Pretty Pumpkin!

I wanted to share with you my first craft project in quite a while! This project was fun and a lot less ooey, gooey than carving a pumpkin! I did find this idea on Pinterest.

You can see the original Pinterest post here.

Anyways, have you seen any of the wall art that was done where you line up crayons and melt them down the canvas? This idea was basically the same thing, except with a pumpkin!

I started out with a black fake pumpkin from Walmart. You can use a real pumpkin or whatever type of pumpkin you want to use. I wanted to make something that was going to last longer than a real pumpkin, so that is why I went with the fake pumpkin.

The first step was to pain the pumpkin. You may or may not have to do this step depending on your pumpkin. Since my pumpkin was white, I had to do a couple coats of white paint on it. I used acrylic paint from Walmart.

I kept the pumpkin in a box which ended up being really helpful when I started to melt the crayons.

Next you will want to peel the wrappers off the crayons and break them in half. Peeling the wrappers off was more difficult than I thought it would be!

The original directions were to use tacky glue to glue the crayons to the pumpkins. I have tacky glue, but for the life of me I couldn't find it when I needed it. Instead I used a glue gun. It worked well, except obviously that it will start to melt the crayons.

I also had trouble at this point because I spaced the crayons too far apart at first, and then I had to go and redo it. It wasn't a big deal, but depending on the size of your pumpkin, make sure you keep this in mind!

Next is the fun part! Again, this is when the box comes in handy! Turn on that blow dryer and start melting! I did this sitting on the floor with the box sitting on a plastic cover. The crayon will bleed through to the bottom of the box, so just to be on the safe side, I had plastic on the floor so it wouldn't get on my floor. It takes a while to melt and can sometimes splash all over the place, so keep an eye on where the wax is going. Also, I used off brand crayons so this might have impacted my end result.

Here is my pumpkin right after it started to melt. I love the abstractness of this project! And I love colors and rainbows so this was right up my alley!

Here is my pumpkin after I finished. I felt there were some places that didn't get enough variety, so I added some more crayon to those spaces to fill them in. Then I let it dry overnight.

Next step is to seal it! Since my base is acrylic paint, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to come off. I used a mod podge acrylic sealer that has a gloss to it. I let this dry overnight as well. It has a wet look to it, but is completely dry. I like the wet look though, it kinda goes with the look of wax melting!

Here is the end result! As you can see, the darker colors definitely showed up better. All in all it was an amazing fun and easy project.

The Lundt Life...Nine Months Later!

Wow! I really haven't kept up on my blog!

I really planned to, but sometimes life happens. A lot has changed in nine months!

Moving into our new house was the last update I made. It seems like a lot has happened since then, but looking back, only a few major things have changed in our lives.

In March we had an addition (or two) to the family. No, not children (at least not in human form!), but two new puppies! We already had two dogs, Ace and Echo and we decided that we wanted another puppy. When we went to get another one, there were only two puppies in the litter, and we couldn't pick between them, so we just got them both! Plus, I am not a fan of odd numbers, so four is defiantly better than three! So now we have Ace, Echo, Izzie, and Ollie! They are now about nine months old so we are almost out of the puppy stage!

It was quite a difference in our household pretty much doubling the number of animals, but we haven't regretted it for a minute! The fit perfectly into the family. It has been really fun to see them grow up together and they have become best friends. Echo loves to attack them, but Ace on the other end only goes as far as "tolerating" them. He has warmed up to them for the most part, but you can still tell he has the attitude that he would have been perfectly happy being the only child!

Here are some pictures!

Left: All of the dogs eagerly waiting for a treat! Right: Ace and Echo (top) before puppies riding in car, and (bottom) puppies at the neighbors when they were about three months old

Izzie Shortly after we brought them home (about 2 months)

Ollie Shortly after we brought them home (about 2 months)

Ace (4 yrs old) and Echo (3 yrs old) about a year ago

The Babies when we first got to meet them! (Around Jan 2013)

Izzie a few months ago (Aug 2013)

They were all thirsty after playing in the big backyard!

The new normal, Izzie, Ollie, and Echo playing 

while laying on me with Ace off sleeping somewhere!

I think I need to take more pictures of the dogs! As you probably can imagine, everyday is an adventure with 16 paws around the house! They are our children (for right now), and they are so lovable and fun. Echo and Ollie are still in a battle of who is the Alpha Female. Izzie knows shes the little cute one and is learning to use it to her advantage. Ace is the easy going one that sleeps 95% of the time. Ollie is the strong, silent type who is turning out to be a pretty good dog. Echo is the watch dog and makes sure to alert us of any noises by barking constantly. They each have their own little personalities and all get along really well!

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Another awesome thing that happened within the last nine months is Nathan and I were able to visit Cancun for vacation! It was a ton of fun and we made some awesome memories! It was our first time being out of the country and it was something we would love to do again! We got to go on a catamaran, a speed boat tour in the ocean, went snorkeling twice, got to wake up to the beautiful Caribbean sea every morning, and the highlight of our trip was getting a chance to swim with dolphins! Here are a few of the pictures we have from the trip!

The view from our room!

The hotel we stayed in

The beach and the ocean!

Nathans favorite dessert that he had almost every night!

 The Catamaran..it has a hammock towards the back of the boat

The beautiful sunset

I love Palm trees!

The view while Nathan is driving the speed boat in the ocean

Underwater snorkeling pictures

The place where we swam with dolphins

Me and a dolphin

Me swimming on the stomach of a dolphin (they can go really fast!)

