8th Grade Graduation & Youth Fun Night

This past Thursday, Preston and I took the day off of work so that we could go to my brother and sister's 8th grade graduation. Since we needed to be there early, we decided to drive after church Wednesday evening. We took Hannah with us and surprised Brinley, which was fun.

Thursday we spent the majority of the day at Brinley and Brice's school for the awards ceremony and then graduation. Brinley and Brice have went to the same school since Kindergarten so it's hard to imagine them anywhere else. When I was in elementary school, we moved a lot and I went to various schools, 6 before high school to be exact. Brinley and Brice both recieved many awards and graduation went well. We followed it with a lunch at Giovanni's pizza before heading to the local airport for some post graduation pictures.

We had planned to swim and spend time by the pool that afternoon, but due to nasty weather and everyone being tired, most of us just napped. We visited with Grandmama and Pawpaw and then headed back home, Brinley came home with us.

Friday I went to work and then that evening we were having a youth fun night at our house. We had pizza and games outside. Later in the evening we had a fire and made s'mores, which is always a treat. We had a really good turn out and all the kiddos seemed to be having lots of fun. We will defintely be doing this again this summer.

Saturday we had a busy day, camp that morning, then Brinley and I made a Wal-mart trip for what I needed for 2 casseroles for church on Sunday. Then that evening we went to our friend's house for a birthday party. After the party the girls went to the movie theater to watch "The Fault In Our Stars"... so good, that's all I'm going to say!

Sunday I was up earlier than usual to make cornflake chicken casserole and cheesy chicken and broccoli casserole for our after church lunch. Brinley and I made it to Sunday school, but we were a little bit late. After church we had lunch and then walked back to our house. I had rented "Labor Day" from redbox because I heard it was a good movie... false, I will never watch this movie again. We went back to church Sunday evening and had a pretty low key evening at home.

It was a great weekend, it just went by too quickly!

Crayon Art!

Hello friends! Hope all of you are staying warm in this cold weather! I am enjoying an extra day off work, as our company is closed today due to the temperatures. I hadn't had time before to write about the crayon art Brinley and I made when she visited. Here I am now with an extra day off, so what better time than now? You may have seen crayon art or have already done it, but it was a fun and easy project so I thought I would share it.

You will need:
Canvas
Plenty of crayons (since making 2, we had around 200)
Hot glue gun/glue sticks
Blow dryer

Step 1. Starting with your crayons, decide what color scheme you want your art to have.  Brinley chose mostly pinks and purples so that her canvas would match her room.  I wanted more of a rainbow look for my office, so I chose red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.  After deciding, we found it helpful to line the crayons on the canvas how you plan on gluing them.  We pointed them all the same direction, with the label showing the same way on all crayons.

Step 2. After lining the crayons how you are wanting them to look, using a hot glue gun, secure all crayons to the canvas.  Keep in mind you don't have to keep them in a straight line, you can create shapes if you'd like.

Step 3. After crayons are secure, hold canvas with crayons pointing down.  Make sure you have either a drop cloth, news paper, or a surface you don't mind getting messy, as some of the wax splatters.  I have a table cloth I use for crafting, so I just used that.  While holding the canvas, begin to blow dry crayons.  It helps to start at one side and work your way across.  Hold the blow dryer in the middle of the crayons.  Within no time, the wax will begin to melt and run down the canvas.  You can change the stream of the wax by moving the angle of your canvas.  Continue melting crayons until art is complete. We found that our wax only went half way down the canvas due to clumps of wax, to fix this problem, simple move your blow dryer to those sections and they will continue to melt.

Step 4. After melting wax, simply lay canvas flat and allow art to dry.

Here are our finished products, they are so fun!

Wonderful Weekends: Homecoming 2013

Hey everyone! I don't know about you all, but we had a great weekend which consisted of me going Kentucky for some football and the homecoming dance.  I left straight from work on Friday, Preston wasn't able to make this trip.
I got to Pikeville just in time for tailgating with family and friends before the game starting. My brother Bradley had an awesome game having 3 touchdowns and 2 extra points, I was a proud sister! The night was complete with a win of 34-21, it was a good game!

Saturday started early with getting my sister, Brinley, ready for her homecoming dance.  Her twin brother, Brice, was also going to the dance, but as we know, it takes a lot more to get girls ready... while Brinley was at her nail appointment, hair appointment, and make up appointment, Brice was in the bed!  Brinley and I have always been close so it was great being able to be there to help her get ready for the dance.  Seeing them dressed up showed just how much they've grown, they're definitely not babies anymore!  They both looked great for the dance, they said they had a great time! Just so that you can see a "then and now" here is a picture of Brinley and Brice from when they were babies:

And here are pictures from before the dance:

Brinley and Brice

yes, her eyes are really that blue!

so handsome :)

Brice and his date, Caysie

Brinley and her date, Brandon

she kept switching shoes!