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Monday, April 30, 2012

Before I leave St. Louis

My St. Louis Bucket List

  1. Go to City Museum
  2. Visit Perennial Ales
  3. Eat at Pappys
  4. Go to the Soulard Farmer's Market
  5. Eat at the Creperie
  6. Go paddle boating in Forest Park
  7. Go to a Cardinals Game
  8. Go to Ted Drews
Anything else I should add on there? Its a combination of things I love about STL (Pappys) and things that I've always wanted to do and never done (Paddle boating)

Speaking of bucket lists, I ran across the cutest, saddest, and most inspirational website. 
This blog is about a little girl named Avery, she is 5 months old and has been diagnosed with a fatal genetic disorder called SMA. Her parent's started a bucket list of everything they want her to accomplish and experience. Read the bucket list and then pray for this sweet little girl and her family.
*Sad update, Avery passed away on 4/30/12*


Wednesday, April 25, 2012

#WINNING

This is the last Thurtene post. At least for a year, because who knows, maybe I'll get back to St. Louis next year to see the Thurtene facades. Let's recap, shall we?

On Friday, April 13th the facade looked like this:

7 days later, on Friday April 20th, the facade looked like this:
That's the same front wall, just taken from a different angle.

Sometimes, I browse through these DIY blogs were people do incredible things to their living rooms or kitchens, but it takes them like 2-3 months. Granted, slightly different scenario, because I have my doubts on rather or not these facades could remain standing for 2-3 months. Plus there are nearly 200 people working on this facade compared to like 4 tops on those blogs. BUT STILL! Jeez-Louise! Pretty fricking awesome! 

On Sunday night, Thurtene honorary gives out the awards. There are a bunch of small awards for the other booths (best food, best activity, spirit for a non-facade etc.) But the big ones (The ones I care about) are given out for the facade.
They are announced in order of least exciting to most exciting. And USUALLY the same group doesn't win more than one award (sometimes they'll give spirit and another award to the same group)
The awards are:
  1. Spirit: for participation in Thurtene's activities and have a large presence and excitement down on the lot
  2. Best Production: for the play being the best
  3. Best Construction: for overall facade construction being the best
  4. The Burmeister Award: for overall excellence (basically its a combination of all three of the lesser awards
By sunday night there was a lot of discussion if the Burmeister just might be ours. But you don't want to jinx yourself, so there was also a lot of mentioning the word Burmeister - then quickly going to knock on wood. Luckily Thurtene = lots of wood (hahaha) (laughing at my own joke about wood = evidence not yet a real person)

We felt like we had just missed out on the burmeister the year before because of the lack of spirit, so the ChiO/Beta team put a lot of effort into showing our spirit this year. So when they announced spirit, and we didn't win the reaction was this:

I tried to compare it to Toddlers & Tiaras to somebody that night, and got made fun of. WHATEVER I <3 TRASHY TELEVISION. But it's like if you get passed over for a lower award, then you feel like you are probably winning a higher award. But there is always that little chance that you win nothing...

So next they announced best production. We had heard that the overall quality of the productions wasn't quite as good as usual this year. But we really liked ours soo....when a different group won spirit, the reaction was this:

Then they moved onto best construction. We knew that our construction rocked, but wasn't all that elaborate, so I actually didn't think we had much of a chance at construction either way. Anyway, we didn't win. Instead the group that had the other facade that I really liked (the Retro Gas Station) won and our overall's reaction was like this:

I think they knew what was coming next. Because next they announced the winner of the Burmeister award for overall excellence. This is like that moment of truth, because you are either walking home with no prize at all, when you thought you had a shot at the big one OR you are walking home with the big one. When the announced the winner, the board's reaction was like this:

WE WON!!!!

Celebration and pandemonium ensued.




Congratulations Chi Omega and Beta Theta Pi, on a wonderful Thurtene! There has been a major upswing in the result of our Thurtene success since I've joined ChiO
year 1: Winners of the spirit award
year 2: Winners of best production award
year 3: Winners of best construction award
year 4: Winners of the BURMEISTER

Awesome, now don't fall back down to winning nothing okay? I have expectations of a repeat next year =)




Monday, April 23, 2012

The finished products



So I love seeing how everything comes together at the last minute. So I purposely took photos of all the facades when I stopped by on Friday afternoon at like 3ish and then again when I was at the carnival on Saturday. It amazes me how much changes in those 17 odd hours between 3pm and 8am the next morning.

