Pom-Pom Necklace

Last weekend, I saw Little Miss Momma's tutorial for this Pom-Pom necklace.

And I knew that I had to make it.

So, off I went to the craft store to pick up the materials.
Little Miss Momma really has much better instructions than I could give, but basically you...

Cut out lots of felt circles,

Scrunch them up,
(obviously, I'll never be a hand model!)

Glue them down to make these lovely things:

Arrange them and add a chain so that it looks like this:

And ta-da, you have made a fabulous necklace!

This is as good as it gets when you are trying to
take a picture of yourself through a mirror. :)

Teacher Talk- Organization

Abby @ Snyder Stories is hosting the first Teacher Talk Thursday today.

I meant to take some pictures at school today to go with the theme of organization, but in the rush of trying to get my report cards done, I forgot. So, here are some organization things from my classroom based on pictures I already had on my computer.

Nothing is really profound, but I always like seeing other classrooms, so I decided I'd go ahead and join in...

Two of my favorite things...
1) Mailboxes- My father-in-law was nice enough to make these for me, just the way I wanted them. Each student has their own box, but there are also extra boxes on the top for notebook paper, white paper, and extra copies of assignments. It works great!
2) On the right, you can see my kid's book boxes. They use these to store the books that they are reading and their writing notebooks. It makes for less mess in their desks and we can always find where they are!


This is my writing/math/craft center. The drawers store all of the math manipulatives that we use often- dice, counters, compasses, etc. The shelves below hold math game sheets. On the right, all of our decorative writing paper is stored and of course, you can see the craft supplies scattered around.

I'm not sure that I love my way of organizing books, but it works for now. Basically, each book is just sorted by the author's last name. I do like storing them in containers like this so that the students can flip through and see all of the books that we have.


Simple, yet a life-saver! My first year I struggled to find a place to put all the random schedules and papers that I needed to display for my kids to see. So, I just made them their own board. This year happened to be my ocean theme, so the board was titled, "Commotion in the Ocean." It has our hot lunch schedule, intermural schedules and anything else that the kids need to easily see. I just staple it up and let it be!

Thanks for the fun idea, Abby!

Happy UnBirthday To Me

Today was my birthday.  Not really.  My birthday is in June.  My sweet room moms wanted to throw me a birthday party.  Since my birthday is in the summer they were going to do it on my half-birthday, but that was over Christmas break, so today was the day.

It really was quite strange.  Some of my kids entered the room in the morning with birthday cards for me.  Which is very, very sweet, but also very strange when it is not your birthday!  I love to read notes that my students give me.  They are always so adorable and just plain nice. 

Some of the girls made me a few gifts:

 

Remember these!?  Seriously, the “Your the best teacher” must of taken forever to make!  (And apparently we have work on the difference between YOUR and YOU’RE)

And now for my favorite…

Yes, yes it is…a duck tape wallet!  A pink and teal duck tape wallet to be more exact. 

Look at the awesome cupcake cake!  When my kids saw the cake they asked me if I loved apples.  Yes, I love apples!  I’m sure that’s why they chose it. :)

I also got a ginormous card which was all signed by my class.  I love 4th graders!  One signed it “your BFF” and all my silly boys signed it with their made-up names so Larry, Bob and Mr. Bean all signed my card today. :)

Cooking is NOT my Forte

Needless to say to those who know me, cooking is just not really my thing. Regardless, my friends and I had a "freezer meal cooking night" last week. Which is actually awesome because now I have quite a few meals hiding out in my freezer!

This year we decided to each bring two recipes and the ingredients for those recipes.
*Note to self: try out the recipes before you bring them!

I searched the internet and found a recipe for peanut butter chocolate chip muffins and macaroni and cheese.
And, I received this cute little recipe book from my mother-in-law for Christmas:

Isn't it cute!? It has a lot of their family recipes written in it which I love!
So, anyways (I promise this is going somewhere) it has a recipe for Cauliflower Soup in it. Dan really wanted me to make this and thought it would be a great recipe to bring, so I did.


We cooked at my friend Sheri's house and made Kara and her recipes first.
They had great recipes for Taco Soup, Chicken Alfredo Lasagna, Chili and Stuffed Shells.
We took a break for dinner and brought some meals over to our friend Annie's house since she wasn't feeling well. Then, we continued on. It was time for my recipes.


Let's just say it being 10:00pm and doubling a recipe that involves a lot of liquid is not just the best idea. Especially when you don't really know how the food is supposed to look. However, we made it. The soup looked a bit runny, but I didn't really know how it was supposed to look and the mac n' cheese just made a ton of mac n' cheese.

