posts in category contest

Thursday, September 26, 2019

amazing floats for the "worlds fair"

I have learned a few things about small town life since moving here 2.5 years ago. This small town in particular has a deep heritage that they are trying to protect and pass on. It is amazing to see the community come together for monthly fun, community activities. Whether they are painting rocks to hide around town, or doing the polka to the German band that has come to play in the beer garden. Maybe it's the zucchini races or the cardboard boat races at the local pool. Whatever they have planned they have the family in mind and fun is at hand. A good time is sure to be had at these community events. The biggest community event of the year is the FAIR!! This is no small fair. This fair includes all the carnival rides you'd expect and the carnival games that are near impossible to win. This fair includes livestock showings, judging of art work, photography, collections, jams, cakes and other delectable desserts. This fair includes a queen and a "future king and queen" as well. This fair boasts everything that you would find at a fair in a city twice as large.

However, the most impressive part of the fair is not having four parades in three days, the antique tractors and classic cars, the local bands that march (and don't forget the cheerleaders) but the floats. These floats are beyond impressive and until you really know how much work goes into these floats you probably don't see the grand scale of wonder and awe that these floats can produce.

Float work begins almost as soon as one fair ends. But in reality the float committees take a few months off. But I'm sure they're always thinking about what they will create next. In the school they have the students draw what they think would make a good float. They have a contest and let the student body decide on which design they should use. Then the work begins; drawing the plans, finding a trailer, finding a huge working garage, ordering non-bleeding tissue paper, and recruiting the help. By May the designs are finalized and the tissue paper cutting begins. All summer long people are seen cutting, counting, pleating and fluffing thousands and thousands of little tiny tissue paper flowers. When you offer to help they will put you to work and you will find out soon which step you like the best. I prefer to fluff, but I know plenty of people who don't want anything to do with fluffing so they will count or pleat. Each flower starts as a huge piece of tissue paper which is then cut down to size and stacked in piles of four. Then the tissue paper is pleated and a wire is wrapped around the middle.

After the pleating comes the fluffing. The four pieces of paper are separated from the other pieces and a flower is formed!! Thousands and thousands of flowers in MANY different colors are pleated and fluffed. If you come into the church building or the classroom you will see boxes and boxes of flowers filling the space.

While some people are pleating and fluffing flowers some others are working on the wood structure of the float. Many times these float includes lights and moving parts. Someone has to have the knowledge to make the wooden base and all the electrical wiring to make things move and light up. This wood base is from our church float from 2017 (I didn't have photos of the base of our school float from this year) just to give you an idea of what it looks like.

The flowers are then put onto cardboard and the wire that wrapped around the middle of the pleated flower is poked through the hole and then split in the back to keep it in place.

Lines have to be carefully measured and marked to make sure the flowers stay in nice clean rows!

The flowers are placed in the boards and then the boards are attached to the wood base of the actual float. As you can see each step takes a lot of man hours and expertise.

This is the finished float that the Lutheran school made this year. Isn't it amazing?! As you can tell it took many many thousands of hours to put this beautiful creation together. This year there were 5 floats in the parades and now it probably makes sense to you why they have the floats go through all 4 parades. With all the work, time and effort that goes into these floats they want to show them off as often as possible.

Here is our church's float from this year too.

These floats are beautiful works of art. The time and creativity that each of these takes is amazing. I am so excited that we have gotten to experience this small town fair. It really is amazing what a town this size can pull off. I am totally impressed. I hope that those who attend the parades and see the floats can really appreciate the time and effort that goes into each and every float that comes down our street in the "Worlds Fair".

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

i heart faces: jump

When I saw what the challenge was a i heart faces I knew exactly what photo I wanted to enter. I realize they may not accept this image since it's supposed to show a face...but you can still see that he has a face you just can't really tell who he is. So, I'll enter and cross my fingers and hope they accept my entry!

If you follow my blog you've seen this before but if not here's the back story...During this family session I was asking the two little girls to jump and after a bit of trying to get them to jump at the same time we sorta gave up...then the dad asked me "can I jump?" I said sure, but I had no idea this is what he was going to do. I'm so glad I was able to capture it!!

Head over to i heart faces to see more "JUMP" entries

Friday, February 18, 2011

vintage

Here's my craft for the American Crafter competition. I really struggled with what to make and when I finally came up with something it came together really quickly. I love how cute this looks but I know it doesn't SCREAM vintage...but if you look at it long enough you'll realize it is! Go over and vote for me if you'd be so kind...here

Monday, February 14, 2011

i made it...