AEPhi/Theta Xi
Retro Gas Station

Here is their facade on Friday afternoon. I liked this one from the beginning, the colors were really nice and bright and it was very clean. I really liked their garage (there is a car made out of wood in there, that's pretty darn impressive)
I was curious to see how they were going to decorate a gas station, and you'll see in the photos below how great of a job they did.



And then here is their facade during the carnival. It really came together with all the little details on it. Also, major plus of building a gas station? You can just store all the tools in the facade, no need to lug everything off the lot on friday night. They had tons of tools hanging on the wall and in the garage.








Here is a better photo of the car. Its the little details of this that I loved. Like the bumper sticker and the guy under the car. I pulled him out because I wanted to see how they did it. They stuck 2x4s down the jeans and into the shoes. Brilliant!






The front was great. I like that they had windows in their facade that you could actually see through. Then all the little details with the signs and the ice chest were great. And it was all really clean.

They had 4 of these gas pumps which were pretty great. Overall, really impressed with how this facade turned out.











KKG and Kappa Sig
Kitchen/Refrigerator
 This one really came together on the last night. It took until Friday for me to even understand what they were planning to do with it. But all I figured out was that the cabinets were going up and that the fridge door was the thing on the corner that you would walk through to get into the facade.

This is the final product on Saturday during the carnival. It was interesting because everything was soooo large. I liked the oven and the giant skillet. But I like bright colors, and a kitchen could be bright, but this one wasn't.
 The fridge turned out pretty cool. I wander how they got it to look so shiny and reflective. But overall the sizing and proportions of everything seemed a little off.
The other thing I really liked were some of their details. On that shelf they had different food products that they had changed to reference the sorority of fraternity. Like the book of Sigma K. How Clever!








AOPi
Pirate Ship
This was AOII pirate ship on Friday afternoon. I majorly failed and didn't grab a photo of the final project. But it ended up looking really great. AOII is the only group that does it on their own without a fraternity, so its a challenge with half the money and half the people to help with the facade. So even though it isn't a full facade like the other ones, it really looked great!
They even had a working fountain surrounded by greenery, so impressive!




Alpha Phi/SAE
House of Cards
 This is the photo taken Friday afternoon. Their theme was house of cards. A very cool element was the stacks of cards on the sides, but I was curious to see what else they were going to add.

You can see in the photo below that not much got added to the outside in the last night, but their inside was very cool (I didn't take a photo of it!) They had an entire wall of the back of playing cards. And then the rest of it kind of looked castle-like.

AEPi/PiPhi
Toy Box
 Here is theirs on Friday. The blocks were cool and very colorful, but it seemed like it needed a lot more of something to make it obvious that it was a toy box.










They did what I thought they needed! They had a lot of large toys that they put up overnight. A giant slinky, a huge over-sized game boy, a dollhouse on one side. It helped it a lot. I really liked the game boy! But it felt like they were probably a little rushed and that some of the paint jobs weren't as nice as they could have been.
DG/SigNu
Monster Under the Bed
 DG/SigNu's facade really came together the last night. You could tell from early in the week that they were building a giant bed and that you would "go under" the bed to see the facade. But I didn't understand how they were going to decorate it or what it was going to look like. I also had no idea what those giant purple blocks were.
 Their facade really changed over night. The giant teddy bear is probably my favorite thing. It looks great! They always do a good job on the details, and I think this year was no exception. I think they maybe had more they were planning to do and ran out of time, but I'm not 100% sure.

 Oh, and I finally figured out what the brown boxes were! Drawers! The sheet they added over the top looks good, although I still feel like they needed something else, a quilt or something. Not sure how they would have done it, but it would have helped complete the look








They also used blocks to display their letters. A little awkward since they were RIGHT next to the toy box that did that too. But I like the giant letter blocks. They look cool.

ChiO/Beta
Summer Camp
I'm biased, deal with it. This one was the bestest! Way to go guys <3 <3. This is how it looked on Friday afternoon. 95% complete, which is just incredible. Besides being practically done, it looked fabulous! The overhangs were great, the colors matched perfectly. The details were starting to come together....

