Gettin' Crafty

As mentioned in one of my posts from last week, I spent three nights at school doing parent-teacher conferences. So lucky me, the district gave us not just Veteran's Day off last week, but also the day after as a comp day -- hooray!

So what did I do with my time?

Slept in... until 8:00. Which may not seem like much, but I didn't wake up to an alarm and didn't get up at 6:50 -- yahoo!

I also got a manicure and pedicure while reading trashy Hollywood gossip magazines while sitting in a heated massage chair... amazing. And best of all? I used a gift certificate... so it didn't cost me a penny :)

Shopping was also on the agenda, and I made one unusual purchase. Trust, friends, that I will most certainly share it with you. Just not today :)

AND I got crafty!

Because apparently, everyone and their dog buys their Thanksgiving decorations before Halloween so when I went looking for some over the weekend, there were none left. Only Christmas decorations. So anyway, this left me no choice: be crafty and make your own!

I made my project out of wood and therefore needed some tools for it. However, seeing as hubby and I live in an apartment, we really don't have any tools because we don't really need any tools. Lucky for me, I do have two brothers who live in the area with their lovely families. And they have homes. So they have tools :) Check! We have tool access -- kaching!

Then we made a trip to the Home Depot to pick up a 4 x 4 wood post. Initially, I was a little shocked when I saw the price for this "post" -- $12.00! I wasn't so sure about following through with my "little" project at that point, because to me, one of the purposes behind making one's own decorations is to be a little thrifty. Luckily I have a hubby with a keen sense of smell for a good deal... and he sought out this fantabulous little "cull cart" -- whatever that means. I didn't bother to ask. All I cared about was the fact that the wood that should have been $12.00 turned out to be just two dollars! Yes, please.


After picking out the [cheap] wood, we asked the nice workerman to please cut the posts into four-inch sections. And this is what my giddy little self ended up with:

So we paid for our blocks and off we went to my brother's house to use his sander and cordless drill [which the hubs drooled over the whole time]. The goal with the drill was to drill a shallow hole that would fit a little tea light candle in it. We bought a 1 1/2" drill bit for around (er, exactly) $6.17 and prior to drilling, hubby had me use a tape measure to find the exact middle of the top of each block.

Notice those nice manicured nails in OPI's Black Cherry :) A handywoman with nice nails, mmhmm.

And no, this is not in our apartment. Us, granite countertops? Someday, my friends... someday.

Anyway, once I finished up that job, hubby started drilling:

And I started sanding to make the blocks nice and smooth. Well, at least to the non-sliver point. About an hour and a half after beginning the tool phase, we finished!

We threw the blocks into our trunk, swept out the garage and tried to make it look better than when we arrived. Oh, and we decided to help ourselves and split a slice of the delicious looking banana bread that was sitting on that nice granite countertop seen a few photos back. Thanks, lovely sister-in-law for sharing without knowing -- we enjoyed every bite after slaving away with power tools over these baby-block shaped hunks of wood :)

When we arrived back at our apartment, hubby set up a painting station for me, turned on some country music (his choice, not mine. Sorry hunny, I just publicly outed you as a country fan!) and got painting.

The first coat was brown.
Yes, that's hubby's hard-working paint-brush hand in the background. When the brown was dry, we layered on a clear crackle-coat. I used this stuff that I found at JoAnn's and it was fantastic:

After the clear coat of this dried, I painted a coat of cream... and then the magic happened! Lots o' cracklin'.

After all of that, I cut out some letters to the word "GIVE THANKS" that I printed out nice and big. After tracing around the letters on each block, I painted the inside of my outlines black with a teensy tiny purple brush we bought at Hobby Lobby (um, I love Hobby Lobby. Like, a lot).

Halfway there... yahoo!

And finally after three days of crafty crafting, I finished!

And I'm very pleased! Except for one thing. I'll bet you can see it...

Yep, the "A" -- it's a teensy bit higher than the other letters. Darnit! So I may or may not paint over it and re-do it, but we'll see.

Eek! My reflection. Slight violation of my blogger anonymity!

For me, I'd consider this a success! I'm very pleased with how it turned out and I really enjoyed working on it. Hubby even likes it :) I'm thinking about doing one for Christmas, too, because we still have around 20 blocks left over that we didn't use but did sand and drill. And it ended up being pretty thrifty after all. Probably around $15.00 was spent on the whole thing... not bad!

