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we have a van! no we don’t… yes we do?

OK, we’ve been talking lately about how people from the outside could potentially think “oh yeah, I’d love to have someone pay my way to travel around the US meeting people and whatnot”. You may or may not have had some of these thoughts, but we probably would if we were you, so we wanted to acknowledge it.

I’d have to say that there’s really no way to sufficiently explain the difficulties, sacrifices, and general discomfort that come with something like this.

First of all, there are no guarantees about the way being paid. There are certainly no guarantees about what this is going to do to the already sorry state of our finances. It’s not like our normal monthly expenses are covered in any way during this time either.

Second, while traveling is awesome, it certainly comes with its own set of discomforts and inconveniences.

Third, we’re living in a state of perpetual unknowns.

I don’t know about you, but we’re not huge fans.

So anyway, one of our goals throughout this experience is to be really real and open. We want you to have the inside track as much as we can show you, on one hand to hopefully help you understand the realities of the hard work of going after something like this, but on the other hand to encourage you that if WE can do it, SO CAN YOU!

With that said, here is our up and down with trying to find a vehicle to use for the tour. It’s not a thrilling time, we’re not always in the best moods, but it’s a reality. I don’t know how many times of going out, driving long distances to find something that would work for the money we had available… kinda lost track.

I’d like to just title this: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, it’s how we feel right now! After WEEKS of searching, and FAR too much time spent driving to look at vans (because we live in the middle of nowhere), last night our summer transportation was finally acquired!!!

SO THANKFUL.

We’ve also acquired a new camera for higher quality video that has audio input (I should say that Krista has acquired it, really 🙂 ) and our mic setup should be coming today! About to be legit, friends. LOL.

So now the plan is to head out on Saturday morning for Indiana and be there for the rest of the weekend, then back to Chicago on Monday or Tuesday.

That means registering the van today, a little laundry, cleaning up our house/cleaning out our fridge, re-packing, finishing preparing the setup and system for managing videos and pictures on the road, etc.

I really hope we can remotely stay on top of all the things we’ll need to be doing! This has really been very much a one step at a time thing… Thank you all so much!

You should go check out what our virtual team member, Julie, had to say about our visit last week! (and don’t forget to check the “As Seen On” page for other posts about the tour) Here’s the little vlog Julie got us to do as we were on our way out the door – GOOD WORK 🙂 She was also the one who gave us the idea to take a picture with each person we interviewed – yes, I think we’ll keep her.

high kick rap me a theme song, yo

On Friday we headed home after a great time in Milwaukee. We needed to return the van that our sweet friends let us borrow for that leg of the trip and find the van we’ll use for the rest of the trip as well as pick up the tshirts!

We’re staying here for this week and then plan to be in Chicago July 23-26 hanging out with the Jesus People and then possibly up to Michigan. The route continues to be flexible and tentative as we go, but I think we’ll be able to start planning a little farther out once we’re back on the road. There is always SO MUCH going on, far too much to focus on at once, so right now that is on the van for the trip and a few other pieces of equipment we’re rounding up. We’re very happy to be starting out next week better equipped all around!

Here’s day 4’s vlog. Rest assured, we are laughing at ourselves the whole time. We are small town, no delusions of grandeur. Hopefully you’ll find it a little amusing as well – at least those of you who know us in real life. But yes, we’re trying to come up with an intro for the daily vlogs. After the shooting of this vlog we immediately retired as rap artists.

HELLOOO Milwaukee!

On Day 3 of tour we had some free time so we headed out on the city! This vlog will give you a bit of insight as to how we might be making some of our decisions on this tour, LOL. We also played a game that night after our interview that gave us some insight into the inner workings of Jeff’s (Julie’s husband’s) mind. It’s a humorous place, but not always kid-friendly, if you know what I mean (boy humor). It’s ok, the kids were watching Dora.

We also got to meet Kayla of Kayla’s Kreations that evening for an interview. We had a lot of laughs with her and her husband – good times! Go check out her post about our visit!

upkaylagroupupkaylasketch

Want to be a part of the fun? Check out the team opportunities and link up a nomination post or just connect with us on Twitter and Facebook 🙂

it’s on!

And going strong… 2 interviews down, 1 or 2 more today!

We jumped right into it with a surprise interview on Tuesday night after we arrived here in Wisconsin and had a little coffee.

