CodeWars

Every year in March the department I work for at HP puts on a High School event for about 600+ students on a Saturday. These students usually come from about 70+ different schools from around Texas, but this year we even had a team fly in from Florida. Pretty cool! A lot of kids show up in costumes to compete in the costume contest after the coding competition. There were some interesting costumes this year. They ranged from Jesus to Mario and Luigi. All kinds of stuff!

The event expanded internationally this year also! We had teams competing in California and even Taiwan!! How cool is that?!? The Taiwan team said the event was VERY successful and are wanting 4 times more teams next year as they had this year! It's so cool to be a part of something at it's early stages and see it grow! (Even though they've been doing this even for 16 years, I've helped for 7 of those years!) CodeWars was even featured in the paper this past weekend and showed up on the HP homepage today!

We prepare months in advance, and stay late the Friday afternoon before the event to make sure set up and everything is complete. This year we weren't here too late on Friday night, fortunately! I was done and home around 7p.m. Yeah, we are that awesome!

This is one of my favorite posters I hung thing year. I hung over 100 of these by myself starting a week before the contest. We print a bunch of posters with pictures of the kids that attended the year previously, so when returning kids arrive on the day of the competition they might see posters of themselves. There is not a single Code Wars poster left in the building by the end of Saturday afternoon. All of the students peel them off the walls and take them home. They even take the restroom signs home! NO JOKE.

Then volunteers arrive at 7a.m. the next morning to do registration, hand out breakfast, show kids to their tables, etc. So much to do! The schools start arriving at 7:30a.m. even though the event doesn't start until 9a.m. They use that 1 1/2 hours to set up their computers and equipment, eat breakfast and anything else they need to do before the coding contest begins!

This was just one side of students. There were three sides full of students!

Around noon volunteers serve pizza then immediately following lunch there is a raffle. SO many sweet prizes this year!

Before the raffle this year they did something a little different. They gathered all the kids to some side of the campus and had them do the Harlem Shuffle. haha...or at least tried. It's hard to get so many kids to all participate. Here is one video and here is another.


Here were the raffle prizes for this year!

They had a bunch of HP Envy x2 laptops,  Spectre laptops, All-in-Ones desktops, Beats headphones, monitors, speakers, etc. Then before each of the kids leave, they get a backpack with some HP promotional items inside.

It was a great event this year! The week after the competition I type up a two page report of all of the surveys the teachers and students turn in at the end of the competition.They had nothing but good things to say about everything. It's so fun to be apart of something so successful every year!!

Some of the kids don't take the surveys very seriously and their personality/humor spills out all over their surveys. Here was my favorite survey from this year:

Little did he know that I would be the one reading all the surveys! hahahaha



Go here to see more information on CodeWars.

Thanks for following!

          ~Nat

You're not my prince if...

One of my recent projects was given to a friend for her birthday. I got a Cricut for Christmas from my amazing husband who feels like it's job to spoil me ALWAYS. He's so good to me, I don't deserve him.

My first project with my new Cricut was with vinyl. I painted and antiqued the board a bit, then added pearls, the picture, added lace around the picture, and finally I added the vinyl, "If this isn't your castle then you're not my prince." So cute!

I love the way it turned out, especially being one of my first projects with my new toy!! Thanks for following.

          ~Nat

Keep Austin Weird

The Friday after Valentine's Day we made a last minute decision to head up to Austin for the weekend to visit my brother and sister. They both attend school there. Spencer and I headed up there around 8p.m. that night after we got off and work and packed to get ready to leave (nope, we hadn't packed yet). It drizzled almost the entire way there and got pretty chilly. It ended up being the perfect weather for our weekend up there. Nice and sunny, and 60-70 degrees outside. AMAZING.

We got to Austin around 11p.m. that night. They wanted to show us around the city a bit, so we drove around and saw the capital and other places they liked to eat at. Spence and I have both been to Austin, but it's probably been 3 or so years since I've been.

Of course our next stop was at Gourdough's to get a donut because we were told they were SO good! This was just ONE of our few trips to Gourdough's that weekend. Such an unhealthy obsession that weekend, but worth every bite! : )

I can't remember the name of the one Stephen got, but here it is:

I got Miss Shortcake...so good, and one of the lighter choices.

I think Spencer got the Funky Monkey. Here it is:

Here are some car pics of us driving around downtown Austin to see the state capital:

Here is the University of Texas tower, just a little blurry:

The next morning we got to shop around (Stephen was up at school studying). One of the cool shops we were in for about an hour was called Uncommon Objects.

And my favorite corner:

There was a really cool costume shop. They had every costume you could ever think of!

