100th Post

Helloooooo....It's been awhile. I've been purposely avoiding doing this post for several  one weeks (it feels like more than a week) now. Since it's my 100th I felt it really deserved to be something profound or totally awesome or super interesting . And as of late I haven't had any thing profound, totally awesome, or super interesting to post about. Life has just been kind of uneventful. Not bad uneventful. Just content and comfortable. Which when I think about it, is kind of profound,  awesome, and interesting. I started this blog way back in February as a form of self care. I was going through a rough patch and thought it was something that might help. An outlet. And here we are 10 months later and things are soooo much better. Getting here had it's ups and downs, but I'm finally in a place where I feel like I have control of my anxiety. Sure I'm medicated (:p) but I'm much more accepting of that fact now. Before it was something that I was really not okay with. My workplace is much healthier than the one I was in and I'm happier because of it. I've made some changes in my lifestyle to improve my personal health. I ran my first 5k this month and I've lost almost 20 pounds since June! Things with Brian are fantastic, as always, and I'm so grateful for the support he has given me while I've dealt with everything.

I have confidence now that I am capable of handling my anxiety, and life challenges in general. Sure things haven't been easy and there were times I wasn't sure if I would ever feel like myself again. But here I am, dealing and doing pretty well.

Sickness Sucks

Blehhhhhhhhhhh... That's how I feel right now. I'm sick. Thought I could avoid all those nasty little germs from my runny-nosed 3rd graders with a flu shot and frequent hand-washing, but alas, no. I think it may be due to the weakening of my immune system courtesy of my 5k last weekend. Yes, I ran my 5k. RAN the whole time. Finished in 45 minutes and some-odd seconds. Not as fast as I would have liked, but dang if that path in Shawnee Mission Park isn't hilly! Here's a "lovely" pic of me getting my run on.

I started feeling sick the day after my run. I think it might of been because it was really freakin' cold and windy before we started running. Then I got hot while I was running. Then cold again while waiting for Brian to finish. But who knows. Trudged through work yesterday as I did not have any sub plans ready and cannot pop into school when I'm sick like I did last year. I got stuff together for a sub and stayed home today. Sure glad I did because I feel like ass. Gonna have to go back tomorrow though. Too much to do!

When you love someone...

When you love someone their little quirks and flaws are cute and endearing. When you love someone small mistakes they make are quickly (sometimes not so quickly) forgiven. When you love someone you are willing to accept them for all of the good and the bad. Until they leave an ink pen in their pocket that you don't discover until you take clothes out of the dryer and it ruins your favorite gray tank top, purple tank top, and work pants. I'm going shopping.

Hello, it's been awhile...

Life's been stoopid busy lately so I haven't been blogging much. That and I haven't thought of anything super interesting to post.

School has been super hectic lately. Between grade cards, conferences, and other random activities I haven't had much time to be creative with my classroom. Tomorrow is our Halloween parade and party and I've been baking away making cake pops for the kiddos. This time I did eyeballs! White cake, white icing, white chocolate, gummy savers for the iris and mini M&Ms for the pupils. Here's a pic.

I will be donning my owl costume for the festivities tomorrow. I got to try it out last night for Ryan and Michelle's Halloween party. Got lots of complements and it was extremely comfy!

Brian was Mad Max. Oh! And I got a a hair cut.

My race is coming up in a couple of weeks and hopefully I will be ready! My first two runs on Monday and Wednesday this week were kinda hard, and I have yet to get motivated to run today. Tomorrow I do my first 30 minute run. I'm hoping to do 3 miles. On a related note, I haven't been losing much weight lately. I've still been doing LiveStrong, but there have been days I've gone over on my calories. I've been staying right around the same weight for about 3 weeks now so I decided to reduce my daily calorie allowance by about 200. But of course with it being Halloween, I've been eating lots of junk lately. Gotta get back on track!

I've also been really itching to do some shopping lately! I'm in the market for some cute sweater dresses for work. I'd like one in gray and maybe brown or green. Target and Old Navy have some cute ones right now. I'm also looking to get a head band ear warmer for when I run and some gloves. There's been a few days where it's been chilly but not too bad. It's going to be REALLY cold on race day though! However, I probably should not spend much since Christmas is coming up and I need to start thinking about buying presents.

