Painting Class

As I am finally finishing up my elementary education degree I had enough room in this semester to try out a painting class. I had been wanting to get into painting and because GBC offered a painting class I signed up! I was really excited to try it out and I was not disappointed! That class was the first night class (7-10pm) I had that I loved going to! The class focused first on acrylic then we worked with watercolor. I wanted to post some of my work. To get us started the teacher mostly had us copying other artists' paintings like in this impressionist painting where we were copying Paul Gauguin's Tahitian Landscape:
Then she had us work with still life. She brought in some objects for us to paint. I chose 2 big seashells. After I painted the seashells I was trying to figure out what to put them on. So I painted in a beach. Because I painted the seashells when they were sitting on the table in front of me they look sort of odd like they are standing up after I painted in the sea and sky. After still life we worked on painting buildings for perspective. She told us to find a picture with a building in it. Kade suggested for me to find a cabin in the mountains. The best I could find was a picture of an old worn down house next to a mountain, so that's what I used. This is also in acrylic: Then we moved on to watercolor painting. Except we didn't actually use watercolor paints. Because the teacher only had a certain amount of money for the watercolor supplies she bought everyone watercolor crayons. They were harder to use but once everyone figured out the best way to use them it got better. My first painting with the watercolor crayons looks like a crayon drawing so I'm not putting it up. This was the first decent watercolor I did, it's two deer during a sunset: As part of the class we were supposed to research a famous painter, report on them to the class, then create a painting like theirs. I did Albert Bierdstadt because he had some beautiful western landscape paintings like in Yosemite. I did one of his paintings in watercolor, Light in the Forest, because it didn't look quite as detailed and difficult as his other paintings. For our final we were supposed to do one last painting and choose another painting we did to display at the college. I wanted to try one of Bierdstadt's Yosemite paintings but they are just insanely detailed so I found an easier one online at yosemiteart.com by Mark Gudmundsen called Half Dome and Two Bears. I chose this one and the Light in the Forest painting for the final. We matted and framed them then hung them at the college during finals week. Now I just have to brave through four months of student teaching starting January!

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving we got to go to West Virginia to see all my family. The only one who wasn't at the house was Aaron who is still on his mission in Chile. However, Stephen had just gotten back from his mission the week before from Spain. It was so great to see everyone! Especially the little babies, they were so cute!We arrived in WV on Monday and stayed until Saturday. We played sports, games, and lots of Wii. There was a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with amazing rolls and delicious pies made by Megan and Wendy. We also got to try a Thai dish that Stephen made, and some crazy desserts made by Stephen, Scott, and Mom Blood.
I wish we could have stayed until Sunday to hear Stephen's mission coming home talk in church. We also missed Dustin's mission farewell talk that Sunday too as we were driving back from Salt Lake City.
I always look forward to the holidays to see everyone again, I can't wait until next time we can all get together when Aaron will be home!

Catching up...

So I've been slacking since school started. But finally everything is starting to slow down, though I know it won't last long. In January I start student teaching in a third grade classroom! I'm scared, but excited to finally be done! Well, what has happened since school started... Kade went elk hunting twice with his brothers and dad. Although Kade was just helping he had a great time. He helped his brother Ryan get a nice elk down by Pioche, NV. Then later he went with his dad and brother, Dustin, to Ely to get his dad an elk. They came back with this
After all the hunting trips things have been pretty mellow, except for the school work. This semester I am taking two methods classes (reading and science) a required GE class that is really retarded, and an awesome painting class. For my observations this semester I was in a fifth grade classroom. The teacher was awesome and taught me alot about controlling a classroom. I also subbed a little bit, too. One week I was scheduled to sub all week in a fifth grade classroom but I got sick half way through and had to call a sub for myself.. But it was good to experience the higher level, I liked it a lot.

It was very depressing to see my garden die from the frost, but before the frost came I managed to pick all the watermelons. They filled up the fridge.And I was still picking some delicious raspberries for a while after the frost. Now I guess I just have to wait until next spring.

Onion and Blue Lakes Camping Trip

Last weekend Kade and I took a camping trip before school started for me. We decided to go all the way up to Onion and Blue Lakes up by Denio. It was a 2 1/2 hour drive including a hour drive through a rough 4-wheel drive road. But it was worth it. It turned out to be a great camping and fishing site. When we got there on Friday evening we started fishing Onion Lake. Kade reeled in two big rainbow trout within ten minutes, but I never got one. A little later while I was back at our tent, Kade caught another one. The next morning we packed up our camp and drove to the Blue Lakes trailhead and hiked up to the lakes. Blue Lake was really pretty. It was surrounded by trees and had really clear water. A family was already up at the lake swimming and jumping off the rocks. We fished for a while there and caught two smaller trout. We were going to let both go but one of the fish was going to die so we kept it. That evening we hiked back down to the truck and drove home. It was a great relaxing weekend and now we have four fish to eat :)
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Summer Project

