Weekend in Review

This past weekend, we had the kids at our house for the first time in what felt like months.  They have been so busy this summer that we haven't seen them much.  Between camps and beach trips and a week at their grandparents', their travel schedule has rivaled that of a business man who travels for work every week.  Oh wait, that would be my husband.  Basically, what I'm saying is that everyone keeps leaving except me. With the new school year just around the corner (just a week and a half of summer left for them!), the kids have been gathering new school supplies and getting back in routine of a regular schedule.  They are attending a new school this year so new uniforms have been ordered.  Wyatt will wear khakis and a golf shirt during warm weather and a white shirt with a tie in the winter.  Anna has a new pair of saddle shoes that she'll wear with her jumpers and skirts.  They'll both be so snazzy!

Besides new backpacks and a stack full of books, the kids also got laptops that they'll use in school everyday.  !!  They'll be in 5th and 6th grade and they'll be using a laptop everyday!  I just can't believe it.  I mean, I know this is the direction the world is going, but I don't like it.  What's wrong with pencil and paper?

They will both continue with their music lessons at the new school - piano for him, guitar for her.  And this year, Wyatt has decided to give football a try.  Saturday morning was his first practice in full pads.

Doc stuck around and watched for a while.  He's definitely one of the smallest on the team, but Doc thinks he's doing pretty well.  Maybe he'll be all heart like Rudy.

After the boys got home from practice, we had some lunch and then headed to the pool.  With it as hot as it is, you either have to stay inside or stay in a pool.  I'm glad we had a pool to go to!

I didn't have my camera out at the pool for very long, so I just got a few pictures.

Wyatt showed off his muscles that he's getting from football practice.  Big, aren't they?

Anna took a break to get a drink, but she only lasted out of the water about 1 minute!

Jett and Bren joined us at the pool.  Jett had some mardi gras beads from somewhere, so that's what we dove for.

Bren likes to jump in over and over again.  She's fearless with her floatie on.

The kids spent a lot of time in the 12-foot end, which means they spent a lot of time hanging on to Doc so that he could tread water for all of them.  At least he got a workout in!

We had a low-key evening at home that night.  I just love how an afternoon swimming can wear everyone out.  I think the lights were out by 9:30...my kind of night!

Sunday morning we went to church.  It was the first time for the kids to get to hear our new preacher and I think they liked him (as much as 5th and 6th graders can like someone they have to sit and listen to for an hour...).  Like most Sundays, we went to my parents for lunch.

Aaaaand we might have melted some crayons.  Again.  I can't help it.  I just think its so cool and there were still more crayons and foamboard left from last time so...

Or maybe I just thought it was something the kids would really enjoy.  Yea, let's go with that.

I was right - they did enjoy it and they thought it was pretty awesome too.  They were limited in their color choices since I had already taken out most of the primary colors.  Anna chose hers first so she got all the pretty colors that were left.  Poor Wyatt was left with all the browns, blacks, greys, and golds.  But those are boy colors anyway, right?

After they had their color order figured out, I helped them glue them down.  Don't worry, I manned the hot glue gun while they placed the crayon down under close supervision.  No burned fingers here!

They got to decide how they laid them down.  Wyatt placed the Crayola logo on top like I did, and Anna alternated hers between the logo and the name of the color.

With the oven set to 250 degrees, we popped them in and waited.  We all placed bets on which color we thought would drip first.  The leading crayon was gold, which no one chose, but my hot pink was second.  Woo hoo!  Would you believe me if I told you that black was the very last color to drip?  I know, crazy, right?  At one point while we were watching them drip, Anna turned and said, "This would be a really cool science project."  I practically shreaked when I said, "I know!  That's what I've been saying this whole time!!"

Just waiting...

Starting to drip!  (And yes, my mom needs to clean her oven glass...)

Even my mom can't resist watching the crayons melt again.

When they got to this point, we decided they had melted enough.  You can also see that some of the crayons melted from the top and dripped down on top of the paper.  That didn't happen with mine, probably because mine flipped over backwards halfway through.