We had lunch at a Crepes food truck. It was really good! Those food trucks didn't disappoint!

This crazy squirrel was not scared of us at all!

 

And we had to stop at the cupcake food truck after we were done shopping and heading back to the car. I only had a little bite and wasn't TOO impressed with the cupcake. We ordered the "Michael Jackson"-cream cheese top with chocolate cake.

Then we hiked up to Mount Bonnell. It was SUCH a pretty day.

Look at all the pretty houses!!!!

Sorry for the horrible shadows on our faces and crazy wind blown hair!

Taking pictures of his knife. 

Then Em and I walked around and took a few pictures of the capital. We weren't able to spend much time there because Stephen was done studying and was going to meet us for dinner. 

Here are a few of the pictures we took:

Right as I was trying to take a picture of these flowers on the tree a bee landed right on it!

While Em and I were out taking pictures a guy asked us to film there little dance that they were going to do in front of the capital. I got a candid of that one! : ) Em might have forgotten to hit the right record button the first time so they had to do their dance again. Pretty funny! They were really nice though!

So many friendly people around who were willing to take pictures for us. This guy was with his kids and got down on the ground like he was a real professional photographer and we were his models..haha

Next, we met up with Stephen and walked to Torchey's Tacos. Yummy!!! So much eating this weekend, but we justified it by how much walking we did. : )

Then we went to Campus candy...I've never seen so much candy in one place! It's just NOT ok. ; ) They also served yogurt and you could put any of the candy on your yogurt like Tutti Frutti/Orange Leaf, etc.

Afterwards we shopped around a bit. Spencer bought me a rose from a lady selling them on the side of the street. So sweet! And let me tell ya, it was the prettiest rose I've ever seen. After taking it home to Houston and putting in a little vase on our dining room table it bloomed and was seriously the most PERFECT rose ever. It didn't even look real!! 

(photo cred: Thanks Em!) 

As the lady put it, "These roses are hot off the press!" ????

Beautiful!

This is a picture of it on my phone the next day. This picture does it NO justice!

We had more adventures that night....like going to the Gourdough's restaurant and (thinking they had their awesome donuts on the menu, which unfortunately they didn't.) it turned out being more like a bar. After we sat down and all ordered waters(yes our waiter made fun of us for ordering water on a Saturday night) we looked on the menu, realized they didn't have what we wanted, and ditched the place! haha...we tried to do it very nonchalantly, but I'm PRETTY sure our waiter saw us get up and walk out. lol...oops! Thanks for the free water! : )

Then we made it to the real place!

This time I got "Naughty and Nice" which was cinnamon and sugar. I was very conservative when it came to these things. Not very daring at all! Spencer was the complete opposite! He got "Black Out". The black out consisted of brownie batter, chocolate fudge icing, chocolate covered brownie bites and topped with chocolate syrup. Just a little ridiculous.

We ran to Walmart and Target and picked up a few movies. We went back to the apartment and watched Pitch Perfect and head to bed. We were all SO tired.

The next morning Spencer, Em and I headed to the graffiti park to take some pictures. We parked at the capital and had a nice walk there. 

These guys at the top painted over all the graffiti in dark green so they could spray paint some new stuff!

Such a model! ; )

Their progress...pretty awesome!

That Austin skyline! 

After taking pictures at the graffiti park we stopped and ate at P. Terry's and shopped around a bit.

Afterwards we went back and packed up and headed out of Austin. BUT, before we left, I knew Spencer wanted to stop at Gourdough's one last time before we left. So with the car all packed up, we headed to Gourdough's to get ourselves one last donut for the trip home. On the way there, we accidentally took a right turn, instead of a left turn and got stuck behind a guy who's car broke down. Spencer jumped out in all the traffic and gave the guy a push to a nearby parking lot. Fortunately his car was really little and easy to push with just the two of them. I pulled into the parking lot and we gave the guy's car a jump. He was super nice and probably our age or just a few years older. He was on his way to pick up his fiance for a date. So cute! I might have snapped a picture while Spencer jumped out to help the guy push his car. ; )

So I think it's safe to say we might have gone to wrong direction for a reason! The whole thing literally took like 3 minutes, but he was so grateful! 

So we finally made our way to Gourdough's to get our last donut. : )

Then we were headed back to Houston!!

The sky was so pretty on our way out:

We made it home around 8:30p.m. and went straight to my parents where my dad was making hot wings!! Yeayaaaa!! Our favorite! It was the perfect ending to an awesome weekend. We're ready for another Austin trip! 

Thanks for following!!

~Nat