Nathan and a smiling dolphin!

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Other than our fun, the only other exciting thing that has happened in the last few months is that I started a new job. I was working for a company in a retail store selling T-Mobile. I decided I was done with the stress of meeting sales quotas and pay being so heavily weighted on commission. I decided to start working at the T-Mobile call center in Meridian. I started training in July and have been done with training almost a month now. I really like it a lot better. I have better benefits including much more time off and a consistent schedule. I am planning on working for T-Mobile for the rest of my career. They have a lot of varied options within the call center as well as other opportunities in a lot of different lines of work. They are making a lot of business changes for the better which has caused a lot of growth. It is really exciting to be part of a company that is growing right now with how the economy is.

Well now that I have caught you up on the major things that has happened in the Lundt life, I promise to be more consistent about posting. I am currently working towards a better and healthier me so this blog will include a lot of posts about my progress and what I am doing to be successful. I also want to start reviewing products and posting more of the recipes I have been trying out lately!

Thanks for sticking with me as I fit nine months into one blog entry!

And Then There Was a House!

So I have been WAY behind on my blog, about 2 months worth! I was planning on blogging as our house was being built but I guess life happened, and I didn't. So here is about 2 months worth of blogging fit into one post!

The last time I posted was at the end of October and at that time they had just started framing our house. Here are some more pictures of our house in the framing stage.

At the beginning of November they were working on the end of framing as well as delivering some of the items for the house including our Jacuzzi tub and shower stalls!

They had the bonus room framed enough that we were actually able to go upstairs. Here is a picture of Nathan's pickup from looking out the upstairs window.

Around November 13th, they finally started painting! Here are some pictures of them painting as well as the final product!

On the 16th, there was finally drywall on the walls and our house really started to look like a house with rooms instead of a bunch of 2x4s and 2x6s.

They finally started installing some of the more detailed items like the shelving in the closets and the pantry. This happened around November 24th.

We were starting to get worried because they hadn't put our roof on and it was getting closer to winter and snow every day. Finally, on November 28th, the roof was being installed!

On the 28th, a ton of boxes were delivered that contained our beautiful dark cabinets for our kitchen.

On the 29th, the walls were painted and trim was installed everywhere except where the carpet was going to be.

November 30th our cabinets in the master bath were installed as well as in the main bathroom, guest bathroom, and they started on the installation of the cabinets in the kitchen.

The 1st, we finally got a look at our bathroom coming together. When you are picking out the colors, it is so hard to know what is going to look good together when you are looking at samples and are trying to picture it. Luckily we love the flooring we picked out which is good since a majority of the floors are this design.

Our counter tops were also starting to be installed. Nathan thought we went a little too light on our kitchen counter tops, but once the flooring went in and all of our black appliances and cabinets, the lighter colored counter tops were a really nice contrast.

All of our bathrooms are starting to look like they could actually be used as a bathroom!

The back splash really added to the contrast and matched the counter tops perfectly! Don't mind the random guy in the picture! He was one of the awesome construction workers who helped make our house as amazing as it is!

So when we originally decided on all the plans and details for our house, we had decided to rough in the ability to add sconce lights to our walls in between the windows in the living room. We had planned to get lights and install them at a later time. Well CBH decided to throw in three sconce lights for us which was awesome!

On Dec 5th, we have carpet. They also installed the rest of the cabinets including the elevated cabinets above the fridge and microwave. The microwave isn't installed yet, but our two oven stove and ceiling fan have been!

Also our lights have been installed as well as our jetted tub and tile around the tub (also added at no extra cost, thanks CBH!).

Most everything by this point has been installed. From this point there was a lot of fine tuning and stuff outside to be completed.

By the 6th, all the carpet was installed and our house was really looking like our dream home!

Now we had to play the waiting game. From what we could see, everything looked pretty much done. There was still quite a bit to do before we could move in. In order for the appraisal to be completed, the sod had to be done in the front yard as well as the brick on the front of the house. This is when things got a little stressful. For some reason things were planned to be done a certain day, but then were delayed. This really made us stress out because we were trying to be able to close on our house early enough before Christmas that we would still have time to get in and unpacked before the 22nd.

After fighting with them and stressing out, the sod and brick were finally done around December 12th.

So finally, as of December 13th. our house was finally completed! We were so relieved. All that was left to do was the final detailing and signing off on everything and then allowing the bank time to get everything ready for closing. Our goal was to be closed and starting to be moving in by the 17th. Some papers got submitted too late and we got pushed back to the 18th. This still gave us enough time (barely) to get moved in before family was in town on the 22nd.


It is amazing to look back to see how much progress happened in so little time. We started out with a empty lot on October 15th and as of December 13th our house was completely built and we were moved in and closed on December 18th.

We couldn't have dreamed for it to go any better. Even though things were tense, we came out stronger for the stress and have an amazing house that we can call our own and enjoy for many years to come!

Here are some pictures we have taken since we have moved in. It feels like home now with all of our stuff. We are still unpacking and organizing, but as much as I am OCD, the organizing will always be a work in progress. I am hoping to have many opportunities to try some Pinterest ideas in our new home. One of the first ideas I have already started on is the painting on the wall. 

  

All in all, this was an awesome opportunity to go through and I am very happy with our decision to build. I can't thank the people enough who were there to support us through this process including our coworkers, friends, family, CBH Homes, our realtor and his assistant, and our mortgage loan officer. You all played a part in making our dreams come true!