Saturday, July 9, 2011

Fourth of July Recap

I know I'm a little late in posting, but its better late than never, right?? I hope everyone enjoyed their 3-day holiday weekend. Mine was a little longer than 3 days, but I'm not complaining. :) Please excuse the pictures in this post (and well, all of my posts for that matter). I don't have a digital camera anymore, so all of the pictures you see on the blog are done using my cell phone. Anyways, into the details of the weekend...

FRIDAY

Friday I relaxed at the apartment for the morning and then headed up to my parents' house early in the afternoon - I wanted to avoid rush-hour traffic on the interstates. After getting off of work, the fiance came over and we started a little wedding DIY project. This was our "before" shot:


It's basically an old photo frame that's been sitting around my mom's house since I was probably in middle school. She found it at a local thrift store, though I don't remember how much she paid for it back then. As you can see, it's missing one a piece of glass and photo backing right in the middle.

As I mentioned, this was a wedding project. You're probably trying to figure out how in the world we are planning on incorporating this into our wedding. Well, the plan is to paint it, then use it in leu of escort cards. Basically print out guests names either alphabetically or by table and insert them into the frames. If we don't have enough tables/guests to fill out the entire frame, then the plan is to insert some pictures from our engagement shoot.

These were our supplies:

 Two $1 paint brushes from Wal-Mart. (Warning, these things are cheap! Meaning, some of the bristels were coming off as we were painting...)

 A can of black paint in glossy finish, also from Wal-Mart. I don't remember how much the can cost, but it was roughly $7-8, maybe less.

A bottle of liquid sand paper, gloves, and a pair of old socks. All of these things were laying around my mom's house, so they were all FREE!


Oh, and we purchased a plastic drop cloth from Wal-Mart for less than a dollar. It was raining outside, so we chose to do our painting inside. Yes, we know that we're not suppose to do that because there isn't enough air circulation. Shoot us. We opened the doors and turned on the ceiling fans to help ventilate. And honestly, we didn't even notice the fumes.

Step one was to lay out the drop cloth and set the frame up on it:


Then we got the socks a little wet and wiped down the frame to get all the dust & dirt off of it:


(Yes, that's the Casey Anthony trial going on in the background. Being that we live in Central Florida, you could say we've been following this case since day one. The fiance was more than a little annoyed by the fact that we had it on in the background.) Anyways, then we used the other sock to apply the liquid sand paper onto the entire frame.

Afterwards, we started painting. And the first coat wasn't looking pretty:


I was not happy with how it was turning out. I was afraid that our little shortcut of using the liquid sand paper didn't work. Here's the fiance trying to get me to lighten up:


My mom said that with more coats it would look better. Me being the pessimistic one didn't believe her. So, we took a break from painting the frame and helped my mom with a little art project instead:



My mom was in charge of helping set up the July 4th events at our local VFW, and she was creating a balloon dart board. She took these styrofoam cooler lids from her work that were going to be thrown away anyways, and painted different designs on them. The three pictured are the ones I designed (sorry about them being sideways & upside down...)


The plan was to attach these cooler lids to a large piece of wood and then somehow attach the balloons to them so the kiddos at the event could throw darts at the balloons.


You can just ignore my little mistake at the bottom of that lid. :) After we finished helping my mom, we went back to paint the frame. Needless to say, we probably applied 4-5 coats to that bad boy, and it's still looking a little streaky. I don't have any "after" shots just yet. I'm planning on waiting until we apply that final coat (whenever that may be...)

SATURDAY
I went out with some friends to a place down on I-Drive called Howl at the Moon to celebrate a birthday. I'll be honest, I am not a bar-going type of girl. I've maybe only been in like 5 bars in my entire life - most of those were when I was younger and we went during the middle of the day to play pool with my parents. But this place was pretty cool. It's a piano bar - something I had never heard of before - and they played requests from the crowd all night.
Here's me all "dressed up" before heading out. Basically "dressed up" for me means putting on some makeup.


The bar was pretty fun. I'd definately go again. And for anyone in the Orlando area who isn't a bar-going type of person, but wants to go out for a little bit of fun, I'd definately recommend Howl at the Moon.

SUNDAY

We hung out at Dan's parents' house for a little while on Sunday. We even got brave and allowed the family bird to come out of her cage:


Everyone, I'd like you to meet Hannah. Yes, Hannah. The bird and I have the same name. There's really funny story about that, but we'll save that for a later date...



We also had to make an unplanned trip back south to the Apartment... You see, before going out Saturday night, I was at my friend's house waiting for her to get ready. Before we left she took a moment to feed her cats. Then I realized... I forgot to leave extra food out for the cats before I left Friday afternoon. I know, you can slap my hands the next time you see me...

Normally the trip takes about 90 minutes from Orlando to my apartment. However, we ran into a little problem on I-4....



Yep, we sat at a complete stop for about an hour... Sadly it looks like it was a moving truck full of some family's belongings. Luckily, it looks like the fire started in the trailer, so the driver was able to unhook his truck from it and stayed out of the way of the fire. As far as we could tell, no one was injured.

Once we were finished feeding the cats, we turned around and drove back to Orlando to celebrate the Fourth of July at the local VFW post that my parents are members of. I couldn't get pictures once the sun went down... but here are the best two on my phone:

The fiance playing horseshoes. It was guys versus girls. The guys won... :(

A blurry picture of the lake.

MONDAY

Monday was really boring... I woke up with a migraine and ended up sleeping away most of the day. My parents grilled up some ribs. We didn't go anywhere for fireworks. Instead, we just watched them on television. I know, we're really exciting people, right? The plan was for me to go home Monday night, but due to the migraine, I stayed in town an extra night, which turned out to be a good thing because on...

TUESDAY

One of my best friends, who will be the Matron of Honor in our wedding, had her baby! It didn't go quite as planned (she ended up having a c-section), but in the end the only thing that matters is that mommy & baby are both happy & healthy. I would love to post a picture of them, but their family is pretty private when it comes to what they post online and what they don't. So, out of respect for them, no pictures.


So, that's the breakdown of how the holiday weekend went for me & the fiance. Nothing too out of the oridnary.

How did you and your family spend the holidays? Did you go out and see fireworks, or did you just simply do them in your own backyard? Did you start/finish any projects around the house? Please, do tell!! :)

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