A lot of random catch up

OK so I am pretty behind on my blogging. So about two weeks ago was my last week of my summer job at the summer camp. Our last day of course was another spirit day. The theme this time was wacky day! So this is how I showed up. Cute huh? You can't really see it but my hair is in little buns on the top, and pig-tails in the back. And no I would never normally leave the house dressed like this, I would like to think I have better fashion sense than that! But its fun to dress crazy like this every now and then, especially when the kids think you are so cool for doing it. Well anyway, the summer camp is finally over, and even though I am really happy to be done, it was definitely a good experience. It was my first real experience teaching a large group of kids, even though they are a bit younger than the kids I want to teach. Plus even though it really wore me out, I like being too busy more than being bored. Right now I am in the process of getting my emergency teaching credential so that I can start substitute teaching in the fall, so that's whats in my future.

Now on for a little update on Zac. At work he finally started his new position as planner for the Joint Preservation division. He has a new manager named Stacey, who is so awesome! She is much more the type of manager that Zac was hoping to have and he is so much happier working for her. This past week he got to participate in a few cadaver labs. A surgeon came in and Zac helped do an ACL reconstruction among some other surgeries using the tools that Stryker makes. He got to go into the knee with a scope and some cutters and take a tendon graft and then he took the graft and screwed it into place. It's actually more complicated than that, but you get the gist. Zac said arthroscopic surgery is actually a lot like construction; drilling pilot holes and putting in screws and what not. He really enjoyed the experience! I think it would have really creeped me out working on dead people, but Zac thought it was so interesting.

It's so amazing to me the oportunities that Zac has gotten recently. He is part of a start-up business now that only consists of a few people. Two weeks ago Zac sat in a conference room with 12 other people, including the directors and President of Stryker Joint Preservation and discussed the business plan of how they will reach 100 million dollars in sales in 5 years. Zac threw out some of his ideas and was praised by the President. Just yesterday Zac received a hand-written note from the President telling him he is doing a great job! Zac's direct manager right now is the Director of Operations for Stryker Joint Preservation. He also hung out with the Director of Marketing this past week! Neither of us can believe the great opportunities that Zac is receiving right now.

Also Zac had another soccer game this past week, and even though they look really excited in this picture- this was right after they lost the game, but they tried really hard and got really sweaty doing it! They ended up losing their first playoff game too so their season is over now. I loved that Zac was on this team because it gave me the opportunity to sit and talk to Kaylee and Cat for an hour every week! We decided that we would start a couples game night every week, so that we could all get together still. This week Zac and I are hosting a badminton party that will go down in history!

In other news, we finally finished our dining room table! And by "we" I of course mean "Zac" since he did most of the actual work. I just chimed in my two cents every now and then about what he should do. We actually forgot to take a before picture, which is a real shame, because it is hard to really appreciate all the work that went into refinishing this table without seeing what it looked like before. So I will just try to describe it for you: The top was a very light maple and the legs were white. I know, detailed description but you get the picture. So Zac had to remove the varnish from the top of the table and sand it down really well, then apply about a million layers of stain, then remove the million layers because it didn't work because maple is impossible to stain without looking streaky. Then put on another million layers of stain, and we had to wait like a week between layers of stain for it to dry before adding another layer of stain. Then when we finally got the table looking like we wanted it to look he had to put the top coat of varnish on, and of course we had to put on like a million layers of that too, and wait 3 days in between layers on that! The easiest part was spray painting the legs black. Oh and Zac also had to do 6 chairs! So he had to do all that work 6 more times! Also he had to take all the chairs apart and put them all back together, which actually turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. However if we ever decide to do this again, we will be able to do it a lot faster because we learned a lot about how we need to apply the stain and the varnish for it to look right. It was really hard work, but it looks so nice now! I love it!

So, about the pictures - I promise Zac doesn't always have his shirt off; I guess it's only when he's doing something picture worthy. These pictures are, from the top going down: (1) Zac working on the table, (2) the total mess that was our apartment while he was working on it, (3) us standing in the mess- this is what I felt like doing to the table the whole time because it was so frustrating and it was taking so long - also Zac wanted me to hold a hammer in the picture because he submitted to me that if I was holding a hammer it would look like I actually did some of the work. I guess it goes along with the old adage that people don't question you if you're holding a hammer, (4) this is all the paint, stain, varnish, sandpaper, applicators, and stuff that we used to finish the table, (5) this is Zac standing by the finished table- yeah!, and finally (6) this is a picture of our first dinner on our finally finished table. I know it seems weird to take a picture of that- but we hadn't eaten a meal on a real table for like 2 months- so it was a big deal!

And now for the last bit of random news - the completion of my project. So there is a little bit of a story behind this project. Zac and I were at Michael's (the craft store) getting mats made for our art a couple of months ago. We also needed to get a few frames for some of the pictures and Michael's was having a big sale, so we got them there. While looking Zac found a frame that was really pretty, but also really big, and he decided that he really wanted it because it was normally $50 and it was on sale for half off. Let me note here that this same logic is the reason why we have tons of stuff around our house that we don't need - hey, it was a good deal! My concern was that we didn't actually have any artwork that was that size, and something that big would be rather expensive. Zac insisted that wasn't a problem, because I could just paint a picture to go in the frame. I was a little hesitant for a couple of reasons. First of all you usually buy a frame for a picture, not make a picture for a frame, so I didn't really know what to paint a picture of. Secondly I had never actually done a painting in acrylics before so I wasn't sure if I could even do it and make it look nice, especially since it would be the focal piece in our living room! (I have done a few pieces in pastels before, but I was still learning how to even use acrylics). I was really stuck trying to decide what to paint so Zac looked and found this really pretty picture of these grapes:

So I went out and got all the right paints, the proper tools, a couple of canvases and some books to help teach me some techniques. So after a couple hours worth of work this is what I came up with:
OK, well only kind of. I did the grey part on the left, but when I put the black lines in the wood they were too big, and I got really frustrated and gave up on the painting because it was pretty much ruined. So I did some practice on the grapes, but it was really hard and really frustrating, so I decided I couldn't paint this picture - I was going to have to do something else. The other random colors on the painting above are where I tested colors for my other painting. I decided to just make up my own painting and here is what I came up with. Much better huh?

I was pretty happy with how it turned out. If there was one thing I would have changed it would have been the yellow color behind the flowers because they don't stand out very well against that yellow background. Oh well, good to know for the next painting; I wasn't expecting perfection on my first attempt. This last picture is from a distance, this is what it looks like on the wall above our entertainment center.

Well thats about it for our random updates! I need to update more often. It takes too long to catch up on so much stuff when I put it off!