Iowa State Fair 2013 - Nothing Compares!

Just one short week ago, I was off having fun at the Iowa State Fair with my mom. I love the fair and I was so happy that I got to go again this year after having to miss a few years due to being a "grown up". The day went WAY too fast, but I think we got some of the important stuff crossed off our to-do list while we were there... We both agreed we could have spent several days there and still found enough to do, though!

 

 

We made it to the fairgrounds a little before noon and not even five seconds after walking in, we saw the Big Green Egg tent. I happen to be married to a so called "Egghead" who loves his Big Green Egg grill. So we took a gander around their tent and listened to the salespeople talk up the Egg and all of the Eggcessories before going on our way. They do have a lot to offer and I do love all that Trent cooks for us on our Egg, so it may or may not have convinced me a little more that we should upgrade our medium sized egg to a large... someday ;)

 

 

After stopping to fill out some forms to try to win a new car (fingers crossed!), we made our way to get some lunch and then find a seat at the Bill Riley Talent Show. My mom had a corn dog and lemonade. I had some cheese curds and a Dr. Pepper! Yum!

 

 

We watched a majority of the sprouts competition which included some singers, dancers, a piano player, and a hula hoop performer girl to name a few. We decided that if we wanted to make good use of the time we had that day, we'd better get on our way and miss out on the Senior Division performances.

After we left the Bill Riley Stage, we made our way to check out the livestock. We didn't stop to look at anything much, but got to see some pigs, cows, an ostrich and a llama among other things as we walked to the back to meet up with some people who were there from our area to show their cattle. And, of course, we took their picture as they were reading The Observer.

 

 

Cows

Our next stop was the Agriculture building. But on the way in we had to stop by the outside of the building to locate Grandma and Grandpa Jons' brick.

 

The view from the top of the stairs in the Ag Building

Probably my favorite thing about the Agriculture building is walking around the upper area and checking out the real live infomercials. Of course, the Quick n Brite stand was there. Unfortunately, we didn't feel like we had time to stop and listen to the schpeel (especially since I've heard it quite a few times before) but it sure does make me happy to think about standing there and watching it do its magic!

 

 

We DID stop and watch the end of the Vitamix show and got to have a sample of the smoothie they were making. Totally worth it! Someday when I'm grown up, I think I'll get one of those.

 

As we finished walking through the building, I figured out how tall I was...

 

...we saw the Butter Cow and the other Butter sculptures...

 

 

...and finished it up with some ice cream on our way out! (I LOVE ice cream!)

 

It was then time for us to head over to the Varied Industries building for our time slot volunteering to package meals for Meals from the Heartland.

 

 

We ended up at a table with 8 other women. At each table, the same process was done to package the meals. First a small pack of vitamins is put into a plastic bag, followed by a scoop of rice, one of soy flour, and a smaller one of dried vegetables. The bag is then weighed and sealed and then packaged, 36 bags to a box. The process was actually quite fun. It was easy and it was definitely something I would do again. I can imagine that it would be a lot of fun to do it with a group of 10 people you know and can just enjoy spending time with them while doing something for a good cause! During that one day, about 1,500 volunteers packaged 255,096 meals that will go to feed children throughout the Midwest as well as overseas.

 

 

The bins of the different stuff we put into the bags

 

 

After our volunteering was done, we made our way through the Varied Industries building, picking up a lot of catalogs and business cards and posters and sporting schedules... you know - the good stuff!

 

(I had to grab a flier for the Sam Clovis for U.S. Senate campaign from the Republicans' table. The guy at the table laughed at me when I took a picture of them but I just smiled back and said that Sam was my advisor in college and told him I thought Sam was awesome. He thought I was cool then... or something...)

 

 

By the time we got through all of the aisles of the Varied Industries building, it was about time for us to head to the concert. We made a quick trip to the car to drop off all our goodies from the day and then made one more stop for some supper before heading into the concert. For supper I had a corn dog this time and my mom had a tenderloin sandwich. Both good choices again!

 

 

Trent told me to have a turkey leg for him at the fair...
There was absolutely no room in my belly for that,
so I just took a picture of a sign instead :)
It's the thought that counts, right?

And then IT WAS TIME! Time to head into the Grandstand for the Jeremy Camp and Casting Crowns concert. We were lucky enough to be in row 5 and were able to experience the great concert from up close! And just like the rest of the day, the concert went way too fast! It was absolutely awesome, though. I can say without a doubt that they are two of my favorite artists and I could listen to their songs all day long. Their songs say so many things that I think relate directly to my life and have such great messages. Being there with thousands of other people, singing together and praising God and worshiping together really fills up my heart. 

 

(Lots of pictures... I couldn't pick which ones to use, so you get to see them all!)

