The Big 2-6!

Today I'm celebrating the anniversary of my birth.  It's been quite a joyous occasion.  I'll do a quick recap of the day's events.  To start, several of my 8th graders made me birthday cards

Aren't they sweet?  My personal favorite (which was on the inside of several cards) was "You don't look a day over 24!"  Riiiight.

My 6th graders sang happy birthday to me and I even had a parent come and sing me one of the most beautiful versions of the bday serenade I've ever heard!

Once I got home, I was super excited to see that the Mr. had pulled out the ugly bush in our front yard that I've been hating forever.  We went to Andrea's for dinner and then he made me this:

I can't wait to eat it!  So far, I'm feeling very blessed and 26 is starting VERY well :0)

Not Too Shabby

My new design template finally worked! Wootie-woot-hoo! Pretty snazzy if I do say so myself.

Today was a classic return-to-school-after-an-extended-break kinda day.  However I'm proud to report MOST of my littles were angels...for me at least!

Should be's

Today is all about should be's for me.  Case in point:

• I should be cleaning my house for the upcoming week.
• I should be finishing IEPs for meetings that are tomorrow and Wednesday (To my credit the only part I have to finish is the goal progress.  The rest is as finished as can be without actually having the meeting and consent of the team.  I'm not that big of a procrastinator!)
• I should be going to the gym since I only went once over break.

However since the anniversary of my birth is approaching, I'm throwing caution to the wind and spending the day going to antique shops and wineries with my mom instead.  It just sounds like more fun, doesn't it?

To make myself feel better about these procrastinations, here's a list of things that did get accomplished over break:

• Jozie's summer haircut
• Raking leaves and spraying weeds
• Cleaning out the patio
• Hemming my man cave drapes (photos to come soon)
• Making 3 throw pillows envelope-style for the cave (ditto on the pictures)
• Running outside 3 days
• Planting an azalea-hot pink!
• Painting my planters

Whew! I guess that's not too shabby a list considering I was gone for four days.

Who's excited about the season premiere of Mad Men?!?! This girl! 

Egg-cellent

Good morning!  Today is bittersweet since it's my last day of spring break (I never count weekends because, duh, I get those off anyways) and I recently purchased a new blog template that's not downloading correctly.  Grr.  However, I did complete a Pinterest project that I'd been wanting to tackle.  It originally came from Alissa over at A Crafty Endeavor

(Please excuse the poor quality of the pictures.  Eric has the camera in his flight bag, so these are straight from my phone.)

Yarn Easter Egg Project

Materials needed:

• 1 bag of globe/water sized balloons
• 1 cup of liquid starch ( I used Sta Flo, which I found next to the detergents)
• 1/2 cup of flour
• Various colors of yarn or embroidery floss (I used yarn)

Step 1: Blow up as many balloons as you're planning to use.  I did quite a few more than I actually ended up using. 

Step 2: Mix your 1 cup of liquid starch and 1/2 cup of flour.  Make sure you combine it well enough to get the flour lumps nice and smooth because they will dry as lumps on your Easter egg.

Step 3: Cut your strings so you have approximately 3 arm lengths (I count both arms) per string.  It's easier to have them pre-cut so you're not constantly stopping to wash your gooey hands.  You also might want to prep your assembly line for making and drying.  It worked well for me to step up my strings, goo bowl, balloons, and various cutting boards for drying. 

Step 4:  Take one piece of string and coil it into your goo bowl.  This will prevent the string from getting too tangled.  Make sure that you press the string into the goo so it will stick to the balloon.

Step 5: Wrap the gooey string around your balloon.  I found that the closer you wrap the strings next to each other, the longer it takes to dry and the harder it is to get excess goo off the balloon. 

Step 6: Wipe off any excess goo with a paper towel.  You don't want too much of it to dry on the egg because it's visible and difficult to get off after it's dried.

Step 7: Set aside to dry and repeat steps 4-6 until you're finished.  I used all of my goo mixture and got about 9-10 water balloon-sized balloons.  My kitty knocked one off the counter and ruined it.  Silly kitty.  (And yes, I forgot to take a picture of the drying process.)  Oops.

My balloons had to dry overnight.  (Some of the balloons that I had over-wrapped were still a little sticky.)  Use a pin to pop the balloon and pull it out of your larger gaps. 

Overall, I thought they turned out super cute! 

Things I'm keeping in mind for next time (oh yes, I'm gearing up to do this with some of my students) would be: don't wrap the string too closely and make sure not to leave too much goo on the balloon as it drys.

Spring Haircut

My pretty girl got her spring haircut last Friday.  It's always a bit of a traumatic experience since we didn't always buzz her when the weather turned warm for various reasons: 1. being young and broke  and 2. hearing that the hair doesn't grow back the same.  Luckily our pooch loves riding in the car so she usually has no clue as to what's in store for her.  I think we've done a good job of not associating car rides with torture the groomers but rather the doggie park, grandma and grandpa's, etc.

This is the second time we've had her shaved and I couldn't be happier!  I think she even likes it (minus the bandanna she keeps biting.)  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go NOT vacuum, yesssssssssssssssss!

First post!

Today is awesome for many reasons: 1st and foremost it's my lovely mom's birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMA!); it's my first day of spring break; Eric starts a whopping 5 days off; and the reason I'm particularly excited about is summer haircut day for the pup.  Oh I can't wait! If you have a huge, hairy dog you know exactly what I'm talking about right now. 

Here's what she looked like prior to the beauty parlor (excuse the quality of the photo, it's from my phone.)  I'm getting ready to pick her up soon. In the meantime, I'm cleaning the house and jumping for joy that I won't be vacuuming every other day like I had up until today.