Pack rat saga continues!

And the pack rat saga continues! haha! Well, its not really funny, more frustrating, but ya gotta find humor in the frustrating things to keep sane, right? A lot of you mentioned you hadn't heard of a pack rat. Well, here is a link to Wikipedia's definition of a pack rat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pack_rat

So we thought we had rid ourselves of the nasty little thing. Well we were wrong! Chris went to start the truck Saturday morning and it made a horrible sound and died! Yikes...of course my first thought is 'here we go again' and 'I wonder if the Ford dealership charges to tow less than a mile....' Chris got out and went to lift up the hood and noticed the little bugger under the truck! Yep, he got taken out by the fan! It was GROSS! We had rat organs on our driveway! haha! But at least we know its dead right??? But that didn't help the truck restart. :-( Nope...Chris got the idea to take a fuel can and get more diesel as the guy we bought it from mentioned that fuel gauge was a little off. It said their was a quarter of a tank left, but it worth a try before paying to have it towed. Yep, that was the problem, no diesel. Chris poured some in and started it up and was on his way! I was SSSOOO glad that the rat hadn't chewed any wires or holes in anything else!

Now on to some scrappy inspiration. Helen at Scrap A Little came out with a new sketch at the beginning of the month.
This is my take on it:

This is Peyton with his Uncle Coco! Peyton LOVES to play games and tries to sucker everyone who comes through the front door to play a game with him.

Labor Day Weekend Pictures

**WARNING** Many many photos to share today!

This past weekend we went out to our favorite camp spot. I LOVE this place, its only 15 minutes from our house, yet out in the woods. There is a neat old old ranger barn and outhouse and a little creek. I wish there was a way to buy this little spot!

Chris's parents, grandparents and aunt came camping with us. GG's (great grandparents) bought Peyton this little Jeep a while back. He has been scared to drive it, but not this weekend. They put miles on this thing driving circles around camp. Maddy would chase after Peyton screaming at him if he took off without her.
It was hard to get good pictures as the lighting was all wonky cause of the trees. There were TONS of shadows!

I love it that my kids LOVE each other. Yeah they fight, but they also love to give each other hugs, kisses and share toys and food.

Maddy would talk on the phone (the walky talky toy attached to the truck) or wave like crazy and say 'byebye' over and over and over as Peyton drove her round and round the campspot.

Maddy loved GG's spaghetti! Can you tell? haha!

There were TONS of these little frogs. When I say tons, it was sometimes hard NOT to step on them. lol...Peyton had a TON of fun catching them.

I love it when Maddy wrinkles up her nose.

Yep, this is the Little Miss's hair when she wakes up. And actually, I had pulled the front part back into pigtales. Its wild...just like her! :0)

She LOVES bubbles and learned how to say bubbles this weekend. She'd take the little bottle and walk to anyone and everyone asking them to blow them for her.

Peyton took Maddy for a ride, then parked the jeep in front of a tree with Maddy's back towards us. He got up and took off to do something else leaving Maddy there by herself. It cracked us up. She just sat there for quite a while too. I think she thought he would be coming back for her, which he didn't.

Yep...the kids got so darn dirty.

We went for a drive to scout for deer (deer season is coming up). I am drawing a blank on the name of this rock. But its pretty neat. I had thoughts of hiking up to it, but then thought better as packing a 30 pound kid for a couple miles did NOT sound like fun!

Maddy fell asleep in GG's lap. Her position cracked me up.

It doesn't look so bad, til you look closer....

That would be her head on the arm of the chair, face in the cup holder.

I woke up the first night, shortly after sacking out to banging on the trailer. Chris was out of bed so I went to check it out, a little irritated that he was making noise that would wake up the kids. Come to find out, a packrat had gotten underneath the fiberglass siding and they were trying to get it out. It's midnight. Peyton woke up in tears cause he heard the 'boom boom boom' and didn't know what was going on. That woke up Maddy who had been asleep for 3 hours. She now thought it was play time, then got mad and cried for over 4 hours. She didn't go back to sleep til 5 am! It was so darn miserable. We got home Monday and Chris went out later that night to take the trash out. Dang pack rat rode home in our truck! Yeppers, it was in our engine compartment! lol...Chris set Decon out for the little bugger and I hope to never see him again!

I have a fun layout and quick mini album to share so check back soon! I also will be participating in a Creative Cuts & More Blog Hop soon!

Cosmo Cricket Layout

Cosmo Cricket posted a challenge on their blog to use their website home page as inspiration. Here is their homepage:

I also stopped by Scrap It With A Song Blog and they had a challenge over there to use 'You'll Be In My Heart' by Phil Collins as your inspiration. Well, I was struggling with both until I got the idea to combine them. This is what I came up with:
I used the Wanted Line, a piece of brown cardstock, white cardstock and some burlap type stuff I found at a little local store.

