Destination: Vancouver

Well, I hope everyone else's week went better than mine!  Mine was a frickin' nightmare, to put it mildly!!!  Of course you want to hear all about it, but I'll keep you in suspense until you see this layout I created:

Still working with my June Counterfeit Kit.  I love the mix of colours in this one!  Not one I would normally choose, I don't think, but seeing I limited myself to the contents of my kit, I had to make it work.  These are photos of Nolan with Jason's brother Mike - he's a cop down in Surrey, and we don't see him that often.  (He's single, by the way - loves history, Ireland, Irish whiskey, and rugby, if you happen to know of any eligible bachelorettes in the area!)  When Jason and Nolan traveled down there for Nolan's hockey tournament, Mike drove them downtown to Stanley Park and all around.  Good thing, because Jason hates driving down there - it's scary!  Here are a couple close-ups:

Not sure if you can see, but I took a length of Tim Holtz tissue tape, cut it lengthwise, then ruffled it up along the top and bottom of the photo mat.  The challenge at Frosted Designs for Fabulous Friday is washi tape, so I'm going to enter this over there.  I also made a little flag out of a pin and some patterned paper, just for the heck of it - I've been seeing them everywhere and loving them!  This Page Maps sketch helped me out:

And speaking of "scary driving" brings me to the next installment of Roxy's Idiocy!  You ready for this?  Okay, after a (very) long weekend of ups & downs with Nolan, I decided on Tuesday that we all needed to get out of the house, despite the fact that I hadn't showered or made myself up.  I proceeded to tow all three kids to a parenting group, finding out when we arrived that it was not on this week.  Not to be deterred, I decided to head to the arena to sign Nolan up for a science summer camp.  Alas, the arena was not the place to sign up for said summer camp, so I loaded everyone up once more, pulled out of my parking spot, and proceeded to ram the front left corner of my car into a lamp post.  It had a concrete base.  There was no reason to hit this lamp post except for... 

1. it was in my blind spot?  
2. I was talking to Nolan?  
3. I'm an idiot.

If you chose reason 3, ding ding ding!  You are correct!  After swearing a blue streak and getting out to examine the damage (extensive!), I drove to GM, the car making funny sounds all the way.  The guy there referred me to another shop, where the owner kindly fixed my signal light and tacked up the fender so that my Stabilitrac sensor wouldn't be lighting up the dash.  I drove home, emailed my husband in the bush to give him the heads up (the "please-don't-kill-me-when-you-get-home!" type of email) and cleaned the house from top to bottom out of guilt.  Oh yes, made a wonderful dinner, too.  I am not above brown-nosing!  Anyway, Jason was pretty good about the whole thing, even though this is my second stupid accident in two years (remember when I backed down a long driveway and dented the door on a telephone pole?)  You know, if I lived in the big city, I might just cut up my license and take transit.

Let's see, what else went wrong this week?  Spilled a whole cup of coffee on two scrapbooking mags and a library book.  (Heat embossing tool works pretty well to dry that out, by the way!)  Several monumental fights with Nolan, to the point where the posters in his room were destroyed and the card I was working on for this month's Seriously Creative Challenge was ripped up.  Many tears were shed, by all parties involved.    Jason was away on his annual guys fishing trip, with no cell service, so he was absolutely no help at all, and my parents took off to Calgary for two weeks.  Argh, worst timing ever!  I'm trying to be optimistic that this is all due to the change in routine and/or a change in medication, and hopefully this coming week will be better (please, let it be better!!!)  I'm not sure I can survive more days like these last ones!  Ailis is going to summer camp tomorrow, and I did manage to get Nolan signed up for the science camp, so maybe keeping busy will mean everyone is happier.

It wasn't all bad, though!  I got to visit with one of my best friends and her sweet new baby who I haven't seen in years.  She's moved to New Zealand with her kiwi husband, so I'm glad she's around for a couple more weeks visiting her parents nearby.  I was chosen as a fave at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge for this layout, and I made Top 3 at Sketches in Thyme for this layout!  Oh, and I won a blog hop prize from Channa for a comment I left during the Frosted Designs blog hop a couple weeks ago.  Also, my very sweet friend stopped by after a particularly rough day and dropped off half her six pack of Palm Bays, restoring my faith in humanity once more.  If ever I needed to drown my sorrows in yummy sweet booze, that was the night!  So, I can occasionally see the glass as half full (well, maybe only a quarter, but still, not completely empty.)

Which brings me to the announcement of this month's challenge at Seriously Creative Challenges:

Are you still with me?  Hope you can join us with all your new and unused products this month.  It's surprising how many things I have in my stash that I could use for this one.  Off the top of my head, I can think of some new ribbon, paper, 2 stamps, a new digi (freebie from Saturated Canary here, scoop it while you can!) chipboard labels and brads from Fiesta...  I'm trying not to hoard, really!