History Camp

The unexpected takeover of 2016 was History Camp! In February I saw a tweet about History Camp Boston and I was intrigued. I went home and started looking into it and found that it was really inexpensive for a full day of history lovin' classes, lunch and a t-shirt. I sent Dave a text and said, "I've got a bee in my bonnet. We have to go to Boston. Next month." He said ok!  So that night we bought tickets for History Camp, bought airline tickets and booked a hotel.  I was going out there with the intention of seeing how it's done so that I could create the same thing in Denver. 

While I was there I spoke with Lee, the found of History Camp, and told him my story and he was amazed that I had come all that way for History Camp. He said he'd help me set one up in Denver and at first he kept saying things like "if this really happens" or "once you decide whether you want to do this or not..." I told Dave that Lee just doesn't realize that my mind was mostly made up before I even made it out there. ;)
  

So, we got home and I got to work. And didn't stop until November 12th. And it was so much fun. I loved the planning, the learning, the connecting, the growing, being part of something that's just beginning to take off. My mind has never felt so alive and engaged before! It was invigorating and energizing.

So, as I said, there was lots of planning - this is at a tour of the Tivoli where we were holding HCC (History Camp Colorado):

Lucky Dave got to go on this adventure with me. Whether he wanted to or not. He was such a good sport and great support! I couldn't have done it without him. And there were many times when I'm sure he felt like I'd forgotten him because HCC was basically all consuming. We did try to take breaks and make sure to reconnect - like going to see the symphony:

They even had an alp horn which was fun to see and listen to:

After all the months of planning, not sleeping, working and hoping, the big day was finally here. Here's the RAV - just a little full with all the stuff we had to bring. Good thing we have a bigger car than the old Sentra now. Hee hee!

We had delicious food for breakfast from Biscuits and Berries:

The crowd waiting for it to start: (Lee had me set a goal of 50 people in attendance. I knew that for me that would never suffice so that was my goal out load when people asked. My real goal was 100. We had 120 there - it sold out two weeks early and I had a wait list!)

On the left is Lee and I'm on the right. It sort of looks like I'm being impatient but that wasn't it at all. It seems I just put my hands on my hips often. I may have to work on that.

This is Dr. Richard who was one of my favorite professors at Metro. She sponsored the event through Phi Alpha Theta so that we could use the Tivoli at Metro for free which was a HUGE help.

We had 26 presenters and 26 sessions, running 3 or 4 concurrently. We had a great variety of topics and I really feel like there was something for everyone. People had to choose which session they wanted to hear and moved around from room to room as desired. Here are a few of the presenters:

This is Janet Kalstrom who was my event planning mentor and friend who helped me get this off the ground. I worked with her at the Molly Brown House where we did the Day in Old Denver event together. When I came back from Boston I knew just who to call to help me get started. She was fantastic!

The day was a huge success!! There were things that didn't go according to plan but that's always how events are and now I've learned lots for next time.

We were both so exhausted. In fact, we went to church as usual the next day and when we came home we realized that we had left our front door wide open. Neither of us noticed one bit. I had some wrap up to do over the next week or so and then I promised to take a break from all things HCC until January. I needed the time to recover and rejuvenate and Dave was really read to not hear about it every minute. ;)

Throughout the process I kept reminding Dave that he did the Single Adult conference with me so knows how I am. He says this was a whole new level and that was nothing compared to this. Isn't he lucky to have such a talented wife? 😏

I did pretty good and stayed away from HCC and guess what? It's January! And I'm right back in the swing of things. I feel rested and ready to go again. I'm working on a venue and tying down a date and I'm feeling just as excited as last year. 😄

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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.

The O Goggs!

Let's start with a little background to the onion goggle story. Here it is in a nutshell - I HATE ONIONS. That's about it. But allow me to elaborate a little... Not only do onions wreak to high heaven, they taste gross and they have a gross texture and they make me bawl. I mean bawl like someone just died. Generally I use onion powder and I'm perfectly happy with that. Other people like onions, my mom LOVES onion. One time I was on vacation and she called me to tell me that she made onion burgers with sauteed onions on onion rolls for dinner. Sick and wrong!

I've made a general rule that if mom wants onions in the food I cook (when I won't be eating) she has to chop them ahead of time and freeze them. Sometimes she does and then I just pull them from the freezer which works beautifully. Plus, then she can't complain when there aren't onions because she's the one who hasn't chopped them so it's her fault if there aren't any. hee hee.

A few months ago I was being particularly generous and decided I'd go ahead and cut up an onion for the whatever I was making. I chopped away and bawled - we're talking tears streaming down my face - and I couldn't even see what I was chopping so really I'm lucky I didn't chop a finger off! My eyes were burning and burned for a couple hours after the deed was done. I mean that is just ridiculous. I vowed that that was the last time I would be nice and add onion to anything unless it was pre-chopped and frozen.

Imagine my surprise on Christmas morning when I unwrapped these beauties:

Wow! Nothing says hottie like super-hero O goggs! The deal is that you wear these while you chop the onion and you won't cry and your eyes won't sting. I will admit that they mostly work. Some onions are just so nasty that nothing can help but if it's a mild onion they mostly do their job. (Have I mentioned that I also wear plastic gloves while chopping onions so that my hands don't stink?)

I have used them a couple times and aside from looking like a loon it was a better experience than most onion experiences. Did I also mention how self-serving this gift from Mom was? Or maybe you noticed that yourself. haha! But, lest mom or anyone else gets too excited, I still won't cook with onions (unless I won't be home for dinner) and the rule about chopping your own onions is still in full force. Just sayin'. Wanna make sure we're clear on that.

It's All About the Gold, Baby!

Last weekend I went to a singles conference. Yes, I know - you're shocked. Me too. I'm trying to be supportive in my role on the singles committee... Anyway, on Friday night they did a personality test. Normally I don't put a lot of stock in those so I went in thinking I'd just have fun with it. It turned out pretty fun and pretty interesting.

After evaluating a series of statements, yada, yada, we were grouped into color groups (gold, blue, green, orange) according to our scores. I was "gold" and I now understand that I really am gold. And there are other crazy people like me! Seriously. Don't let that scare you though.

We sat in our groups and were given a poster board and told to make a poster that will explain our personalities to the group. The yellow (gold) poster board we were given was torn on the bottom two corners. My first, immediate thought was "ok, we need to either cut that edge off or make the other corners match." hahaha! Then almost everyone at the table said the same thing! hahaha! That was when I knew I belonged and everything would be alright. We started making a list - all in nice rows and columns - with words that explain us like "dependable," "organized," etc. There were some impostors in our group who drew pictures on our chart - sooo not gold - they should have been in the blue group. The blues are all about artsy creativity, lovey dovey kinds of things. Blue was actually a close second for me which is why I was ok about the pictures (although it would have been nice if they were centered a little better...) and not freaking out like some of the gold who were clearly 100% gold.

The oranges are the party/risk takers/need lots of attention people. They were arguing over who would get to get up and present their poster yet. The rest of the groups were arguing about who had to get up and present their poster. You think I'm a little crazy? You should think about those oranges you know - they really are crazy. heh heh.

Greens are the scientific type and they too makes lists but they must have bullet points. They say what they think because that's how it is and why dance around it?

It was so interesting learning about all of this. I realized that while I'm so very gold, it's because of the strong blue in me that I can live with my messy desk. See, I'm not so anal as you thought.