I don't know if you remember, but a couple years ago when we were living in Utah going to school, we were in desperate need of a dresser. We were so lucky to find a free dresser sitting by our apartment's dumpster. The thing was actually a dresser with a changing table on top and was very sad looking. After leaving Utah for Winnemucca and a new house, we were able to get real furniture. We seriously thought about throwing it out or giving it away, but I decided I wanted to try and fix it up. So this summer I started working on it in the garage. I removed the ugly handles, stripped the old finish, hammered some parts back together, and put wood putty on the scratches. It took me quite a while stripping off the old finish because it was hard to work on for more than a couple hours at a time. But I finally got it all stripped and sanded so I could put some new stain on it. With some new handles the dresser looks just like new! Kade couldn't believe how much better it looks.

Kade's Big Buck

Once again, Kade has killed a monster buck. Bow hunting season just started a week ago, but Kade had his eye on a nice buck coming into the farm at Adams Peak. On Friday, three days after Brandon got his huge buck, Kade saw this deer with his group of 8 other bucks and stalked him out of the field into his bed in the brush. He sat crouched down for almost 4 hours waiting for the big deer to stand up so he could get a shot. One of the smallest bucks got up and came 16 yards from where Kade was but didn't even know what he was. Finally, the deer Kade wanted stood up to scratch his back and he got a shot. Because the arrow was a little off it took a while for him and Brandon to track him. They left the farm at dark and we all went out the next morning to look for the dead deer. After finding a bed, Kade and Brandon were able to track the deer to where he died. Kade was so excited to get that huge deer. He measured it 29 inches. The head is currently at the taxidermy waiting to get mounted.
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New Garden Pics

My beautiful garden! I love it :)

My garden is doing really good this year and I just had to put new pictures up of it. I have regularly been getting delicious tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, strawberries, corn, broccoli, and carrots. I was able to freeze two bags of peas, a bag of beans, and two bags of broccoli because we couldn't eat it all! We are still picking onions whenever we want one and the potatoes are pretty much ready. We have already had some really good baked potatoes from the garden. Some of the cantaloupe look like they are almost ready. But I'm not so sure about the watermelon, I really hope we get some this year. I'm amazed at how the corn is taller than our fence!
Here is picture of what I picked one day: tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, corn, onion, beans, and the last of the peas.My flowers are looking good, too!

Painting

Because I knew I would have so much more free time after school ended I had to have a project ready to be worked on. So, I planned on painting the house. I had never painted a room in my life and was not expecting how exhausting it would be. I soon discovered muscles in my arms that I didn't even know I had. Therefore, I only painted the great room, kitchen, and hallway (mainly because it would have looked weird if I would have stopped early, which I desperately wanted to do). I got super lucky on paint because the week school was ending, there was an ad in the local paper for buy one get one free gallons of paint at True Value. So I was able to get my paint half off! I took about a week to paint it all and I was wore out by the end of that week so I have no plans of completing the house until I can completely forget about my first painting experience. But it did turn out good :)

Garden, Year 2

I have started my second year of gardening. I'm so glad we got our landscaping done so I could grow a bigger garden this year. We also put up a little fence to keep bunnies and Roxy out. Compared to last year, the garden is much bigger. I'm so excited that we got everything planted and I wanted to put pictures up of its progress so far. I packed my garden to the brim with delicious vegetables and fruit. On the left I planted strawberries, broccoli, 3 rows of tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, carrots, 2 grape vines and raspberries along the back fence. On the right side we planted onions, peas, 3 rows of potatoes, and six rows of corn. The pots have some herbs in them.We have already picked lots of delicious green onions and today I picked my first strawberry. We planted the corn a couple weeks ago and its coming up quick. The potatoes, peas, and carrots have gotten really big and the broccoli is coming along really well too. I started the cantaloupe and watermelon from seed in my window and transplanted them because last year the melons didn't have enough time to grow big enough when I planted the seeds.I also planted some flowers in the front of the house.

