Merry Christmas!

Our friend Donna took these pictures, and Sam put the card together. Thanks again to Shutterfly and their 50 free cards for bloggers!

Thanks for the Memories

Over the years, Sam and I have taken a LOT of pictures. We both enjoy photography as a hobby and our computer is filled with many memories of us together, the things we have done and the places we have lived.

Since we have moved into a new home this year, we also have a lot of pictures of our home. We have begun to decorate and have taken a lot of "before" and "after" pictures to post on this blog, so that our friends and family can keep up with what we have done with the house.

Today our friend, Donna is coming over to take our Christmas card pictures. We waited until the last minute-we know. It is actually perfect timing because it snowed last night and looks like a winter wonderland out there! I can't wait to make our Christmas cards on Shutterfly after our pictures are taken. Two years ago we sent out photocards and we planned on sending another one this year. Thanks to Shutterfly's 50 free cards deal for bloggers, we are getting into gear so that we can once again send our family and friends a picture of us and the new house. I love receiving photocards at Christmas-I love to see how people have changed, kids have grown and peoples' personalities show through in their selection of photocards. It is my favorite time of year because I get to reconnect and catch up with old friends.

As I have perused Shutterfly's site, I am also contemplating a calendar for the new year. I thought about a DIY-ed calendar of our house projects, but then I realized we have a lot to do, and that might be a project to tackle next year. Only time will tell.

I have used Shutterfly before, and I really do like them for photo projects. They are easy to use and I also taught my Mother-in-law about photobooks using Shutterfly. I just recently printed pictures of my house to send to my Grandmother, who does not do a lot on the computer. I will put them in an album (the old-fashioned kind) and send them off to her for Christmas. After I printed the pictures, I realized I should have made a photobook to give to her, but my good ideas usually come after the fact. I also noticed these thank you cards that I thought would be great for housewarming thank you's.

Here's to another order from Shutterfly and more memories to make with my husband in our new home!!!

DIY-ing it Up!

We are s-l-o-w-l-y decorating our house. We decided that we would focus on one room at a time, and I'm having a little decorating ADD. We started with the tables in the living room, one of which is complete and the other is apart, but still in our living room.

After our big trip to IKEA, we thought we would tackle the spare bedroom. I know it may sound strange to begin in a room that we are not in often, but we found these awesome shelves that I am dying to put up. The only problem is Sam says he won't put them up until we paint. So...I have put up paint samples, (by the way-I think those are the best things invented, because it is so hard to go by those paint squares) and we are still trying to decide on the one we like the best.

So my project tonight has nothing to do with the spare room or the living room. (I think I have blogging ADD too!) I really want an area that I can work on crafts in, i.e. sewing, scrapbooking, jewelry making, etc. Enter 3rd bedroom. I am so excited that we are able to have a guest bedroom and a spare room. Since we Sam isn't going to start another project, I thought I would do a quick DIY project on my own. So here it is: Super EASY and super CHEAP!

I started with an empty cashew can:

I tore of the label:

(I know-these tips are so great, you can't stand it!)

Then I used scrapbooking paper I had lying around and trimmed it to fit each can. I used mod podge to adhere the paper. Any kind of glue would work, but I like that flat look it gives underneath the paper, and the low-maintenance it provides. I rolled it around the can and glued the backside down.

On the bigger can, my 12x12 scrapbook paper, didn't quite wrap all the way around. I thought about leaving it, since I will face that side to the wall and only I would know (and the few of you that read this blog)...

...but Sam convinced me to fix it, and with the scraps I had left, I cleverly matched up some of the paper to cover the little spot.

So there it is! My little DIY project I completed in about 15 minutes. I know it's not fancy, high-tech or sophisticated, but I like it and I can't wait to fill it with craft goodies! (pens, scissors, glue, whatever floats my boat)

What We've Been Up To

I can't believe it has already been two months since we moved into our house. As people continue to ask us if we are "settled," the answer remains, "no." A friend of mine told me to put all of the boxes in the garage and bring them in as we need/want to in oder to unpack easier and not feel quite so overwhelmed. It was the best idea-it really helps me not to feel so much pressure every time I walk into my house, and keeps the house looking a little more neat and clean. It does make me wonder, however, if I actually need the things that are still in the garage. I have not needed much from those boxes, and I'm tempted to pack them up and take them to Goodwill without looking. Almost. I'm too much of a chicken though, and would probably regret it later. Plus some of the boxes have craft things that I do need, and don't want to buy again. I just haven't had time to make things since we have moved in.

We have been able to get a few things done and after a trip to IKEA (my new favorite store!) We have the decorating bug! We started with our coffee tables in the living room. They came from a friend of a friend (for FREE) and we were just going to spray paint them, but Sam got the idea to add some visual texture to them and wanted to add a branch. My husband is a very good artist. He tries to be humble and tell you he's not, but I tell you the truth folks-he is good to have around!

