Land of the Free, Home of the President

This President's/Valentines Day weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to spend it in none other then our nation's capital - Washington, D.C. I may or may not have mentioned this on this blog before, but I am a volleyball coach, and my team competed in the Capitol Hill Classic this weekend. I love away tournaments because they're like mini vacations that I am getting paid for - the best kinds. I also always invite a few friends to join me on these long weekends, because hey, it's basically a free trip. My friends Alex and Wilber decided to join me and I couldn't have asked for a better pair to spend the weekend with!

Friday: Travel Day

We left a little before 3 pm and hit the road to D.C. With bags packed, we jammed out to some T. Swift and other throw back tunes all the way there. It's about a 5 hour car ride, and with stops (including a detour to get some cupcakes at Georgetown Cupcakes for my teams) we got to the hotel at about 8:45. I had a meeting with both of the teams that I coach, with my Head Coach, at 9 pm to distribute wristbands that all you to enter the facility as well as just going over what to expect for the upcoming weekend. All of the girls were very excited to start playing and even more excited to meet both of my friends who I brought along on this trip. 

After introductions and all of the excitement died Alex, Wil and I realized we were starving so we ventured out into the city to find somewhere to eat. Given that it was February 13th, the day before Valentines Day, many couples were out that night and it was a bit hard to find a restaurant that was able to seat us without a reservation. We eventually found one though called Zaytinya. To say it was delicious would be an understatement, this meal was possibly the best meal that I have ever had. It features traditional Greek, Turkish, and Lebanese dishes that are served family style, you pick a few dishes and share it with the table, altogether everything was to die for. If you are in the DC area, I would highly recommend checking this restaurant out!

A few of our selections for the night - a Greek salad, shrimp, and brussel sprouts

Awaiting our delicious meal

Alex and I enjoying dinner

After dinner we decided to walk around DC and see the monuments since there wasn't going to be much time for the rest of the weekend to sightsee. After going about 8 blocks, the cold and wind caught up with us and we decided it would just be best to head back to the hotel and go to sleep. However we did catch some cute pictures of the Capitol building prior to heading back.

Alex and I

Wil and I

Saturday: First Day of Play

Saturday was the first day of the tournament but we didn't play until the afternoon wave. How this works, since there are many teams that participate in these larger travel tournaments, is there is an afternoon wave and a morning wave. Morning wave starts at 9 am and the afternoon wave starts at 3:30. My 13's team had the afternoon wave and my 14's had the morning wave. Given that I wanted to watch both teams play, my entire day consisted of volleyball. I went and watched them play at 9 am and then at 11, which my friends both decided to come watch, and at 11:30 we left to go get lunch with my 13's team at Panera.

Wil and I watching an 18's team during the morning wave

After Panera 13's were on. We went 2-1 in our pool that ended up lasting until 11 pm! Our court was behind from the morning wave and ended up getting even more behind because a couple of our games went to 3 sets. But given that we had a winning record, that meant we played in the morning. So it was immediately off to bed because we had to leave for the convention center at 7:45 to play at 9 am.

Sunday: Second Day of Play

This was the second day of pool play and the day that my friends had to head home because we didn't have school off on Monday. After we played in the morning we ended up 1-2 for the day, which was a bit disappointing because that meant we ended up in the Silver division, instead of Gold (which is the highest). After we played, I caught some lunch with my friends before they headed back to Raleigh at this restaurant about 2 blocks from our hotel called Cuba Libre. After bidding them farewell, I spent sometime with my team and then caught a game for one of my high schoolers that started at 8:30. After that it was time to pack up and head to bed for the last day of the tournament.

Monday: Last Day

Like the rest of the weekend, Monday we had a start time of 9 am. However unlike the rest of the weekend, this day was single elimination so if we were going to lose we were done for the day and had to go home. If we won, we kept playing. The first game was definitely our hardest by far, they took us to 3 games but we ended up winning the second and third games easily. After that we were on a roll, and won our next two games which meant we wont the silver division and 13th place overall for the weekend!