It’s been a great couple of days, very jam-packed! We’re really happy to be able to meet our virtual team member – she is a little less virtual and a little more like real life now 🙂 Her family is pretty super awesome as well!

Here is another sneak peak of a photo shoot we did yesterday.
Girls just wanna have fun, you know.

Check out the vlog from the first day of tour while we head out for some on-the-street this and that.

Meet Clayton, the crazy inventor/radical fundraiser dude!
We’re going to be posting these pictures when they happen and the interviews will come later. 

Randall has been doing a sketch for each person that we interview.
Yes, there is an inside joke as to the diamond in the light bulb here 🙂 

ready. set…………

Remember that TBD person who’s going on the tour with us? Well, he’s finally been decided!

Meet Randall the sketch artist!

515a2910c3c411e1a8761231381b4856_7.jpg

Like the rest of us, exactly what he’ll be doing on the tour will be determined as we get a better feel for how things are going to work out. But you’ll probably be seeing his sketching skills in action a lot.

I (Krista) met him for the first time about a week ago but David & Christina have known him since…ok. I don’t really know how long they’ve known each other but they’re good friends. And, as you can see from the video below, we’re all already having lots of fun together getting ready for the tour.

Speaking of the tour, did you know that we’re leaving TOMORROW? We’re going to visit the lovely Julie from The Funny Thing of It Is blog (she also happens to be our virtual team member!) in Milwaukee, WI. We are so excited to meet up with her and her family to kick off the 2012 Blank Canvas Tour! For this week, we are borrowing a van from a friend and we’ll be on the lookout for a van we can use for the rest of the tour.

And GUESS WHAT!

We have been so blessed by two people who want to support the Blank Canvas Tour by donating money to help us buy a van. We just found out about it yesterday and were completely taken by surprise. But this post is already getting long so we’ll save that story for another time.

In the meantime, check our new interactive map of all places the blank canvas has been and all of the locations we want to hit this summer. If you’re anywhere close to any of the places we’re headed this summer, we’d love to meet up with you!


(yellow = where we’ve been, blue = where we’re going)

Callie out on the town

In gearing up for the tour we are doing some fun on-the-street practice interviews and such, so this morning we went downtown to a little arts and crafts market that they have once a month in the summer. We had a nice time talking to a number of people who are pursuing their dreams and hearing their perspectives on what it takes to make it.

The kids got a little face paint on their arms since Maverick went first and was a little wary of the lady messing with his face.

David noticed a nice spot for a blank canvas shot and Callie did a little posing.
The kids couldn’t resist playing the piano, so they joined her in the shot when David was done 😉

Krista and I manipulated David into doing what we thought was a yoga demonstration and Callie was all set up to laugh at him in the background (in his opinion), but he actually ended up basically getting a massage and Callie kept falling over, and over, and over, so… I think David won.

We also posted a few of these!

Stay tuned for some sneak peeks of what life on the road with us this summer might look like…

Launch Party!

What do you do when your crowdfunding project launches before you realize it is going to happen? Well, in our case you scramble around like crazy to try to get up to speed!

We have SO many ideas of where to take this, guys, you can barely imagine! It’s a long, long road with a whole LOT of sweat and probably some tears… but by the grace of God we’re going to keep going!

We had to have a little team celebration for making it this far. Since we stay away from sugar most of the time, and also keep it out of our kids’ diets for the most part, we picked midnight to have the Kalona Chocolates that Krista brought us 😉

and the next day we had a pizza party!

Thanks for taking us to 4% of our goal so far!

(by the way, we had a free pizza, we’re not just throwing good money sense to the wind 🙂 )

what does it look like from the inside?

Well, currently it looks like some buggy technical website issues that we are having to deal with, as you can probably see the extra lines of random code showing up. Don’t worry, we are addressing the problem and it will hopefully be resolved shortly!

The inside also currently looks like us freaking out a little bit because, well, apparently that is what people do at the start of things like this. Who knew?

We want to maintain a very real look into how this all works and what it feels like to be a part of. It’s so easy to have doubts and fight negativity in the middle of something and look at all the other success stories as having happened overnight – we want to change that impression with a behind-the-scenes look at our journey.

We obviously don’t know what the outcome will be, but we do know that it will have its ups and downs and be a crazy ride 🙂