A Woodchuck!?! Seriously? Yep.

Yep. That's right. A straight up woodchuck.

In my yard.

I saw it yesterday when we let the dogs out and they chased it over to the neighbors. It ran under their deck. The whole thing happened really quickly and I wasn't quite sure what it was at the time. My brain said small beaver with a furry tail. I knew that wasn't a real thing, but that was pretty much what I saw.

My husband had said something about the pile of dirt in the front yard a couple hours before. He thought we had some moles. His parents have an army of moles in the yard of their house in the country. Honestly, I thought the pile was from a plant I dumped out a couple weeks ago, but if he wanted to blame a rodent that was fine by me. 

I didn't put the two together until I saw another pile in the yard on my way out of the driveway this morning. I knew what I had seen wasn't a mole so I thought...maybe a gopher?

Nope. That wasn't not quite it.

I was sure it had a furry tail, not a little rat one and it was WAY bigger than the description for gophers. Then I found this handy What's Digging Holes in my Yard? Extension publication from the University of Minnesota. 

Deep burrows with excavated soil spread around the entrance. Possible cause: woodchuck

Yep, that's it. 

Sidenote: did you know a groundhog and a woodchuck are the same thing? I didn't until the internet told me so.

I kinda hate to do anything about it. It is the cutest little guy. I'm sure it's a totally horrible thing to have in your yard, especially when you have an infant, but I'm certainly not going to poison or shoot him (or her). She could have babies. I'm not killing the mother of adorable little baby woodchucks. I mean, I have an infant. Moms have to stick together regardless of species. Plus, poisoning anything is a bad move when you have a little person who puts anything and everything in her mouth.

More googling.

Humane Society What to Do about Woodchucks

Apparently timing is crucial and I shouldn't evict it until mid-late summer. Since I've never seen this thing before and it certainly hasn't been burrowing in the yard for long I'm going to go ahead and say it doesn't have babies in the burrow so maybe will try to evict it.

Austin still thinks moles are making the holes so maybe we can just keep the woodchuck. What do you think? It is absolutely freaking adorable, but I don't really want to share my hard earned vegetables if I ever actually get up the gumption to plant a garden.

In Spring: Wall Art from Stickers and Thrift Store Art

A while back I was about ready to lose it if I didn't get to do just a little something creative so I took on a tiny project with a piece of thrift store art I bought a couple of years ago. Like thrift store art plus stickers tiny.



I had some sparkly pink stickers that came with one of the page kits I bought for my pregnancy scrap book, but hadn't used yet. The only problem was I had to decide what to write. Indecision kicked in and it took me a whole day to pick something.

Once I knew what I was writing I was feeling impatient and couldn't be bothered to take multiple shots or stand still long enough for a clear shot. Quick little projects like this get me way too excited. I didn't take any mid project either. Bad blogger. But seriously, do you really need pictures of how to peel off stickers and stick them on something?

How to Make a Sweet Blog Header (For Your Mom Even if You're Still Not Totally Satisfied with Your Own)

Hey guys! I miss you. Norie was sick all last week and I spent this week trying to catch up with life. I'm almost there and have several reasons to be extra motivated about life so expect a flurry of new posts in the near future. Anyway, back to the post.

I love my mom's new blog header.

I love it so much I went crazy and sized it for her facebook page and even made her business cards to match.

I have one too, but I'm not totally in love with it (thanks for the props though, Crystal!). It's definitely an improvement, but it's not there yet. I really think maybe I just made one for her that was a lot like what I really wanted and then didn't know where to go with my own. That and it's a little too crafty (as in it doesn't speak to the parenting, decorating, building, gardening, and cooking parts of what I write about). I hope to get it updated (again) over the weekend after I had some time to think about it.

Since Crystal thought it was great I wanted to tell you how I did it. You know, just in case you wanted to make yourself one too and had some crazy idea that I would do something super hard. 

I'd had this idea for a while and finally just did it over Craft Weekend. I sketched out a basic idea and made my mom pick out some scrapbook paper she liked (it's from My Mind's Eye Bramble Rose).

I'm obsessed with decorative tape so I made some faux decorative tape from one of the pattern she liked by cutting a 1/2" wide strip and tearing it. I used a random sheet of off white card stock cut down to 5"x11" so there would be come visually blank space for the lettering. I laid everything out on her kitchen floor and just took a picture of the whole thing from directly above.

Then I used Picasa to crop the image to the dimensions listed for her header.

And finished off by using the Add/Edit Text option to add her blog name and tag line. I highly recommend using a font with two versions since it lets you switch it up a little without making it look like you're a crazy font person. I used Niagara Solid and Niagara Engraved.


For her Facebook cover image I simply recropped to meet the cover image dimensions (851x315).

Easy peasy. Now if only I had my own thought out I would be set.