Since we were pleased with the amount of drippage, I turned the oven off and closed the door.  I figured since it wasn't too hot to begin with, it'd cool down pretty quickly, and I really didn't want to handle the foam boards while the wax was still liquid for fear of messing it up.

A few minutes later, my mom looked over and said, "Oh my gosh!  They're pouring out!"  And sure enough, the crayons looked like waterfalls.  Every bit of wax poured out of every paper tube.  I guess maybe the oven didn't cool down as quickly as I had hoped.

So this is how they ended up.  Less drippy than planned, but still pretty cool.  I like how the colors blended together.  You can kinda see some lumps on Wyatt's from where the whole crayons poured out.

Unfortunately, the kids had to leave to go home before the wax had firmed back up, so they'll have to wait to see their finished products.  Maybe I can find some frames by then.

Right as the kids were leaving, this little doll showed up with her Mommy and Daddy and I don't know for sure, but I think she was pretty glad to see me.  At least that's what I tell myself.

Look! Teeth!

My mom and I visited with little Alice's parents for a few minutes before they headed home for a day of unpacking.  I'm so glad to have them in town!  Maybe they'll become regulars on this ol' blog.

While Doc took the kids home and ran some errands, my mom and I spent the afternoon working on the super secret birthday project.  It's starting to come together and I love it!  They birthday party's not til next weekend, though, so I have to hold off from posting pictures.

My dad spent a good portion of the afternoon like this:

My parents are in the middle of having a sprinkler system installed in their yard, and so far the cable has already been cut in about 6 different spots.  The only place the cable still works?  Their master bathroom.  So my dad rigged up this lounging area with a bench and a chair so he could still watch tv.  Anything for some Sunday afternoon golf, I guess.

The rest of the fam came over later in the day.  Mom bribed everyone with dinner: pork chops, baked beans, cheesy potatoes, fruit, rolls, and more!  While dinner was cooking I played on the playground with the munchkins.

Yes, I'm the aunt that lets Bren climb to the top of the ladder and just takes pictures instead of holding on to her. I blame the pigtails.  They're just so darn cute.

I also let Jett practice jumping out of the swing.  Safety doesn't always come first when I'm the babysitter.

And then, as I was taking pictures of Jett swinging...

...I remembered the AutoStitch program that my father-in-law introduced me to, and got an idea.  I took a picture of him on each swing, and then after a few minutes of tinkering on the computer, voila!  He's everywhere!

Sure, he's a little blurry, but I don't think it's that bad for my first attempt.  I see a lot more AutoStitching in my future.

So that's our weekend in a nutshell.  Low-key but fun.  Now if I can just make it through 4 more work days so it can be the weekend again!

Public Service Announcement

In light of a few recent bathroom visits, it seems as though some public bathroom patrons may be unaware of acceptable public bathroom etiquette.  Or all bathroom etiquette, for that matter.  So, I've put together a Flow Chart.  No pun intended. Read it.  Learn it.  Use it.

Seriously.  It's not stinkin' funny.

2 More Completed Projects

It may be hard to believe, but last weekend while I was at my parents' house, I actually did more than just play with crayons.  I know, shocking.  I'm happy to report that I was able to check a couple of projects off the ol' to-do list. The first is a bench that someone had "ordered."  (It feels weird calling it that since I don't actually have a store, but they requested it, I made it, they paid for it, so that means they ordered it, right?)  The bench is an Ana White plan that I'd done last fall and this particular "customer" (that's weird too) had seen it in its new home and wanted one too.  Well by all means, let me jump right on that for you.

I didn't take an in-process shots, so here it is in its finished state.  My customer chose the paint color; it's Nifty Turquoise by Sherwin Williams.

The top is hinged and has a little storage compartment.

I won't lie, I was pretty nervous when I opened the can of paint and saw how bright it was.  Nifty?  More like Welcome To Preschool, Let's Learn Our Colors Turquoise.  Thankfully a dark chocolate undercoat toned things down a bit, especially after I went at it with the sander.

