Adventures in Crafting

Now that y'all are caught up on my travleling, I can talk about all my craft projects this summer!  While it isn't an adventure per say, its something that I love doing.  I am considering embarking on a self imposed crafting adventure/challenge when I get to Germany, but we shall see!   Pretty much all of theses projects were inspired by something I saw/pinned on Pinterest.  If you don't know about Pinterest yet its probably because we haven't talked much.. I'm kind of obsessed with it and I literally tell everyone about it!  So if you don't know about it, click on that little link up there and go explore!

(I'm prefacing these projects with the fact that my pictures are horrible when compared with the pictures from my inspiration.. I should really get better at photography...)

My most recent project was to make some artwork for my parents bedroom.  This was my inspiration...

a la

and this is what I made for Mama and Daddy's room.  

Here are some of the other projects I have been working on...

Inspiration is on top.  Mine's on bottom.
I made this for Mama's office area.  

a la

Inspiration on left.  Mine is on the right.
Yes, you did just see this in my post about Meg's apt!

a la

I also made these for Meg's apartment, but I completely forgot to take a picture!  Maybe she will take one and send it to me (hint hint!)...

a la

I made this for the Greiler's when we went out to Texas to visit them! 

Bennet's 1st birthday was on the 26th, so these are this is what I made for the occasion!  

That is all for now!  My current adventure is packing because I'm moving to Texas in FOUR DAYS!  

Nashville and Megan's Apartment

Y’all are almost caught up!  Only 2 more adventures to update before I can move onto life lately!  There is light at the end of the tunnel! 

At the beginning of August, I took Memommy and D’Daddy up to Nashville for a little mini vacation.  We stayed at the Opryland Hotel which is, in my opinion, one of the coolest hotels!  While we were up there I took them to the Country Music Hall of Fame and they went to the Grand Ol Opry.  All in all it was a good time! 

That next weekend Megan and Jonathan were moving into their new apartment so I coerced them into letting me volunteered to help decorate it!  Megan had bought some furniture and some new bedding, but other than that our budget was virtually non-existent so the challenge was to decorate a whole apartment on about $50 and what we had.  Challenging, but FUN!  Here is what we came up with!

Kitchen

Living Area

 Curtains and valance were made from a $10 sheet from Wal-Mart!  I also painted the art on either side of that great clock that Meg had!

Art work opposite the couch wall.

 I painted these pieces on either side of the dandelion picture too.  

Megan's room before

Megan's room after!

 We used the painted wall paper tutorial found here but we blew the template up to 18x24 and went with a single line.  The bedding is from Target.

Great Craigslist find!  $30 for this dresser.

Which I turned into this dresser a la here!
This is opposite the bed..

Bark shelving

 The letters (50 cents each at Hobby Lobby) are wrapped with fuzzy gray yarn.  

Prints via pinterest here and here, frames were $2 at Wal-Mart.  

The bark is from the woods.  God made it, I just turned it into a shelf.

Ruffle Curtains

 I made these out of a $10 sheet from Wal-Mart and some scraps of blue fabric.  

Ruffle Pillow

 Can you tell we like ruffles?  I used this tutorial, that same blue fabric from the curtains, and a fabulous linen that matches the bedding! 

My first adventure in upholstery. 

I recovered Megan's desk chair with the same blue fabric.  The fabric that was there was neutral and pretty but Roo (her cat) had pretty much destroyed it.  We are hoping that this fabric will hold up a little better!  

What do y'all think?!

YTC: “Is aquaculture an option?”

About a week after I got back from California, I headed back to Athens to pick up some kids to take to YTC.  

At the beginning of last school year, Mr. Boggs okayed me starting a Y-Club for the next school year (this one).  When I resigned, I made sure that I could still start one if I found someone to sponsor it.  Luckily I coerced found a willing sponsor so MCMS could have one.  However, the new sponsor wasn’t going to be able to take the kiddos to YTC, so since I was going to be there anyway, I volunteered to take the kids.  Not only was I taking kids to the conference, I also had CAS responsibilities!  Not going to lie.. I was a little worried about how I was going to balance it all, but it worked out beautifully.  

My girls made friends quite quickly and they were much more interested in hanging out with them rather than me.  Perf!  I ended up teaching the Secretary class and the Leadership Academy classes.  Josh and I (lets be real, mostly Josh) also ended up being the NE Bedlam Ball coaches.  If I couldn’t play then getting to coach was second best!  I think that the weekend is best described with pictures so here it goes!

At the 'Rave'

After participating in one of the games

My Leadership Academy class

Taylor planking

My little zebra girl athletes!  

NE Bedlam Ball is serious business.. 

