Sister Blogs

This is my sister Amanda...

...and she just joined the blogging world!  Check out Love and a Prayer, I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

Wedding Pictures!

As promised, here are links to the pictures from Dave and Emily's wedding.  And as I knew they would be, they are amazing!  The pictures themselves are incredible, and capture everything about the day - the setting, the people, the emotions - perfectly! 

Part 1 - The ceremony.

Part 2 - The reception, aka dance party!

And So It Begins!

By the time you read this, I will be somewhere at this fine facility:

The Bristol Motor Speedway.  Why am I there?  The Well goes twice each year, in March and August, to work at the Nascar races as a fundraiser.  So many things I could say about Bristol...But one thing that is interesting about Nascar is that the fans are from one end of the spectrum to the other.  In the suites, where we work, the ladies are in heels, designer jeans, and wearing too much make up and perfume, and the men are channeling their inner frat boy.  But then you step outside to general seating and it's a whole other story.  Men and women alike are in camo, cut-off jeans and sporting mullets.  It is quite a sight.

And tomorrow is just the start of a busy few weeks for us.  Here's the line-up...

Wednesday the 22: Bristol

Thursday the 23: Helping with freshman move-in at ETSU in the morning, and  

going to Milligan to pass out brochures in the afternoon.

Friday the 24: Bristol; but I won't be going because there's an event for  freshmen that I'll be at with a few other students.

Saturday the 25: Bristol 

Sunday the 26: Ministry Team Cook Out

Monday the 27: Ice Cream Giveaway on campus all morning, and the Back to 

School Bash in the evening.

Tuesday the 28: Prayer for the start of the semester at the church that evening.

Wednesday the 29: Event on campus in the morning, and the first Well service 

of the year that night!

Friday the 31 - Sunday the 2: Ministry Team Retreat

Monday the 3: First Class '16 event of the semester

...and then things fall into a routine of organized busyness... 


So needless to say, I'm going to be a little preoccupied and sleep deprived for a while, but hopefully I can touch base a few times before September!

DIY Wedding Decor

My sister was Matron of Honor at Emily and Dave's wedding last weekend, and she did a wonderful job with all of her MoH duties, but I had fun helping her out with one of them - making signs for the guest book and gifts.  Amanda had already come up with the idea, gathered the supplies, and started them, and then I got to finish them.  I'll start with the finished product, and then go back through the step-by-step process.

Step 1 - Glue the lace onto the cardboard.  I used Aleene's Tacky Glue, ya know, that stuff in the gold bottle.  This was just plain cardboard, like the kind you would find in the frame, but you could use any color background to coordinate with wedding/party colors.

You'll want the lace to be bigger than the cardboard, so you can wrap it around and glue it on the back.

Step 2 - Make a pattern.  There was no way I was going to write on the glass without something to trace.  So using Word, I typed up Guest Book and Gifts and tried out a bunch of different fonts until I found one I liked and knew I could duplicate.  Unfortunately I can't tell you which one I ended up using because I didn't save the document and I don't remember.  And I have a bazillion fonts in my font book because of work, it would take forever to go back through and figure it out.  Anyways,  I was doing this at home, where I don't have a printer, so I did just free-hand it onto a piece of paper and it took a few tries to get it right.

Step 3 - Trace it.  I cut out my pattern and taped it onto the glass to secure it before tracing, making sure both sides of glass were clean and smudge-free first!  I used two different brands of paint markers, both of of which I got at Michael's.

I had never used these brands before, and I actually liked the Sharpie brand better.  It gave a more solid stream of paint than the craftsmart one.  If you compare the pictures below you'll see how the green one is pretty continuous, but with the purple one you can tell where I picked up the marker and started new strokes.

Step 4 - Put it all together!  The easiest and best step of all!  The pearls were adhesive and Amanda had already put them on.  A few were coming loose though so I glued them on with some more Aleene's.  I didn't think to get a final final picture at the reception, so we'll just have to use the original one I posted.  Hopefully there will be one in the professional pictures! 

The lime green was a bit hard to read unfortunately.