Now it's time for me to make myself a cookie dough malt (um, delicious) and pick out my clothes for school tomorrow before I head to bed. Yes, I do still pick out my clothes every night before going to bed. Trust me, it saves at least 10 minutes in the morning.

Happy Wednesday tomorrow! :)

Christmastime means Christmas Cards!

For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by looking at the Christmas cards my parents received each year during the holiday season. Reading their personal messages and well wishes gave me that warm, fuzzy holiday feeling. But what I liked even more was looking at the photo cards. The ones where families wear matchy matchy sweaters or button-down denim shirts (ha!) were my personal faves... and the inspiration behind me vowing to never have my [future] family fall into that whole "clone" thing.

Anyway, all those years of leafing through their Christmas cards made me eager for the day when I could send out some of my own. And last year, we finally had that chance! So I decided to look at Shutterfly for our Christmas cards because we ordered a photobook from them for our Guestbook when we got married and were super happy with how it turned out. Anyway, I dove into their Christmas card templates and was so impressed by all of the cute choices they had. Now, I have a tendency to be completely indecisive, so choosing a border/backdrop for our card wasn't easy with all of the fantastic holiday card options; I spent days looking at all of the options before finally deciding on one that matched one of our wedding photos perfectly.

Once I got over the obstacle of narrowing down which template to use, the whole ordering process with Shutterfly was a breeze. For newlyweds, the price-point wasn't too high, either! And they had a great promotion going where we got 20% off, too... always a bonus :) Best of all, we even had the option to pick up our cards at a local Wal-Mart rather than waiting for them in the mail (which was perfect, because I was totally impatient to see my first-ever Christmas cards!). They turned out beautifully and we got so many complements on them.

This year, I'm just as eager to get Christmas cards out... but maybe this year with the addition of a Christmas letter, too :) We'll see. This time I'm also thinking of doing a multi-picture card to showcase some of our adventures in our first full-year of marriage. I was really excited when I looked into Shutterfly's new options for Christmas cards this year because I found one that would fit exactly what I was looking for if I wanted to go the route of both a letter and a multi-picture card:

Christmas Letter Christmas Card

But of course, life gets busy... especially with being a first-year-teacher! So who knows if I'll get to writing that little letter. So if not, I could still use this multi-photo option instead...

All in Lights Christmas Card

However, there's something to be said for simple elegance at Christmastime, which Shutterfly does an amazing job of. These are some of my favorites...

Merry Bright Star Christmas Card

Swirl Greetings Christmas Card

Festive Script Christmas Card

And then these next few are just so fun and so perfect...

Vintage Merry Christmas Card

Mod Ornaments Holiday Card

Glitter Glamour Joy Christmas Card

I love that last one with the glittery words. The red looks so good with the black and white photo! I think I might be mostly leaning toward that one. But can you see how hard it is to choose just one?! They have such cute designs!

I can't wait until Christmas comes a little closer and I can start playing with each of these cards and getting some ordered! I'm trying to hold off on getting into the Christmas spirit too much before Thanksgiving... :) But when I am ready to be full-blown Christmas, ordering one of these snazzy holiday cards is definitely at the top of my "to-do" list! And I promise I'll share it with you on here when I do :)

*I’m receiving 50 free cards from Shutterfly for this post, and if you’re a blogger, you can too! Follow this link and check it out! Click here!

Twelve-hour days...

I've now spent two of the last three school days at school for 12 hours, and I'll be doing it yet again tomorrow. Why? One word: conferences.

I don't mind them, really. Except toward the end where I start to feel lightheaded (seriously. This has happened to me both days now). And the part where my brain starts to turn to mush. And tonight I made the mistake of wearing a woolish cableknit sweater from Gap's Christmas collection a couple years ago... which means that I probably convinced my students' parents by the end of their conferences that I must've rolled in poison ivy just prior to their arrival. Live and learn, I guess.

Anyway, this post isn't about conferences, really. All I wanted to share was something glorious one of my kiddos shared this morning.

I called his name and asked if he'd like to share anything with our class today. He proudly made his way to the front of my room and when he got up front there, he shoved his little hand into his right pocket and dug down deep. His hand emerged, little pieces of fabric sticking out from between his chubby baby fingers, as he boldly declared, "this is my tag collection". A toothy grin spread across his plump red face, so obviously pleased with himself, as he spread out a vast array of tags. Yes, tags. From the inside of his t-shirts. Black tags, white tags, big tags, little tags. Even one tag he'd just cut off this morning! "I've been collecting them a long, long time," he explained. "And when I feel sad or nervous, I just pull one out and rub it in between my fingers and it's like a cure."

