Collage

Last night was Collage...every year the music department at the High School puts on a "collage" of musical talent. This year's show was much shorter than most, but the talent was still incredible. It was a new experience for me as this was the first year I was actually able to watch Collage instead of participating.







The H.S. concert band opened the show with the theme song from Star Wars. Darth Vader made an appearance and the band director, Tony Bush, defeated him. It was fun to watch!









The show choir was incredible as usual. They preformed a fun jazzy song, Blue Skies.






One of my friends and fellow Color Guard member, Debra, performed a flag routine to the song "Somebody's Someone".











Another friend, PJ, sang "Wherever You Will Go".





My brother, Nate, is in the Jazz band. If you watch the video (I had to link to it on YouTube because it took literally all day, from 10:45-9:56 to try to upload it to blogger), he is the guitarist on the far left. He had told me that he was doing background vocals for a song in Jazz band, but I didn't know it was the one they were doing at Collage! This isn't the type of music that is most common at Collage, but it was a nice change of pace and I enjoyed it. This group is very talented!

Zack and his friend Tyler sang one of my favorite songs, "Fire and Rain". I took a video of it, but I have a feeling Jennifer will be sharing it on her blog. If she doesn't, I'll post it up here.

And yes, I know that this is my 200th post, but I thought Collage was more important. I will post my special post later tonight or tomorrow :)

Clocks

The other day I showed you pictures of my spray painting project...here's the final project...





Before




and after

You might have to click on the picture to see it bigger so you know what I'm talking about but...I think the turpentine I used ruined my clocks!! :( Though I covered up the face of the clocks, some spray paint still got on it. So I used turpentine to clean it off...well, I think that it took the shine off of my clocks, so now they look bad cuz they're all scratched looking. I tried cleaning them with windex but that didn't work, so I might try some buffing stuff and then a shiny coat. Does anyone else have any ideas on how to restore the shine to my clocks????

Pretty Flowers!

I had such a nice surprise when I got home from work today!!!!
When Gerri came home from Romania last summer, she bought back a bunch of flower seeds from the mission house. She thought my dad would like to try to grow them. Well, I was talking to Jennifer one day and we ended up talking about these seeds. Her husband, Mark, works in a greenhouse and I ended up bringing him some of these seeds. He was very excited to get them. Now today, he brought me 8 pots of these flowers which are beautiful! They're not in full bloom now, but they are gorgeous when the flower is full. I will take more pictures later this summer. We are not sure exactly what type of flower these are, but that just makes htem more interesting right?

Today's Project

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am often finding myself with nothing to do...which gives me plenty of time to read blogs, but after a while they're all read and there's nothing to do! Today was an exception. I had a project to do that I was very excited about. You see, for the past year or so we have had this (pointing at this first picture) sitting in my backyard. (Oops! I guess the "before" picture that I took didn't actually take...my camera's been doing that lately.)

This fire pit thing is so rusty, I wondered if it was even worth it. But I sanded it down and it looked better.

Then I coated it with a rust protectant. It's supposed to bond the metal back together and prevent more rust from forming. We'll find out if it works as good as it sounds.

And this is the final product. Nice and black. It's not as shiny as I would have liked, but I had to buy heat resistant spray paint, so you miss out on the fun stuff you know?








If you had stopped by my house today, this is what you would have seen. No makeup, baggy sweatshirt, ripped pants, spray paint and dirty hands. But it's all fun! (Actually the mail lady came and I had to sign for something with icky hands! It was totally worth it though because she brought me my camera battery charger so now I can use my good camera!!!)




This was my next project. My mom bought me these clocks for Christmas. They were almost what I wanted, except they weren't silver. So I bought some metallic/chrome spraypaint...and....






...and painted my hand! Haha....I wasn't thinking about how much paint was on my hand...and now my hand is (still) silver!








This is the final product! I love how they turned out, you can't hardly tell that they are painted plastic instead of metal!

Finding treasures!

I've been out of school for aout 3 weeks now. As you can imagine, I find myself with nothing to do. The other day, I decided to clean out my closet! I wish I had taken a before and after picture, cuz let me tell you, my closet needed a good cleaning! It looks so good now! I threw away a ton of stuff...lots of old school papers and just junk that I have no idea why I was saving it. 3 big trash bags full of junk! Why was I keeping it in the first place?
Well, among the treasures I found was this...



What is this you ask? Well, only one of the best bread toppers out there! It's similar to Nutella, but with a twist....it's from Romania! I also found some other Romanian snacks and a bottle of my favorite drink, Sokata. Jackpot! :)






I had seen this recipe and I thought it sounded delicious! So, I used my Finetti (instead of Nutella) and oh boy! Are these good! They're pretty simple to make and they are really good!
(Disclaimer: I made this post on Wednesday, I just didn't put it up until today! Oops!)

