After locking myself in the craftroom all day, I've emerged with mother's day cards and gifts (breathing a huge sigh of relief here). Of course, in the case of my mom, I still need to get to the post office to mail her her package—and therein lies the problem because I absolutely hate going to the post office!—but at least I have a package to mail to her now!

Experiencing a shortage of money-bearing trees in our yard, I needed a cute and inexpensive project to make. And since grandmothers seem to like nothing more than even more pictures of their grandkids to share, I decided to make some fabric-covered brag books for them. I already had some older, but still very cute, Alexander Henry fabrics as well as a few of those cheapy-plastic photo albums. I just needed to sit down and think about how to make covers for them. And, honestly, that took me about an hour. Or more. Okay, definitely more! :P My mom—who is an excellent seamstress, by the way—can just make sewing projects up as she goes along. Me? I'd end up stitching my hands closed into something (with no way of ever retrieving them back out!) if I wasn't careful. So I definitely had to think and plan a bit before.

Anyhow, by the time I finished two "trial" ones, I got the hang of it. And you know what? I totally love them! I made a set of three for each of our moms and then a few extra just because. Towards the end, I fooled around with adding some ribbon along the spine and even sewing ribbon onto one to use as a tie. They make me so happy with their fruity prints! :)

As for the cards, I usually make a little mini-album every year ("from the grandkids") with some recent pictures and drawings in it along with a coordinating card from Jack and I. Lacking inspiration & motivation, though, I was seriously going to pass on making them this year...but somehow I let Jack talk me back into it. And in the end I'm glad he did simply because I know our moms will appreciate it. :)

Allright, I guess that's enough bragging for today, hee! It's just that me + sewing projects don't usually result in a happy ending (if at all...most projects remain unfinished, ha!).

I have to get going anyhow because we're supposed to be putting in the paddleboat this afternoon and Matthew is about to pee in his pants if I don't get off the computer and get outside already. You know how it is with eight-year olds, don't you?

Hope everyone is having a nice week! :)

and without further ado

Sorry to keep you waiting all weekend (and then some). It's been really stormy around here and with the unsettled weather my internet service is less than stellar. But, the sun has finally come out again and my internet seems to be working okay for now (holding my breath, of course).

Thanks so much for all your wonderful comments about Simple. I enjoyed reading each and every one of them! :) It seems, however, that the ever popular random number generator especially liked comment #152.

Utilizing my super-special sleuthing skills, I discovered that "kimmik" was the owner of the 152nd comment.

So three cheers for Kimmik...don't forget to send me an email (margaret.scarbrough@gmail.com) by the end of the week to claim your prize! And thanks again to everyone for playing along!

Now I head back to the craftroom where I'll be working on Mother's Day gifts and cards. It's going to involve a sewing maching which also means it's going to involve a fair amount of cursing. Wish me luck and hopefully I'll have something to share for my efforts! :)

happy may day

*Pretend that it's May 1st when you read this...my internet started getting v-e-r-y slow yesterday, then went out completely and then I fell asleep and never posted, ha! But I checked and you can still enter the giveaways I mention at the end...they're taking comments until 10:00 (MST) tonite! Good luck! :)

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Happy May Day to all you druid folk out there. I'm going to have Jack bring out the Maypole later today for some merrymaking (wait a minute, that totally didn't come out how I thought it would, haha!). Anyhow, we don't even own a Maypole...that is so last year, hee! Truth be told, I was just trying to get in on the holiday spirit, ya know, before things went terribly downhill. Ah well...

For some reason, the first day of May always seems to bring with it a sense of excitement. For me at least. I think it's because school will be over soon (= looking forward to sleeping in), the flowers and trees have all bloomed (= no more winter, hooray!) and, for us, the creek/lake is back in (= the most lovely view out my front door for the next six months).

Seriously, how could one ever tire of that view? Incidentally, now that the dam has gone in, you know that I'll be hosting my annual "Guess how long it took fill up the Lake Giveaway." I'm thinking early next week some time, so don't forget to check back in. Oddly enough, we never know what to call our little pool of water. Since we dam it up, we refer to it as a "lake." But it seems a bit, well, smallish to be called a lake, don't you think? People have often referred to it as a "pond" as well. But that tends to peeve Jack off a bit because to him a pond equals stagnant water (which our lake isn't...since the creek runs year-round). I tend to refer to it as "the creek" and will talk about "the creek" being in or out. But that's a bit silly too as the creek is there all the time. Regardless, I can't believe I've wasted a whole half-paragraph on this very topic. Call it what you will, it's back in and we couldn't be happier! Well, maybe just a teeny bit. The paddleboat is still getting its annual refurbishment and the boys are not-so-patiently waiting for it to just.be.done.already.

