Cabo San Lucas

The first point I have to make, is that Jason is way better at this "blogging" thing than me. I am so good at not doing it for a while that I feel like there is so much to catch up on that I get overwhelmed and I never update. It's just like my journal writing... uugggh... Last year's New Year Resolution was to be better about writing in my journal - at least once a week. Look's like it's going to stick around for 2009 - maybe another year will help me get the hang of it. My grandma, who passed away in December 2005, wrote in a journal nearly every day and I have taken the liberty to start transcribing her journal from 1984. I haven't been very good about doing it, but it does inspire me to keep up my journal writing. Blogging is similar enough, I should be able to do it! (Honestly, one thing that kind of "un-inspires" me, is that people very rarely comment on my entries. I know they aren't amazing or anything, but I would just like to know that people are at least somewhat interested... :) That's a hint, guys.)

So, what has happened that I didn't write about. We went to Cabo San Lucas. That was a big deal for us - it was our first vacation by ourselves. I know that sounds silly, but it's not. My parents are usually nice enough to let us tag on to their adventures and we usually invite them when we have fancy plans, but this time we wanted just us. (We still haven't heard the end of how mean we were to not invite them on this one.... )

K, I kinda figure that the easiest way to do this is to post what we emailed home to our parents: So we hope you enjoy!

CheesCloth Ghost Craft

Ok, with Halloween speedily approaching and not much time left on my Calender, I decided that I was going to do something that I have wanted to do for a number of years. Years ago, my mom had made a ghost out of cheesecloth that was just freakin cool to a 7 year old. Anyways, I was reminded of this craft when I was visiting Roberts and they had a small one out on display that I suppose one of the workers had made. Well I decided that mine was going to be big and kinda scary (or at least cool).

So I bought the necessary supplies.

4 Sheets of Cheesecloth (1yd square each).
A bottle of Fabric stiffiner (its pretty much like glue).
A big foam ball (for the head of my ghost)
Toilet paper or Paper towel rings (the cardboard inside roll)
2 or however many metal hangers you think you need
Hairdryer
Construction paper or some sort of thicker paper
Pencil
Permanent marker

With these supplies I went over to my mothers house to enlist some more hands. Muahahahahaaaa!! I took two metal hangers and made a metal figure out of it to support my ghost head and the arms. We used the cardboard Paper towel rolls to cover the arms so they looked a little more proportionate.

We dumped the entire bottle of fabric stiffener into a bowl and then filled the empty bottle about 1/3 to 1/2 full or water and added that to make it easier to work with (trust me you will want to do that, I tried it the other way and it didn't work worth JACK!).

So as my mom soaked the cheesecloth in the watered down fabric stiffener and then squeezed it out (not hard because the fragile cloth will tear). My brother Eric and I (wearing disposable latex gloves, I did mention that we all wore them right?) and we draped the sheets of cheesecloth over the Foam ball and metal frame we made and positioned the cloth the way we wanted it to fall. We continued to do this until all four sheets of cheesecloth were draped over the figure and it looked awesome!!

We supported the outstretched arm with something underneath, since the wet cheesecloth was heavy, and we got a hairdryer out to help speed up a few crucial spots that support the entire figure. Then we left it to sit for about 12 hours and VIOLA! it was stiff (it can take up to 24 hrs to dry). Once the Ghost is dry simply remove / take out the wireframe and foam ball so the ghost is ... well... a ghost! It will now, with the cheesecloth dry stand on its own. Pretty cool hu?


So then I just drew the shape of eyes I wanted on some cardboard and cut them out and then traced both eyes and then filled them in with permanent marker right on the cheese cloth.


The ghost turned out really good in the end, I look forward to displaying it on Halloween, or helping somebody else with theirs! Pretty neet. I encourage you to try it. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask!

Here you can see the overall form of the Ghost. The outstretched arm was a little tricky but we got it!



Here you can see that we mostly let the cheesecloth fall where it wanted to, except for a few effects we wanted. You have to remember that this base will support your ghost so it has to be strong. Feel free to fold or overlap some cloth, just remember that it has to look natural and ghoolish!



This is the cool part. The ghost when dried and finished weighs close to nothing. It is empty inside and partly see-through depending on how much cheesecloth you have.

Update from Aimee :)

Hi! I just saw that Jason posted again! He's so cute, huh? :) Anyway, I have been working on getting stuff for our Halloween party up and going - good thing I have help! I just finished sewing a bunch of "leaves" for a dress that I designed. One of my best friends in the whole world is the one responsible for making it come to life. It's for one of our Young Women in our ward, Jackie - she is going to her homecoming dance this Saturday and had asked me in June to design a dress for her. It looks FANTASTIC so far! It is so exciting. I will post pictures when it is done. It's going to be great!!!

Best 80's Cartoon?

Hey, Everybody! So I have recently undertaken a number of new projects. The first one is the upkeep of this blog. The second is making a Ghost out of cheesecloth for Halloween. Its always been my favorite holiday! Anyways, it's drying right now and as soon as its done I will put a couple of pictures on here to show you how freaking cool it is! It's really simple to make too. Anyways, the third project is more out of curiosity and goes along with the blog. Its a Poll!! Anybody can vote and its completely anonymous. The first one is Which is the best 80's Cartoon? I know there were a ton of them but for the four that are listed please vote! And, if yours wins I will post a video or maybe even an entire episode of it on the blog for everyone to watch! So get voting. Its just right over here -------------------> on the right side of the blog.

I finally finished my online portfolio!

I am just excited that I finally finished my portfolio - I just have to blog about it! Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think I even had to dive into a bit of scary JavaScript.... that was pretty much the toughest thing I have ever done (not really :) ).