Yosemite National Park

A couple weeks ago, May 1-3, Kade and I drove to Yosemite National Park in California. Because neither Kade nor I had ever been we thought this would be the perfect vacation before the busy summer months. As usual, I looked up all the information about the park and the best things to do and trails to hike. I also kept checking the weather because our trip relied heavily on good weather. We were not going to spend anytime wasted indoors. Up until the night before we were leaving weather.com showed partly cloudy or sunny with a high of 60. Thursday night I checked the weather once again just to make sure and sure enough it changed to 80% chance of rain on Saturday. Wonderful. We seriously considered canceling the hotel reservation and going another time. I checked out reservation and we were too late to cancel so we left the next morning.
On the way to Yosemite we stopped in Reno to do a little shopping. We continued on south through Carson City and into California. Our hotel was in Angels Camp, CA about 2 hours from Yosemite; any closer and there weren't really any hotels for us to stay in. Angels Camp was a small mountain town famous for its Frog Jumping contest, very weird. I read that it was made famous by one of Mark Twain's writings. Angels Camp was also surrounded by a lot of caves and caverns. The closest about 5 miles away was Moaning Caverns. Saturday morning we woke up to rainy conditions so we spent the morning taking the Moaning Caverns tour. The cavern was really deep and had a huge metal 100 year old staircase you had to climb up and down. The cave was pretty cool, but the staircase was scaring me.
Thankfully after taking the cave tour the rain had let up almost completely. So we started heading to Yosemite. By the time we got there it was barely sprinkling but it was extremely foggy. We didn't have much of a view of Yosemite driving in because of the fog but it stopped raining completely. We stopped in Yosemite Valley first to hike to Yosemite Falls. We couldn't believe the amount of water in the park. There was water everywhere! flooding the trails and blowing you over next to the waterfalls. It was a really pretty place. We even saw a couple taking their wedding pictures in front of another famous waterfall, Bridal Veil Falls.
After taking a few trails and driving around Yosemite Valley we started heading down to Mariposa Grove, the biggest collection of giant sequoia trees in the park. It was about a 45 minute drive with a spectacular view. The absolute best part of the park was the Tunnel View. Pulling into the full parking lot off the road, we stopped in front of the famous view of Yosemite Valley. It almost didn't seem real it was so beautiful. At that time I really wished I hadn't forgotten the battery to our digital camera because all we had was two disposable cameras to capture the view.
Mariposa Grove had huuuuge sequoia trees throughout the trail. We saw the grizzly giant, the California tunnel tree, the bachelor and three graces, and the loyal couple. We were trying to find the fallen tunnel tree (the one with old pictures of cars driving through it) but the signs were not very helpful and we got very confused. After a while, we started heading back to the parking lot. It was crazy how ginormous those trees were! The pictures do not do them justice.
Even with the rain the trip was great and the park was beautiful. I really hope to go back someday. Oh, and Kade and I celebrated our 3rd year anniversary right before the trip. It's crazy how time flies, it has already been three years??

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The best birthday ever!

So, as many of you know I just had a birthday on February 4th and I got a brand new piano for my present. The piano didn't actually come on my birthday but I was so excited I didn't care. The piano was delivered yesterday when I should have been in class; I did eventually make it to class though. I got a Essex 48" polished ebony upright. It is so beautiful I just have to put it up for all to see! We don't have a very big house so we squeezed it next to the TV in the family room. Not a very ideal spot when someone wants to practice and someone else wants to watch TV. So last night Kade had to listen to me pound on the piano and watch his show without sound.. Of course he said he didn't mind.. :) The piano company also sent the movers with some very pretty flowers for me. Last Saturday we drove to Reno in search of a piano. Unfortunately, Reno has a total number of 2 piano stores, so not much of a selection. I had originally planned on purchasing a nice used piano to save money. But there were no decent used pianos to be found in either store. I did find a couple sad looking used spinets at the Steinway store, but I was set on a taller piano. After fending off the salesmen at Steinway we went to the other store. This store had some nice pianos too, but we found out the salesmen at the Steinway store was actually giving us a pretty good deal. Kade was excellent at haggling with the goofy salesmen and eventually agreed on a price. We left spending more than we planned but getting an excellent deal. For my birthday I asked Kade for a fruit pizza instead of a cake. So he made one and put candles in it. It was delicious. :)
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Christmas at the Bloods

Our vacation didn't end with the cruise, we headed for WV the same day we got off the boat. It was pretty traumatic coming from 70 degree weather in Fort Lauderdale to below freezing in WV. But it was so great to see everyone (except Aaron and Stephen who are on missions). We arrived that night to a very full house. There were 17 people packed into my parents house, but each couple managed to get there own room. And we got to meet the cutest little babies Megan and Seth for the first time. The next week we had a great time with my family, playing games and the Wii. Mary and I went to the Y to go running because it was so cold outside. Then on Christmas Eve, we woke up to Mary and Scott gone. Mary had started having contractions early that morning and started heading back home. No, she didn't have her baby that day, but we did get a call Christmas morning from Mary after she had delivered little Rebekah! How exciting! We got the call while eating Christmas dinner. That morning we had gathered everyone for a family picture and then opened presents.As a present to Kade, my mom had gotten a friend with paintball guns to organize a day for all of us to go. We went up to the Powell's house and played in the woods in front. It was really fun, Kade, Jonny, Timmy, James, Jacob, and Joanna went with and one of the Powells and his friend also played with us and helped out. I also got to see Whitney and her boyfriend, which was awesome considering I haven't seen her in years!! We went to Applebees and then to her apartment where we played Rock Band 2 (very fun!) Unfortunately we did have to go back home, we had been gone for over 2 weeks! That Saturday dad drove us to the Charleston airport early in the morning. We had a connection to Chicago, which was a mess. We left our flight there like an hour late and had to run to our next flight in San Fransico. But we made it! This was such a great trip, I can't wait until we all get together again! :)
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