I ran the burlapy type stuff through my Cuttlebug to create the flowers.

The frames were the negatives from the die cut sheet. I just cut around them and layered them on another piece of paper.

I really like that burlapy product. I think I'll have to go get some more!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cosmo Cricket Latyout for Scrapbook.com Challenge

I am hosting the Cosmo Cricket Monthly Challenge over at Scrapbook.com. The winner of the challenge gets goodies from Cosmo Cricket (courtesy of Cosmo Cricket) and also gets their layout featured on the Cosmo Cricket Blog! Pretty cool huh? Wanna join in the fun? Check out the challenge in the forums, under Interactive Fun and then Challenges.

This month I challenged everyone to mix it up, to use products from at least two different lines. Easy peasy huh? Here is my layout...
I'm not overly happy with it, but guess thats how it goes. The papers are from the Pixie-liscious line and the chipboard is from the DeLovely line.

I love the layered centerpiece with circles, scalloped circles and topped off with chipboard.

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you'll return soon!

Pictures, pictures and more pictures

As I mentioned in my last post, Chris took a weeks vacation a few weeks back. Our plans didn't work. We ended up having to come up with different things to do. Chris wanted to take Peyton fishing. So we loaded up one afternoon and took off to a fishing spot maybe 5 to 10 min. from our house. Seeing it was the middle of the week, we had the spot to ourselves!
Maddy was quite intrigued with the water. She wanted to walk right into it, shoes and all. I knew she was going to end up falling in by the end of the day, but she didn't.

Peyton had a lot of fun. The fish weren't biting so he lost interest in the fishing quickly and started throwing rocks in the water.

He couldn't sit still, haha!

Most of our camp chairs were in our trailer, in my parents driveway, 40 min. away. Thank goodness for a bucket we had in the garage! haha!

What else did we do? Chris took Peyton to the driving range. Boy did Peyton enjoy this! He has his own set of little golf clubs and even a little glove! How cute is that?

Of course, a yummy bbq meal at my parents. Oh how I crave these meals. My dads garden had a off year and he didn't get any lettuce, but we stopped by the grocery store and picked some up. The beans and taters are from the garden though. Yum.....My mom makes THE BEST green beans every! Hands down...I could eat a whole pot full! Yes, this is my plate, yes I ate it all, yes I even went back for more green beans!

Miss Maddy loved the meal too. She devoured her green beans and taters!

And some exciting news....

My last layout I posted here, made the top five!

Thanks for stopping by! I have a few layouts to share so please come back soon!

Altered Gift Bag & Card

I haven't ever altered a bag before! Can you believe it? Well, I had this white bag and needed a gift bag for a wedding. I figured this was my chance. I don't know what the colors of the wedding are but I figured red, white and black are classic, right? ;-)
The black and white polk-a-dot is Prima packaging. I layered the flowers and added a button and rhinestone. I needed a card too and figured I might as well make it to match.

A couple weeks ago Chris took his vacation week. We had planned to pull our trailer to Idaho and Washington and camp. Our transmission went out as he pulled the trailer to our house. :( (we keep the trailer at my parents house as we can't park it at ours due to the CC&R's). But, better then than in Idaho or Washington or in the middle of no-where! We decided to go visit Chris's brother in Idaho anyways and just took the car.

Sadly, I only got a few pictures. Poor Peyton got car sick, so we stopped in every little town we could trying to find him some medicine. Finally, after 5 or 6 stops we found some. That and a new dinosaur made him feel much better! Above is a cute little coffee shop! It wasn't open, but made for a cute backdrop!

This picture of Maddy cracks me up! She did fantastic on the way up, not so well on the way back. Lets just say 7 hours in the car was a bit much for the kiddos. We had a lot of fun visiting with Chris's brother and fiance though!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have a wonderful extended holiday weekend!

ScrapStreet Magazine Layout

A while back Helen at Scrap A Little e-mailed her DT to let us know that ScrapStreet Magazine was going to be doing an article on Scrap A Little!!! She asked us to create a special layout using one of her sketches. Here is my layout:
Supplies: Paper: Kaisercraft, Cardstock: Bazzill Basics Paper, Alphabet: American Crafts, Journaling Spot: Jillibean Soup, Ribbon: Offray, Bling: Studio 18, Ink: Colorbox, Sketch: Scrap A Little #19, Other: pin, metal frame, journaling spot.

I'm hooked on these flowers at the moment. They are so easy to make and I just love the looks of them.

Its all about the layering too! I am having fun adding different textures to the layers. Here I used a metal frame and a pin. I'm in love with pins at the moment, but intimidated on how to use them.

Thanks for stopping by!