My second Homemade Gift Exchange!

Every year, Linda over at Craftaholics Anonymous hosts 2 craft exchanges.  She pairs people together from the same country and has them make things for each other and then send them to their gift buddy!

This time, I got a girl named Brittany from Atlanta as a gift buddy, and I made her this:

This project was super easy and came out super cute, so you probably don't even need a tutorial, but here is what I did.  I bought a small letter B from Wal-Mart, along with a pack of scrapbooking paper.  I came home, and painted the B black on the back, outer rim, and inside.  Then, using sunlight, held the letter B up to a window behind my favorite piece of scrapbook paper to see where I wanted the pattern to go.  I Mod Podged the B and stuck the paper to it.  Once it was on there for a few minutes, I took an Exacto knife and cut the paper out around the B.  Then all I had to do was put Brittany and Justin (her husband's name) on the B with stickers I already had, go over it with Mod Podge one more time, and voila!

A really cute little B to celebrate their first year of marriage, and it can either be hung or stand on its own!  Happy Anniversary to Brittany and Justin!

Bonnie's Big Little Adventure

We finally got around to naming our new dog.  We named her Bonnie Lass Waterfield.

And this morning, Bonnie Lass went on a very terrifying adventure.

I took her for her morning walk, and we walked toward the outskirts of the woods behind the apartment building.  We have walked past them several times before because she likes the smells of the forest.  It's definitely the coon hound in her.

And, like usual, Bonnie got herself tangled around a tree.  I kept tugging on her retractable leash from my side of the tree, but she kept trying to come from her side.  I stepped up to the tree to help her, and when I got to her, her leash had somehow gotten hooked on a tree branch, and come off of her harness.

At first, I didn't think anything about it, and even mentioned out loud that it came undone.

But then, something clicked in Bonnie's head and it occurred to her that she was no longer captive.  In other words, she was free.  Suddenly, she decided to embrace this freedom.  She started slowly walking away, hot on the trail of something near the edge of the woods.  I started yelling for her to come back, but she wouldn't.  I kept clapping, like I do when she does something bad, and screaming, "No!" and "Bad!" but she just wouldn't listen to me.  It seemed like much longer in the moment, but it was only a few seconds of her walking further and further away.  And then, she decided to just live her dreams and she ran into the woods!

I knew what I had to do.  But I really didn't want to.  I wasn't dressed to go traipsing into the woods, hell I wasn't even dressed hardly to take her for a walk!  I had on my pajama bottoms, flip flops, and not even a bra, just my housecoat over the shirt I slept in.

But I did what I had to do.

I took my first step into the woods.

For as long as we've lived here, I've been somewhat scared of these woods.  Not in the serial killer way, but in the creepy snake and other creepy crawler sort of way.  I was completely mortified the entire time I was in the woods that I was going to get bit by something in the woods and die.

Luckily, at least at first, she kept about 10 feet in front of me.  I could see her past several trees and hear her dog tags on her collar when I couldn't see her.  But suddenly, I couldn't see her, and then I couldn't hear her, either.  I kept screaming and calling her name, but she wouldn't come.  I continued walking in the last direction I saw her going, losing my shoes several times along the way, screaming for her.  For several minutes, there was no sign of her.  It was like she had disappeared.

I immediately started to think about the next step.  Flyers and prayers.  We hadn't even changed her dog tag yet, and she still had her former owner's number on them.  People couldn't even contact us if they found her.  What would we do?  This was all my fault, and I definitely felt guilty.  We'd only had this dog for 6 days and now I had lost her.  Man did I suck.

Then, I saw her.

I kept calling, much more frantically now, and scrambled my way to her across the 30 or so feet she was away from me.

I managed to catch up with her before she could fun away from me again, and let my frustration out on her.  I hurried to attach the lonely leash I had been carrying through the woods back on her harness, and proceeded to spank her.  I didn't hurt her, but she knew she had done something very bad and that I wasn't happy with her one bit.