I haven't heard back yet if my customer is pleased or not.  Doesn't matter, though, cause this store doesn't take returns.  Mwahaha.

Project Numero Dos is one that my parents started a couple of weeks ago and I just helped finish it up.  The inspiration was this piece of wall art that my mom and I saw at an antique store.

What you see there is a whole bunch of strips of colorful beaded board framed together and hanging on the wall.  Fun, easy, genius.  I mean, who doesn't love beaded board?  It's cheap and super easy to get your hands on.  The antique store had some of these same colored slats in longer pieces for sale.  Aaaaand it just got even easier to get our hands on - we didn't even have to drive to Home Depot or Lowes.

I can't remember the price but it wasn't much.  Mom went ahead and bought one long slat in each color.

I think they may have called these antique beaded board but it really isn't much different than what you can buy in the store today.  These are tongue and groove pieces, not just strips from a big sheet of beaded board like we normally buy.  I think the main difference is that it's a little bit thicker.

Well, it's thicker and it's already painted and distressed.  Gotta love it when you can cut out a step from the get-go.

Now, these were mostly purchased so we could make some generic wall art for the beach house, but you know my mom needed something for her house too.  She cut off 15 inches from each slat, and then cut those down into 3 five-inch pieces.  She had a total of 21 pieces and went to town arranging them.  My dad built her a frame to go around them.

Mom has a long skinny place in her den where she wanted to hang this so she couldn't follow the pattern from the inspiration photo.  Instead, this is what she came up with.

It reads a little checker board-ish in this picture, but it's actually really, really cute in person.  The dark colors that look kinda black in the photo are actually a darker green and brown, and you can see a lot more of the imperfections in the wood in real life.

She even managed to line up all the "beads" in the beaded board.  (The slats didn't automatically line up, she had to shave a little off here and there.)

Dad and I put the hanging wires on the back and took inside to see how it'd look in it's new home.  I think it looks good by the polka dot chair!

Maybe one day I'll remember to take my real camera with me so I can take some better quality pictures (these are from the iPhone).  This would be really easy to recreate, and you could make it any size and color you wanted.

We also worked on another really cute, really fun project this weekend, but I can't reveal it yet because it's a birthday present.  It's so hard to resist posting pics because I think it has turned out so well.  I love it!  Here's a hint:  it involves a tree, a door, and a mailbox.  Any guesses??

Just for fun, here's a picture of Lolli.  This is how she spends her mornings when she thinks it's close to time for her to get in her kennel.  If I even think about coming near her, she darts under the bed where I can't reach her.  She's a mess, I tell ya.

Pinterest Challenge Redo

I had totally accepted my Pinterest Challenge FAIL yesterday when I wrote my post about it.  Really, I had.  I knew there were some things that I could change before setting my crayons out in the sun to bake again and I had every intention of trying out some of those changes.  I felt like my first attempt hadn't been all that bad.  Heck, some of you even thought it looked good enough to frame.  Even still, I knew I could do better. But then...sigh.

Then I started clicking links and looking around and reading comments and I started seeing all these other melted crayon masterpieces and they looked good.  Like, really good.  And way better than mine.  But from what I could tell, no one else went with the sit-it-out-in-the-sun-to-bake method like I did.  Or actually I guess I should say no one stuck it out all day like I did.  Well, I'm sure someone did, just not anyone whose blog I read.

If using something other than the sun to melt the crayons could be called cheating, then I read about quite a bit of cheating going on!  There was a lot of hair dryer usage to get a nice drippy effect.  I knew that wouldn't work for me, though, because I recently sweet-talked Doc into cleaning out the little lent tray thingy on my hair dryer and now it doesn't get as hot as it used to.  Then, later in the afternoon, I read one blog post that showed the crayons dripping in the oven.  Hmmmm...