Home I went with all my goodies.

The next morning, Dan is looking at his phone and
sees that his dad sent him a text-
"Call us about the Cauliflower Soup. Something is wrong with the recipe."
(We had called his mom earlier to ask about an ingredient.)
Um, too late now?
Apparently the soup is supposed to be creamy, not runny, so something did go wrong, but I'm still not sure what. Perhaps it was the fact that we were trying to warm things up in sections since we didn't have enough pans. :)


Don't worry though. I taste tested it the next night, before
anyone else had a chance to.
It is runny and probably not the best soup ever, but it is edible.

So anyone else want to sign up for making freezer meals with me?

Let the New Year Begin with Love!

Here we go...round two of wedding pictures and there are lots of pictures to be seen!

Bridesmaids...

We had fun taking pictures outside. It was a bit cold, but also surprisingly warm for Dec. 31. I love the look of the icy pond in the background and can't wait to see the professional pictures.

The church entrance...

Cute ring bearers and a flower girl...
not the best pictures, but you get a taste of the cuteness. Tommy did an awesome job pulling the wagon down with his HUGE muscles!


Cutting the cake...

The happy couple...

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1...Happy New Year!!!

Congrats Sarah & Trevor! We couldn't be happy for you two!

Ready for the Walk Down the Aisle

Forgive me for again splitting an event into two posts, but some events are just deserve two posts. :)

The weeks before my sister’s wedding, Sarah, was full of preparation for the big day.  I had the two weeks before off from work due to Christmas break so it worked out well for me to help out.

I love wedding projects and was glad to help out with a few…

Sarah saw a picture of an aisle runner that she loved and put me in charge of recreating it, so with some help from my dad and my other sister, Trisha, we were able to make a similar one. 

Many hours were spent punching circles out of gold bags and gluing them onto fishing wire… it was a labor of love.  It was a nice touch for above the dance floor.  These were equivalent to the tissue balls from my wedding… a lot of work, but a nice touch.  It is still up for debate what project took more love.

The day before the big day, Trisha and I hosted a Bridal Luncheon for Sarah, her bridal attendants and some special family members.

After rehearsal, we celebrated with dinner. 

All the girl cousins…

My family…

Sisters… this should probably replace my picture of my sisters and I that is on the side of my blog since that picture was taken 6 years ago at Trisha’s wedding rehearsal.

We went back home to all get our beauty sleep and then we were ready for Sarah & Trevor’s Wedding Day!!!

It all started at the hair salon…

Almost ready…

We had a wonderful lunch at our friends’ house.  I love this picture of my mom and us.

I love the hanger that she bought for her dress to be displayed on.  She got it from this great etsy shop.  Isn’t it adorable!?

Here she is…beautiful!

And all tucked in the car ready to meet her groom!

More to come!

Christmas Craziness…part 3…the end

The final Christmas post!  If you’re sick of the Christmas posts, don’t worry- I am too.  But one more…just one more!

First up… Christmas Eve

We always celebrate Christmas Eve with my family, beginning with a delicious dinner, then attending my favorite church service of the year- a candlelight service, and present opening to end the night.

Tommy was just a little bit excited about Christmas and Henry was more into eating Christmas goodies than opening presents.

This is the only picture that I have of myself during Christmas…so here it is, for better or for worse…

The famous poinsettia wrapping paper.  My dad is in charge of wrapping his own gifts.  He bought this paper on sale about 10 years ago and it is still around!  Little did I know that one of my favorite gifts was wrapped in this beautiful paper- a Kindle!

On Christmas morning, we woke up and took off to Canada to celebrate Christmas with Dan’s family.

We were both very excited to give this gift.  Can’t say that O loved it, but he was a good sport and modeled it for us.  Isn’t it adorable!? 

I was in charge of creating a scavenger hunt for people to find one of their gifts.  It took me a while to figure how to make a hunt for 7 adults without having it be too simple or ridiculous.  But, I found some cute clip art from lettering delights and put my creativity to work.

Clue #1- They had to unscramble the letters on the ornaments of the tree.

Clue #2- Each person had different clip art cut outs with letters to unscramble on them.

Clue #3- Each stocking hat had two letters on it- the letter for the word was the letter that comes between those two (confused?)

I had a good time watching people fly around the house and outside searching for their clues and presents.

 

We also celebrated Dan and his sister, Rachel’s birthday, shopped the Boxing Day sales, and played an intense game of Monopoly.

Dan’s high school friends live all over the place so it isn’t very often that everyone is able to get together…but there was one day that worked out for everyone.  It was great to see everyone!

It was indeed a merry Christmas!