I flash him my great big teacher grin and use my best teacher voice to commend his "fantastic" collection and thank him for sharing. In reality, he probably never thought of them as a collection until I called his name to share. He probably just shoved 'em in his pocket this morning before leaving school in order to have something extra to play with. After all, this is the kiddo of mine who spends probably five dollars a week on erasers from the quarter machine in the hallway before school. Which would be fine and dandy, except he then proceeds to stick them in his mouth and chew on them rather than erasing with them or even making a neat little collection or eraser house out of them (a common activity in third grade, by the by). The worst part for him (or maybe his parents, whose five dollars he's spending...) is that the moment I notice him chewing on something, I walk over and make him spit it out in my hand. Yes, I do get a nice pool of spit in my hand when I do that. And yes, it is gross. But gross is kind of my life in third grade. You don't even want to know how many fingers up noses I see each day.

Oh, and I earned a new teacher badge today! What for? My worst fear came true! Well, almost. I survived my first puker! Yes, indeed. Except I was standing by the door of my classroom, ready to give hugs and high-five goodbyes to my busers when I heard what sounded like someone spilling water all over the floor. Only it wasn't water. Anyway, lucky for me, pukey was standing toward the front of my room and there were desks (and a circle of third grade gawkers) to shield my eyes from what probably would have triggered my own barf reflex. So I'm still waiting for my real first close encounter, but this was certainly close enough.

Sidenote: the most horrific memory of puking I have happened when I was in second or third grade myself. The setting: our all-school Christmas concert. The who: Chris VanVulkenberg. Yes, that was his real name; we called him "VulkenVader" -- why? Lord knows. Anyway, nearing the third verse of some Christmas tune, he decided to add his own personal gift -- right down the back and into the shoes of the person in front of him. Oofsch. Thank goodness my music teacher didn't stick me in that spot. Yeesh. Anyway.

By the by: janitors deserve a medal. Mine was in my room within minutes and cleaned it up before any of the rancid fumes aerated the room my conferences would be held in.

All-in-all, regardless of the length of the day, my itchy sweater and the puking child... today was a fantastic day. My first day without standardized testing in practically a whole week. Hallelujah!

Have I mentioned yet how much I love my job? Well, I love my job! Like, way more than I thought possible. Eek!

The elusive boot search...

I've never been one for boots.

Well, I take that back.

I like boots. Just... not on me.

Especially well-loved by my petite-bodied heart are booties.

Yes, booties. Ankle-high booties paired with superskinny jeans? Yes ma'am.

But alas, I have never found such booties to elicit much of a cuteness factor on me.

Until yesterday, that is.

While sitting in church one Sunday (yes, I know. But I definitely prayed harder for this thought to get out as soon as it got into my mind), I decided that I'm now a workin' woman, so I should be allowed to buy a pair of boots that I love at full price.

Naturally I shied away from that thought five hours later when I revisited it (me, pay full price for something? HA!), but I shopped around online and decided to order three pairs of booties from Piperlime.com, seduced by their free to-and-from shipping. Anyone who knows me knows I refuse to pay for shipping on near anything. Anyways.

After weeks (well, what felt like weeks in shoe-time; it was more like four days) of waiting and a faulty shipping label that almost kept my shoes from me (yikes!), hubby brought my shoes home from the UPS store.

I walked in the door, saw the green and white box sitting on the floor and tore it open. The lovelies in box numero uno looked a little (er, exactly) like this:

Designed by Jessica Simpson (yes, I'll admit, I do love her... despite the fact that she divorced Nick Lachey), these black booties are made of real leather, have a hidden platform in the footbed, and have a four-inch heel. Oh yeah, and I'm in love with them.

After liking the first pair so well, I actually secretly hoped I would despise the other two pair of boots that were waiting to be uncovered.

Anyway, I opened up the next trunk of goodness to find these:
Oh. My. Goodness. The leather on these babies is like buttah. You heard me. Amazing. And the boot itself is suuuuper comfy. And is SO cute with skinny jeans. Yes, puh-lease. I know, they are semi-cowgirlish. But in a good way; not a honkeytonk, badonkadonk (or however that country song goes... ack) way.

