The Big Ta-Do, The Whole Sha-bang

The culmination of the week was the Strike Fighter Ball where the girls get all glammed up and the guys wear their dress uniforms! We had a ton of fun with our new Diamonds!

The boys:

The girls:

The CO and XO with their amazing wives!

 Getting jiggy with it on the dance floor!

Frodo & Laser

Focker & Christy

 The CO is in there somewhere!

The great thing about the Navy is you make so many amazing friends! Some we met a couple years ago and others we just met when we got to Lemoore. But we are all in the same place in life, it's awesome! The Navy community is an amazing and supportive one!

What an amazing night with amazing friends, old and new!!!

Strike Fighter Sports Week -- Spouses Volleyball

The Lady Diamonds set out to represent our guys in the spouses volleyball tournament. We had a great showing of gals! They put in a great effort and a wonderful time was had by all!!

 Here's the team!

 Now be serious and tough!

 We had a good turnout of supporters as well!!

Strike Fighter Sports Week

This past weekend was the Strike Fighter Ball. A fancy dinner and dance for all of the strike fighter squadron's here on the West Coast. The week leading up to the ball includes various sports competitions between the squadron's. Our boys came back from a month on the ship to play beer pong, crud, golf, and volleyball during the work week...not too shabby!! One of our beer pong teams took the tournament! 

Here are some pics of the "crud" match. I'm not too sure on the rules but you use a pool table, the cue ball and one other ball. There are two teams and you play offense and defense. Essentially you do all you can to not allow the other team to score (hence the third picture down)...

Learning the rules of crud

Getting ready for round one

Making sure the other team cannot get to the ball

 Round two

The golf game was a 6-man scramble. This is what they did for "work"

And a few of us wives went out to support our boys!

Our boys did not win crud, and got -9 for their round of golf (but didn't win either). But we all had a blast watching and playing!!

Making Christmas Wreaths

So some girlfriends and I decided that we wanted to make wreath for this holiday season. We met at Starbucks for some coffee, went shopping at Michael's, and then headed to Kate's house to make our wreaths! There were about 8 of us making wreaths and a few others hanging out and making other things.

I decided to get really crafty and make a poinsettia ribbon wreath (directions found here)

 I had to make tons of ribbon flowers...

 But I think it turned out pretty good...what do you think?

 This is the one that Leslie made...

 This is the one that Amy made...

This is the one that Kate made...

And this is another one that I made...For this one I found the berry bunches and they reminded me of grapes from a vineyard! My mom is big fan of wine and so I made this one for here. Hope you like it Mom :)

We had a great day being crafty and hanging out!

Mike left and I was bored...a quick bathroom makeover for $100

So Mike has been gone about two weeks, and is still gone for another two weeks. I got bored and have been watching a lot of HGTV and decided I wanted to do some redecorating. I didn't necessarily want to paint the bathroom but I wanted to bring in some more elements. I have black and a tealish color already in place so I wanted to work off of that. This project cost me a total of about $100.

Here is a before picture. 

I found these two pictures that had almost the perfect teal color with some black. So this was my jumping off point. First I needed to change the frames to black so that they would work.

 The frames were papered over the back so I had to block out the glass so I didn't get black spray paint on it.

I had also found this tea light holder in the leafy theme as well. It was a bronzy color so I had to paint that black too. All I did was use a black spray paint and put a couple of coats.

I was looking at an etagere or cabinet to put over the toilet but they were all way more than I wanted to spend so I found some great little shelves instead. But then I wanted to find some different knick-knacks to put in them. So here is everything I am putting in there...

 And then here is the after...

Pretty good if I do say so myself. And I won't have to repaint anything just putty some holes when we leave! (Unless I get tired of this in the next few years and change it again)

Custom framing by me

To have framing done is ridiculously expensive. We've payed to have plenty of things done but I decided to try a new approach and see if I could do something myself. I had some of our friend John Boucek's photos printed but had to get them in some odd sizes so that they wouldn't crop the photos.

I went to Michael's and picked out a frame. They were doing a sale of buy one get one for a penny! I did something similar to another picture but it's a Christmas present so I can't post it yet :-) I picked out some fairly simple black frames in larger sizes so that I could fit my odd sized photos.

After I chose the frames I went over to the poster board section to pick out my "matting." I had my pictures with me which really helped. I picked out a silver one to go with these two black and white photos and my black frame.

Here are all my materials for the one I did for Mike and I. 

I decided to put two of the pictures into one frame.

 Here is a photo of the finished product...

I have an idea of where I'm going to put it but I'm waiting on some other "projects" I have in mind to come together first. I want to do a photo frame wall with this one incorporated.

All in all I did both frames for about $60. Not too bad considering framing these two pictures into one would probably have been about $300 or so!! I'll post the other one after Christmas (if I remember).

Do you have the Captain in you?

Since the guys are gone, the wives of our squadron decided to go to the Halloween party on base. Originally we were trying to think of something we could all dress up as, but then we just decided to let everybody do what they wanted to. So last minute I had to figure out what to do...

This is what I came up with:

Here's a picture of our whole group:

Some more randoms from the night:

We had an India sari, Alice in Wonderland, Sailor Girl, Catwoman

Medusa and Sailor Girl

An "old fart" and Amy Winehouse

Our fearless leaders went as Catwoman and her Bad Kitty

Check out Medusa's crazy red eyes!! A little creepy

Hope everyone has a fun halloween!!