Keeping Track of Birthdays

So the past couple of weeks I have been feeling pretty arts and crafty. So I decided to try my hand at making a wooden birthday calendar for my family. I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like so I went to Hobby Lobby and found the parts. There wasn't a pre-made kit or anything so I looked through the wood section until I found a good bass and little round wood cookies for the people's names. Then I went to the jewelry making section to find rings and hooks to attach everything together.

The first step was to get it all painted:

I used normal wood acrylic paint and painted the girls circles red and the boys blue. Then I did a dry brush of white over everything.

The next step was putting the months onto the base:

I used a normal sharpie pen to write them in:

After that was done I packed up everything and brought it over to my parents house. They have all the handy wood drills and hammers and stuff. And they were kind enough to drill holes into my little wood circles:

On the front side of the circles I put everyone's name and birthday. On the backs I put their birth year.

The next step was screwing in the eye hooks to the bass:

Then using the rings I got I attached all the circles into a chain under the correct month and this was the results:

(One slight fix I need to make though, my birthday and my older brother's birthday are in February not March) But other than that, it turned out pretty good. And it was pretty easy to make. Now I have no excuse for missing someone's birthday.

New Artworks - Ocean Cliffs and Allyways

This last weekend I finished a couple more oil paintings. The first one was of a cool downtown marketplace ally in Kilkenny, Ireland . I loved the stone walls and archways. And had fun trying to paint them. Here is the result:

And after working on the ally, I felt like I needed to paint something more colorful. So I stepped away from the greys and brought out the blues and greens. I switched between the two paintings and had fun. Here is the colorful oceanside cliffs I painted:

I feel like I went a bit abstract with this one but the effect turned out very nice. Now I need to let these dry and look for something new to paint.

Setting Some New Goals

Its been awhile since I posted something and so I'd thought I'd talk about some of the new goals I've tried to set lately.

All my life I've suffered from migraine headaches. Lately they have gotten worse. I started seeing a new doctor, who in turn subscribed me a few medications. I'm very hesitant to take prescription drugs because they always seem to have pretty extreme side-effects on me. The last drugs I took made me loose 30 pounds. So I was a little nervous with these new drugs. The first time I took the new meds, it intensified my headache and made me extremely dizzy. So my doctor, gave me a different drug....it helps a little but doesn't get rid of my headache. So after all these trial runs, I decided to try some other things.

Visiting my cousins back in May, I was introduced to some healing oils. One in particular has helped with my minor headaches. It is a nice new alternative to the heavy meds.

I've decided my first goal was to keep track of my food. And try and find out if what I'm eating has any effect on my head. The most recent discovery...one I'm kind of sad about is that certain pre-mixed muffin, brownie, or cake mixes can cause my headaches. I think it might be the preservatives put in them. I love to bake and if I make something completely from scratch I don't get the headaches. At first I thought it was the chocolate in the brownies...but then I got the headaches from just the muffin mixes as well. So I guessed it had to be the box mixes themselves.....sigh....

My second goal was just to get healthier. So I started to exercise. A friend had posted this challenge on Facebook:

I showed it to my family and in June we decided to challenge ourselves to do it. Amazingly I was able to finish. I hate working out, running or doing anything too physical always because I was afraid to get another migraine. And the fact that I'm a bit clumsy. But I was able to get through this challenge and when it ended, I started another one in July:

And I was able to complete it as well! I was so pleased with myself. For the month of August I just started a third challenge:

If I can keep going, I will finally get my body into shape and maybe that will help with my migraine headaches. We shall see. It can't hurt.

My third goal I've made is to put a certain amount of money away in savings each month. The rent on my apartment is huge, so saving any amount of money is hard. But I've decided to cut my spending on things I don't need right away and try and concentrate on putting a little away each month. Then I might finally be able to have the savings to travel again. I renewed my passport and am dying to use it again. But first comes the savings.

So big goals right now are diet tracking, exercising and money saving...simple but important. And when I have time, I want to study something new...that I'm still working on.

