Pinterest Challenge Reveal

So I had grand expectations for my pinterest vision to come to life.  I tend to visualize things in a lot of detail in my head and it usually comes out much different then my elaborate day dream.  I haven't deemed my pinterest project a complete failure yet...just a work in progress. 

Anyways...so I ordered some of my favorite instagram pictures that I have taken over the last year and had them printed out in 5x5 prints. I would have gone larger but I ordered them from PicPlum and that is the largest they print instagrams. I am trying to brighten up the living room and the picture above the couch was just a little dark. My vision was a bunch of instagram canvases in a grid on the wall above the couch. 

It's not crazy...Look at these examples:


 
   




 Aren't those fun? Super colorful and personal. 

Anyways, so for my take, I was planning on putting my instagrams on 5x5 canvases and mounting those on  the wall.  Well, do you know a 5x5 canvas is almost $6 at Michaels?  And I had 16 pictures!!  That's almost $100 just on the canvas. I explored the options of frames and various mats, but everything was super pricey.  Then I stumbled upon these babies:

These are 6x6 wood squares on clearance for $0.94 a piece. And they had exactly 16. Jackpot!
 So I stuffed them into my basket and raced home! I knew I didn't want the wood grain backing the pictures so I pulled out some white craft paint I had at home and painted the outer edge of each piece. I didn't have to paint the whole thing because my pictures would cover most of it. 

I let those dry for a day and then I put the hooks on the back. These boards are extremely light-weight so I knew I didn't need anything heavy duty. I found some of these hooks at Michaels and knew they would do the trick. 

  

 Another happy coincidence was that my L-whatever it is was exactly 6 inches!  I just squared it up with the bottom of the block and made a dot at the 3.

 Then, just push in your hook where you made the dot. Easy! You can kind of tell in this picture that I played around with painting the edges yellow but I ended up not liking how it was looking so I stopped.

 Then came the Mod Podge. All it took was a layer of Mod Podge directly on the front surface of the wood, a layer on the back of the picture, and a layer over both combined. It drys clear and the picture is stuck!

Then I had to figure out wall placement. This was the hardest part and ultimately the part that I'm not completely happy with.  Derrick and I played around with 5x5 paper squares and even thought about a funky pattern like this.

But I worried the pattern, combined with the colorful instagrams would be too busy looking.  So, I whipped out my L-whatever it is and taped a million pieces of paper together to make a template. A level and good measurements are your best friend for this part.

This method is great because once you finally get the template made, you just nail right through the paper and pull the paper down once all the nails are in place. The nails stay and the paper comes off leaving you with nails exactly where you needed them.  Then, just hang those pictures!

I can't decide what's wrong with it but something is not right. I think they are spaced to far from each other and there aren't enough of them.  The annoying part of that is having to make the template again though. I'm not sure...I'm just not loving it.  Also, can you see in the bottom row the one that I faked? Turns out I either only ordered 14 pictures or I lost 2. We needed 15 for the grid so I just taped a picture onto one of the pieces of wood until I order another instagram.

 

Anyways, I still love the idea of this project, it just hasn't turned out like I envisioned it.  I have a couple ideas to fix it but we'll just have to see. Derrick likes it so I'll probably leave it for a while.

At least I finally completed one of these things!

Winter League Tournament!

This past weekend was the Winter League tournament. Derrick and I play winter league almost every year and we both really enjoy it. You sign up and your name is entered into a pool of players. All of the captains get together and have a draft to choose teams and you get together to play against one of the other teams every Saturday. I love that the triangle has such a large ultimate community! It allows you to meet and play with new people every league season.

This year, Derrick and I were drafted to team Natty White. Natty Greens is a Pub and Brewing Restaurant and a winter league sponsor...hence the name shout out. We had an awesome team! Everybody was a blast to play with and it was a nice change from former years to have 6 ladies on the team! It's much more common for the ladies to have to play close to every point during the season because of lack of numbers so it was nice to have 6 ladies who all liked to show up to play!

The weather Saturday was terrible! It was about 35 degrees and raining.  Typically the WL tournament is two full days with each team getting at least 4-5 games over the weekend. Due to the weather, they had to re-structure the tournament to fit all of the games on the UNC turf fields and a lot of teams only got 2 games in crappy weather.  We ended up having one of the best games of our season on Saturday despite the conditions and we moved on to the quarter finals on Sunday morning.

Sunday's weather was picture perfect! We won a very close game in Quarters and moved on to Semis. We ended up losing in Semis to the team that ultimately won the tournament.