Well, in honor of all things spring-like, I'm gonna share some quick spring pictures with you from around the creek house. It's been a while since I've done any regular blogging and I've got a serious backlog of pictures I want to share with you all. I'll try to restrain myself and just keep it down to a few though...yea, right

1) Our very beautiful apple tree blossoms. We're hoping for lots and lots of apples this year (since last year was a total bust!).

2) The beautiful dogwood tree just outside the guest/craftroom. I love, love, love this tree...so much so that I even did a layout about it!

3) What? You mean to tell me that you don't have wild turkeys running amok in your front yard strutting their "stuff" all day in a desperate attempt to find a suitable mate? Really? It's just us?

4) Last month, we finally got around to planting some flowers here and there around the house. You know, 'cause we've only been living here for over two years now! We stuck to some perennial favorites...pincushion flowers, geraniums, sea thrift (see below) and a mugo pine. Okay, so the last one was totally Jack's pick. But I went ahead and approved it since I know that all authentic cottage-y gardens should have a mugo pine in it. Oh, you didn't know? :P

5) And I know these aren't from around the creek house, but we've been to Turtle Bay twice already this spring and I can't get over all their cool flowering plants. Next time we go, I'm going to have to make sure to write down some of the names of these plants...

And believe it or not, I actually have pictures of people (more specifically, the boys) too. How novel, I know! :)

6) Matthew is looking far too old these days, don't you think? This was taken at Table Mountain on our annual "Do you think the wildflowers have bloomed on Table Mountain yet?" trip. And, sadly, we were a bit too early this year (we were on the late side last year). The lupines weren't even out yet this time around (not that the boys cared though, ha!).

7) And here's a shot of Hoonie from the same Table Mountain excursion...it's so cute to see him wearing all of Matthew's old clothes. :)

8) We also took another trip up Highway 70 while my brother was out visiting. This time we found a little sandy beach by the river and climbed on down. A bit nerve wracking for me since I was imagining both my boys falling into the river simultaneously and having to decide who to save first (we moms sure know how to worry a good afternoon away, dont' we?).

9) And, finally, a couple more of our little Hoonie monster taken at Turtle Bay. Believe it or not, this little stinker will be turning three in less than two weeks. Lord have mercy on us all!

I'm going to have to start planning his birthday party which is going to be next Sunday. Just family, like usual. But it's always nice to plan things out a bit.

Anyhow, I guess I have to admit that I've been in a complete funk lately (lately = all of 2009 so far) and not in the mood to share much of my life on here. But, thankfully, with spring comes a sense of hope and I'm really going to try to break out of whatever it is that I've been in. So stick around for a bit and, who knows, I might just start sharing some stories again soon.

Happy Friday everyone! :)

ps-Don't forget that you can still leave a comment on yesterday's post to enter your name in my Simple giveaway. And check out these three blogs today for a really cool giveaway: Angie, Cathy and Wendy.

simple memories + a giveaway

Evidentally, my memory does not serve me well. I thought I knew for sure what my first publication with Simple Scrapbooks was, but I was wrong. Way wrong. Not only that, though, my second guess was wrong as well. So, being the obsessive spreadsheet type person I am, I went back all the way to my 2004 scrapbooking records and found out, for real, what my first ever publication with Simple was..."Giddy Up."

(click to see larger)

And it wasn't even in the magazine. It was in a special issue titled, "A Simple Guide to Scrapbooking with Color." Remember that one? I was in the "neutral" section, hee! I'm guessing from all the sanding and inking that distressing was popular around this time! :)

So then, I started wondering when my first time in the actual magazine was. And thanks to my trusty spreadsheet, I quickly discovered that my first Simple Scrapbooks magazine publication was in the March/April 2005 issue with this gem..."Hapa Baby."

(click to see larger)

Matthew was so cute and chubby here...I can't get over it! :) I'm guessing this must have been done during a "bright" stage in my life...you know, to make up for the "distressed" phase I went through earlier.