And this picture is a tad blurry and has a glare :(

Goodbye Summer Weekends

This past weekend was my last one before two weeks of pure crazy busyness, so my weekend consisted of lots of errands, laundry, cleaning, and getting ahead on some blog posts and cards that I wanted to send.  I had hoped to spend my last summer weekend reading magazines by the pool, preferably with someone fanning me and feeding me grapes, but sometimes you just have to be responsible...

I'd been in the laundry room at our complex for quite a while before I realized I was wearing one black flip flop and one brown one.  At least I wasn't still out running errands!

Without a laundry room in my actual apartment, clothes get hung everywhere while air drying...

Leadership Retreat

We had a little retreat at the beginning of the week with our student leadership team.  Our time together was a mix of teaching, preparing, planning, and having fun and eating (a lot).  Sunday night we went to a drive-in and saw Ice Age 4, and Monday afternoon we went hiking and then ate at Ridgewood Barbeque.  Ridgewood is one of those dives in the middle of no where, where the decor hasn't changed since the 80's, but the food is amazing.  When we left I was very thankful I was wearing elastic-waisted pants!  

10 of the 13 of us had on Chacos.

Chelsea was in my small group as a freshman, and she's a a leader as a senior this year!

The girls!

The Marones Are Married!

I had the privilege this weekend to direct the wedding of a wonderful couple, Dave and Emily Marone!  I've known Emily for about twelve years, ever since her and Amanda have been friends, and over time she's become like a sister too.  And I have enjoyed getting to know Dave and watch their relationship grow.  Their wedding day was so fun - with lots of colors, a cookie bar, and kazoos at their exit!  I'm not going to try to explain it more than that, because when their pictures are posted I'll give the link; the pictures will be wonderful and will tell the story of the day just beautifully.  But until then, I'll share a few of the ones I managed to get.

Me and Amanda.  All of the bridesmaids wore white, which was different, but looked just fine when they were all together and had their bouquets. 

Aimee Jane and Ashley Sue

Mr. and Mrs. Marone!...and these pictures helped me see that I have bad posture...

My friends Heather and Sherri, who are also married to Emily's brothers.

Back with Mac & Cheese

I've been gone for a few days, not just from the blog, but home as well.  Friday and Saturday I was back in Lynchburg for a wedding, and Sunday through Tuesday I was gone on a retreat for work, posts about both to come soon!

Tonight Jillian invited me over for dinner, which was great because there is no food in my house, and every now and then there's just something good about chicken nuggets and a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese :)

Camera Cleanse

If you follow me on Twitter (@aimeestone86) you've probably seen some of these already, but it's time to get them off my memory card, so I'm sharing them on here too.

Someone in my complex finally decided to get rid of their Christmas tree.

We used my shutters as a photo display at Drew's going away party back in January.  Seth took them home in his car because they fit much better, and they sat in his garage until a few weeks ago.  He brought them back to the office and I brought them home. Like this.  Sticking out the window.  At least I didn't have far to go!

After three months of almost no activities, we hit the ground running on Sunday!

After two days, we got our 22,000 brochures stuffed with discount cards.  These will be in the hands of college students all over the Tri Cities soon!

When I walked out of my door this morning this was what welcomed me, my neighbor's cat.  I pet her for a little bit before I realized I was wearing a black shirt and now had cat hair all over it.

Customer Service

I spent a while at Customer Service today at Wal Mart.  I was returning 100 folders.  Despite the fact that there were so many of them, it should have been pretty simple.  Of course it wasn't.  Part of that was because I bought two different kinds in several different colors, on two different trips, and had already returned some of them.  The other reason was because the cashier who rang up the majority of them did it wrong.  Despite the 30 minute ordeal with lots of counting, sorting, and recounting, the lady helping me was so nice, which I was thankful for, because I did feel bad.  It seems rare these days to have a good experience when dealing with customer service, so when I do, it always encourages me to be nicer too.

Summer Reading Part 2

When I made this post about the books I had read so far this summer, I concluded it by saying the goal was to finish the last book in the Mark of the Lion series, and the last two in the Hunger Games series before the summer was over.  Well just a few minutes ago I finished As Sure as the Dawn.  I didn't like it nearly as much as the first two, but I couldn't not read the final book in the series.  Overall though, this series is great!  I own the first book and hope to add the last two to my library.