I can't believe that I made it to round three of American Crafter.
Did you see what I was up against?
Those were some mad crafting skills by the other talented ladies!!!
So, now I have to come up with something "vintage".
I'm not a "vintage" type of person, although sometimes I really wish I was,
so I'm really trying hard to think of what to make...any ideas?

Snow photos and lots of other great things to share.
Probably tomorrow...
my parents are here for one more night (gotta soak up every last minute).
Tomorrow they leave to start their overseas teaching adventure.
I'm so excited for them...but so sad for them to leave!!!

See you soon!

Friday, February 11, 2011

san antonio snow

The theme for week 2 of American Crafter is "Let it snow".
I'm not one who usually decorates with the snow theme,
so I was at a loss as to what I should make for my let it snow craft.
My mom and I threw a lot of ideas around.
This is what I finally came up with.
It's a snow mobile...are they snow balls or just giant Texas sized snow flakes?
You decide.

It looks great hanging in the corner of our kitchen,
it adds a little sparkle to the room, and lets us enjoy the snow without the cold.
However it did snow here last week but not much and it didn't last long.
This Texas sized snow mobile is guaranteed to last as long as we want it to.

Don't forget to head over to Naptime Crafters and vote for your favorite "Let it snow" craft.
I would appreciate the vote, but please just vote for your favorite one!

Monday, February 07, 2011

let it snow

I made it to round 2!
Currently wracking my brain trying to figure out what to make.
Since it doesn't snow much here in San Antonio...
except last week while Greg and I were out of town (go figure),
I haven't been motivated to put out snow crafts, or make new ones...
but this has got me motivated so I'll be sure to share my
snow craft later this week!!!

Oh and my mom took pictures of my kids making snow angels while we were gone so I'll make sure to post them asap! And we had a great time at the San Antonio Rodeo and Stock show today...I'll make sure to get some of those pictures up too!

Friday, February 04, 2011

time to vote

Don't forget to head over to Naptime Crafters this weekend and vote for your favorite craft that says "Be My Valentine"

Thursday, February 03, 2011

some sugar (cookies) for my valentine

So this is my first entry in the American Crafter competition.
I made some felt sugar cookies decorated for Valentine's Day.
I was actually working on these before I even found out that I'd been selected.
I made some for Naomi since she loves to play "Food Network"
and some for my etsy store (which I hope to get back up and running next week).
If you'd like me to set aside 4 of the sugar cookies for you
(since I'll be selling two batches of 4), let me know. (They're $7 and $2 s/h)

So, there you have it...
Some Sugar (cookies) for my Valentine!

I hope to show you how I made some of those other fun Valentine's Decorations soon!

Monday, January 31, 2011

american crafter

So....on a whim I decided to enter a crafting bloggy contest.
All I had to do was enter one of my favorite crafts,
then three talented judges (super star crafty bloggers)
were going to pick their favorite 15 crafty bloggers
from everyone who entered and 130 people entered.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email from Amy
telling me that I had been chosen to be a contestant.
I wrote her back and explained our situation with the
call and how I didn't know if I'd be able to get everything done
because I was going to be out of town and such...
but she encouraged me to give it a go.

And she also told me that I was actually chosen #2 out of 130 people.
That's CRAZY!
My crafts are not THAT cool.
I just copy what I see,
in my own way of course.

So anyway, I've got my first craft for
Be my valentine
done already, just have to photograph it!
Can't wait for you to see it.

Then this weekend you can go over to Amy's blog
Naptime Crafters
and vote for your favorite craft...
if it happens to be mine
AWESOME
and if not, that's totally cool too!

This was my audition craft...

Sunday, August 01, 2010

photo challenge: buddies

This week the challenge over at The Paper Mama is BUDDIES.
I love that my two small ones are such good friends...
most of the time.
They love to play together, use their imaginations,
they are each others best friends
(even though sometimes they won't admit it).

Micah was so lost last week while Naomi was at VBS.
He always wants to do what she's doing.
Naomi is the same way and always wants Micah to play with her,
she usually makes him be the Beast but sometimes he gets to be the prince.

So, here are my two buddies,
when they were first starting to play together.
Not exactly sure what it is about this photo...
but I just LOVE it!
I can't wait to see how they do with their next little friend!

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