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!