CONA kids and our Purity Balls

NLC 2011: Day 6 and 7—Awards, Huntington Beach, and Home

Sorry for the blog hiatus.. I was off having more adventures! 

The last day of our trip was quite busy!  That morning we had the Award Ceremony to attend.  My girls did GREAT!  The way scoring works with FCCLA is a score 0-69.9 is Bronze, 70-89.9 is Silver, and 90-100 is Gold. 

Chapter Service got Gold!

Focus on Children got Silver!

Life Event Planning got Gold!

I was so proud of all my girls!

After the Award Ceremony we changed into our beach stuff and headed to Huntington Beach!  We grabbed some lunch once we got there and found ourselves a spot on the beach.  Huntington Beach was really cool!  There were lots of surfers and they were even setting up for the World Cup of Surfing that was going to be held there in a couple of weeks.  The water was freezing (again) but that didn’t stop our girls, or me!  There were some great waves for jumping! 

Afterwards we went back to the hotel, got cleaned up, and took the party bus back to LAX to catch the red eye back to Atlanta.  

I will admit—I did tear up on our way back to the school.  It was a great trip but, despite how exciting my new adventures will be, I will miss my girls!  

NLC 2011: Day 4 and 5—Disneyland and California Adventure

After a good night sleep we headed off to one of the happiest places on earth—DISNEYLAND!  I am unashamed to admit that, even at 23, I love Disney!  They really know how to create magic! 

The Focus on Children group was competing that day, so Mama took them to compete and afterwards they came to the park!  We rode some famous rides, met some famous characters, and had lots of fun!  I also learned how to do the fishtail brad from a cool Romanian woman while waiting in line for Space Mountain.  That kept us occupied for a while!

Around dinner time we left the park and went to eat at Bubba Gump!  Bubba Gump is kind of a tradition for my family.  If we are in a town where there is one, we must go eat there and get a glass.  The first one we ever went to was in Maui when I was in middle school.  We stayed there for hours because it was July 4^th and we had a great view of the fireworks!  We also collect glasses from each one.  So far, I think we have Maui, Chicago, New York, Orlando, Charleston, Daytona Beach, and now Anaheim!  Not only did we get a glass, BUT our waiter was also in the Suite Life movie!  My girls were SO EXCITED!!

After dinner we went back to the park, rode some more rides, and saw the fireworks! 

The next day got off to a rocky start for me.  The Life Event Planning girls were competing that day and I had to decorate their cake.  For those that don’t know about the project, we planned a wedding.  Lots of people do that for this event, so we needed to do something to make us stand out.  We made a dress that we put on my American Girl doll, made an example invitation, and made a bouquet.  For region and state competition, we also made a cake; however, that was impossible for Nationals.  What we did instead was order a cake from the local bakery and picked it up when we got there.  We had them just put a crumb coat layer of buttercream on it because I was going to make the fondant to cover it.  Making fondant in a hotel room?  No problem, right?  Wrong!  After a minor breakdown on my part (though I’m blaming the exhaustion), I just sprinkled the white frosting with our gold flakes, put a ribbon around it, and put our topper on it.  Done is better than perfect—I have to remember that sometimes!

After that got taken care of (at like 8am), the rest of us went to the other Disney park, California Adventure.  The Life Event girls met up with us a bit later.  Again, we rode some fun rides and met a very fun character!

 

That afternoon we were supposed to leave the park early to go to the official closing ceremony and then have a formal dinner at the Cheesecake Factory.  We made it to the Cheesecake Factory…Disney is just too much fun!  

NLC 2011: Day 3—Knott’s Berry Farm

The next day was the first day of competition and my Chapter Service girls were scheduled to compete that day.  Since her daughter was competing, Shona (one of our chaperones) volunteered to take the girls to do that.  Mama and our other chaperone, Paula, were also occupied that day judging.  Each school has to provide 1 judge for every 3 kids you bring so I was SUPER grateful that they were suckered into so willingly volunteered!  I’m not a good judge.  I am totally a Simon.

While everyone of competing and judging, I took the rest of the kids to Knotts Berry Farm (yea, like the jelly).  It’s actually not a farm—it’s an amusement park quite similar to Six Flags.  The kids had a great time and so did I!  The best ride of the day was definitely The Accelerator.  So much fun!  The girls that competed caught up with us after they got finished and still got a few rides in before we had to head back to change for the opening session.  

Opening session was crazy!  3,000 middle and high schoolers piled into this huge arena.  It felt like we were there for a concert!  It was a great session full of skits and a fantastic keynote speaker, Chef Jeff from the Chef Jeff Project on Food Network!  His story is a great one of overcoming circumstances and poor decisions.  After the session we went to our State Meeting and then hit our beds!