Doc is still out of town so after work I drove over to my parents house for dinner.  I know I just spent the whole weekend over there, but I'm not one to pass up on a free meal.  Especially lasagna.  (That meal almost got really expensive for me since I got pulled over on my way to their house.  Luckily I got off with just a warning.  Phew!)  There's a Fred's located just around the corner from their house and I have to pass it to get there and this time I just had to swing my car into the parking lot to pick up another pack of crayons.  This time I sprung for the 64 pack!

So while my mom finished preparing dinner, I dug around in her cabinets to find some baking tools and ignored her comments of "You are NOT cooking crayons in my oven."  I promised her I'd be real careful.

I was originally going to use the big center piece from my tri-fold foam board since I had so many more crayons, but it wouldn't fit into my mom's oven.  And then, since I had to cut it down anyway, I went ahead and made it an even 11x14 so it'd easily fit into a standard sized frame.

The rest of the prep work was all the same as the first time: line drawn at the top for straightness, colors arranged according to Roy G Biv, crayons glued down with Crayola logo on top.  When my board was all ready to go, I placed it on a cookie sheet and leaned it up against a cooking dish.

I made a little tray out of aluminum foil to catch any crazy crayon drippage.

I had no idea what temperature to set the oven to.  250 seemed like a good number to me, so that's what I went with.  Into the oven it went.

Did I mention I left my camera at home?  Yea, these awesome photos are comin' atcha from my iPhone.

I may or may not have squealed when I saw these two drips.

It's working!  And it's working fast!  The crayons started dripping just seconds after being in the oven.

It's hard not to be a cheater when it feels looks this good!

I don't know why, but this was so fascinating to me.  Especially after my first failed attempt.  The crayons that baked in the sun melted inside the wrapper first and most of the tips never really melted, they stayed hard.  But now, in the oven, it's the tips of the crayons that were melting away.  And they were all melting at what seemed to be an equal pace, regardless of their colors.  So freaking awesome.

After about a minute of good dripping, I turned the oven off so it could start to cool down and the wax could harden back up.  I felt like I had reached a good level of drippage.

Here's my masterpiece fresh out tha oven!  It smelled delicious like wax.

I've got these pretty sweet blended smears at the top of my crayon row.  This might be from me getting uber creative and putting my own twist on it, or it might be from the foam board being top heavy and flipping over backwards.  Only my mom and I will know for sure.

It's a good thing I put the aluminum foil tray down at the bottom because my drips definitely made it that far and pooled up at the bottom.  Truth be told, I kinda like the way it looks on the bottom, even though that will probably get covered up by the frame.

Like last time, I took a picture from the top.  This time, the wrappers still had a lot of wax left in them.

I think this photo is my favorite.  I love how the melted wax and blended colors look!

So there you have it.  When making melted crayon art, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again just cheat and stick it in the oven.  You won't regret it.

Pinterest Challenge: FAIL

Last Tuesday, the lovely ladies of both Young House Love and Bower Power announced that they were holding a little Pinterest Challenge.  In short, the challenge was to take inspiration from something you found on Pinterest, put your own spin on it, and then post about it today (Tuesday).  After writing the post, you could then add a link to one of their sites so that others could come visit and get inspired.  Simple, no?  They explained the challenge on their blogs using a lot more words than that, and even created a fun little video that included an HGTV celebrity whom I do not know, so feel free to click on those links to get more details. Pinterest, for those of you not in the know, is a fun site where you can pin things that interest you.  Get it?  Pin + Interest = Pinterest.  And by "pin" I mean it's a place where you can create your own folders to place things you find online that you like and don't want to forget.  Similar to saving things in your Favorites Folder, only you can see pictures instead of just names of websites.  Oh, and just like every other social media platform, people can follow your pins and you can follow others.  Or you can just search for things on the main page and look at things that people you don't know have pinned.  What I'm saying is that there's lots of cool stuff on there to look at, and it's really, really easy to get sucked in and then realize you've blown a few hours on the site.  I've noticed that when I log on my productivity levels majorly plummet, so I save it for a little treat for myself when I know I've got some time to kill.

