Cheap-o Decor over here

I've had some spare time on my hands you might say and our apartment was seriously lacking in seasonal decorations. Granted it still is because my decor is tiny but I finally finished my last Halloween embroidery! 

I love them. The witch silhouette is probably my favorite.

I kept seeing different leaf garland projects on pinterest so I combined aspects and wound up with this little guy. I like him too. 

So yeah, they're small but it makes the apartment feel just a tiny bit more cozy and well, lived in I guess. 

Gateway Chalk Art Festival 2014

Chalk art festival number four happened for me this past weekend and I think it was my favorite image that I've done so far. It was also my last chalk art festival before Scott and I will be moving. 

 

There were three of us that worked on the image together as a team. Last year we did a Michael Jackson image but it rained and ruined our work, so we never fully finished it.
But we wanted to do something with a lot of color, something interesting that wouldn't be everywhere else. (Frozen movie characters were immediately thrown off the list of options. Way too popular.)
This was the oil painting I found that we decided to do. 

 Normally I like to prepare for the festivals by sketching out the image on paper using the grid and then when the time gets closer, rough sketching the full size we're going to do on sidewalk. But this was the first time that I never sketched out on paper, on sidewalk or anything before the festival. So I was not feeling great about it. Combine with the absurd amount of things going on in mine and Scott's life the past couple months... means I was at times regretting even signing up for the festival. I just didn't feel like I had enough time for everything and I was getting stressed out! 

 Starting the image was hard. It was hard to figure out how to make an oil painting work with chalk and a sidewalk. We were kicking ourselves in the pants for picking this image at first. But as the hours went by we finally figured out how to make it work.

Meet Amber. She is the messiest chalker I know. :)
 

Meet KaLee. She is a perfectionist and made our image perfect. Amber and I made her do that hard parts that we didn't want to even attempt. (Like the gondalas.... geesh hard.)

 We chalked for 7 hours Friday evening, ending at 9:00 pm. It started to get really windy so we taped a tarp down around our image and called it quits for the night. There is where we ended...

 It ended up only taking us 4 hours to finish the image the next morning. I thought for sure it would take longer but we got rolling along! 

 The image was 8ft tall and 6 ft wide. I have no idea if we won any of the contests. We didn't stay long enough to find out. But that's okay because I never do these for the contests. It's fun being in the environment of all these great chalkers around you, creating beautiful images. You get sucked into your own work and don't realize you've been on the ground as long as you have. I love chalking as a group. My first chalk art I did by myself and it was fun and rewarding, but I couldn't even attempt these larger scale, and more difficult images that we've done as a group. Plus it's just fun to spend so much time with your friends creating something.

Here are some of the other images that were done that I thought were picture worthy!

The End!

Chalked that Block

Do you remember when I decided to give myself a little push? Earlier this summer after being a volunteer for the chalk art festival up in Salt Lake I decided I wanted to add "participate in a chalk art festival as an artist" to my bucket list. But I was planning on that festival which wouldn't happen until next year. I would have a nice lovely year to practice and slowly talk myself into participating. And then a wonderful friend sent a message to me about Chalk the Block happening at Riverwoods in a month. She told me I had to sign up. 

My stomach seriously dropped and the nervousness set in. 

See, I love doing my chalk art every summer on the sidewalk that lays to the side of my house. It's secluded, and no one can really see me chalking, and if my drawing completely sucks then that's fine because no one can see it anyways. 

But participating in a festival where you expand the size of your drawing, where people are constantly walking by and watching you. Where everyone can see your work... and if you end up making a disaster  good luck hiding it. 

But at the same time, I really wanted this experience. So I hurried and paid the entrance fee before I could turn back. 

And I'm so glad I did. 

Seven hours later and I'm done!

It really was such a fun and different experience. Thankfully I was tucked away in a corner and all the artists around me weren't there on Friday so I felt mostly alone. There weren't a lot of spectators either so I was able to get lost in my chalk. 

It was hard chalking in the parking lot. The surface was bumpy (as can see in image above.... it gave my picture weird texture) and it took a lot of chalk layers and rubbing in to cover the surface. 

A sweet little side bonus was that I got my picture in the Daily Herald! (well, I don't know about the actual printed paper but it was online!) 

I also got incredibly dirty. Black feet, black all up the outside of my legs from sitting on that parking lot. I took a lunch break and walked over to Subway and this cute lady behind me asked if I was one of the artists, to which I replied, yes. She then told me she could tell because I had chalk all up my leg...

I really was such a mess. 

But it was one of those things that you're almost proud to show off because it meant you just accomplished something worthy of that black tar. 

The chalk art festival went on into Saturday as well. I chalked all day Friday and finished so that I could go back Saturday and just meander around and enjoy the other artwork.  