One Day Road Trip

Yesterday we took a road trip up to Panguitch Lake, UT. My Dad is looking for a nice cabin in the woods and he heard about Brian Head and Panguitch Lake. So we all got in the car and drove up to Utah to get out of the heat and see a new place.

Nevada Desert

Driving into the Virgin River Gorge

The Virgin River Gorge is always a cool drive. But the river seemed to be completely dried up. We made pretty good time and found ourselves in Cedar City around 10:00am. Then we turned east and up into the mountains.

 

 

It was a very pretty drive. The higher we got up the more breathtaking the view was.

At one point we stopped to enjoy an over look:

At the tops of the mountains were these beautiful meadows full of wildflowers.

Finally we reached the lake. It reminded me of the Alpine lake towns I saw in Switzerland. Very pretty and peaceful.

I think my parents liked it up there the only down point was no cell service. But it was very pretty.

We came back down the mountain through Panguitch. I used to meet in Panguitch every Thursday for District Meeting when I was serving my mission in Beaver, UT. It was cool seeing the chapel again.

And driving on the same roads I drove on my mission. Nice bit of nostalgia. With our goal reached we headed back down south.

We stopped for ice cream in St. George, UT. And took a look around the St George Temple.

 

 

 It was beautiful day and the temple glowed.

It was great to get out of the desert and see some green. It was a fun day trip and hope to do it again sometime.

Independence Day 2014

I had a nice relaxing Independence Day this year. I spent it with my parents and brother. It's become a tradition here in Vegas for us to enjoy a early breakfast with my parents Ward and then walk down the street to the Summerlin Parade, the biggest parade in Vegas. So bright and early at 7:30am I made my way over to their chapel for a flag raising ceremony and some breakfast.

 

It was a light breakfast. But yummy. The weather was cooler than usual for Vegas in July and there was talk of thunder showers but in the morning it was a beautiful day out. After eating and helping to clean up, Mom, Dad and I made our way to the road with the parade. Doug didn't join us he thought it was too hot.

We found a nice shady spot on the opposite side of the street. And watched the Pre-Parade. Crowds filled in the gaps, a nice couple from California joined us. It was their first time at the parade and were going to be moving to Vegas so they were checking it out. It was fun watching it with first timers. Here are some pictures from the parade:

The Crowds gathering

Dad and Mom, Dad sporting his ASEA shirt.

 If curious about what ASEA is see http://sepperson.teamasea.com/

Me and Mom. My Disney hat worked perfectly for my Red, White and Blue outfit.

Of course there would be one of these in the Vegas parade

Color Guard. Attention!

 

Biggest Flag I've ever seen

 

We waited to see the Dino Float and then decided we had seen enough...one of these times we might actually make it through to the end. As we were walking back to the church, we saw the rest of the floats lining up and of course there was this:

And so we had the "Let it Go" song stuck in our heads all the way back to our cars.

After cooling down, I did some grocery shopping. Bad idea...everyone was at the store buying picnic supplies. It was quite the mad house. But we made it out alive and went back to my parents for a good ol' fashion hot dog picnic lunch.

 

Mom made a hot dog sauce out of a new recipe so it was kind of a chili dog, just not as spicy. With a yummy fruit salad. Doug picked up these new Pringles. They taste just like Doritos.

To fill our afternoon we went out to the movies. We went and saw the new Tom Cruise movie: Edge of Tomorrow. It was very good. Right amount of humor, action and good storyline.

The only negative thing about our trip to the movies was meeting a really really grumpy old man that kept blocking us in the parking garage....lot of crazy people out there. But movie was great and we got out of the theatre in time before the firework crowds showed up.

We didn't want to try and find a place to watch fireworks so we came home and relaxed. And had some pizza for dinner.

After dark the thunder storms came and so there were firecrackers and thunder booms going on outside. When I finally made my way home, I was able to see some of the shows from the balcony of my apartment.

 

It was a fun, quiet Independence Day and I'm glad I got to spend it with my family.