Derrick and I really enjoyed playing on this team this year! Everybody on the team was very nice, fun to play with, and really enjoyed the game which is what it's all about. Here's a picture of the team yesterday after our last game.

And here is our teams Spirit Award winner Doug with his spirit disc!

Thanks for a great season Natty White!

Pinterest Challenge Time!

So...lots of people know I follow several blogs and I also browse Pinterest quite often!  Well, each season two of my favorite bloggers (who also happen to be best friends) host the quarterly Pinterest Challenge! Young House Love and Bower Power use this to motivate everybody to stop pinning and start creating!

It's not a contest. No one is going to call and reprimand me if I fail. It's just a challenge to get personally motivated and actually do one of the things you pinned. 

 During the past challenges I have just sat back and read about the amazing accomplishes and crafts everybody has done but I haven't participated. So, I'm announcing it here in hopes that it keeps me accountable! Everybody is revealing what they've done next Wednesday, February 27th so check back here then to see if I've actually held to my word!

Here's a clue as to what I have planned:

Start to a Great Girly Weekend

For the next four weekends, we are going to be pretty busy with frisbee tournaments, a get-away, and a 5k race in Winston. It's going to be super fun, but very busy so this weekend we're getting in some quality QT and catching up with friends we might not see for a while! 

Yesterday I woke up early to meet up with Nikki for a girls date. We decided to go the Raleigh Home Show at the downtown convention center. They advertised it as a free convention so we were bummed to find out we had to pay $7 for parking, but it was still worth it to get some quality hang out time at a cool place. There were tons of vendors! It was really cool to just be there and look at all of the neat things out there for your home now.

I won my parents a security system for their old house once so I am a true believer in drawings. I diligently filled out every free drawing I saw and I'm confident I'll be getting a phone call to pick up my $25,000 Macy's giftcard on Monday :)

Our first stop was a Chiropractor booth who ensured we were sufficiently self-conscious for the rest of our time there. Apparently my head is way to far forward and I'm on the very brink of having a hunchback. The picture he gave me had me looking worse then Quasimodo. Nikki, on the other hand, was not likened to a hunchbacked Disney character and was able to walk around without her jacket hood pulled over her face for the rest of the convention. Here she is getting her analysis. 

The rest of the show was very cool. There were some places that had been transformed into outdoor gardens in the middle of the convention center. We were tempted by all sorts of things as we wandered around but were able to get out without spending too much moolah. 

How spoiled are the chickens that live in here!

Nikki and I battled it out at cornhole and I emerged victorious. Please stop staring at my hump.

 We came out to snow! You can't see it in the picture but it is blizzarding behind us!!

We headed out for lunch at this awesome restaurant called Beasley's. I had never been there, but Nikki assured me it was worth the 10 minute walk in the cold. It was so nice to just walk and chat with my best friend. Downtown is awesome in the snow!

 

How adorable is she?

Beasley's was not a let down! It's this super cool restaurant with Chalk board walls and family style seating. Since there were only two of us, they were able to seat us right away crammed between two other groups. It was awesome. We both got the Reunion (Biscuit with chicken and fried egg on top) Delicious!

 

Thanks for a great girls day Nikki!!!

After hanging out with Nikki, I had to head off to another baby shower. This time it was for a frisbee friend Katie. I only snagged one picture while I was there. Isn't she the cutest pregnant lady? She's due April 6 but I told her not to worry if it came a day early because great things happen on April 5. (That's Derrick's birthday :)

 

It was really great to see all of these frisbee ladies again. During the off season it's easy to not see people regularly. We just talked and laughed together for the 3 hours were there. Oh, and their house is incredible! They were married just two weeks before Derrick and I, bought a house in September, and our now expecting a baby girl in April. That's a lot of change in less then a year, but they are rocking it!  Can't wait to meet the baby!

Ok...this post is getting long but I can't leave this out. That night, Derrick and I were fully immersed in the NBA skills challenge.  Crosby has a tendency of heading to bed early if it's been a long day so we weren't really thinking about her and realized it had been over an hour since we had seen her. We called for her and she didn't come. Derrick got up to see if she was just laying in bed. Nope....

She was locked in our closet!!!! We died laughing!! She came flying out like a tornado and acted like she had never been more excited to see us!! We think she was in there sniffing around and accidentally pushed the door closed on herself. She is such a mess. It's good Derrick and I got a dog first and she's very forgiving :)

Here she is after we found her. No hard feelings. Sorry about that Cros!