So, back to the challenge.  I follow both Sherry and Katie on a regular basis and I have my own account on Pinterest, so when I read about the challenge I immediately thought it sounded fun.  Only problem?  I didn't have a project on Pinterest lined up to do.  They both announced the kind of projects they would be working on - Sherry's would be a light fixture for her laundry room, Katie's something for above the bed in her guest bedroom.  Those types of projects called for a lot of supplies I didn't already have on hand, like light kits.  Since I didn't already have a project in mind, nor did I have time to shop for a whole bunch of supplies, I figured this would be a challenge that I'd just have to watch from afar.  No participating for me.

Fast forward to late Wednesday afternoon when I found this fun piece of artwork on Pinterest.

(via)

Pretty awesome, right?  And no, I wasn't on there looking for a project to do so I could participate in the challenge.  I quickly logged on to pull up something I had pinned a few days earlier, and this immediately caught my attention on the home page.  Super cute, super creative, and super easy.

Did I mention that the supply list would be a cinch to get my hands on?  I mean, I can grab a foam board and a pack of crayons practically anywhere.  And that's just what I did.

What is it about a brand new pack of crayons that makes me so giddy?  It's gotta be their perfectly sharp tips and the newness of them.  They're just screaming to be colored with!

My foam board was actually one of those tri-fold boards that are used for science fair projects, so my first step was to cut off the two sides.  I was originally going to use the bigger center piece for this project, but since I only got the 24 pack of crayons (as opposed to the 64 pack), one of the smaller side pieces was plenty big enough.

While my hot glue gun heated up, I arranged my crayons in the perfect rainbow order.  Roy G Biv, y'all!

Now, I tend to err on the side of being a perfectionist, so before slapping on some hot glue and sticking the crayons down, I drew myself a line across the top so that everything would be perfectly straight.  Then I could get to gluin'.

I left a little bit of space at the top and the sides so that I could easily frame it after the crayons were melted.  What can I say, I'm a thinker.

I debated between having the Crayola logo be on top or the names of the colors, but in the end, the logo won.  My OCD came out and I decided I liked it better with them all looking the same.  Besides, what's the fun in colors that have practically the same names, like Yellow Green vs Green Yellow and Red Violet vs Violet Red.  How are kids ever supposed to learn their colors with names like those?

Approximately, oh I don't know, 48 seconds of hot-gluing later, I had my rainbow completely stuck down.

And all of my perfectly pointed tips were still in tact.  I resisted the urge to give them a good scribbling.

Here's the full view of my canvas.  Sure, my edges aren't perfectly smooth, but I was banking on a frame covering those up, so I didn't care.  See that little dent about midway down on the right?  Yea, that's where I rested on my elbow while gluing on the crayons.  Lesson learned: my body weight will leave an impression on foam board.

The next day was kinda overcast and rainy so I didn't get to set my board-o-crayons out in the sun.  I actually had to wait until Sunday to set them out to bake.

I moved a chair out into the yard where I thought they would get some full-on sun.  After a little bit of positioning and re-positioning, I left the board propped up with a slight incline.  I figured if it was straight up and down my crayon wax could drip straight down and miss the board all together.

About 30 minutes later I came back out to check on the crayons.  They were starting to look a little sweaty and the darker colors were getting melty on top.  Aww yeah.

Up close of the melty-ness.

You know what they say - a watched pot never boils - so I went inside and left the crayons to melt on their own.  I did sneak a few peeks from out the window and could tell progress was being made.  On my next trip out with the camera, the crayons looked like this.

It's like the blue and green were racing down the board and then got stopped by a major crayon wax pile-up.