Overall I am very happy with how the girls played, and had so much fun with my trip to DC this weekend. I'm so glad my friends were able to come up and keep me company. Can't wait till the next trip! Next stop - Atlanta!

Till next time,

Casey Rose

Crafting Daze

Well hello again, long time no see.

I didn't realize how difficult it would be to find things to blog about. It's been a week or two since my last post. I figured that because it was summer time and I had all these things to do that putting up blogs would be a breeze! Not the case.

Ever since I had gotten back from the beach my life started up again as normal - working, babysitting, taking a few trips here and there to visit my boyfriend and my friends in Wilmington. Other than that, it has been a lot of sitting around at home doing a lot of nothing.

However, one thing that has kept me busy is crafting!

As you may or may not know, I am in Pi Beta Phi sorority at my university. I rushed last year in the fall and have loved every second of it. For those of you who are familiar with sorority life, you understand the whole Big/Little process. For those of you aren't, I will explain...

When you rush a sorority and begin the new member process there is a point down the road where you are assigned a 'Big'. This person is supposed to be your mentor, someone who is normally a year older than you and was just in your shoes as a new member last year.

At my school the way we find out who our Big is going to be is by Big/Little week. This was probably the best week of my life, not joking. It is 4 days of getting spoiled to death. The first day is normally a card or letter from your Big (this is still anonymous by the way). The second day you receive some sort of sweet treats. Third day is tee-shirt day, my favorite; you get a bunch of hand-me-down tee shirts from your big and family. And the last day is reveal day! This is the day when you find out who your big is and you get completely spoiled with a basket full of things Pi Phi related. For example my big gave me a couple of items from the Pi Phi Lilly Pulitzer collection, wine glasses, more tee shirts, cork board, Pi Phi related canvases, etc.

This can get to be pretty expensive if you decide to go all out, however at the end of the day it is all worth it. So with all of that being said, and having one year of greek life under my belt, I get to be a Big next year! I have already started crafting for my little and I am loving every second of it. I have only started working on two canvases for her and neither are completely finished yet, however I figured I would update you on my progress as I go along as well as maybe do a tutorial as to how to do some of these.

I got inspiration for my first canvas off of a group on Facebook called The Big/Little Connection where a lot of people post different crafts they did for their littles. I thought it this one was precious, so the crafting began...

Now some of you may be asking how I got the hands for the design. Well I tried finding cartoon hands of our symbol online but I had no luck. But if you have a Mac then you are in luck. There is an effect on the Photo booth application that is called "Pop art". All I did was pose my hands in a certain way and took loads of pictures until I found one that I liked the best, here was the winner:

Then what I did was printed the picture out (I actually had to use two pieces of paper to get it the size I wanted) and on the back I shaded over the lines that were the most important for my picture (obviously the TV in the background didn't make the cut). After that I flipped it over, positioned it how i wanted and proceeded to trace the lines of my hands and it turned out like the picture shown below. This method also works very well if you were painting a cooler.

I then colored it in with neon paint, I decided to go with these colors instead of the muted colors that were from my inspiration. (sorry for it being side ways, i couldn't figure out how to get it horizontal)

After a few more coats I added the black around the edges. This is good because you don't have to completely worry about staying within the lines when originally coloring above because the black will hide any mistakes.

After that I drew the black lines in between the boxes.

And traced the lines around the hands. You also want to keep your original photo that you traced in case you have to go over any lines that may have been covered up by the paint - that blue covered up everything.

And here is the finished product! I'm obviously not completely done, I still have to add the "Throw what you know, Pi Beta Phi". But I will probably just use either silver sharpie or paint for that, it shouldn't be too difficult.

So that is my first project of the summer! I am very proud of the way that it turned out. If you have any questions about paint or brushes that I used feel free to leave a comment with any questions that you may have! I have also started on a chevron canvas so be on the look out for that, I am done with the chevron but I want to wait until it is all finished to make a post about it because it is going to be one of my favorite pieces :)

I will definitely have a post at the end of the summer with all of my finished products so also be on the look out for that. Other than that, happy crafting!

Until next time,

Casey Rose