Sidewalk Chalk

I'd read in the paper that our neighboring little town was giving people the opportunity to do sidewalk chalk as part of the town's festival last weekend. I thought that would be super fun since I love doing sidewalk chalk, so I signed up to do 2 sidewalk panels. There's something intriguing about art that washes away. It cost $10, I'm assuming to help pay for the chalk! I've been busy, I was looking forward to a fun distraction.

I didn't know what to draw, it just kinda came to me when I got there.

First I started with a butterfly:

Know why I did a side profile? Cause it's hard to make symmetrical butterflies when you're crouched over!

 And then I attempted one of the lighthouses on Presque Isle:

I loved the bright colored chalk they provided, a good variety of colors! 

Other artists at work:

I worked right by Spiderman. 

It was fun to have people from the community come up and see what I was doing and say hello. Also saw some friends who were enjoying the park. 

I'd love to go back and do these again better, but it was pretty fun. I was covered in chalk dust and my hands were blue! The next day I hurt from using muscles that I don't normally use while crouching on the ground to draw!

I love the part in Mary Poppins where they look at the beautiful detailed chalk drawings on the ground. Someday I'd love to use smaller pieces of chalk to make a more detailed image!

 I need some sunny days and some time to do that!

Break

I realized that I never did post about what I did on Spring Break. Is it really Spring Break when it comes way before Spring? It would have been more appropriately titled Winter Break.

I did manage to have some fun before I came down with a yucky cold. There are a few Washingtonians in my YSA group, and they had friends from WA come to visit. Laura and I joined with them and we formed The Washingtonians and had some fun in Erie. It's always fun to make instant friends in the gospel. Isn't it amazing when it's like you've always known each other?

We showed the visitors Presque Isle, and by the time we made it out there, the sun was setting and it was really lovely. I think I prefer the scenery there in the winter, it's so serene. I hadn't taken sunset pictures there before, I was glad I had my good camera with me. Lake Erie was very much frozen, and it was neat to see.

Yes, that is frozen Lake Erie behind me:

And it's nice to have Laura be my personal photographer.

I didn't do much else over break, tried (ha!) to clean my room. Got a few projects done or started. Spent time on the couch. Wanted to go to an art museum but didn't cause I felt crummy.

So there you have it. 

Update

Well, I've now survived two whole weeks of school. I'm taking Art History (Post war to present), Art Ed, Bio 101 (dang core classes), Fabricating Metals and Woodshop. I like my metals and woodshop the best so far. I have the same teacher as when I took casting two years ago, and I enjoy her. This time around we're manipulating sheets of metal into stuff. I'm riveting these days. ;) Let's hope I can solder better this time around!

This is what I've done so far in class- my practice rivet piece. I think I'm doing a floral pin for my real project. I did a tube rivet at the top so I can put it on a necklace. It turned out kinda big so it'll really be some bling! I'm not really crazy about mixing metals or the hammered texture on the brass, but having a texture was a requirement. I do like the silhouette. The silhouette came from my print last semester, and the outline for the frame came from the gold frame I spraypainted black!

In woodshop I'm learning how to use hand carving tools (while trying *not* to carve my hand) while making an "alien fruit vessel" which is a silly project. I'm basically making something that my teacher will like because I feel so uninspired by this project. The rest of the semester will be spent making a table and I have several ideas floating through my head for that. I'm much more excited for that.

This art history class is about modern art and my teacher is a bit too right brained, she makes little sense and is hard to follow.

My dear friends John and Nancy (from my mission) came to see me Labor Day weekend- we had a nice weekend though I was a bit stressed from having started school. I also worried too much about entertaining them. It made me feel good about myself that people were willing to drive ten hours to come see me. I was excited for my dad to meet John, since they can totally talk shop. Unfortunately Mom was still in CA at the time so she missed out on seeing them. I took them to Presque Isle and then we ate lunch at Quaker Steak & Lube. They got a big kick out of all the car/motorcycle stuff everywhere. It was a nice day.

It was SO windy, we didn't make it to the other lighthouse! Could hardly breathe.