I looked around, and luckily we were behind a house that is on the street on the way to the complex we live in.  I hauled her out of the woods and we made tracks back to the apartment.

The whole ordeal had eaten up about 30 minutes, and I still had to get up to the apartment, make Justin's lunch, get Justin up, and take him to work.  Somehow, I managed to do all that.

Bonnie made no mistake the rest of the day that I was very unhappy with her.  But, eventually, I came around and wasn't sore with her anymore.  I really hope she never does anything like this again, I nearly had a heart attack this morning!

Our New Addition

It's not a baby (yet), it's a furbaby!!

We are finally getting a dog.

Justin and I always knew that we would have a dog some day.  We've talked about our perfect family for years now, and that included one boy, one girl, and at least one dog.  Ideally, we wanted a Corgi, because they are so adorable and Ein from Cowboy Bebop is a Corgi.

Ein from Cowboy Bebop

A few weeks ago, we visited our local animal shelter looking for a new pal, because it was important to us to rescue a dog instead of just going out and buying one.  After meeting some furry friends, we decided that maybe this particular shelter wasn't the place for us to get our new dog from.

We were only temporarily heartbroken, because Justin took off to Craigslist, and found this little cutie:

Her name was Shel, and we were pretty smitten with her from the pictures we saw.  We found a Beagle in the pound we visited, who we were convinced would have been perfect for us, but she was already taken.  I've always loved Beagles, so I was perfectly fine when we suddenly went on the hunt for one.  Shel is part Beagle and part something else.

After several e-mails back and forth with the current owner, Dee, we were ready to meet her.  She even matched all of our criteria.  We had a small laundry list of things we wanted our dog to do/be, like:

• Be housebroken
• Be a little older, not a puppy
• Be a medium-sized dog
• Be a rescued dog, not a purchased dog
• Be a quiet dog, not a barker

From what we asked Dee and what she answered us with, Shel met all of these things.  Then we had a date, Saturday, November 5 would be the soonest we could meet her since I was going out of town and Justin was having company the weekend before.  We waited and waited and got excited.  We talked about nothing but the dog for weeks, talking to family members and friends about her, and thinking of what we would call her and where she would sleep.

Friday, November 4, the night before we were to meet Shel, Justin got a phone call while we were out to dinner.  It was Dee.  She told us that, unfortunately, another couple that had been interested in Shel had already adopted her.  Dee is a foster parent for dogs, and takes her position very seriously, and like to be choosy when deciding who gets one of her dogs.  She told Justin that she felt like Shel was a better match for this other couple because they were very athletic and had a fenced-in back yard.  Even though we were hurt by this, (I mean, we didn't even get to meet her!) we still understood.  We felt as though it was a good thing that Dee was so choosy, as opposed to just giving the dogs to whoever came first.

But then, while they were still on the phone, Dee told Justin about another dog she had that was currently up for adoption.  She was also some part Beagle, and Dee felt like she would fare better in an apartment setting than Shel would have.  After several minutes of describing the dog and other things to Justin on the phone, Justin agreed that we would meet the new dog instead.  So we kept the same date and Dee even offered to drive clear out to the apartment so that she could get a feel of where the dog would be going if we decided to take her.

The next morning was wonderful.  We had a date set for 10 a.m., and Dee was running a little bit late, so we even had time to grab some breakfast from Biscuitville before she got there.  The previous night, Dee took the time to text Justin several pictures of the new dog, but because they were taken on a cell phone, and because the new dog, as we found out, is very camera shy, they weren't award-winning.  The real thing was so much better than we could have foreseen.

This little girl came through our front door last Saturday morning, and we are in love!

Her current name is Sally Mae, and we hate it!  Haha!

We are having the worst time coming up with a name, but we are not adopting her officially until the 16, next Wednesday.  So we still have time to figure it out!

We are so happy that Shel lead us to something so perfect for us.  We think it was meant to be, and we can't wait to share our adventures from now on!