And here is what I *thought* was my first publication with Simple. It turns out that it was actually my first assignment from Simple. For a special issue called "Scrapbook Shortcuts using Simple Schemes." The scheme was by Donna Downey and I created a whole album (about Matthew's many quirks) based on it:

(click to see larger...I'll try to scan the album later)

And finally, here is my first assignment for the magazine...a layout called "Allstar...Not" which was featured in the November/December 2005 issue:

(click to see larger)

Sadly, Matthew's athletic prowress hasn't improved much since 2005, ha! Poor guy. But I am happy to say that after this initial assignment, I have had a layout or project in every issue of Simple Scrapbooks magazine published since. Well, minus one...the November/December 2006 issue. But that's only because I was recovering after having a baby. And not just any baby, but a Hoonie baby. My loyal blog readers will understand! ;)

And now, what you've all be so patiently waiting for...the giveaway. Here's a shot of four possible giveaway packages. A simple tote and three recent issues (not the last issue though...still trying to get an extra copy of that!) and a special issue (Photo Play). An assortment of specialty Making Memories papers with tags, fabric buttons and ribbon. Another Making Memories assortment with coordinating glitter stickers, metal clips and ribbons (plus some American Crafts brown letter rubons and some SEI brown mini coasters). A Little Yellow Bicycle assortment of Zinnia papers, fabric sticekrs, cardstock embellishments and brads (plus some coordinating Fiskars glitter stickers).

(click to see prize package in all it's glory)

The thing is, I'm going to give all of them away...to *one* lucky person. Just leave a comment here with a Simple memory of your own and I'll pick a winner on Sunday. That means you have until Saturday, May 2nd, to enter.

And don't forget to check these blogs out today for even more giveaway fun: Beth Proudfoot, Celeste Smith and Rachel Gainer.

some new giveaways

Make sure to check out the following blogs for some fun new giveaways today:

Rebecca Cooper
Marnie Flores
Cheryl Overton
Elisha Snow

And don't forget to check back here tomorrow when I'll be hosting my very own giveaway and sharing some of my earliest Simple layouts and memories! :)

a final farewell

I am (temporarily) coming out of blog hiding to say a final farewell to Simple Scrapbooks Magazine. The other week when I opened my mailbox to find the final issue of Simple waiting for me, I was instantly saddened knowing that it would be the last time that I would eagerly thumb through it's pages. At the same time, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude and pride. I have been involved with Simple in some capacity now for over four years and I am thankful for the experience, friends and outlook it has given me. I am also proud of all the work I've done for them. And all the work of my friends as well. And that is what this week is all about. Celebrating. So join me and others as we reflect on our time at Simple and celebrate something that goes beyond just the magazine...the Simple philosophy. And make sure to stop by all the blogs joining in the celebration this week. There will be lots of reminiscing and sharing and, of course, giveaways too...really cool giveaways! :)

Elizabeth Dillow

Candice Palmer

Jennifer Wozab

Rebecca Cooper

Marnie Flores

Cheryl Overton

Elisha Snow

Rachel Gainer

Beth Proudfoot

Celeste Smith

Stacy Julian

Angie Lucas

Wendy Smedley

Cathy Zielske

Oh, and just so you know...Elizabeth, Candice & Jennifer (top three on my list) are all hosting giveaways today. So make sure to go and visit their blogs first! :)

there's a new trouble chair in town

And it looks a little something like this...

*shown with its usual occupant


note: he was currently "in trouble" at the time

I picked up this chair at my brother's house when Matthew and I drove down south for a super-quick trip to help celebrate his fortieth birthday. Mike's fortieth birthday, that is. The chair, apparently, was abandoned by my parents when they moved out earlier in the month and it seemed to me like it needed a good home. And since Hoonie's original trouble chair was recently repurposed as my lounging chair (in the guest/craft room), he was in desperate need of a new one...though I'm sure he would most likely beg to differ.

To tell you the truth, the original trouble chair was far too comfortable to serve it's needed purpose (maybe the reason it was repurposed as a lounge chair). And it's temporary replacement, the trouble bed, wasn't really working either. This chair, on the other hand, is hard and uncomfortable. In other words, it's perfect. And look...it's already being put to good use! :)

oh, the sheer injustice of it all...