Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Gapinski Family Photos 2010

Back in October we had the chance to take some family photos before it got too cold. We actually did both my family & Tyler's family on the same evening which worked out SO great! I will post my side's photos next but first here is a few of the GAPINSKI'S...








Sunday, November 21, 2010

A recent project!

So a couple months ago I had the random desire to redo a chair that I could use when I shoot family portraits. I didn't want to spend a lot of money but I wanted the end result to not be just a boring white chair. I asked my cute friend Emily Flannery for some words of advice & she helped me a lot!

I started by finding a plain old kitchen chair from DI for $5

The hard part was sanding all the shine (top coat) off of the whole chair. With all the little nooks and creases it made it very tedious.
I had pre-determined that I wanted the chair to be gray & white to easily match anything I may want to use it for. So after I finished sanding I painted the entire chair with gray primer spray paint.
After it dried, the next step was to coat the entire chair with crackle glaze.
After the glaze had dried it was time to paint the white top coat.
It was pretty cool to watch the paint crackle as I was going over with the white paint. The nice thing was that I didn't have to be too careful about making everything look perfect because the end result I wanted was for a weathered old look.
After it dried, I sanded some of the edges of chair just for effect & then put a clear sealant top coat so that the paint wouldn't chip off with use.
And the end result...
I really loved learning how to redo this chair. It wasn't difficult but it took time. The end result made all the time well worth it!


On a side note... Did you guys see this sunset the other night?? GORGEOUS

Thursday, November 11, 2010

The Buddy Walk

Dang.. I'm behind.

Every year we have the privilege of going to the Buddy Walk to honor our amazing nephew who has downs. It's such an awesome time & we enjoy spending time together as a family.
I was also super happy that Tyler was able to attend this year.

We enjoyed a concert put on by Signing Time which is a DVD series and TV show that teaches kids sign language. Kids with down syndrome do well with sign language and my brother and sister in law have been doing such a great job at teaching Porter.

{Emerie enjoying the concert}
{Porter Ray enjoying time with Daddy during the concert}
{The Signing Time crew}
{Isn't he just the cutest?!}
{Em & Karli during the walk}
{Em & Chase}

{Waiting patiently for lunch..}
{Devanee enjoying her cotton candy}
{Tim & Megan enjoyed it as well}
{Tyler & I}
{Dev found some sweet glasses & decided to give them a try}
{Dev, Em & Karli enjoying the huge blow up slide}

This was such a great day, and we have always looked forward to the Buddy Walk every year. We are so blessed to have such an amazing nephew - he is such an incredible guy & we are so excited to watch him grow up! WE ARE LUCKY.

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