My Love/Hate Relationship

Can I please tell you that I hate going out of town because I feel like I can never catch back up. 

Hubs and I went out of town for his best friend's wedding this weekend. 

I was already behind before we left with report cards due, half-days at school, and "teacher planning" aka please sit through these meetings all day and not have any time to plan. 

But this post isn't about any of that. Stay tuned though because apparently I have 50+ photos from the past week and a half. 

October,

We really did use to get along. 

Cooler weather.

All things pumpkin. 

My favorite holiday.

We really go all out costume wise...

Having a legit excuse to watch Hocus Pocus

And lets not forget I got engaged in October.

Sadly, ever since I began this whole teaching thing October seems to mean other things.

Like being sick for almost a whole month straight with different things.

The end of the first quarter, boo report cards.

And all sorts of other craziness that didn't seem to effect me before. 

So long October, 

I'll remember you not so fondly when I'm dealing with my kiddos coming down from a sugar high and lack of sleep. 

See you next year, hopefully your redeeming qualities will once again outweigh the negative.

aka, please don't let me have strep again!

The One With the Engagement

In honor of it being two years since hubs and I got engaged I though I would share with you my foolproof way to get a man to propose! 

Please keep in mind that this is a 6 year plan.

This is a video from the weekend I met Kyle.
Not only did him and his best friends think this was hilarious, but there I am in the background. In other videos you can see multiple other people from our youth group standing around watching this behavior!
Clearly digital cameras had yet to produce videos with sound!

Nerd Night

This is what me and my best friends did that night. We also prank called the boys below us. ALL NIGHT! This is, to this day, my favorite trip ever.

 Obviously we were an immature match made in heaven from the start.

• Sit in front of him on a bus. Shamelessly use his best friend to have an excuse to talk to him the whole drive. 
• Talk to him on AIM whenever you get a chance. 
• Make sure he asks you out and to prom on the same night, in an Arby's parking lot. 



Prom 2005

• After he asks you out, don't hold his hand for two weeks or kiss him for a month and a half. 
• Don't go anywhere with him just the two of you. 
•  Make him go see Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants with you. Because he's late, make him purchase his own ticket and come find you and your friends. 
• Alternate weeks of being out of town for the entire summer. 
• Now that he's wrapped around your finger, break up with him over AIM because "it's just not working since we never see each other." (Bonus points if it's his mom's birthday) 
• Start dating someone else on a trip you convinced him to go on with the youth group. 
• Accidentally go on a date with him when everyone else bails last minute. Kiss him on that same night. 



Before officially dating again, New Years Eve Blowout 2005

• Ask him to come over to help you set up your new iPod.
• Agree to go to his sister's wedding, but only if you're boyfriend/girlfriend again. 

• When he goes to college an hour away, work on all weekends so you can only see each other every few weeks or so. 

• Call him every night, forcing him to stop hanging out with his friends. 
• Go to college 4 hours away from him. 

• Immediately get a job and join a sorority so you're insanely busy. 
• Make him drive the 4 hours every month so he can sleep on your floor for the weekend.
• Drag him to sorority functions. 
• After three years of this start telling him that you want to be engaged. 
• Tell him you want to be engaged by the end of the year.
• Ignore the situation and hope for the best. 
• Visit him at his school and talk him into walking on the beach at night. 

• By the end of the night you WILL have a ring on your finger.   

Kyle, I will forever be grateful that I have such a wonderful man to call my husband.
 I can't wait to see where our love story takes us.

2 Ingredient Pumpkin Cookies!

Now that I'm working I don't have much time for crafts, but I still try to squeeze in some new recipes!

This past weekend I found a super easy pumpkin cookie recipe.

I absolutely love all things pumpkin and can't believe I made it so far through October without making something yet!

As soon as I saw the recipe I went out and bought the things to make them that day!

The ingredients!
Seriously one box of Spice Cake and one can of pumpkin!
Pre-heat oven to 350

Mix the two together until combined.

Drop on sprayed cookie sheet (I put mine on parchment paper) and place in oven.

Bake about 15 minutes. They are a very cakey cookie, so don't expect them to get hard!

Allow to cool and ice if desired!
I used Cream Cheese frosting.

We may or may not have eaten half of these in one day....

Linking Up with Melissa, Sarah, and Amber

Airing My Dirty Laundry

I put a load of laundry in the dryer and another in the wash and went out to run some errands.

When I came back the dryer was stopped so I thought I must have been out longer than I thought.

I opened the dryer to find it dark and still full of wet clothes.

Try to re-start it and nothing!

Tried flipping the circuit breaker, still nothing.

Tested the washer and it was fine.

So I was stuck with one load of partially dried clothes and another full load of wet clothes.

What's a girl to do?