 

 

Both Jeremy Camp and Casting Crowns not only had great messages in their songs but they also spoke great messages to the crowd. Their encouragement to us all as Christians was absolutely uplifting and I honestly believe everyone had to have left there ready and pumped to spread the greatness of God through their words and actions.

 

 

Not only was it a great experience to have to be there with all those thousands of people, singing together and praising the Lord, it was a great experience to share with my mom. I'm so happy that I got to spend the day with her and top it off with the amazing concert. It was a perfect day! There really is nothing that compares to the Iowa State Fair!

 

"I want all who I meet to see you through me.

I want all that I speak to be You.

If there's anything that I would pray.

It's that the whole world would seek Your face.

And in spite of who I can be.

Please reign in me"

Reign in Me - Jeremy Camp

Bell Reunion 2013

The first weekend in August was once again one of my favorite weekends of the year. It was the annual Bell Reunion!

The Aylward portion of the Bell family!

The festivities began for Trent and I on Saturday evening when we went to meet everyone at Aunt Jeanne's. We had a scrumptious supper of hot beef and mashed potatoes and dessert of peach cobbler and ice cream.

 

Some of the guys got a game of cards going and the rest of us sat around and chatted. There was a lot of talking and laughing and it was just a ton of fun. Cooper did some magic tricks for us and invited us all to go out and watch a movie in his parents' car with him (we stalled him long enough though so it was his bed time before all 6 or so of us "adults" and him had to actually pile into the car to watch a movie!). It was great!

 

 

Sunday morning, we got our food ready and headed over to Vail so we could finish up getting stuff ready for lunch when we got there. There was no shortage of food for everyone. It almost didn't all fit onto the tables that were lined up to hold the food!

 

After we ate, the afternoon was filled with visiting, picture taking, a bean bag and horse shoe tournament, and more eating.

Cousins

 

 

Trent got to come to the Bell Reunion again this year since it didn't completely interfere with his work schedule. That made me one happy girl!

 

 

Sadly, I only made it to the second round of the bean bag tournament this year (which really isn't much different than any other year)... Ted and Tom won which I don't think surprised anyone!

 

 



Lots of my pretty cousins!



Oh... Hey, Jared!

Mattie got to come at the end, too.
It was her first Bell Reunion!

 And since our family likes to stay at every event until we're the last ones, we got to help with clean up. Luckily, the guys wrapped up their card game and did most of the "hard work".

 

Once again, it was a great day! The day seems to go so fast every year, though. I feel like when we were younger, the day seemed to last so long and we'd eat and play and swim and just had time for everything! I wish these kinds of days could last forever!

Until next year!

To the Iowa State Fair!

Today, my wonderful mother and I are off to Des Moines for the Iowa State Fair!

I'm sooo excited! I love the fair! I have gone to the fair pretty much every year since I was a youngin' (except for a year or two after I got old and had to actually go to work at a real job and things like that - boo).

We're going to get there in time to watch the Bill Riley Talent Show and have an awesome fair lunch. I'll have to figure out in what order I'm going to eat the foods I have on my list... cheese curds, a corn dog, lemonade, a funnel cake and a smoothie are always a must. I could always branch out and try the fried brownie on a stick, cajun flavored cheese curds, sweet corn corndog or any of the other new foods they'll have this year, though. (It all sounds so healthy, right!?) (Don't worry, Grandma, I wont eat it all!) It will be quite the decision to make! After the Talent show, we'll then set out to see the Butter Cow on our way through the Agriculture Building, find Grandma and Grandpa Jons' brick, tour the Varied Industries building and get some Iowa State posters, see some animals and maybe even ride on the Sky Glider, among other things. As always, there will be way too much to do in the short time we will be there!

This year, we're doing something that's a first for us, and, in the afternoon, we'll be volunteering for an hour at the one day Meals for the Heartland food packaging event. During the opening day, the goal is to package 250,000 meals for those who need them. I'm looking forward to this and I'm glad we get to volunteer while we're out having fun.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about the day is that we're wrapping up the day by going to a Jeremy Camp and Casting Crowns concert in the Grandstand. I have seen them both in concert before and I am soooooo excited to see them again TOGETHER! I love all their music and it is sure to be an awesome and emotional concert! And to make it even awesomer - we have great seats. On this map below, our seats are the two little dots that are highlighted in yellow. Seats 6 and 7 in Row 5! And it is actually like Row 3 because we're the first row behind the two handicapped rows - pretty sure this is about the same spots Kellsey and I were in when we saw 98 Degrees at the fair all those years ago... the night we got to touch Nick and Drew Lachey and vowed to never wash our hands again! (Don't worry, we have washed our hands since then!)

I certainly will give you all the details about our day at the fair including our volunteering experience and the concert after it's all over! I'll be sure to give you a review of the food too ;)

Have a great Friday-eve!!