Wedding planning hasn't gotten really any further lately. I've been pinning stuff on my Pinterest and thinking more about flowers, bridesmaid dresses, tuxes, decorations, save the dates, invitations, hotels, bar service, cakes...You name it; it's on my mind. I think the next thing to do will be save the dates to send out in January. Once I get our engagement pictures back from Kaleigh I can get started on those.

Well I better get back to work on laundry so I can go for a run soon. Brian had to go into work today so I did the grocery shopping by myself. In between that, laundry, and cake pops I've been watching Halloween and Halloween H2O on the X-Box. Bout time I got busy!

Week of accomplishments and fall fun.

Well it's Sunday night and tomorrow is the start of a new week, and I have to say I'm mighty pleased with myself. I had a pretty productive work week and a fun weekend. All in all no complaints.

We only had students Monday-Thursday this week and although my class is chatty and seems to really struggle remembering to raise their hands when they need something instead of chasing me around the room, it was a pretty productive week. We managed to stay mostly on schedule and did alright with everything I planned for the week. On Friday I worked on grade cards and a few other odds and ends. Surprisingly, grade cards weren't as bad as I thought they were going to be. Now that I have one 9 weeks under my belt I don't think I'll be so intimidated by a new grading system next time around. I was also able to finish guided reading plans for next week, prep some new AR (Accelerated Reader) things to implement, and fill out progress sheets for conferences. Unfortunately I did not get my student improvement plans done for a few of my kiddos, but I've got some down time during conferences this week I can work on those.

Friday after work I went to my parents house to run to David's Bridal with my mom to pick up my wedding dress! Everything was in except for the veil so we'll go get that some other time. Right now it's hanging in my parent's closet until I got back for a fitting in February. I tried on a 14 in the store which was quite snug so they ordered me a 16. I'm planning on continuing to lose weight so it's possible the 16 could become too big. The plan is to go back in February to see how it fits and order a smaller one if necessary. I'm thinking since they can take it in two dress sizes with alterations it should be fine. That would bring it down to a 12, and their dresses run small, so that should be about right.

Saturday Brian and I drove down to Baldwin for the Maple Leaf Festival. It was very crowded but lots of fun. We looked at crafts and had some lunch then my parents and Chris, Jess, and Cam showed up. We walked around a bit more and laughed at Cameron and his, "I see tractor. I see baby. I see cars. I see dog. Tractor night night. Baby night night. Car night night. Dog night night." He's so silly! Then Brian and I headed home. We had dinner and watched a movie. We had picked up the Tawny dessert wine from Somerset Ridge to try. We hoped it would be as good as the Citron. Brian liked it, but I did not. It tasted very strongly of alcohol and reminded me of whiskey. Not a fan. So he drank that and I had some left over margarita stuff we had.

Oh and I almost forgot! Friday was a very exciting day because baby Saydee was born! One of my best friends Katie and her husband Louie welcomed their first born on Friday afternoon. I've only seen pictures so far but she's super adorable. I can't wait to go down to Hutch and visit.

And another thing I forgot to mention. On Saturday morning Brian and I went for our runs. I ran 2 1/3 miles in 25 minutes without stopping! A first and major accomplishment for me! I have gone from hating running and barely being able to do a minute without huffing and puffing to doing 25 minutes without stopping. Our race is November 12th and I still have 3 weeks of training to do, but I think I will be able to do a 5k in 30 minutes. Then hopefully onto longer races.

Today we didn't do a whole lot. We got up and had breakfast and I started climbing Laundry Mountain. Between our everyday clothes, Brian's work out clothes, and my work out clothes we go through a lot in one week. I did 5 loads of laundry today! Ridiculous! We went to the grocery store and ran a couple of errands. We came home and lazed around for a little bit. I took a brief nap while watching SNL on Hulu. Then we decided to get out of the house again. It was Give Away day at the library books sale so we checked that out. I found a few good teacher books and Brian picked up a couple of cook books. I had been wanting to go to the pumpkin patch for awhile so we headed out there next. We got a couple of good sized pumpkins for carving and Brian got some cute little pumpkins and a gourd for his office.

