30 Before 30: Update #1

 

April 25, 2013:

So, I started pondering my 30 before 30 list this week. I've come up with a few more ideas and wanted to add to the list. I haven't crossed anything off the list yet though. No worries. Five years to go. I add 6 1/2 ideas to the list below (in red). Hmm....will see what else I can come up with. 

September 30, 2010: 

I'm linking up with my new favorite blog, www.emyselfandi.com, for her 30 things to do before 30 post. I love this idea of having a list of things to do before a certain age. I'm not sure I'll be able to come up with 30 things tonight but seeing as a have several  years until I'm 30, I'll still have plenty of time to add to my list of things. 

1. I hate trying to come up with the first thing on the list. Yikes! #1 always seems to mean the most important. I guess the most important would be to have a summer packed full of fun the year I turn thirty. I realized in typing this list that I will turn 30 in June and then celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary in August of the same year. I think that is super cool and requires some super fun plans that summer. I'll let you know when I decide what those plans might be (in a few years)!

2. Go on a cruise with Mom. Hopefully that will happen in the coming summer! Woohoo! Not sure cruises will be happening for a while with all the Carnival drama lately. 

3. Lose 15 pounds. I should really get busy with this one NOW!

4. Get a full time job as an elementary school teacher. Come on, Economy! I'm ready and willing to work!

5. Pick out and purchase a new (or at least new-to-me) SUV. 

6. Find an organization system for my photos, scrapbooks and stick with it and stay up to date. 

7. Learn how to apply eyeliner on myself and establish good makeup and skin care routines and stick with them! These dark under eye circles are creeping up way too soon for my liking!

8. Participate (walk) in a 5k

9. RUN in a 5k

10. Participate in a meal swap and stock my freezer with meals.

11. Spend weekend at the Foley House Inn in Savannah again.

12. Fly somewhere....I've never flown before. 

13. Learn to curl my hair in beachy, soft waves. 

Confessions: Almost-May Edition

I'm linking with E, Myself and I here today for her Midweek Confessions. Oh, I had so many thoughts to share but then I decided it would be best to pack lunches and get a shower tonight so I wouldn't have to rush tomorrow morning. Trying to be productive...and I'll still be running to bus duty as the bell is ringing tomorrow morning. 

~ I've come up with a few new ideas for my 30 before 30 list. Will plan to update that list on the blog soon.


~ I love my leopard print house shoes. No one else seems to think they are cute but I love them and they are so comfy. Hardwood floors are pretty but they are cold, even when it's hot outside!

~ Our cat hasn't felt very well lately. Nothing major but, gosh, I wish he could talk and just tell me what is wrong! I guess kids are the same way but .... so nerve wracking!

~ Only 23 more days until summer vacation! Lots of good stuff there! This will be the first summer that I will get a pay check and be off at the same time. 

~ Hubby will be finishing his masters degree this summer. YAY! Will be so glad when that is over! I have to get busy thinking about throwing a little grad party for him.

~ I wish I could design really awesome blog backgrounds and such. But I can't. Oh well.

~ How is it almost May? I know school is almost out and all but sieriously....May starts next week! YAY!

Midweek Confessions

I'm linking again with http://www.emyselfandi.com/ for Midweek Confessions. I'm not sure if she's doing a linky this week but I thought I'd confess anyway.....here goes....

- After deciding to post confessions today, I surfed over to my blog and noticed my last post about my word. I still don't have a word. I'm not sure if I'm going to have a word this year. Not really worried about it.

- We had dinner at church tonight and I managed to actually cook real food. (We're going to ignore that my real food consisted of macaroni and cheese - for the 2nd time this week. Oops.) Not only did I cook for tonight, I also cooked tomorrow night's dinner too. I'm hoping to work with a teacher buddy and get a lot of planning done tomorrow afternoon and wasn't sure how quickly I'd get home. Wanted to make sure there was a pre-cooked meal all ready to go.

- I wish my cat could talk. He always seems like he has something to say. I also wish I could take him for walks at the park or to visit my family and on car rides to the Chickfila drive thru for cookies. That would be great! (So random, I know)

- I slept through most of the Bachelor on Monday. Just can't stay awake until ten on a "school night". LOL. Sad to see Kacie B. go. She seemed so sweet in the last season but I felt like I was back in 5th grade with the tattle-telling.

- We can earn "early out" passes at work to leave 30 minutes early. I used one of mine today. What did I do? I bought gas and groceries. Then, I came straight home and dumped the groceries and went for a jog/run/quick walk to the lake and back. Not sure what came over me but it was so fun. I was very proud of myself. Normally, I'd use that early out to get an extra nap. LOL.

I guess that's enough random-ness for one midweek post. Happy Almost-Thursday!

My Word - 2013

2013 - Twenty Thirteen - Two Thousand Thirteen

Every year for the last 3 years I've chosen a word to represent my year.

2010 = celebrate

2011 = engage

2012 = active

But 2013 has no word - yet.