Create her own clothes line of course!

Except all of my clothes pins have been moved to my classroom.

Hence the hangers.

Unfortunately, we barely have enough hangers for the clothes we hang!

So I dried the first load and re-washed and hung the second one the next day.

Here's to hoping our landlord gets it fixed soon! 

Having a landlord who lives part time in Spain is super frustrating some days!

Now don't think you can get away that quickly today!

I have some wonderful ladies hanging out on my sidebar for you to meet!

a Rafflecopter giveaway #YOLO

Let the Games Begin!

For those of you who have never played Settlers of Catan, 

you are seriously missing out!

The first time I ever played was the summer before college.

At the time I remember it being fun, but since I had my wisdom teeth pulled only moments before I didn't think much else about the game. 

Last month, friends of ours brought the game over and we've been hooked ever since. 

As in we've played three different weekends in the last month. 

Each time we've played three games. 

And those games are not that quick either!

This past weekend, our cousin had friends over to hang out. 

The main focus of course was Settlers.

However, for some odd reason the game only allows for 4 players.

With the expansion pack you can play with up to 6.

We had 7 people, so we had to be creative.

Enter an epic version!

Multiple games and expansion packs combined, plus a few rule modifications.
It was amazing even though I lost all three rounds.

As a random side note:
Our church rocks! 

Happy Halloween!

Go hug a vampire!

Caramel Cheesecake Dip

Not only is this dip one of the easiest things I've ever made, it also tastes amazing.

This is all you need for the whole recipe.

Two things of cream cheese.

1 jar of chilled caramel sauce. 

 

Beat the cream cheese together until smooth.

Mix in the chilled jar of caramel sauce. 

  Refrigerate and enjoy!

I like to serve it with cinnamon sugar pita chips.

Linking up with Melissa, Amber, and Sarah

 

High Five For Friday

1. I officially have survived my first full week with my kiddos! 

We're finally getting into the swing of things and it's getting a lot better. 

The first few days coupled with my Strep were emotionally exhausting!

2. Speaking of strep! I finally feel like a normal human being again!

No more feeling of painful knifes stabbing my throat constantly!

3. I am so thankful for a school where I can actually dress like this on a daily basis!

Want to know a secret? 

My hair's in a messy bun with a side braid!

This is the first school I've ever worked out where I've been allowed to have my hair up however I wanted!

4. I've never really been a morning or a night person. 

Let me go to bed at 11pm and wake up at 9am and I would be a happy girl! 

The plus of leaving for work early and driving east are the pretty sunrises!

 5. Whenever I'm sick all I crave is comfort food! 

This was dinner the other night. 

I felt like I was channeling Erin @ Living In Yellow!

Linking up with Lauren at My Grey Desk Blog

Class Job Chart

I told myself I would not have jobs in my classroom.

They're hard to keep up with.

I can never remember who should be doing what.

And more often than not they tend to be more effort than they're worth.

Then I got my class.

All of my students had come from one of four other classrooms.

All of those classrooms had class jobs.

My students wanted to know what their jobs were.

They pushed and shoved and got in trouble because they all wanted to be line leader/door holder.

So I caved.

I made a job list on my white board that I changed daily.

But I had no good way to rotate the students or remember who had done what.

Plus it was taking up half a white board.

Of course I immediately started searching pinterest. 

I saw this one and decided to make one using the jobs I had already come up with.

Mine is no where near as pretty. I'll probably do more work on it later, but mainly I just wanted it up this week. Plus, I'm sick so I spent maybe 10 minutes on it....

It's hard to see in the picture. 

On the bottom right it says extras and holds all the names that don't have jobs yet. Their sticks will travel around clockwise, changing each Monday.

Jobs in order:

Substitute- Takes over if someone is absent

Table Washers- Cleans lunch tables

Morning Meeting- Does Calendar and Money Mob

Line Leader

Door Holder

Electrician- Turns out lights.

Teacher Helper- Opens door when someone knocks, runs notes, passes papers out, and anything else I need.

I also have their pictures cut out in circles that will be glued to the sticks so it's easy to see from farther away.

Linking up with Melissa, Amber, and Sarah

Couch Potato

This past weekend has been spent like this

Thanks to my adorable kiddos I have strep...

Super not cool! 

My throat feels like it's being repeatedly stabbed and my fever keeps coming and going.

Thankfully I am on medication and hopefully will feel better soon. 

Luckily I don't feel absolutely miserable all day.

Unfortunately I still have to teacher, don't worry I'm not contagious anymore.

 I have been blessed with an AMAZING husband who goes above and beyond when I'm sick. 

As soon as he heard I wasn't feeling well  he went to the store and I came home to this. 

Plus Ginger Ale.