Here are some pictures to show the before and after of the table. Soon I will have a new picture of the living room as a whole, after we spray paint the end table.

Before

After

That is no sticker! Sam hand-painted that on there! I told you he is awesome!

Our New Home!

In June, we decided to look into the possibility of buying a house. We are young and don't have a lot of money and we just needed to know where to start. We started looking online at houses in our price range and started making lists of what we wanted, what would be nice and what was a deal-breaker. We thought about it for a while, went on vacation to Colorado with my family and in the middle of July started looking at houses.

The first house we looked at was our favorite online as well. I told myself not to get too excited, because I may hate it when I actually went to look at it. Even as we pulled into the driveway, I tried to talk myself out of liking it at all, just so I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Then we walked in.

There was new carpet, new laminate hardwood flooring in the kitchen and new tile in both bathrooms. It was freshly painted on the outside, as well as the inside. It hardly looked lived in, but looked like a brand-new home! There was a beautiful FLAT backyard, where we could see our neighbor's yards, but were not right on top of them and a privacy tree line in the back. It was great, but we had to look at the rest of our list.

The rest of the houses we looked at were less impressive. Not just because we had the first house's standard to hold the rest of them to, but because some of them looked like they could have been "drug" houses before. I'm not joking-I can only think of one use for florescent orange, yellow and pink racing stripes and glow in the dark stars in a garage. I'm just saying... Others were just filthy, and gave me the creeps!

So we decided on house number one. We put an offer in and the fun began! We prayed that things would go smoothly if we were meant to have this house. We also talked about the possibility that we may not get this house. If that happened, we knew we would have to look in a different area, or in a different price range, which would mean we would have to wait and look again sometime down the road. Sam and I didn't want to rush into anything, but were also very excited for the possibility of being homeowners. Getting all of the paperwork for our loan was a little scarier than I thought, but everything started falling into place and we were able to close on our house at the end of August!

We have been in our house for 2 weeks now and are working on making it a home. We LOVE it! We LOVE being homeowners and we LOVE that we don't have to ask anyone if we can do anything, because it's our home! We also see the responsibility of being homeowners and know that it takes a lot of hard work and money to keep it up. We are excited about this next phase in our life and feel very blessed!

Cleaning Out and little rambling...

Today, my goal was to pack up more of my house. I did not reach my goal. I packed a couple of boxes, but mostly I cleaned.

I started in the kitchen-where any "good" housewife would. I cleaned out the disgusting (molding!) trash can, the fridge, cleaned out cabinets and checked every expiration date on every food item in my cupboard-even the spices. I also did dishes...can I just tell you HOW excited I am to have a dishwasher in my NEW house! I think that is what I am most excited about! It's the little things. After doing dishes by hand for 4 years, and wasting I don't know how many hours, I will finally have a machine to do my work! Ahh...

It is somewhat bittersweet; moving. There are a lot of memories connected with this house, as there were many with our townhouse. I'm sure there will be many more to make in our new house and I look forward to them, as I reminisce about the people, events and life changes that have occurred while we have lived in this house.

I looked through old pictures and old recipes. It amazes me how many connections we have with people over food. I guess that is the American way. Plus, I just LOVE food. And people!

I am fortunate to have an easy-to-please husband who loves just about everything I cook and tells me how good I am at it. I have enjoyed cooking this week-it's like a long, lost friend I haven't seen for a while.

I obviously had no goal for this post, so I can feel confident saying that I must have completed it, because I have nothing left to ramble.....

How long has it been?

I have not been able to blog since January 31 of this year because blogger disabled my account.

Probably because the email I had set up with it (from college) expired. I was mad and didn't know what to do, so I gave up on blogging for the past 6 months.

I finally decided to switch over my old blog posts, sorry your comments are no longer there. I have NO idea how I would even go about getting those moved over here. I am proud of myself for figuring out how to create 2 blogs with one sign in, since I have a (not so public yet) jewelry blog... designedbyg.blogspot.com

But now I am back! Hopefully, a little more consistent, now that I can get into my account!

I did change the url, but I like it better, it feels a little more "grown up." Unless of course you have actually seen the McGee and Me TV show, which is really for kids, so I guess I'm a lost cause.

I also have to figure out what to do about my backgrounds, since The Cutest Blog on the Block is changing all their stuff tomorrow...I think I have impeccable timing!

Ugh, my life is so hard isn't it?!

I am not really sure where this blog will go, but I have been wanting to do more with it and maybe you will get to follow along with our crazy house hunting process, if you so desire...

We shall see...

A-Recycling We Will Go...