At this point I won't be able to finish the Hunger Games series, but I'm probably going to be in the car a lot over Thanksgiving break, so maybe I can read one then and another over Christmas break.

The Cover Up

I got another one of my summer goals done!  I replaced the vase and sticks that I was using to help cover up the breaker box with a painting I did; it's actually a quote I saw on Pinterest a while back that I liked.

So here's the dresser top and breaker box before:

And after!

I started with a blank canvas and painted it purple.

Then I typed the quote up on the computer until I had it formatted like I wanted, so I would have something to look at as I wrote it out.  I'm pretty good at looking at different fonts and free handing them, but I don't trust myself enough to do it with paint on the first try, so I penciled it first and then copied it with a paint marker.

It didn't turn out as good as I had hoped, because the letters and words aren't evenly spaced.  I had thought about printing the design on a transparency and using an overhead projector to copy it but decided against it, and learned my lesson.  Oh well, I definitely like it more than the vase and sticks!

My summer goals as they now remain:

Paint window in kitchen with crackle paint, and paint something on the glass.

Get something on the wall above the kitchen sink.

Paint little table next to wicker chest.

Paint coffee table white.

Varnish the end table.

Get something on bedroom walls.

Find something to replace vase and branches on dresser.

Put new fabric on director's chair.

Repaint red and green chest.

Paint earring holder white and then distress it.

And while there are still several projects to do, I've done a lot of things that weren't originally on the list, like: Painting a leaf dish, ModPodging a tray, Mr. and Mrs. mugs, and covering a clipboard.

Saturday Day Trip

Saturday I finally did something I've been wanting to do all summer: go to Asheville for the day!  My friend Eileen and I went, and our original plan was to go to the Biltmore, but the whole way there the weather was not promising and I didn't want to spend all that money and not be able to walk around outside and visit the gardens.  So instead we just spent the afternoon walking around downtown, window shopping and eating.  

The day was wonderful.  The weather ended up being absolutely perfect, and the people watching did not disappoint.  Asheville is a great place for people watching because such a wide variety of people are always there, preppy people, hipsters, hippies...and you never know what you're going to see.  The strangest thing I saw this time was a man dressed as a nun, riding a double decker bike with sparkly handlebar tassels and yelling "I love you!" as he rode by!

We started out by visiting my favorite little store in Asheville: L.O.F.T.  It stands for Lost Objects Found Treasures.  It's full of fun and quirky home decor, stationary, jewelery, etc.  I've bought lots of gifts for people here over the years, and picked up something again!

After popping into a few more stores we looked for a place to eat.  We ended up at an outdoor restaurant called Carmel's that had burgers, sandwiches, salads, and pizza.  I got a pizza with candied tomatoes, brie, spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, and a crust brushed with rosemary oil.  And let me tell you, it was deee-licious!  And we saw lots of interesting people passing by, including a couple who matched identically from head-to-toe: White hair, round glasses, black button down shirts, jeans, and black shoes, and a couple where the woman was dressed to the nines and the man had on a t-shirt, khaki shorts, and tennis shoes with white socks pulled up high.

After several more stores, we started heading back to the car, with two more stops to get food :)  We went to a place called Chocolate Gems to get gelato to eat outside at the little cafe tables.  I sampled Salted Caramel and Cappuccino, both of which were great, but I ended up with Mint Chocolate Cookie.  After more people and (dog) watching we want back in to get some chocolate to take home with us.  Eileen got a huge chocolate covered marshmallow, and I got a Coconut Truffle and a Peanut Butter Truffle.  

After that we walked two more blocks to our last stop of the day, The Gourmet Chip Company.  They have tons of combinations that they mix on the spot when you order, and then serve them in a paper cone.  We got the Parisian that had goat cheese, rosemary, thyme, white truffle, and sea salt.  Like everything else we'd eaten that day, they were tasty.  I will definitely go back next time I'm in Asheville and try a different one.

So with tired feet and full stomachs we headed home, with lush green mountains, fluffy white clouds, and clear blue skies to look at the whole time!