DIY "Canvas" Prints

For the first year that we lived in our house, I think we had a total of 6 things hung on the walls throughout our whole house. This really made our large dining and living room look very bare and "unhomey." So I was very happy to finally get to a project that would give us some more stuff to hang on the walls and make our house seem a little more lived in.

On Pinterest, there are a lot of posts about ways to make your own canvas looking prints at a cheaper price than actually buying them at a real store. This post is the one I chose to follow to make my own for our house.

I followed what she did pretty much exactly except I made mine a little different size and didn't use the same kind of foam that she did.

I ordered my pictures from Staples.com. The Engineering Print 24" x 36" size is $3.59 per picture. The Engineering Prints are cheaper than ordering a real picture, but you have to get them in black and white, so if you want to do color, you'll have to explore other options and they probably will cost more. I ordered the pictures online and they were usually ready the same day. I only needed 4 pictures, but I ended up doing 3 separate orders. I ordered just one the first time as a test to be sure that it was what I wanted and then I ordered the other three the next day after I knew I was happy with them. After I got those pictures, I realized that two of the pictures wouldn't work because we were too big in the picture in comparison to the others, therefore looking like giants. Because of that, I had to place one more order to get the "right" pictures. The only thing it cost me though was one more trip to Staples and the $7.18 for the pictures, a small price to get it right...

The pictures:

At Lowe's I bought one large sheet of foam board (1" x 4' x 8') and had one of the workers cut it down for me. I told him he could just cut it so I could fit it in my car and I could cut the rest at home, but if I were to do it again, I'd have him cut them all. That way I would have all straight lines and be sure they were the same size. Mine ended up being a little off and not have as crisp of edges as I would have liked, but I can deal with it.

I also bought some Loctite Adhesive Spray at Lowe's, which is what I used to adhere my pictures to the foam. Be sure to get the kind that works with foam so it doesn't eat away at it.

I set up shop in the garage and got to work. First, I figured out what part of the picture I wanted to show on the foam, since the pictures were a lot larger than the actual board to allow for some to wrap around. Then, I picked up the top part of the picture and sprayed underneath on the board and then smoothed the picture over it. Once I was happy with where it was, I'd do the same thing with the bottom half. The adhesive is fairly giving and if you don't place the picture correctly the first time, you have some time to fix it before it is stuck on there for good.

Once the picture is all attached to the front, I moved to attaching the sides. Doing one side at a time, I would spray the side and then attached the picture to the side and then the same with the back. On the corners, I wrapped them sort of like a present so they were flush with the sides.

It probably took me two hours at most to finish all four pictures, and that included getting my foam to the size I wanted. (Each of mine is about 18 x 26) So it would be even less time if you had the nice guys at Lowe's cut them to size for you.

I let the pictures dry overnight before I attempted to hang them. To figure out my placement on the wall up the stairs where I was going to hang them, I used some newpapers in the approximate size that I wanted them to be to get a visual look. I then put a piece of blue painters tape along the bottom of the newspaper where the pictures would go and used a level to be sure that the tape was straight across.

The foam is very lightweight so I just used some Command Strips to hang them on the wall. I lined up the bottom with the painters tape (knowing they were straight because my tape was level) and then pressed it to the wall according to the recommended instructions on the Command Strip package. Repeat four times and WALLAH!! I was done!!

All in all, I'm very happy with the way these turned out. They were very easy and inexpensive and I'd definitely do them again. I can also see myself redoing the same technique in with some other project idea in the future.

For this project, I spent $54.38 for the pictures, foam board, adhesive spray and command strip hangers and I still have some of all those supplies left to use for future projects (even though I'm not sure what I'm going to do with two big 24x36 pictures of us!).

To purchase four similar sized canvas prints from a store I would have had to spend a lot more.

Costco - $44.99 for 1 - 18" x 24" canvas print ($179.96 for four)
easycanvasprints.com - on sale for $77.92 for 1 - 18" x 24" canvas print ($311.68 for four)
snapfish.com - $99.99 for 1 - 20" x 24" canvas print ($399.96 for four)
Walgreens - $99.99 for 1 - 20" x 24" canvas print ($399.96 for four)

You get the point! I like doing projects like this (when they turn out good) and when I can save some money, it's even better!

TV Stand Redo

Another project that we accomplished within the last few months was the redo of our TV stand.

Before and After

I had bought this buffet turned TV stand on Craigslist a few months after we moved into our house. It was a very interesting minty green color with some polyurethane on it that had turned a little brown. So it was a green-with-brown-streak beauty!

I had purchased it with the intention to repaint it, but it was put right to use, holding our TV until I had the time to start the project. The walls in our family room are light blue, so it really looked like we were trying to decorate for Easter all year long with all our pastels going on. To get this TV stand looking like I wanted it to, it would need to be stripped of its paint, sanded, and then repainted. Honestly, I had no idea what I was getting myself into...
 