At this point, I realized I was in trouble. Big trouble. Did I get these boots on sale? Yes. But does that mean they were Dakota Boy's Ranch cheap? Uh, no.

So at that point, I decided to peek in my last box and see if I could put myself into deeper trouble. Here's the last treasure I found:
Cute? Yes. But luckily, there was one factor about them that made me have a strong dislike of them: they were near impossible to put on. No zipper, no elastic, no generous room to slide my foot in Cinderella-style. And luckily, that automatically rules them out (sort of. I'm wishy-washy like that).

So I've spent an ample amount of time assessing the options and trying to determine which pair of boots (or both?) to keep. I really can't justify two pair of ankle boots; I mean, really? Do I really need two pair? Not really. Granted, one is black and one is grey. But still.

Anyway, tonight was our first evening of parent-teacher conferences. [I promise, this is somehow tied-in to my shoe dilemma. Hear me out.] And as I was pulling out of the parking lot this evening, my mind wasn't on what Johnny's mom said about his math grade; nope, not one bit. It was instead on this boot dilemma, attempting to rationalize keeping both pair.

"You fool! Of course you can keep both pair. You just did conferences. Your paycheck will be bigger because you've been spending and will spend a number of extra evening hours working over the next week or so!" my mind thought.

Rats. I was double fooled by my own mind. Because, in reality, that is not the case at all. My paycheck stays the same... I am on SALARY! Whoops. No justification there.

Which I guess leads me back to square one: which boots to choose, which boots to choose.

Thoughts?

Today

Was a challenging day in my classroom.

Why?

We took some state standardized testing.

I thought it would be an easy, relaxed day. I mean, what's easier than staying in your seat and filling in some bubbles?

Apparently, for third graders, a lot of things. It dawned on me partway through the day that kids really hate sitting still. Duh, third grade teacher! You just figured that out? Anyway.

And today, my kids challenged my patience. And even more-so, the resolutions I decided upon over this last weekend that included:

Give more hugs.

Enjoy each student as individuals. Every. Single. Day. It's way, way, way too often that I find myself standing in my classroom alone at the end of the day, crumpled notebook paper and pint-sized chairs strewn around the room, wondering if I even uttered a non-academic word to most of my students. I spend so much time trying to make sure they've learned every last little vocabulary word or name of some leaves on our Wisconsin Fast Plants that I forget to connect with them on a personal level and celebrate them as wonderful, amazing, beautiful little people. I recognized it probably sounds completely horrible that this even needs to be a resolution for a teacher, but really: we get so focused on wanting our students to do well and to succeed that it's all too easy to forget to take time out of the day to appreciate and love on them. My gentle, encouraging, humorous, silly, guiding words -- the relationship I can have with my students -- those are what are most important. Sometimes it's just though to be mindful of that in the craziness screams, "Assess! Assess! Assess!"

But tomorrow is a new day. I'll give more hugs, more smiles and more patience all around.

Not to mention, I'll totally have a spring in my step. Did you see the U.S. maps on this fantastic election day? What a beautiful shade of red all around (those of you who know me had to know this would get at least a teensy bit political considering it is the first Tuesday in November...) :) Wheeeeee!

It's Saturday...

And the living's easy.

Well, aside from waking up at seven a.m. to work at Old Navy. Minor detail, though. I enjoy working there and got some phenomenal deals without utilizing my employee discount -- right now, for every adult item you buy, you can get a kid's item of equal or lesser value for FREE!

Of course, I don't have kids. But I do have a niece and nephews :) Let's just say they reaped the benefits today.

I also braved the crowds at the grand opening of the new Forever 21 store that opened up this morning. Was I nuts!? Holy cats! The number of girls there was insane. And any boyfriend or husband that got drug along deserves a medal. Seriously. It was mass chaos. I anticipate the line to check out took at least an hour. Trust me, I wasn't that crazy and left the store empty handed (checkbook = sigh of relief).

Anyway, as I said: it's Saturday and the living is easy. My tummy was a rumblin', so I opened up a nummy cinnamon bread mix this afternoon which produced these delectable little darlings:

Oh my.

I hope you enjoy your Saturday as much as I enjoyed these babies.

New hairs

Since middle school, I've made a wide range of hair mistakes. My first experience was in the summer after seventh grade. I wanted highlights, so my mom bought one of those at-home kits and within hours, I'd become a girl with blonde roots and brown ends. Whoops. And of course, tears ensued. After that mishap, I went to a salon of some sort to get them done.