8 in 2008

I can't believe it's check-in time again! Here we go...

1. Make devotions and prayer a priority--I'm not sure I'm doing to well on making them a priority, but I have been doing my devotions every day.

2. Listen more, talk less--I thought I was doing well at this, but I think I've started to back slide. I've got to try harder.

3. Don't choose favorites- pay attention to everyone--I've been doing better I think

4. JOY. Jesus, Others, Yourself--The road to success is long...

5. Be able to run 5 miles by December--I could probably do this now, but I'd be dead at the end. I haven't had the time or inclination to run...horrible isn't it?

6. Keep my room clean--I've been bored...so I've cleaned. More on this later...

7. Live with Kaylyn and Libby for a week this summer (preferably July 21-25)

8. Teach the Hill girls how to cook a full course meal for their parent's anniversary (July 14)--They keep asking me when we're going to get together to cook again....we only have 2 months so we better get busy!!!

a Time to Dance

I just read a great book. a Time to Dance by Karen Kingsbury. I absolutely love the title...and KK is one of my absolute favorite authors! I highly recommend this book. If you're a crying person (which I am not and I did not cry...but that's besides the point), this book will make you cry...and it will also make you smile and laugh. Anyway, the book told of some of the habits of eagles and she related it to our lives as Christians...I thought it was interesting and I thought I would share what I learned with you:

"An eagle almost never eats anything dead...But if it does, if something happens to make him sick, he flies to the highest rock he can find, spreads himself across it, and lets the sun soak out all the poison." After getting into trouble, the eagle had the knowledge to take his pain to the rock and let the sun make him strong again. I guess we could say that we can take our pain to The Rock and let the Son make us strong again.

"The eagle allows the storms to take him to a higher place...The eagle doesn't flap around like the chickens and crows and sparrows. It waits patiently on the rock for the thermal currents, and only then does it take flight. Not by its own efforts, but by the effort of the wind beneath its wings." Again, likening us humans to the eagle, how many times do we try to solve our own problems? We should have faith like the eagle and patiently wait... While other birds are taking cover in the storms, the eagle is soaring.

"An eagle would never fight against the storms of life. He saved his fighting for the serpent. Especially when the snake threatened the eagle's young." Do you see the analogy?

"When the female knows a male is interested, she leads him on a chase through the skies, swooping and diving and soaring high above the hills. When the chase is nearly over, she flies as high as she can and flips on her back, free-falling toward the ground. It is the male's job to place his body over hers and grasp her talons, flapping his wings with all his might to keep her from certain death. Moments before they hit the ground, the female pulls out of the dive and circles the male. Because he had been willing to stay even unto death, he will have proven himself as a mate. The eagles are joined for life from that point on." I hope that someday my future husband and I will experience such selfless love like that!

Now I will leave you to ponder one of my favorite verses, Isaiah 40:31
They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they will mount up on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not grow faint.

What a beautiful day!

It's so beautiful outside...

Go enjoy the sunshine!!!

Yummy :)

I posted over at my recipe blog today.

These two meals go perfectly together!

Herb-roasted Chicken and Vegetables and noodles

Go check it out!!!

And in other news....

This is post 192 for me...8 away from 200.

I'm working on my list of 200 things about me...

this post should be sometime next week

assuming that I have at least 7 interesting things to write about between now and then :)

Stay tuned...

And still more news :)...

Shelly had information about americanchairstore.com on her blog.

Go check out the web site...there's some neat stuff on there!!

Splash

Last night was the last meeting of the school year for Splash (our middle school youth group). We had a really good time and I gotta say I'm really going to miss my girls!!!



Anna and Jessica were entertaining us as we were waiting for pizza. Jessica's facial expression is priceless...and I think Anna should jump hurdles!!
(pictures are clickable)












These four girls are from my group of 6th grade girls.
Hannah, Emma, Jessie, and Grace











The pizza has arrived! Yay for Vitale's!!!












Kaylyn and I built a tower from all the little tables she stole off the pizzas










The youth praise band leading us in one of their original songs







Some of the group....the 8th graders were MIA (playing outside in the woods)







The group of girls inthe back of the room are from my group. They always dance around while singing the songs.








Blake is just the ladies' man. He came over to check out what we were doing during our small group time...and ended up getting decorated with cupcakes :)

These are my girls! I love them like crazy...this picture represents our group perfectly because we're always laughing. We already have plans to get together over the summer.

They were so cute when youth group was over. They all gave me hugs and said they can't wait for next year. They were super excited when I said that I planned to be their leader again next year (Lord willing!)!