My very helpful husband taking all the doors and hardware off.

The worst part by far was the stripping. I had never stripped anything before, and I will definitely think twice before I choose to strip the paint off anything else.

I used this Citristrip paint stripper.

It has a very nice, citrusy scent (hence the name) and I'm sure is much more pleasant than regular, harsh paint stripper.

I covered the entire surface with the stripper and let it sit for a few hours.

When I came back to it to start the stripping, it was really very easy to get the paint off of the large flat surfaces (i.e. the top). The rest of it was a little challenging with all the grooves and corners. It also got kind of difficult because the paint and stripper that came off was very gooey and messy and would stick to my scraper and my gloves. It was just pretty annoying and gross...

Eventually, though, I got all the paint off good enough that I figured I could either sand the little bits of paint off or sand it down good enough to be painted over. (Sorry I didn't take a picture of it after it was stripped and/or sanded.)

We had decided to take the two drawers out of the middle so we could put our receivers and things in the cubbys. Previously we had an ugly little black table that I found at Goodwill that sat next to the TV stand that we put all those components on.

This is the temporary table that held our TV while I was redoing the real one.
And that's the little black table that hung out next to it, holding our components.

Trent made a nice little shelf to put where the top drawer used to be and we filled some places around the shelves with wood filler to make it look like there was supposed to be shelves there all along.

 

After that dried, I was able to start sanding.

 

Originally I wanted to stain the top of the TV stand and paint the bottom a whitish color (called Honeymilk by Valspar) but after I got the top sanded, it was clear to see that this was a very cheap piece of furniture. The top and sides were made out of something that resembled plywood and the fancy shmancy legs are made out of some sort of plastic material, so that meant that staining the top was out of the picture and I'd just be painting the whole thing the white color.

 

 

I painted on two coats of paint all over it and then, after letting it sit for a day, covered it with two coats of Minwax Polycrylic Protective Finish in satin. This kind is supposed to stay clear and not eventually leave brown streaks.

 

 

After letting it all dry overnight again, we moved it in the house and put all the hardware back on it. We kept all the original hardware because it is actually pretty. I just had to clean it up a bit. 

Trent hooked all the electronics back up (because that's his area of expertise) and now we've got a nice looking TV stand and not one that looks like we're trying to decorate for Easter.

 

It feels so good to have that project finished finally!

Next Someday I've gotta figure out the gallery wall I have planned for the wall the TV is on!

Front Yard Fix Up

Back in May, right when I found out that I had passed my final CPA exam, Trent and I got to work doing some projects to the house that we had been putting off for the first year we have lived here.

The first thing that we tackled was a little front yard work. We added edgers around the area with wood chips to kind of corral the wood chips, put new wood chips down, planted a few new plants and flowers, and put flowers in our window box for the first time. It was just a few small things but I think it turned out great. Just the little changes made a big difference!

I don't really have any good before pictures (and not any real awesome after pictures either) of the yard, but I have just a couple pictures to show.

This is before the new wood chips. Trent did some good work!

(he did most of the heavy lifting and digging!)

Don't mind the little bare spot with no grass. We had to tear up some tarp
that was under the grass. It was filled in later, though!

You can see the color of the new wood chips in the back left area where the
hydrangea tree is and see how different it is from what we had before

The top two pictures here are what it was like without the edging and the third is after they were in along with the new wood chips.

We also added a few new little bushes in the front and a few hostas. I'm looking forward to seeing those things mature. And now that we've got a good practice year under out belt with the flowers, I've got some new plans in mind for next spring! I'm looking forward to starting over with those and doing something a little different! We're also looking forward to hopefully doing some good things to the backyard next spring as well! I can't wait to see what comes of that!

Painting: Kitchen Bathroom

Back in March, we decided to tackle another minor painting project - the small bathroom off our kitchen. Once again, it was a room that was the same "builder beige" color that was in all the rooms in the house were when we moved in so this was just another step in the process of personalizing our house. 

Painting that little room was harder than I had anticipated due to the high ceilings and the lack of area to put a ladder! During this little spruce up project, we also put in a new toilet paper and towel holders when we were done painting. We still have to get a rug and some fun stuff on the walls in the room, but I'm just happy that the hard part is done!

These pictures aren't much to look at since there's nothing in this bathroom decoration-wise, but at least there's a difference in paint color :) Hopefully someday I'll get to hanging stuff on the walls and making it look nicer...

I didn't think to take a "before" picture until after we had already tried out some paint on the wall...
As you can see, we didn't choose that color!

Hopefully someday this bathroom will get a much needed upgrade. But for now it does its job!