Vacation 2015

     Hello, my friends!  As you read this, I'm sitting on an airplane, over the ocean - coming back from Europe!  We left TYS (Knoxville) the afternoon of Oct. 11 and flew to PHL (Philadelphia) and then headed to VCE (Venice, Italy).  I was gone for 3 weeks (well, 22 days) and had the fabulous opportunity to visit Italy, Israel, Turkey, Greece, and Malta.  **I did not have internet at all while gone and will now have major jet-lag so photos will have to wait a couple days - I hope to have the first day or so up by Nov. 6** 
    
     The first 5 days (Oct 12-16) were a land tour in Italy, during which we visited Venice, Florence, Pisa, and Rome.  The next 4 days (Oct 17-20) were on a cruise, during which we docked in Israel, overnighted there for 3 days (Oct 21-23), and visited Jerusalem and Galilee.  The rest was aboard the cruise ship (Oct 24-31).  Now we are traveling home :( 
    
     While on the cruise ship we stopped in at Naples and Pompeii (Italy), Ephesus (Turkey), Mykonos, Athens, and Corinth (Greece), and Malta, an island.  It was so, SO exciting and I can't wait to share my photos!  I also have some travel journal entries to share along with the photos.

     Oh, and in case you're wondering "how in the world is she posting about this while on an airplane and when she said she had no Wi-Fi?", I am sitting and writing this now on September 23, 2015 at 9:45pm.  There is a wonderful feature on blogger that allows you to schedule a post for weeks in advance.  I love it :)

     With that, I will leave y'all to your day and hope you have a great life until I can be back in touch!  I look forward to being able to share my experiences!

Instructables.com

So, I found this fan.tast.ic. website, www.instructables.com.  It is literally DIY Heaven (I think that's actually their motto).  You can create a tutorial and post it to their website, you can view a tutorial for EVERYTHING on their website, you can enter contests on their website, you can vote for contests on their website.... Y'all probably see where this is going :)

I entered a tutorial into 2 contests - the First Time Authors Contest, and the Fall for Yarn Challenge.  I was wondering if y'all wouldn't mind heading over to their website at this link (like, click this text right here. It should be purple or blue or something.)  and voting for my project, which is a Crochet Bobble Beard.  It's really cool :)

If you do take the time to click the link to go vote (which doesn't take more than 3 min) follow these steps:

1.  When you click the link, it will go straight to the contests page.  However, you have to sign in to vote.  If you already have an account (it would be, like, really cool if you did) just go ahead and login at the top then A) click the "explore" button at the top of the page next to the search bar, B) click the "contests" button on the top left of the menu that will come down, C) scroll about halfway down the contests page, click on the "Fall for Yarn", scroll down to the entries, and click the "vote" button at the bottom of mine (which, once again, is this super cool Crochet Bobble Beard modeled by my lovely younger sister :D)  If you don't already have an account, you can...
2.  Sign in with Gmail, Facebook, or Twitter.  Do this by scrolling down to the entries on the contest page and clicking  the "vote" button.  A window will pop up with sign in options.  When you choose your sign in option, you'll sign in and it will take you to the main page of the website.  After that you can just follow A, B, and C of numero uno up there (number 1 :D)

When you figure that out, you're more than welcome to do the same for the First Time Authors Contest (there are quite a few more entries, almost 400 - mine is only a few rows down though bc it's more recent).  You can find it on the Contest page as well.

Well, that was an incredibly long blog post.  I have some super cool Nail Art and Crochet DIY's/Photo-Showcase-whatever thingys, plus the results of the 2015 TN Valley Fair (!!!).  Thank you all soooo much for reading all this and voting for my project!  I'm really excited! Stay tuned...

** Please feel free to share the link to this post with your friends, on social media, etc.  I'm trying to spread the word as much as possible! :)

Happy New Year!!! It's 2015!!!

Yes, I am posting this at 12:00AM.  Yes, I am posting this in 2015.  Yes, this is my first blog post in 2015.  Yes, this post is about FIREWORKS!  This is basically a photography post showing all the firework-y fun (yes, I also just made up that word) we had tonight.  Well, technically last night :P  The people shown in these pictures are my lovely siblings/cousins, who were here to share the fun.  Oh, and I think I may have made it into a couple too :)  Ok, enough rambling... here we go!  :D

 

Roman Candles

 

More Roman Candles

 

I'm not sure which one was going off in the picture but I like it :)

 

"Fog Machine" :)

 

 

This was like the best one I got all night!  I was so excited that it turned out so good!

 

 

More Roman Candles.  These were actually really good for getting pictures with.

 

 

 

Sparklers!

 

 

Ok this is like my total complete favorite from all night!  This is my cousin, Mia, waving a sparkler around in a circle.  It turned out so great and I wasn't even trying to get this shot!  :)

 

 

Saturn Missile

 

 

Ella Kate with her sparkler

 

 

Mia and Ella Kate duo :)

 

 

This is Ava with a perfect sparkler circle :)  It's so awesome!

 

 

Emma was setting everything around her on fire :) (not really lol)

 

 

Ava with her sparkler again

 

 

So you know how at circuses and stuff they have the people with the fire lassos?  Well this is what this looks like... or a fire baton on steroids :)

 

 

Another one of my favorite shots

 

 

 

Caption dubbed by Ethan and Brock - Firework Backfire

This is like the favorite from all night.  Another description the boys came up with was "Heaven meets Earth".  One of the fireworks went haywire and shot the missile things everywhere!  Literally!  One went flying past my head and another went across the street and exploded in the neighbors front yard right in front of his window.  And he was trying to sleep.  lol.  :)  We love the picture though, cause it's the only one I got during that little episode :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

This looks like a fire breathing dragon :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey, I'm in this one!

 

 

These are all Roman Candles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Grand Finale of 2014.  Happy New Year everyone!