My Summer Project

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

As many of you may already know, I am the President of the SMSU SIFE team, and we own and operate our own store. The store is called Nature's Backyard, and we sell wild bird supplies, lawn decor, and a variety of gift items.

A little background info - Nature's Backyard is located on the corner of two streets, Main and Third. Well Main street has been closed, due to construction, since last May. Main street is the main enterance to our store, so this made the summer tough for us, especially with it being our typical busy season.

So with the slow down at the store, I decided that I would take this opportunity to undertake a large project, sprucing up the "Yard." I pooled all of our resources and dramatically increased our inventory! In addition, another volunteer and myself decided that we wanted to revamp the interior. We landscaped the inside of our store with pavers and mulch. Then in a spur-the-moment decision, we also put in a pond. With the help of our other volunteers, we were able to complete the landscaping. We also gathered antique items to use in our new display areas. The entire project could not have turned out any better! The store looks wonderful!

With the grand opening of Main street happening next week, we still have some work to do. We have two huge walk-in displays surrounding our main enterance that could use some rework, and we need to make a new store sign.

Wish me luck!

Pictures - The picture at the top of this post is the new view of our store when you come in the main enterance. To the left is a picture of a section of our extened Droll Yankees line. To the right is a picture of the landscaping and merchandise surrounding our porch. And below is a picture of two of my favorite products at Nature's Backyard! Please forgive me, there was a smudge on my camera lens, and it shows up in the majority of these pictures.

Summer Review

Well, it has been an extremely busy summer. But hopefully I can get everything caught up this week. Where have I been?! Schwan's University... I have been working full-time all summer. Also, Nature's Backyard. I'll post some pictures of Nature's Backyard sometime this week and show you all of the things I have been working on this summer. I promise... I'll be back!

Get Motivated!

On June 20th, myself and five other interns left Marshall at 4:00AM and went to the Get Motivated Seminar at the Target Center. It was a great time and we got to hear some pretty amazing speakers including, Jeff Taylor, Tom Hopkins, Suze Orman, Zig Ziglar, Bill Cosby and Colin Powell.

May 2007

May was an extremely busy month! The month started with finals and then a trip to Dallas for the SIFE National Convention. We went down a couple of days early to sight see. We spent a day at Six Flags and went to the Dallas Zoo one morning. Our hotel is one of the most recognizable icons in Dallas, the Hyatt Regency Dallas. It is connected to the a large, light up revolving restaurant, over 50 stories high. One of my favorite parts was the view out of my window. I looked right out onto the JFK memorial and the area where he was assassinated, my sound a tad weird, but I am a history buff...

Competition went great! I was on the presentation team and we placed in the top eight again this year! It is quite an accomplishment for our team to be this successful as there are over 900 SIFE teams in this country. And SIFE teams are different from other teams, there are no divisions... so when we compete we are competing against Notre Dame, the University of Arizona, and many more renown universities. To have other schools come up, congratulate you, and ask if we can give any advice; not bad for a team that is only seven years old.

Another exciting moment from Nationals was our faculty advisor, Randy Abbott, winning Sam Walton Fellow of the Year. This is an award that we should have nominated him for a long time ago, but thankfully we took this head on this year, and it really paid off! We couldn't be any prouder of him!

Our last night in Dallas with this years SIFE team, we voted for our new leadership team. I am happy to announce that by a unanimous vote, I was asked to be next years SMSU SIFE President.

After Nationals I began working fulltime at Schwan's University with my internship. So I continue with my job, running the SIFE team, managing Nature's Backyard, being an active member of the Southwest Minnesota Youth Council and finding time for the rest of my fun-filled life. Hopefully I will be able to keep up with this blogging and let you know a little more detail about my world.

March & April 2007

Well since March and April weren't all that exciting. I spent the majority of March preparing for SIFE Regionals in April. And April was spent preparing for Nationals. So instead of boring you with presentation practice photos, I will show you some of my newest craft projects.

Here are some of the purses that I am making now. They are completely handmade (well I don't weave the fabric, but you get my drift). I made them for friends for Christmas and then got asked to make some for a birthday. My first paying customer, yay!

Oh, in April I began managing our SIFE owned store, Nature's Backyard, in downtown Marshall. We sell birding supplies and backyard decor.

February 2007

In Febuary my family and I took a trip to Puerto Rico, I have to say it was beautiful! We spent a week there and got to do and see many great things. Our hotel was gorgeous, with an uncountable number of pools and a lazy river, in addition to being ocean front.

Tiana and I spent a lot of time walking around the property and taking a ton of pictures!

We went snorkling on one of the days; this was the first time any of us kids have been snorkling. We took a sail boat off shore and swam at two different reefs. We saw lots of fish, an eel and a crab-lobster. We got to feed the fish, they would swim right up to you, and on our way back to the main land we saw two iguanas.

We also took a day trip around the island. We went to the world's third largest cave and spent a lot of time in the truck. It was a good day all around. Here is Tiana and I on a frog statue at the cave. This frog is the island's "mascot." We thought they maybe just liked it, because they have it them in every gift shop. Then one lady explained that it is hard to catch a glimpse of one, but you here them all the time. She made the noise they make, and we immediately recognized it; we had thought it was a bird we were hearing.

Mom, Dad and I took a quick trip to the Bacardi factory one day. It wasn't the greatest tour, but the drinks were free! Might I say, I think we spent a bit of time in that gift shop.

Mom, Dad, Tiana and I spent a day in Old San Juan. It was really neat to see all of the historical buildings, as well as some new ones (see below). We went to an old fort and walked for what seemed like forever, but it was one of my favorite days.

This was a great trip, one of which no one wanted to end. We had a great time being around eachother, and finally taking a trip that was completely scheduled with theme parks and other attractions. We took plenty of time to relax and take in the gorgeous view.

January 2007

As many of you know I attend Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, and I am very involved with the Students In Free Enterprise team. For the 2006 - 2007 year I was the director of our Personal Success Skills category, one of our six focuses. For this category I created, organized and implemented a variety of projects that teach students the skills they will need to succeed in a competitive job market.

I taught 156 Fourth graders how to start their own friendship bracelet companies. This is always a great project. We teach them skills like teamwork and communication while they learn important aspects of starting your own business including, design, manfucturing, marketing, selling and financing.

Another big moment in my life happened in January... I kicked off my largest event thus far! The Speech Spectacular is a speech tournament hosted by the Marshall High School Speech Team and sponsored by The Schwan Food Company, a company of which I have the pleasure of working for. For this event I was asked to plan their Friday night party; it was a pirate themed party for over 750 high school students.

I accepted this offer enthusiastically and have to say, it has been the highlight of my internship. I received an abundance of positive feedback and hope to assist with the planning of next years event.

Some of the decorations that where at the party.

Kids playing on some of the games that we had brought in for them.

My slushie machines!!! These were the biggest hit! We brought in four slushie machines and served them in my custom designed glasses; we had a bar and everything, the kids really seemed to enjoy it!

Here are some of the kids. There was over 750 in attendance!