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!

Best Weekend Ev-ah!

Oh my goodness I can't remember the last time I had so many enjoyable experiences in one weekend. It really was perfect. And my loving fiance had doubts that I could do it all. Pshhh! I showed him! In a loving point proving sort of way.

It all started with Kaleigh's arrival on Friday night. She got in and we went OUT! The three of us first headed to Louise's (where I hadn't been in YEARS!). Kaleigh and I got schooners of Boulevard and enjoyed sitting and laughing in the way more comfortable booths than Louise's had when we were in college! Next we headed to Free State where it was already last call so we used the bathroom and decided to try Quinton's. $3 cover? No thank you. We ended the night at Henry's Upstairs with some sangria. It was heavenly. Rolled in at about 1:30 with plans to get up at 6:00 to take engagement pictures! Yikes! Not in college anymore!

Up and at 'em Saturday morning and got gussied. We started at Alvamar for some pictures on the bench where we first chatted. Sigh....Then headed downtown. We did pictures at The Carnegie Building, Mass Street, and bridge by the train depot. They look AMAZING! Can't wait to see them after Kaleigh does some editing. We finished just in time to run home, grab a few things, and jump in the car to head to David's Bridal in Topeka.

We met my mom, Mara, Jessica (my brother's wife), Linda (Brian's mom), and Kristen (Brian's sister) and I started trying on dresses. The first dress I put on was one I fell in love with when I found it on the Knot. It was beautiful but not really me. The second dress was one Kaleigh picked out and was also very beautiful, but too much for our outdoor wedding. The third dress had a single strap and was just weird and ill fitting. The fourth dress was one I liked, but didn't have any strong feelings about. Until I put it on. Just before I had been saying to Kaleigh, "I don't know how I will know! How do you know?" She reassured me, "Oh you'll know. The heavens will open up and you'll know." As I walked out of the dressing room, the song we are playing for our first dance (Michale Buble: Everything) came on. The heavens opened up and I knew. I started to tear up, Kaleigh teared up, my mom teared up. I had found my dress! It is perfect. I'm not going to put a picture or describe because I want Brian to be surprised,  and I think sometimes he reads this. But I assure you, it is perfect.


After dresses Kaleigh and I went to my oldest friend Liz's sister's wedding. It was beautiful and I'm going to steal her program idea. They are super cute! After the wedding Kaleigh and I headed back to Lawrence. We picked up Brian and went down town to grab a quick dinner. We brought it back home and watched Bridesmaids. Then Mara and Chad came over. After the movie Mara, Kaleigh and I went downtown again. We went back to Henry's (the Sandbar's line was waaaay long) and then to The Casbah for some sweet potato fries. In at 1:30 again! Who am I???

On Sunday morning Brian, Kaleigh and I went to campus to take more engagement photos. They also turned out amazing! We went to the fountain, Potter Lake, the Campanile, and a really cute red garage with love spray painted on it in black. After we went out to lunch at Zen Zero then Kaleigh headed home. :(

It was a blast. I couldn't have asked for a better weekend. And we got everything done! I wouldn't mind doing a Kaleigh only trip again. I sure did miss Andrew, Reygan, and Jack but this was fun too! Bachelorette party's next!