Since my husband and I have moved into our new house, we have tried to be a little more "earth-conscious." We started recycling and making a compost for our garden. We have a lot less garbage now, and we feel like we have been doing more of our part.

Before Christmas, we bought this awesome recycling "organizer." It seemed like the perfect answer to our mess that is the entry way in the kitchen. It is nice and big, as you can see...

That is, until we (over)-filled it a bit!

We were very proud of our organizing-we even made labels for each drawer.

See?

Now it's to the recycling center we go, thanks to our new SUV. (I think the SUV and recycling organizer may be canceling each other out in the whole "Green" area, but that is beside the point!

We chose the snowiest day we could-when all the Tennessee snow started to fall, but we were determined to make our house look better and promised each other we would never let our recycling get that bad again.

We are now very proud of our recycling organizer once again, and have found that it makes recycling easier and our kitchen cleaner...

Ahhhhh, that's better. Now my house is in order!

Well, sort of.

Goals for 2010

I am with 3verthing 3mily on the whole goal setting thing, so here they are:

1. Read more (I'm going to set a goal of 5 books, we'll start small)

2. Loose weight (I'm not going to set an amount here for everyone to see)

3. Make more jewelry/crochet/cards/scrapbooks/etc.

4. Organize our spare room into a craft room/office I/husband can actually use

5. Blog regularly (let's go with at least once a week)

6. Learn more about my camera so that I can take better pictures

7. Read my Bible every day

8. Pay off our credit cards

9. Find a "permanent" job

10. Stay organized

P.S. I have added my jewelry blog to my blog list so that those of you that might be interested can look. I don't have much up yet, but hopefully, and if I reach goals #3 and #5, you will see more posts on there soon!

Here's to 2010, or "O"-10 as I like to call it!

Christmas in Colorado

I haven't been home to Colorado for Christmas in 2 years! It was great to be back again with my family and real snow. I also got the best Christmas present of all...I got to meet my niece, Isabella! She is 6 months old, and tons of fun! We enjoyed playing with her on her blanket, and chillin. She is a very happy, beautiful little girl!

We actually remembered to take our camera this time, so allow me to share the pictures of Christmas, 2009:

See how fun she is?!?!?

Snow in the backyard

Mom using the snowblower, or her winter toy!

Dad frying the turkey!!!

We just love her!

Merry Christmas from the family!

And once more, because you can't get enough of this girl!

Opportunity Knocks

This year is not at all what I expected. I have finished student teaching and my Masters Degree, been a bum for a summer, and taught 1st grade for 5 months. I never thought I would finish the Masters program. I cried and cried when I first started, thinking I could not do it. As the year went on, and I fell in love with teaching all over again, I realized (with the help of my husband, family and friends) I can do anything for a year.

This summer stunk. Well, for me it did. For my brother and sister-in-law, it was a miracle-they adopted a baby girl in July, who I got to meet for the first time last week! For my friend, she added a fourth child to her family at the end of July. I had the opportunity to watch her kids the night before and see her newborn and hold him in the hospital. For me, personally, I looked for jobs. I slept in a lot, I cried a lot, and I looked for more jobs. I did toy with the idea of starting a jewelry making business, and started a jewelry blog that [surprise] I have not updated since the summer.

In August, I was offered a first grade interim position (the last blog I wrote explains it more thoroughly). I was ecstatic! I have enjoyed working with the first grade teachers at my school and getting to know my students. I did not expect any of what has happened in the past five months. Sam says I should write a book about it-1st graders come with great stories, and maybe I'll share them on here at a later time.

I've learned that in order to teach, you first have to love. There is no way I can teach these students what a noun or verb is, if I don't first teach them that I love them and that they are safe at school. Without love, nothing else matters. There is no need for anything else, if you don't have love. I also learned (once again, with thanks to my husband) that I am only here to plant seeds. I do not get to see them grow completely. I have heard this before, but the note my husband left me one morning hit HARD. God takes the seeds we plant and continues to take care of them as they grow. I have no idea why the teacher I interimed (yes, I made up that word) for decided not to retire, but I know that I was placed there, for that time and now it is time for me to let go.

Please don't let me fool you, I did not come to this reality easily. And I have a feeling it will be something I have to learn over and over and over and over...

Now, as we begin another year, I have another opportunity. I am the interim teacher for a third grade classroom. I will be there for the remainder of the year (as far as I know). I am looking forward to this opportunity with confidence, and a lot of fear. I know those seem to be conflicting emotions, but that is exactly how I feel. I have new students to meet, new curriculum to teach, and a wonderful group of teachers to work with. I also have the first 6 weeks planned out for me from the previous teacher, and this was the same time I soloed in third grade last year during my student teaching.

I hope to share more and have great stories from third grade to tell. I will be more diligent at keeping you up to date (I know you are sitting on the edge of your seats!)