You can check it out here!

Sudoku

I am just playing around with the blog at this point and seeing what is possible. So, in an effort to keep people checking out our blog, perhaps even when we are not posting, I have posted a Sudoku game on the right side under "Stalker List". I played it and its not bad if I say so myself. So if your bored check us out!

I am soo in.

Ok everybody I finally added myself to the contributors list. So now when I post something it will say me and not Aimee. Just FYI!

CHATROOM!

Ok Everybody here is a code based chatroom. It is located in the upper right hand corner of the blog page and is called "McDaniel's Living Room". I figured the blog was not a blog without a chatroom in which anybody on the site could talk to anybody else on the site in real time! Pretty Sweet hu? Well I thought so anyways. Enjoy!

Adventurers...

Anyways, Aimee and I have decided that we need to spend some time getting to know Utah more. So, last week we decided to be adventurous and go explore two things in Utah that we had never been too. One was the Golden Spike Museum and the other was the Spiral Jetty.

For those of you who don't know what either of these two are. The Golden Spike museum is
located at the spot that the last ceremonial spike was driven to mark the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. This Spike joined the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroads together on May 10, 1869.
You know it’s funny how the whole thing transpired. The government offered the company that could build the first transcontinental railroad a lot of money, not to mention that every other mile of railroad that they built they could own ever other square mile of land touching the railroad on both sides. This was great encouragement for the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. Both built like crazy and met in Utah. Actually, neither railroad wanted to join together because that meant that they would not get the complete grant that the government offered, nor as much land as they would if they each built straight to the coast, so they actually passed each other and continued building. Fed up with the fighting, Congress declared where and when they should be joined. Pretty cool hu?!

Anyways we also went to see the Spiral Jetty. It’s a giant spiral built off of the North Coast of the Salt Lake coast. It was built by American sculptor Robert Smithson in 1970 during a drought with black basaltic rock, but after it was built the Salt Lake rose burying it with water for nearly three decades. Everybody just about forgot about it because of this and the death of the artist. Years later in 2004 the Spiral Jetty re-emerged because of a drought and everybody was like, "WTF where did this come from?" I'm sure a couple of loons were like, "Aliens!!" LOL.

It was a cool site. The Salt Lake is still very low, We walked out about 50 Yards to even reach the water. I believe you can walk out to Antelope Island from the South Shore. Which by the way there was an old anchor out there a while ago and I intend to go and get it! :)

Anyways, we plan to continue this tradition of exploring Utah for as many weekends as we possibly can. Its amazing, you live somewhere forever and you never go see anything thats there! We will try to keep everybody posted.

Catch-up...

Wow a lot has happened since we last updated our blog. First, I want to defend myself and say, we have been too busy. LOL. But if I did I would be lying. Second, I would like to recap what has happened over the last 6 months. I am however, going to break down what has happened into a few sections so that its easier to follow. I will be re-capping everything since I have plenty of time right now.


OOOooo I just remembered all that we are planning for October! We bought 6 Big pumpkins that we are going to carve and design for our Halloween party! Its going to be awesome! Costume Party with friends, with fun games and activities and the classic scary movie going on in the background on our projector. Last year the party was a huge hit! We played all sorts of games and just hung out. Anyways, we just bought some shrunken skull's that grow when they are soaked in water for a few hours. It will be both a great decoration and a great prize! Costumes... Aimee and I couldn't decide what to wear for Halloween so we are leaving our options oh my head feels like its been through a can opener. I actually decided to update the blog because I ran into an old friend's (Brittany) mom at JoAnn's. I felt kinda weird cause its one of those times you feel like crap and you run into people. We bought ourselves skin colored unitards...I have been wanting this for a while. It will be great for my flasher costume HAHAHA. Also we are going to airbrush some muscle definition on them and can use them for our He-Man and She-Ra costumes or our Adam and Eve costumes. Either way it will be great. I was going to be Captain Moroni and Aimee was going to be Rainbow Bright for Halloween this year but I think we will keep those in the bedroom. We decided to go as Adam and Eve. It will be fun. I need to go find a HUGE leaf!! But yeah so that's what's new with us, I think. I always forget something.

So anyways, I know all of you are wondering, "Where have you two been? What have you two been up to? Well that brings me back to my reason for writing this blog today. So here we go in chronological order.

First I left my job at Target. The management there was getting really crappy and I never wanted to work there forever. So I spend the whole next semester (which was my last!) focusing on school and finding a better job. So anyways my last big project in school was to write a full blown business plan for a company that was going to go international.


So my team and I choose to do a timeshare/hotel in Croatia. I believe over the course of the semester and countless hours researching, analyzing and planning we had a polished business plan of around a couple of hundred pages. Research included of course. Needless to say, we aced the class. I finished the semester and instead of walking I decided to take off to Washington D.C.for a week or so to see the sights! I told them to just mail my diploma to me. :)


Throughout the summer Aimee focused on taking care of a few HUGE projects she had going. She was doing a whole website redesign for a Non-Profit Organization called Operation Kids and for a company called RW Smith Brokers, who are a broker's broker.

Operation kids, has been one of the large contributors to the rebuilding and reorganization of schools, parks, community places in New Orleans and elsewhere. They are a fantastic organization and I would recommend them to anybody. Aimee and I have donated money to them as well.

And because of me and Aimee's hard work we have been able to pay off her car and all our debt. We have planned a trip to Los Cabos, Mexico. This will happen October 18th - 28th. Its going to be such a blast, we are going to go para sailing and snorkeling, swimming, scuba diving, dancing, eating..etc.. you name it! I'm going to love it so much!