SA Conference 2014

Dave and I committed to help put on the regional Single Adult conference this summer - one last time. Here are some of the decorations we put together with help from Becky and some of our committee members:

Building the jail - we used fencing pieces and secured PVC pipes on as bars. We spray painted the pipes black. And we decided that the fencing wasn't really strong enough so for future reference, if you're going to build a jail don't use fencing. 

We attached plywood boards to the bottom and the sides. Our biggest concern was stability and safety. The little money bags you see at the bottom were filled with sand to help stabilize it.  This worked for one night but we all decided that we could have benefitted from a much better design from the get to. But hey, not bad for a design off the cuff.  :)

We even stapled old fashion looking fabric to the inside of the doors and put wood-look paper on the lower outside. 

                

We had mustaches and a hat to pose for pictures: 

Next we made a watering hole. I love the way it turned out but this project was my first and last pallet project! I do not see the appeal. Seriously they're a pain in the rear to work with. Just my opinion...

We made a "kissing booth" where people could guess how many kisses were in the jar. Then we decided we could also have them guess lemon drops and root beer barrels.  I think the idea was good but we were out of time and energy to make the booth as well as we did the other things so I didn't love the way this one turned out.

 

We made big sandwich board signs out of plywood. They were heavy so they wouldn't blow over or get knocked down easily. We stapled our signs and cowboy silhouettes to them - don't they look cool? Love 'em!


 

Speaking of signs, we also made Wanted signs for each speaker to post by the classroom doors:

We used gold and brown plastic tablecloths (I couldn't face washing cloth ones this time) and put red and blue bandana, mason jars with a burlap & lace warp filled with real babies breath and little gem-like rocks scattered on the bandanas as the table centerpieces.

For the buffet tables we put burlap down the center with some cow print fabric for color and variety. We used the same gem like rocks as well as "gold" nuggets to scatter on the table. Again, mason jars with a burlap & lace wrap and wildflowers. 

Along the walls we did rosettes in two sizes - huge ones and then a big bunch. These took pretty much forever to make. I think we had 4 people spend about 3 or 4 hours making all the rosettes.










For the small ones that were all bunched together we made all the rosettes and then used floral wire to secure them to a sheet of grid wire sort of like chicken wire but with smaller holes.  Gloves were required as it's sharp and it was trick getting them all secured on tightly and close together.

We always forget how BIG those walls are and how much you need to really make an impact. We were glad we had the big rosettes.





We had a torn fabric garland and hung a sign that said Howdy Ya'll at the entrance. (It's hard to read the sign here but it was sure cute!)













We strung lights across the gym (you have to have lights!) Here's a fun story about the lights....  We had bought the lights we needed but moved in the middle of all this. The day before the conference we were house sitting (really, too much going on at once) and came home to make sure everything was together to haul over to the church the next day. This is when we discovered that the lights were missing. They're somewhere in our storage unit (!!) so we had to buy new lights and now we are the proud owners of several boxes of lights. I hope our new house has a pergola or patio or something. If it doesn't maybe Dave will just have to build us one...  ;)



We hung up our moon on the stage for a good background there and hung black paper behind it to camouflage the stage.












And then the fun began...

We couldn't have done it without Becky, our committee and the stakes who signed up to help us set up all the decorations. I was mostly pleased with the way it turned out and I hope the conference attendees enjoyed it.

Manitou Springs

In September we went to Manitou Springs for the day. There's really lots to do in that area so we'll have to go back again. Oh bummer! ;)

I wanted to surprise Dave (this will also surprise all of you) so our first stop was the World Famous Penny Arcade. You probably need some proof so here's photographic evidence that I went into an arcade:

It was interesting (but not surprising) to see what we both gravitated to - I wanted to play the old games like pinball and skeeball while Dave wanted to play all the modern games like Mortal Kombat. I did play Ms. Pacman and Dave even talked me into one game of Mortal Kombat.

Just for the record, I'm not too bad at skeeball... but I really sucked it up on everything else. One observation from this little foray into the world of video games - it was obvious that these games have been made for men since the very beginning - even the really old ones were full of scantily clad, overly busty women no matter what the game was and most of them are violent. Yuck. Just sayin'.

We took a tour of the Cave of the Winds. Have you ever seen the darkness of a cave? At one point they turned off the lights so you could see what total darkness is really like when you literally cannot even see your hand right in front of your face. It was DARK! It only gets that dark two places in the world - in caves and at the bottom of the ocean.

Manitou Springs has 7 natural springs where the water is naturally carbonated. We tried it. Gross. That's all.

Jodee recommended Heart of Jerusalem as a good place to eat so we tried it out. We liked dinner but the best part was the Baklava - oh! my! word! Incredible. We split a piece. I told Dave he has to get his own piece next time because I want my own piece.

A couple observations about Manitou Springs... 1) There are lots of hippies there but what was unique about that was how many old hippies were there. Tons. 2) There are some serious hills there! So, we'll avoid it in the winter and visit in the summer. 3) There's lots to see and do in this area and we only had one day. Georgetown is still our favorite but we'll be back to Manitou as well.

Oh, and one last note - 

There's a Mata shop there - mata is the preferred drink in Argentina where Dave served his mission and he's always wishing he could have it here.  Needless to say, Dave was so excited to see the shop and then so sad to see that it was closed because we were there on a Saturday and the shop's owners are Jewish so it's closed on their sabbath. Guess that just means we'll have to take a long weekend and stay down there sometime so Dave can have Mata.  Ok, twist my arm.