Extreme Makeover: Window Edition

Do you have a window in your worship center or home that is dull and boring? Do you have windows that let in too much light and you need a way to dull the light without blinds or curtains? Then have I got an idea for you! With about $30 in window paint, some imagination and a little time you can have your own fake stained glass window.

We had some windows in the youth center that were letting in too much light. I figured stained glass would look nice. So we went to the store and got some paint. My wonderfully amazing and talented wife did the real work. Lynnette spent about two days transfering Van Gogh's "Starry Night" to our Youth Center windows. The look is amazing. I highly recomend you try this in your home, office or anywhere else you get inspired.

Check out the picks below. And you can see the entire renovation in the last post.

Youth Center Renovation

Here's what we've been up to the last couple weeks. We have had some amazing people helping us. It's been a blast. And it's turned out pretty nice.

Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy

Say Hello to my little friend!! (I call him Herb)

"I'm Sailing, I'm Sailing!!!"

After a long day at the church working on the renovation of the youth center, Dave and I got invited to go sailing with a great couple from our church (Shawn and Jennifer Seely). Shawn and Jennifer have 3 teens in the youth group and both help out at youth. We had a blast with them as we sailed. It was a 1st for Dave and I both, neither of us had sailed before. It was beautiful, we sailed until the sun went down, great way to end your day!



Jennifer and Lynnette



Shawn and Dave




Dave even got to sail the boat...that is what he's doing in this picture:)




How beautiful is that!

"The Renovation Starts... Right Now!!"

This past week we started the renovation on the youth center. The youth center is located in the "old side" of the church (the old sanctuary to be exact). This has been the meeting place for both the children and youth services. The children are getting a new meeting spot in the downstairs area of the new building, work on the painting and construction of that starts next week. We have been busy all week painting, building and getting rid of the "old stuff". We are giving it a fresh new look for the fall. It's been heaps of work and there is still more to come. The youth center will now be the meeting place for the youth and a venue service on Sundays.

O Beulah Land!!!

This week has been family camp at Beulah Wesleyan Campgrounds in Brown's Flat, New Brunswick. Dave and I have been driving back and forth from Camp each day so that we can be a part of it as much as possible. This week at camp the speaker was Dr. Bud Bence (IWU) and Jay Guptill (former worship pastor at College Church) lead the worship...we may not of known many of the people at camp, but we thought it was cool that we did know the special speaker and worship leader. Beulah has beautiful campgrounds filled with over 300 cottages. A lot of people end up retiring and living right on the camp grounds. There is a river that runs right by the campgrounds...plus the camp owns an island near by...that's where youth and kids camps are held through out the summer. Sunday afternoon there was a baptism service and there was quite a few from Kings Valley that were baptized. Monday, we brought up some of our teens from Kings Valley to be at camp for the day. We spent most the day at the camps beach, and wharf...Swimming and playing circle volleyball. Then we all ate dinner together and went to the service. Monday night after the service, Kings Valley had their annual fundraiser "On the Boulevard". We had heaps of tents set up and we sold, cotton candy, popcorn, beaver tails (elephant ears), hotdogs, hamburgers, curly fries, and heaps more!! It was a lot of fun, Dave and I headed up the popcorn tent. Wednesday night we got an opportunity to stay at our Sr. Pastors cottage for the night and Thursday was Church Conference. Camp is still going on until Sunday, we aren't sure if we will make it up or not for one more service. Over all we had a great time at camp. It reminded me of my days growing up and going to camp each year at Whispering Pines Wesleyan Camp in the North Michigan District. God did a lot of amazing things in my life through that camp and I have many great memories there. Dave also has a "home" camp where he grew up...Silver Lake Wesleyan Camp. Dave's parents have a cottage there...and there were a few people from Beulah that use to go to Silver Lake and told us stories of how Dave use to gather frogs and sell them to people at camp. Fun times...well here is a few pictures from this weeks camp at Beulah.


This is Beulah's Tabernacle. It seats about 1300 people!



Here is a picture from Wednesday nights service.



This is us with Brent and Melanie Ingersoll. Brent is also new on staff. They both grew up going to Beulah, and their family's have a cottage and boat up at the camp. Here's a picture of Brent and Melanie giving us a tour of the river at camp.



This is Dave and Harley (student in our youth group) at the wharf. This is often more popular then the beach...you can dive right in!



JUMP!



Instead of eating at the dining hall...we walked with the teens down the road to the Irving for some deli sandwiches and ice cream, YUM:)

Wharf Jumping

Harley & I decided to jump off the wharf. It was fun.

Visit @ the beach

It was a beautiful day in Quispamsis, New Brunswick... so after a morning of going to rummage sales with Linda and Sarah... Dave, myself and Jeremy headed to the beach! (Only a mile or so from our house). Here are a few pictures for you all to see. Enjoy!

New Curtains

To some, it may be no big deal, but we are excited about our first decorating purchase...Curtains!! We are no longer in a fish bowl, we can close the curtains at night and not feel like we are on display for all to see:) Dave picked out the curtain rod and I picked out the curtains.

Fish Blender/Desk Lamp

You ever wonder what to do with that old blender? Why sell it in a garage sale or pitch it when you can make it into something else? I decided to make my old blender into a fish tank. I think I got the idea from one of those cheesy motivational posters something about "keep on swimming" or something. The poster had a picture of a goldfish swimming in a blender. I thought it was a hilarious idea. So when we got our new blender, making my old blender obsolete, I wanted to make one. It took me a while to figure out how to get the motor out, and how to install a light (oh I added a light to my fishtank by the way). And here it is. Tomorrow I will add a switch to make to cord longer (I have the original on there now) and so I can turn the light on and off, I don't want to cook the fish. I will add a picture of the fish when I get one. Till then enjoy my Fish Blender/Desk Lamp.

A Hiking We Will Go

Today Lynnette and I decided to go for a hike. Seeing as we had the day off thanks to Canada Day being on a Saturday. It was nice, as it turns out there is this really cool trail right down the road from our house. The hike was very nice, we even saw a deer crossing the trail about 15 feet in front of us. I was told there are also bears in these woods, I don't think I would like to see one of those. But I still think I'll hike there. So this adds to the list of things we can do with people who visit, there is a beach about 1 km from our home and in August we will have a fishing boat to explore the river. The Recreation Center even has a little league field if HomeRunDerby ever wants to go international.

Canada Day and Fiesta!

Yesterday was Canada Day! To celebrate we had the Lamos family (Dan, Linda, John, Jeremy, and Sarah) over for the afternoon and dinner...then we all went into Saint John to the harbor to see the fireworks. We had so much fun yelling and screaming after every firework, it was great:) The Lamos family was our first connection to Kings Valley. Dan has helped lead the New York mission trips the past few years and has become a great friend of ours. The Lamos family has been our family away from family, we look forward to doing many years of ministry together.

VBS...aka "Fiesta" was all last week...and this morning Linda Lamos (Children's Director) had the kids give a presentation to the church of what their week looked like. The kids were soo cute and did a great job singing all their songs. They even got visited by the "3 Amigos" aka--Pastor Dave, Pastor Brent, and Pastor Dan.

One thing that was promised to the kids if there were over 150 kids that attended "Fiesta" was that all the pastors would get a pie in the face...well the kids did it! And the Pastors all got pies in their faces, it was soo funny!






Here is our Sr. Pastor Don getting a pie in his face.


Looks good on Dave!


Dan, Dave, Brent, and Don