Side note: My thighs have never ever been as sore as they were the following few days after chalking. I seriously could not walk normal and don't even ask me about stairs. It was awful. 

But it was completely worth it! And I'm so glad I was able to have the opportunity. I don't want it to be a once in a lifetime thing though, I want to continue to push myself and participate in more festivals down the road. I want to increase this talent. And my thigh strength. 

A Few Things

It was Marie's birthday last week and since I'm always looking for opportunities and excuses to make a cake (practice practice practice) I told Marie to leave the birthday cake to me!

We had a fun girls night full of chatter, hot tubing, 40's music, and Doris Day. 

I'm so glad I've become friends with these girls. We always have a good time together.

I was going to write "Happy Birthday Marie" but I didn't want to take the risk of ruining the cake. So I left the open space for all of the candles. 

I was out working in the yard with my mom the other day and we had been working on cutting back some of the bushes, and I just couldn't resist trying out my hand at bush pruning. This bush was already an ugly shape and I tried to work with it to give it a spiral... it doesn't look too awful right? Granted the bottom needs some growing in to do now. I'll keep working on it throughout the summer don't worry.

One last thing, I hiked to the "G" for the first time last night! It's slightly sad that I've lived here almost my whole life and am only now doing this. It was a great hike and had an incredible view of the valley. It was a good evening. 

Cake Making

If you don't already know this about me then just understand that sometimes I look at something and decide that I could probably do that if I tried. So I do. Example. Example. Example. Example. Example. Example.
Guess what I've gotten my hands into now?
Cake Decorating.
Yup.

I made my first attempt cake yesterday night/today.

Crumb coating. 

I didn't have the right size of coupler but I didn't realize that until it was already in the bag with frosting... So duck tape came into the rescue to help me with the piping. 

Are you slightly impressed? 

I feel good about this being my first decorative cake. Granted the frosting is kind of messy looking, but this was my very first time piping frosting. 

I found the idea for the decorating here and decided that since those flowers are pretty forgiving, it would be a good first attempt idea.

Frosting recipe was a Buttercream Icing which was really good. But the recipe hardly makes any. Of course I used a ton for the flowers but with one batch it wasn't enough for the filling and crumb coating, let alone adding all the flowers on top.

The cake was a Hersey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake recipe which was really good and moist. I obviously didn't use their chocolate frosting but I think it turned out well in the end.

It was a really fun experiment! I would love to take some classes though, just the basics so I'm not stumbling around like a chicken with its' head cut off. There are so many details!! What kind of cake? What kind of filling? What frosting? Colored? What decorations? If you want the flowers to harden then it's one recipe, if you want them to soften up then it's another. What freaking frosting recipe is good?! What tip to use for piping? Remember how painting is a complete art and science all it's own? Cooking decorative cakes is exactly the same way. There is so much that goes into planning a cake.

October = Halloween = PUMPKINS

I have never been to a haunted house or a haunted corn maze. I have a hard time thinking of something I want to dress up as and finding a costume. I don't know if I care incredibly much for Halloween parties because it seems like an excuse for girls to dress up like skanks. I don't like scary movies and the only scary stories I look forward to are my Grandma Croslands'. But do you want to know what I love?
Pumpkins.
I love everything about pumpkins in the month of October. Carving pumpkins, eating pumpkin seeds, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin muffins. So amazingly delicious.
A couple years ago my family invested in a second garden located in a community garden location. We've been growing mostly our corn and pumpkins there. And for the past two years I've been up in Rexburg during Halloween which means I have missed pumpkin greatness. Well, this year I wasn't going to miss out and we were going to have a fantastic pumpkin episode. We ended up having 88 pumpkins grown this year. Most of them were on the smaller scale but they looked fantastic spread out all over in our yard.

Brilliant right?
Well just wait until you see what we've carved.
(Warning: lots of photos coming up.)

Boogie Man carved by: Nate

Smiley Jack and Sally carved by: Megan

Boo carved by: Amie

3 Pumpkin Tower carved by: Dad

Michael Jackson and Thriller carved by: Megan

Zero carved by: Megan

Angry Birds carved by: Nate, Megan, and KaLee

Neytiri from Avatar carved by: Mom

Cheshire Cat carved by: Natalie

Mad Hatter carved by: Megan

Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog carved by: Nate

Angry Birds carved by: Amie and Grandpa Packard

Batman carved by: Heather

Jolly Rogers carved by: Jake

Pretty sweet huh? I enjoyed myself and I've gotten my fill of pumpkin carving for the year. Time now to make some goodies. 
I hope the trick-or-treaters enjoy our display.
Happy Halloween :)