I was able to make a few observations at this point.  First, the darker colors were obviously melting way faster than the lighter colors since they absorb more heat.  Second, the purple crayon on the far left was my favorite; it looked like it slid completely out of the paper wrapper all at one time but was still kinda intact.  Third, the wax was separating.  See the little white spots in between the crayons in the shot two photos up?  That's wax that was sweating through the paper.  And the lightly smeared purple-y area above the wax pile-up is where all the white wax melted off the purple crayon that's still intact, if that makes any sense.  This was shaping up to be quite the science experiment.

Once again, I headed inside so the sun could work its magic without me watching.  This time I waited a couple hours before heading back out with my camera.  Here's how it looked that time.

Um yea, pretty much the same.  The light colors still weren't budging.  What the heck?  I could tell from barely touching the paper that they were melted inside, they just weren't doing any dripping.  I was about to start running out of daylight, so I tried to help speed them along.  I grabbed a couple toothpicks and did a little poking and prodding.  Then I tapped the board up and down hoping to loosen the wax up a little.

Oh, I loosened it alright.  The pink crayons from the far right fell right off.  Crap!

(Yes, that's the instructions on how to put together a piece of furniture.  Once the melting got into full swing, I slid into under the edge of the board to protect the chair.)

I was majorly bummed about those two falling off.  I guess if the point of the project is for things to start melting, then I probably shouldn't use hot glue as my adhesive of choice.  Another lesson learned.

The view from the top was pretty cool.  You can see how the crayon wrappers are starting to look hollow.  I could see all the way through some of the darker ones that had already dripped out, and I could tell that the reds, oranges, and yellows were melted, they just weren't sliding out.

Then, while I was standing there feeling defeated and disappointed over my failed project, the pile-up of wax started sliding again.  More drips came from the dark colors too.  Can you tell in the picture below how the purple crayon from the left has started melting and there is more blue and green smeared at the top?  The glob at the bottom is moving too.

I can't even tell you how fascinating this was to me.  It was so fun to watch the drips and try to predict which way they would go!

It was blazing hot outside so I went back in, leaving the crayons out to melt a little longer just in case the lighter colors decided to get in on the action.

An hour-ish later I came back out and booyah! The oranges and yellows finally let loose!

Here's a zoomed out shot where you can see that the blues/greens/purples made it all the way to the bottom.  Good thing I put that paper down.

You can see from the shot above that the shade was creeping in, so that's as far as the melting went.  Obviously this is not worth framing, which is why I'm calling this project a FAIL.

But!  I think I'm going to attempt it again.  Maybe I could get better results if I switch up the variables a bit (like how I'm using my science fair lingo?).  For instance, what if I used a piece of plywood or something that wasn't so smooth?  Then maybe the initial globs wouldn't slide so fast and would leave more of a color streak on their way down.  Or, what if I cut off all the tips before I glued the crayons down?  That was one of the fascinating parts to me - even though the wax inside the wrappers was completely melted, the tips on the lighter colors were still hard as a rock.  Wonder if the colors would melt at an equal pace if I set it up in a hot car?  There are so many things to experiment with!

Of course, my dad insisted all day long that there's no way possible to get it right without using some kind of applied heat.  He even suggested putting it in an oven somehow.  I shot down his ideas, telling him that would just make my foam board melt.  My mom suggested I pull up the tutorial to re-read it, but I reminded her that I didn't read a tutorial, I just saw the one picture.

Turns out the joke's on me.  When I went back to pull up the original inspiration picture from Etsy (where it's for sale for $70!), I was able to read in the description that the artist uses a heat gun and applies a controlled heat application to get this outcome.  Ugh, maybe I should've done my reading before-hand.  I don't know, though.  Now that I've seen that it's possible to get them to melt from the sun, using a heat gun just seems like cheating.  What do you think?

Updated to add: The results are in!  Click here to see Sherry's awesome Clothespin Light Shade, here for Katie's really cool basket weave mirror, here for Emily's swanky nailhead trim on closet doors, and here for Lana's bold chalkboard fridge.  Looks like I'm the only one that majorly failed.  Crap.  Oh well, I'm linking up on their blogs anyway!

Updated again to add: I gave it another try!  Check out my much more successful attempt here.