For three years now, Bennett and I have been able to be a part of this totally awesome project that happens in Downtown Wheeling.  It’s called “Lovescaping” and it’s something that hopefully will continue on for years and years and years.  What is Lovescaping?  The City of Wheeling is full of old buildings that have a lot of historical significance but often those buildings have been overlooked over the years.  The Wheeling Young Preservationists “adopts” them for a couple of weeks in February, in an attempt to draw attention to them.

How?  By covering them with hearts for Valentines Day.  
It’s adorable and I love the entire project.

In case you’re feeling extra eager to read things from the past two years of our participating…
2013: We helped decorate the Professional Building in crocheted hearts.
2014: We decorated the Fort Henry Club, dubbing it “The Lonely Hearts Club”.

I don’t want to brag or anything, but the two buildings that we decorated the last two years have both been purchased or are in the process of having new tenants move into them.  (Most likely I didn’t have anything to do with that but I’m going to pretend I did.  So there.)

Anyway.  Last Thursday was the kickoff meeting for Lovescaping.  There is a new Steering Committee for the group that wanted to introduce themselves to everyone, as well as they put the name of OVYP up for a vote.  They could have been talking about the world’s most boring thing ever and I would have been there with a smile on my face.  Because it involved three of my favorite things in one place: people who love and care about this city, crafts and beer.

Hello Katy paradise!

(I got in trouble for taking a bunch of pictures without using the big ole’ flash for our camera.  So I apologize for the quality of some of these pictures.)

But really.  How much fun was this meeting?

I’m really excited to see how everything comes together on Saturday for the actual decorating of the six chosen buildings.  They brought a bunch of plastic bottles for us to cut and bend into flower shapes…and I’m insanely interested to see how they continued making them into flowers.  I think spray paint was involved but I guess I’ll have to wait and see when we are helping put them up.

One of my favorite parts about this group of people is that we’ve basically become BFFs with everyone in it.  When you surround yourself with smart, driven, positive, awesomesauce people…you can’t help but want to spend more time around them.  Each person brings something different to the table and it’s been a great ride so far.  2015 is going to be amazing.  I just know it.

Another plus is that we get to take Louis with us whenever we are with the WYP group of people.  Not only is it wonderful to have kid-friendly activities, it’s also great to get Louis involved at such a young age.  Sure, he probably has no idea what we are up to most of the time…but he’s been surrounded by the best & brightest of our community since day one.  You can’t say that it won’t make an impact on him.  

Plus, it was crazy cute to watch him and his new friend make their own decorations.  :: heart eyes ::

A big thanks goes to these six individuals, who have stepped up and taken leadership roles within the Steering Committee.  This certainly isn’t a paid role, unless they count being paid in appreciation by people like me.  They’ve all worked a lot of long hours and had plenty of meetings trying to get everything together for the rest of us. 

And they are all individually pretty rad.  Stephanie, Jon-Erik, Liz, Brian, Becca and Bennett are all awesome.  There.  I said it.

All three of us showed up to the meeting in semi-matching outfits.  I had this idea to spread this shirt all over the city of Wheeling, allowing everyone to change the bottom line to their own personal “vice” in life.  

I love Wheeling more than Sewing / Super Heroes / Craft Beer is what our family chose.
We are all dorks about something in our own right. 

What would your shirt say if it were about your city?