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.

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. 

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...

It smells like the LOT!

Thurtene is such a unique WashU tradition, that I can't NOT blog about it. Plus, I figure if I post some frequent updates than alums that aren't coming back for Thurtene can check out the facades, and those that didn't go to WashU can see what the heck it is, because it is impossibly hard to describe.

The whole point of Thurtene is to raise money for charity. Or at least, that's what the official party line is. In reality, a lot of groups spend way more money on building their facade then they raise to give to charity. Another issue some people have with it is that there is a lot of secrecy behind the groups and the honorary that runs it as to where the money all goes. Things have gotten better in the past few years, and I think that as long as it continues to move forward that it is an awesome tradition and something I'm glad I've gotten to experience.

The Thurtene process starts at the very beginning of the school year (if not before). In general a fraternity and a sorority pair together and each contribute members to the board that does all of the creating and planning prior to the spring. I don't know anything about that process because I avoided it like the plague when I was active. BUT then come march or so, the entire chapter gets involved. Pre-lot starts about 5 or 6 weeks prior to Thurtene and groups work on preparing to build the facade. They build flats and paint and do whatever they can to make Lot week go smoother and be less stressful.

Then comes lot week. Lot week is incredible because we go from from a bunch of boxes to crazy awesome final designs. In order to get the big wooden box, we have to do wall raising, a process that still amazes me that nobody dies. I missed the actual wall raising this year, but here is the finished product. A BIG WOODEN BOX!

After the walls are raised and bolted together, the I beams have to go up which help stabilize the structure. This process also makes me wonder how nobody has died yet (a common theme to lot week)

Becky and Josh stand up on some super sturdy scaffolding preparing to hoist up the beam

Bunch of teenagers carry the thing in and then lift it up with 2x4s

(Sound safe yet?)

The lovely Josh and Becky line it up with the groove in the wall

Still holding it up with 2x4s the people on the other scaffold grab the other end and line it up with the groove in the wall

Everybody with the 2x4s pushes up on one side so it falls into the groove

Everything shakes, but nothing falls down and nobody dies!

And then we repeat this... a lot. And BOOM! Big wooden box is done!

I'll try and keep taking pictures and posting them so that you can see the whole evolution.

Honestly, it sounds a little crazy and a like a lot of work (which it is), but it was such an awesome part of my college experience and a great bonding experience. 

A Belated Happy Easter

I was with the Boy and his family for Easter last weekend and then school this week was trying really hard to kill me. Perhaps not an excuse, but that is why this pictures of Daisy as the Easter bunny are soo late.
Also, I wasn't going to bother posting these. But Chris hates them, and almost surely won't let me do this when he officially adopts her. So enjoy. And HAPPY EASTER!!

She has a large mouth for an Easter Bunny

How much hatred can a dog convey in a look?

Welcome home Ellie!

Well, this blog post has been severely procrastinated on. As I mentioned a couple times, my roommate Michele decided to adopt a dog and Ellie has been living with us full time since March 22nd, almost 2 weeks now.
This made both Michele and I a little nervous, since Ellie and Daisy did not seem like the closest friends the first time they met. Even at Ellie's foster mom's house, Daisy was being very stubborn about exerting her dominance over Ellie. She would hump her and that would cause Ellie to growl and snarl which just led to a bit of a problem. So needless to say, we were a little worried about how they would do living together and rather or not we would have to keep them separate for nearly 2 months... Added on top of this, when we picked Ellie up she had just had her spay so she had stitches and her cone of shame.

But we had spoken with a trainer at Stray Rescue who had given us advice on how to correct any of Daisy's bad behavior. So we did the normal long walks with the pups to make them feel comfortable and kept them both leashed while in the apartment to make it easier to break up any fights that may occur. 

But after just a couple hours, it seemed as if the girls were bffs. And before too long they were playing tug of war with each other and cuddling.

There is no longer any room for the humans on the couch

But, I'd say that they now feel pretty comfortable together

Tug of war is a frequent occurrence now, although it often ends up with both dogs running into the walls.

And then this is what told me that they were really and truly sisters. They were spooning on the couch!!! How completely precious is this?? It was even cuter in person because they were both sleeping, but my flash woke Daisy up.

Having two dogs in a relatively small apartment has been a bit of an adjustment, but it works out pretty well. Ellie is in the process of being crate trained, so she has been staying in Michele's room while we are away, but we are getting closer to her being able to stay in her crate! She jumps quite a bit, but is very relaxed on walks. 

We still have an occasional fight, usually over them getting too aggressive with a toy or fighting over food. But, Ellie is small and easy to pull up and away from Daisy if need be. Plus Daisy calms down pretty quickly once they are separated. So overall it is going well! YAY for Daisy learning how to share her space.

Daisy is rooting for UK tonight.... are you???

This is the position Daisy will be in as she roots for UK to win it all tonight in the NCAA championships.

She knows she has to root for UK, because soon she will be a Lexington dog, and you know those Lexington-ians are crazy for their bball. 

Her bracket is toast and she has officially lost out to all the humans who picked their brackets with the added ability to read and use logical reasoning. Maybe next year she'll have a shot. On a more positive note her Mama (ie: ME!) won it all, take the boyfriend's crazy, sport addicted family! Wooooot!!!

Post coming soon about the addition to Ellie into our household. I promise!!! School and nice weather makes it less desirable for me to sit on my computer and write blogs.