Now we're home and Brian's playing WOW and I'm watching Oliver's Twist on Netflix. A nice way to end a lovely weekend.

And as I promised here is a picture of me in my finished owl costume as well as a couple of my new nail polish.

I think it looks pretty good! I wish you could see the owl face better. It's really cute!

 

 

These pictures really don't do the polish justice. This a really pretty gray called Cockatoo's Mystery.

This is a gorgeous black with gold, green, and red sparkles. It's called Owl's Night.

Guess whooo's got a cute Halloween costume??

I finished my costume! And it looks sooo cute!

As you may remember I found this adorable owl costume here and immediately knew that's what I wanted to be for Halloween.

I started working on it last weekend when Brian and I were visiting his family. We stopped by Savers (a thrift store) and I picked up a few items to cut up and use for feathers. I found a dark brown pillow case, a dark gray, light brown, and tan-ish t-shirt, and some awesome off white scrap fabric with a leaf pattern. Brian, his mom, and sister helped me make cardboard templates for the feathers and cut them out. Brian's mom quilts so she had plenty of cutting boards and Olfa cutters for use to use.

Earlier this week Brian and I went to Hobby Lobby so I could get materials to make my mask, headband thingy. I decided that stiff kind of felt would make the best material and picked up sheets in light brown, orange, yellow, and dark blue. I printed out the make template and used it to piece together the owl face. I glued everything together with Aleen's fabric glue. I wasn't too sure about the stuff at first. It seemed like the parts of my mask weren't really sticking. But once I let it set over-night it worked fine. I attached the owl face to a stretchy brown headband.

Tonight I started working on attaching the feathers. I'm using a Gap t-shirt dress (I actually think it's Gap Body night gown) I bought at ATC last fall. I got one in dark and light gray and I don't wear the light gray one much so I figured it would be okay to use. I put an old paper bag inside the t-shirt to keep the layers from sticking to each other. I started at the bottom of the shirt and glued on a row of feathers at a time, overlapping to cover all the t-shirt. It went pretty quickly and wasn't too hard to do. The one thing I would do differently next time is use a wooden skewer to spread the glue on the feathers. I started out just squirting it from the bottle and it was hard to control the flow. I ended up using way more glue than I needed on the first few rows. By the time I got to the neck I was pretty much out of glue. I didn't want to go get more so I started scraping bottom with a skewer and it was just enough to finish.

I'm going to let it dry over-night and hopefully everything will stick when I pick it up tomorrow. I plan to wear a black long sleeve shirt underneath the t-shirt dress, black leggings, and ballet flats. The one thing I'm a little worried about is putting the headband on. I don't want my owl face to pop off! I guess if it does I can always safety pin it.

I'll post a picture of how it looks tomorrow after it dries!

Halloween Costume

I found a super cute Halloween costume that I'm going to try to make for this year. It looks pretty simple so hopefully I don't mess it up too much. It's a child's costume that I found here, but this chick made it in grown up size here. I have a gray t-shirt dress that I bought at Arizona Trading Co. last year that I thought would be good to put the feathers on. Then I can just wear a black long sleeve under it with some black leggings and ballet flats. I'm going to attach the mask to a headband and wear it on my head like the girl at humble ablog. My future mother in law quilts so she said I could look through her scrap fabric for feather material. Hopefully she has some cool colors. I'm going to use fabric glue rather than sewing. I don't have a machine and I'm not a good enough at hand stitching to do it that way. It would take forever!

And I found some absolutely beautiful fall nail polish that I would like to wear with it. I saw it at Walgreen's last week but talked myself out of buying it because I don't paint my nails very often, but now I want it! I checked 3 stores last night and no one had it! It's a limited edition so I may have to resort to online purchase. We're going to KC today so maybe a Walgreen's there will have it. It's called Owl's Night and it's part of the L'Oreal Project Runway collection. I love how it has the specks of different colored sparkles that reflect in the light. And the dark, rich color is perfect for fall. I hope I can find it!