stories about us

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.