He is also wonderful about bringing me drinks and blankets and whatever else I might need.

While all I've done is lay on the couch and watch an entire season of Greek!

On a side note, today a parent brought her child to school telling me that last night she had a fever and was throwing up, but wanted to come to school anyways...

I'm glad she likes school, but is it any wonder I'm sick?

Please leave your sick 5 years olds at home!

Super uncool!

Linking up with Carly for YOLO Monday

High Five for Friday {10}

My life has been completely consumed with teaching! 

I wake up, go to work, come home, make dinner, and am ready for bed. 

And of course by the time I make it home it's time for to make dinner. 

Plus I have a to do list that seems never ending. 

I probably add 3-5 things for every one thing I cross off. 

Thankfully, I love teaching. 

Even when the kids are bouncing off the walls, I still want to go back the next day. 

Maybe not right when I wake up, because lets face it, 6:30am is way too early!

On Monday, I got stuck at a clearance meeting all morning, but the process for me to actually get into the systems in finally in progress!

Monday when I came to school I was told I was going to get the kids.

I scrambled to pull together a few things to keep them entertained for the last 30 minutes of the day.

Then I lost misplaced two of my kids...

Everyone told me that they would help me with dismissal since no one had given me a list of how everyone leaves. 

I was told that aftercare would come by to get their kids and then I needed to walk the rest of the kids out with the other teachers.

So aftercare comes by and 5 of my students say they are aftercare. I double check with the workers and they say yes, these are the aftercare kids. 

So off they go.

Then I get outside and two different students are supposed to be picked up and I have no idea where they were, especially since I met these children 30 minutes prior.

Finally we found them, they had both gone to aftercare!

Needless to say I was given a list as soon as we got back to the room. 

Tuesday was my first day with them and they were CRAZY!

Running around, talking like crazy, pretending they couldn't hear me!

It was a mess.

Sadly, I've had to be EXTREMELY strict with them ever since then because they just are not listening.

Thankfully the last few days have been better and we're finally getting into the swing of things. 

I've almost made it through my first week in the classroom and am beginning to feel like I have things under control. 

I even left Thursday before 5pm!

On the down side, I am now getting sick :(

Plus I cried like a baby through the end of Glee, and I have to wait till November now!! 

DIY Gallery Wall

Inspiration

I pinned this wall idea awhile ago, but didn't have a lot of space at our old apartment. 

Now that we moved we have ridiculous amounts of wall space plus vaulted ceilings so I finally have space to do it!

I've been trying to think of decently cheap ways to decorate since I know we probably wont be here more than a year or two. This project cost me $25, but you could do it even cheaper if you already have some of the stuff. 

I was originally going to do something different with the space so I bought frames roughly the same size. If I do this again at another place I'll probably add some different size frames in the mix. 

First off, I printed out pictures that I wanted to use in a mix of 5x7 and 4x6. I had a coupon so I got all the photos for $8. If you use pictures you already have you're doing it that much cheaper!

Next, I went and picked out some cheap frames. We didn't have any extras to use, but the dollar store by us had a ton of cute ones! I picked out 11 different frames to use. I wanted all of them to have different looks, but still be able to go together. $11 for frames for all of you keeping track!

Once I got them home I played around with the photos and frames trying to decide which pictures I wanted in what frame.

Before I changed my mind on what I was doing!

Then I decided to add some wood pieces to the collage. I found the large wooden "D" at Michael's for $4 and bought paint in light blue and dark brown to match our bedroom for $1.
I wanted to add some other pieces to balance out the letter, but after searching everywhere and not finding anything I liked I decided to leave it as is. Hopefully I'll find some more pieces to add later on down the road!

 
Paint your wood pieces! This was one of those white letters from Michael's so I knew I wanted it to match our room since that was where I was going to put it! It took two coats!

 
I spent a lot of time re-arranging to make sure that it was exactly how I wanted it. I didn't want any of the silver frames next to each other. I also wanted the different events to be spread out. I had three from our vacation and four from our engagement photos in the mix.
Take a picture of what it looks like once you decide! I was constantly looking back at the picture to make sure I was putting all of the pictures where I wanted them!

The next part is the hardest! I didn't wait for hubs to get home because I was so antsy to get it on the wall. Therefore, I had to do all the hanging by myself, which I hate since I can't make sure it's straight!
First, I measured the wall and marked the center. Then I measured my pictures arrangement to make sure that the center of my layout would in centered on the wall. I started with the bottom and slowly worked my way up hanging each picture to make sure that it was where I wanted it before I hung the next one. You can also cut out paper the same size as each of the frames and tape it up on the wall so you can play with it.


I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but I know later I'll want to add some larger frames so it fills up more of the wall.  

   

Linking up with Melissa, Amber, and Sarah