 The craft table out front (with all the junk on it) was used for little kids to do actual crafts during the carnival. It was a big hit.
 The inside had two big things that still needed to be done. Cloth was draped along the ceiling to cover the I beams and the ugly ply. And then astroturf was put down to be a nice plush grass under all the play watcher's feet.
 By Saturday, it pretty much looked the same. I told them I thought they needed something else on the porch wall. One really awesome idea was adding some camp rules or list of activities. They didn't end up doing it - psh! my only critique.

The beach towels look good and I like the flag pole! The front and the sides still look beautiful! But they had for days, so not a surprise come Saturday.
Congratulations on a great facade ChiOBeta. And everyone else did pretty good too :)

I have some photos from awards that I'll post tomorrow, but that pretty much concludes the posts on Thurtene. You can read about wall raising here, then see an update on facade progress here and here.
Thurtene is one of those things that is impossible to explain to anyone. I find pictures do a much better job than words - so hopefully, those that haven't experienced Thurtene now understand it a little better.


Sunday, April 22, 2012

4 days in

Sorry, I'm behind on these Thurtene blogs. But, lets back track to Tuesday, things are still mostly wooden boxes, but you can start to understand what the plan is at least.
The outside starts to take shape, the stage goes up so the cast can practice, decorations begin etc.

I'll let the pictures do the talking.
Siding goes up on the outside. That same siding taken off a barn that they bought on craigslist for $150.

This is only in here because I can point to it and say "I did that" 
Last year, I built that reference desk for the entrance of our library. Now it's a chop saw table. NBD

Here is the stage as it is going in. The stage this year was huge. And you know whats a challenge? Building a flat stage on uneven ground...

These pictures were taken on Wednesday night. I think this was the transition where it became really clear that this was going to be an awesome facade.

This is the right side of the facade. The wall that juts out is an outhouse and the whole thing got the siding put on it.

Inside started to look really good once the paper mache trees were added, shockingly good considering they were made out of chicken wire. Go artsy people!

I finally figured out that these pieces were the cabins of the two "competing camps" for the skit. little details like framing them out really just helped it all come together.


Here is one last picture showing how super safe this whole event is. Climbing on the roof putting up the vaulted roof. Very safe Matt. Glad you didn't die.

I've got awesome photos of all the facades, not just ours on both Friday night and again on Saturday, its quite amazing how much changes with 12 hours of work that everyone puts in on Friday night. The rule is that you have to be off the lot by 8am on Saturday morning. Most groups work all through the night trying to get as much done as possible. 

Sunday, April 15, 2012

2 Days in: Still a wooden box




Went back to the lot today to check out the progress. It still looks like a box from the outside, but the inside has made a lot of progress. The biggest difference is that the roof is on. Which is good, because it is about to pour. Time to find out how waterproof that roof is. Hope the duct tape we put over little hole we found between one of the sides and the ply holds....

They also got up this awesome old wood on the two corners. Where did they get a bunch of old rotten wood? Tore down a barn of course. This is kind of amazing. They found an old barn in middle of nowhere Illinois on craigslist that this little old lady wanted torn down. (gotta love craigslist). So they told her they wouldn't tear it down but they'd pay her 150 bucks if they could come pull all the old wood off of it. SCORE! It looks sweet.

Here is the other corner. You can also see what has taken up a lot of time. Spackling the connections between the flats because most of the time, they aren't perfectly  at all even. Once they all get spackled and sanded we can paint all the walls nice and pretty.

Here you can kind of see that the roof is on. And that it looks like a construction site with our super safe scaffold. Yet again another reason why we can say, "how has nobody ever died doing this?"


And this is my favorite part. This is an old window off of the barn. And guess who gets it when Thurtene is over? ME! Whatever am I going to do with it? I'm not sure, but I'm thinking either some piece of art to go behind it, maybe an ocean scene. Or blow up a big black and white photo. Or maybe put smaller photos in each frame like a multi-picture frame. We'll see, either way. It's mine. I call it!

I feel like things move slowest over the weekend because everyone has other stuff they want to be doing, and you know, Thurtene is still over a week away. No rush! But the progress made over the next couple days should be really impressive. haha....hopefully...