Inflatable collars, power tools, and one determined chihuahua: story-telling through scrapbooking.

Scrapbooking has to be one of the very best ways to tell a story.  Imagery combined with words, some fancy paper, and embellishments... really, what could be better?   The lesson for today: think of a story you'd like to tell and create a layout that illustrates that story.  I promise, you'll NEVER forget it.  Here's my example.

This layout tells the story of little Miss Bunny whose greatest goal in life is to sneak out of the gate and run free, as nature intended.  The gate at our house used to be suspended several inches from the ground and the bottom was unfinished... resulting in scary dagger-like poles which Buns would nearly impale herself on every time she squeezed under that gate to chase after another dog or small child.  Vicious chihuahua!

Matthews, who loved Buns the moment he met her, decided it was time to fix the gate.  Here is why Matthews is amazing: He first dismantled part of the gate to take to the hardware store so they could match the paint.  Then he bought a long piece of aluminum, used a spray gun to paint it, and then sawed it to the perfect length to cover the unfinished bars at the bottom.  All the while, Bunny looked longingly out the gate, knowing her days of running free would soon be over.

KeKe (me) has known the Buns for seven and a half wonderful years.  I am not fooled by that sausage-like physique.  I know that she can turn herself into a flattened pancake in 0.2 seconds if she wants to pull a Houdini.  I said to Matthews, "I'm pretty sure she'll be able to fit under  it still..."  "No, no," he reassured me, "this will do the trick."  But alas, just as we were installing the final screws, another dog walked by and Bunny showed Matt what she's made of (which is Silly Putty, apparently).  The look on Matthew's face was priceless... but not quite as priceless as the photo of him holding the paint gun...

Ooooh, such a scary man with those power tools.  So, after Bunny slid under the newly modified gate, we did what any smart human would do: we took BOTH gate doors off the hinges and lowered them by about three inches.  Take that, Bunny!  With the gate now sitting literally centimeters from the ground, we knew, we just knew, there was NO way she was squeezing under it.  Silly humans.  Bunny, apparently, can also squish her skull and shoulders and fit THROUGH the gate.  You have got to be kidding me.  I had no idea this dog had so much talent.  We sat on the other side of the gate and tempted her with a few Cheerios (her favorite treat, BTW) and she sailed through the gate like a dainty mid-leap ballerina. 

I appropriately named this layout "The Great Escape".

These past few months, we've had to keep a watchful eye over BunBun, knowing that even with the gate shut, she could leap through.  The only thing that surprises me is that she doesn't try to jump right over the top of the gate!  The final solution, an inflatable dog collar, turned out to be the simplest... and may have saved us from going through all the commotion to fix the gate.  But hey, it makes for a great scrapbook layout, right!? 

Here's is a fabulous photo of Buns in her inflatable collar, and Matt, in a make-shift inflatable collar (so that Bunny has a sympathetic fellow fashion victim, of course).

Don't you just love a story with a happy ending?