A Relaxing Richard Howell Valentine's Day

Happy Valentines Day from the Marceys! We're taking it easy tonight and avoiding the Valentine's day crowds but we're going out to dinner tomorrow night! We got a Valentine early from my parents! It was such a sweet surprise and I immediately took a picture and texted it to Derrick.  We are already planning a breakfast date. Thanks Mom and Dad!! We love you!

This morning I pulled Derrick's present from under the bed where I had planted it a couple of days ago. He's now and official member of the Beard Gang :) Richard Howell is one of our favorite Wolfpack basketball players and he sports an incredible beard.

Derrick surprised me tonight with the sweetest card and a....Massage Envy Giftcard!!! He knows me sooo well! I think I'll use it tomorrow! Not really, but ASAP!

I also got myself a beard gang shirt, so we took a couple gang pictures.  The following family photos were taken with the camera timer while the camera was balanced in the large handle of a pair of scissors. Pays to be a hoarder!

 Here's Crosby wearing her favorite of the two shirts.

Happy Valentine's Day from the Beard Gang!!

Finally, today also marks Crosby's 3 year anniversary as a Marcey. She started out as a foster and I couldn't  bear to let her go so Derrick gifted her to me 3 years ago for Valentine's Day. It was the best day of her life. Here she is right after I reminded her of that special day. 

Happy Love Day! Go tell someone you love them!!

Happy Valentine's Day to My Love

Love this Man!

Back off, he's mine!

What's been Happening?

I don't have much interesting to post. We've just been doing normal day-to-day stuff. Derrick is working longer hours to meet an important deadline in the next couple months and I'm still on the hunt for more clients! Here are a few pics of the randomness that has happened the past few weeks!

Macy's had a registry completion event on top of their yearly home sale event so we snagged this new bedding set and new pillows for half of the original cost of the bedding. We love it!

We bought Kettle bells. They are a killer workout! On Sunday we did a circuit of 4 exercises 3 times and Derrick and I are still sore! Derrick might have pulled a hamstring too...that'll teach us to do a warm-up jog next time.

Our front door looks adorable now. Nikki made us this amazing wreath and it's so fun to come around the corner and see it on our front door. The actual wreath was made by Nikki's mom using vines from their mountain house. I think it will be decking our door for a long time to come and the great thing is, when the flowers start to look old and dusty, they are really easy to take out and replace. Thanks Nikki!!

I think this picture is hilarious. Crosby is such a cheese ball.  Those letters mark her food station. Her bowls sit on the floor right below them. It was an idea I just stumbled upon when I found these letters in the Micheal's dollar section. It's probably one of my favorite personalized parts of our apartment and I plan to set it up in everyplace we move to because I love it that much. 

 Anyways, that's all. Nothing much exciting going on but we do have a very busy few weekends coming up so we'll keep you posted!

Oh Baby!

There is something in the water around here. The amount of frisbee babies being born before May 16th takes more then 2 hands to count. It's crazy! One of the first ones was born just last week and he is super cute. I just went to a baby shower for a set of twins coming in May and I have another one next weekend for a little girl coming in April. 18 years from now there is going to be a new generation of frisbee players taking the field. 

Long story short, Derrick and I are avoiding the water for now, but it's fun seeing so many Frisbee friends become Moms and Dads at the same time. 

Superbowl Sunday!

This past weekend, Derrick and I went over to Courtney and Jeff's place for tacos and the super bowl! Their friend Sarah was there too. The 30 minute blackout made the game last longer then we were all expecting so we ended up leaving after the 3rd quarter and watching the end of the game in bed. This football season I cheered for teams in the following order:

1. Buffalo Bills - I inherited this allegiance from Derrick and it's unfortunately not usually a happy ending.

2. Seattle Seahawks - Russell Wilson, self explanatory

3. Baltimore Ravens - I like Michael Oher from the Blindside :) And Torrey Smith

4. San Francisco 49ers - Because I love that city

So my three and four were in it! I stood behind the Ravens for this game and they came out on top!


Here is the group cheering for the 49ers!

Sarah and I were cheering for the Ravens. This is my best fighting Ravens impression.  

Crosby and Lucy...best friends!

Loving their Pup-sicles!

Happy Birthday Trey Man!

Today is Trey's 11th birthday! Trey is Derrick's cousin/godson and my new cousin :) We made a quick trip down to Winston Salem on Sunday to celebrate his birthday with the family. Trey is an awesome baseball player, straight A student, and a fantastic person! We're so proud of him!

We Love you Trey!

Opening his gift from Derrick and me

TWENTY DOLLARS!!!

The Loot

Awesome brownies Mom made. Check out those white chocolate baseballs and basketballs!