Until, of course, the movie A Walk to Remember with Mandy Moore came out and I dreamt of having her gorgeous, chocolate brown hair. And during a sleepover with a bunch of other high school girls, we decided that someone should dye their hair. And, of course, I volunteered -- after all, I'd been longing for shiny brown hair... So off we went to Target, where we found a box where the girl on the front had a color that mimicked that of Mandy Moore's. I called my mom on the ride home, who asked with a hint (or an urging) of caution, "are you sure you want to do that?" Um, duh! I'm 15 and what could go wrong?

Um, everything? Basically, yes. For starters, we only glanced at the picture on the box -- had we read the color as my mom and I did the following day, we'd have found out it was dubbed "Deep Copper Mahogany". Oofsch. Yep -- it was brown, but with an orangey/red/purple hint. Whoops. And we also didn't do a good job of washing all of the color out, because my pillowcase turned a shade of purple over night. Double whoops. Unfortunately, my hair turned a vibrant purple/red shade. Enter tears. And a mom who shook her head as she dialed up a salon in town to fix the silly, impulsive teenage mistake I'd made.

So the next day, I found myself sitting in a salon chair for around five hours to change that cartoon character hair into something a little more, well, normal. And then I cried, again. And I distinctly remember thinking, "what did I do to my pretty, highlighted hair?"

Naturally, I continued to make good and not-so-good hair choices from then on -- but none quite as horrible as that. Most of the time, I remained highlighted. A few times, I dabbled in being an allover brunette. But about two years ago, I finally realized that my no-fail color was a few shades of blonde highlights. I never disliked the look when I'd get it done and made me look less "boring" than being a solid brown-hue. And I'd vowed to never do anything but highlights.

Naturally, I'm fickle. But two years was a pretty long time for me to go without breaking that vow. Until last night, of course.

I went to a new stylist who I'd never been to before. She was quite a bit more spunky and I kind of felt like a nun sitting in her chair. Seriously. When she asked if I ever go out, I responded with a meek, "not really." She looked at me like I really was a nun. Seriously. And then when she asked where I go if and when I do go out and I responded with, "I dunno, Applebees?" she looked like I was a nun who was asking to get a mohawk.

Anyway.

She suggested I "go dark" for fall. "Everyone goes dark for fall. Even I go dark for fall, and I am blonde in the summer!" oofsch. Peer pressure.

Maybe it was the fact that I was starving at that moment and just wanted to hurry up and get on with it. Or maybe it was that my roots had grown out an inch and a half and I just wanted them covered up. Or possibly because of the one hour of sleep I'd gotten the night before, or because she told me it would really make my blue eyes look "suuuuuuuuh beeeeeautiful, ohmigod".

No matter what it was, I broke my vow.

And I am now no longer a blonde. Instead, I am a vampy auburn goddess... or something. A vampy auburn goddess who got into her car and sobbed about her horrible lapse in judgment.

A vampy auburn goddess who had trouble falling asleep because she kept thinking about the horrible mistake she'd made and what her students would say when they saw her the next day.

Anyway, I got to school this morning and waited by the door of my classroom to give "hello handshakes" as my third graders come in like I usually do. Only today, rather than smiling and saying good morning, their little mouths dropped to the floor and then ran a-mile-a-minute about my new hair color.

Here are some of my favorites from the day:

"Um, can you change it back?" "No, I'm afraid it doesn't wash out." "Oh no!! I liked it yellow so much better!"

"Your hair doesn't match your face!"

"Your hair doesn't match your outfit today."

"Your hair doesn't match any of the clothes you have ever worn."

"You look like my mom." -- I heard this eight thousand times today.

"You look hideous." No seriously, one kid really did say this to me.

The boy who said I look hideous even routinely shielded his eyes from my ugliness.

Luckily, I have a self esteem that doesn't get dents in it from eight and nine-year-olds : ) My husband said he's surprised I didn't cry, but I really just found it hilarious. They were being completely preposterous.

Well, it also helped that many of the people I work with seemed to genuinely like it. Some, of course, shared my feeling -- that it was pretty drastic and gave preference to my former hair. But some really liked it significantly more.

And now that I'm getting over the whole, I-feel-like-I'm-wearing-an-auburn-wig-thing, I might like it a little more. Maybe.