This weekend I got to go to the Sparty Fair with my sis- it's such a little fair that you can do it all in an hour and a half! Love it. We went when it was dark so I could photograph the rides in motion. We also rode a carousel that was SO clunky- you had to hang on for dear life! Something very wrong with it's motor/mechanism.

It was a chilly night, I was glad to have a coat! I rode this ride and I timed it perfect so I was the last one on (instead of having to dangle at the top while it got loaded) but didn't fare so well when unloading. A little nervewracking!

I used to help run a ride just like this when I worked at Enchanted Village many moons ago. Good times.

Well, that's all for now. September and October are filling up fast!

Jamestown Conference

Last weekend was our third annual Jamestown NY Stake YSA conference. We keep trying to plan things early and each year planning goes awry, but things went really well this weekend. It's just hard planning when you have the holidays and planning sessions canceled due to snow right when it's crunch time. Laura and I were the most consistent YSA planners, a few others helped but not as much. Let's just say I slept really well when it was all done!

Instead of having things at the stake center and farming people out to member's homes, this year we decided to try having everyone camping in cabins, which worked out well. Camp Hawthorne Ridge is not far from school so I was happy to have a short commute. It also didn't make sense to have everyone drivel up to Jamestown when they are coming from the South- no one would be coming from Buffalo or someplace like that. Everyone rolled in from Pittsburgh, Ohio and West Virginia.

Friday night was spent playing board games, we served yummy food and just wanted people to have fun chatting and relaxing. People roll in at all hours of the night, so it's hard to do much else. People had fun, they stayed up late chatting and playing.

On to Saturday:

We had breakfast and then classes, I taught about easy things to improve your photography. I put together a Powerpoint presentation that I'll share more about soon. It was a lot of fun to teach and I got a good response. We had another good class about Cooking on a Budget and then then Brother Trusel taught about Dry-Pach Canning with the help of his lovely assistant, Bertha (aka Betsy his wife, she does this bag lady bit that is hysterical!).

We didn't know if everyone would be excited to do their own can of rice but they were!

The Strassbergs from the Palmyra temple also came and spoke, they were great. I've gotten to know them from my recent trips to the temple (for Rene and then Dan & Sissy's sealing) so I really enjoyed having them there.


We had an ice carving demo from Bro Alexander, I didn't know if people would care but they loved it!

Had fun at freetime, went to Presque Isle, which is just so lovely anytime of the year. I tried out my new DSLR. Part of Lake Erie was frozen!

Cute houseboats:


Gotta love lighthouses:

Ice dunes were neat!

Then we rushed back for dinner and our 80's dance! I wished the dance had gone a bit better (I think I would have been a better dj) but it was still fun!

All of my outfit is new, it's hysterical to me how 80's influenced everything is these days!

Me and my friend Anne:

After the dance, the boys had built a bonfire by their cabin and invited us girls, I had to laugh at their macho attempt to impress us. Because being a pyro is so attractive, lol.

On Sunday, we had sacrament meeting in the main cabin, which was interesting. The Strassbergs spoke more about temples (very lovely) and then we had a really nice testimony meeting. Then it was time to grab some food and go home!


Me and my friend Levi (I tease him about being a vampire, lol)

I did not get much sleep this weekend- all us girls were crammed in our cabin and it was not restful! I came home, slept like a log for hours, ate dinner and then went right back to bed! And I was still tired come Monday morning!

In all, everyone gave us rave reviews, which was great. I tried really hard to make things more fun/better than the other conferences that I've traveled to. We had some spoilsport girls from our stake who couldn't just have fun (Odds are you will *not* meet Mr. Right at this shindig, get over it! Like they're gonna want you anyhow when you three were so snotty!) and went home early but they were the only ones and really nothing would please them. Other people who left early did so for callings, baptisms, etc, not because they weren't having fun. In all we had about 50 YSA, a great number. I don't know how we'll top it but we'll try next year!

Stay tuned for my Photo 101 class!

I Love Lighthouses

We had FHE at a different place the last couple of weeks...at Kate's house who lives on Lake Chatauqua in New York State. I was pleasantly surprised to find this little lighthouse on the lake by the ferry dock and had to get my picture with it. I liked lighthouses before I went to Connecticut, but now I really love them. For my birthday last July I got to see two of the three Erie lighthouses.