I have lots of things on my mind for this year and even a few goals to strive toward. But I'm stuck on a word. I guess I'll ponder it some more and come back to it in a few days. After all, it is only the 3rd day of the year (even though it feels like New Year's Day was for-ever ago!)

Four Things

Elizabeth is having a link-up for 4 things Christmas gifts. Her image was so cute I just had to participate. This is my realistic list. I could have totally made another one say that I "needed" all new kitchen appliances  I wanted living room furniture, for wear I'd include casual Saturday-type lounge clothes, but I'd still say I Christmas books for the read section. I just love my Christmas book collection!

Christmas Book Collection

I spent my Sunday afternoon photographing and cropping these pictures of my Christmas book collection. Then I spent some time browsing Amazon for new books to add to the collection. All the while I should have been working on lesson plans for my 4th and 5th grade classes. Oh well. This is more fun and more festive too. 

I started collecting children's Christmas books when I got married in 2008. The goal was to add one a year and then eventually I'd have enough to read with my (future) children one book a night each day in December. It was quickly pointed out that unless I planned to wait 24 years to have children I wouldn't have enough. Ooops. So I've started adding 2-3 books each year. Sometimes I get them as gifts, other times I buy them while J & I are traveling, or I pick them up at the Goodwill store. There are even a few that were my childhood books. Those are extra special. 

If I counted correctly, I have 21 books now. Only a few more needed to have "enough" and then I'll keep adding so that I have some to rotate in and out. :)

 I love the Christmas Story book with the babes! This book is new but was a favorite when I was little. 

 My first book in the collection. 

 Tucker was very interested in my books when I was taking pictures. 

 Then Tucker decided to climb in the book basket!

 I bought this book in honor of Tucker's first Christmas with us!

 

The entire collection. All 21 books!

Midweek Confessions

www.emyselfandi.com 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'm linking up a day late (and dollar short!) for E, Myself and I's Midweek Confessions. I'm not sure anyone would be interested in reading these confessions but anyways...that's not my problem.

1. I baked a cake yesterday and it miraculously didn't stick to the pan. I used Wilton's Cake Release and I may never go back to using regular baking spray again. 

2. I love dressing. It is my favorite part of Thanksgiving. I could seriously do without the turkey. I used to only liked my Nanny's dressing but now that we spend time with hubby's family for Thanksgiving I've started to enjoy other people's dressings too.

3. I got out my DSLR camera this morning. Why is it that I suddenly want to play with it at holidays? I'm not good with it so I'll probably end up with icky pictures today.

4. I've read all of the other link-ups on E's confessions this week and I loved reading this blog: http://lott2love.blogspot.com/ Love finding other blogs + especially blogs without kids. Not that I dislike kids but I just don't have any.

5. I really don't like to dress up in dress pants for holidays. I'd rather wear jeans but today I'm wearing some comfy dress pants because I plan to eat lots of dressing :)

I hope everyone has a Happy Turkey Day today. 

Here's a peek at my Christmas mantle. Love having a fireplace and mantle to decorate in our new house!

Midweek Confessions

Want to read more confessions? Check out Emily's blog at www.emyselfandi.com 

-- I have a pan of smores bars sitting on the stove waiting to get cool enough for me to eat. They smell good, they look good, I just hope they taste good. I found the recipe here. For the most part, they actually look like the picture except I had regular size marshmallows instead of minis. 

-- I have to go to a meeting at Human Resources tomorrow about benefits for my NEW JOB! The last time I went to HR there was road construction and a huge detour and I was almost late. I'm planning to leave super early so that won't happen again. 

-- I wanted to stop for a ham sandwich at the Honey Baked Ham Co. today but I was finished my errands around 10:30am and wasn't ready for lunch. I was so excited too because I had a really good coupon to use. When I got home I cleaned out my wallet and realized my punch card for Honey Baked was full and I get a FREE sandwich! I'll be going there for sure tomorrow!

-- I also found a coupon for a free Dunkin Donuts drink in my purse from my birthday last month. Woohoo! Will have to save that for another day. 

-- My sunglasses broke at the beach last week. So I quickly rushed to Target and bought a new pair. I was desperate because of the bright beach sun! Now, I wish I'd waited because they aren't very comfortable and I really would have liked a more stylish pair. I'm suddenly intrigued by dark purple sunglasses. Sigh.

-- I ran into the Dollar Store Monday night and found a great zebra scarf for $5! I guess that makes up for my  not-so-stylish sunglasses. 

-- I also went to a makeup class Monday night on eye makeup. Pretty neat. Since then I've been watching lots of tutorial videos for hair and makeup from http://www.thesmallthingsblog.com/ and http://www.beautybroadcast.net/ Both ladies have great blogs and videos! After watching their videos I decided I needed eye make up brushes instead of trying to use q-tips. I knew exactly where to go...Target to the ELF makeup section. I found brushes for $1 each!

Road Trip Snacks

I have this really cool Thirty One cooler bag that was given to my husband from a student. It has been a very well used gift! The cooler comes out for every road trip. I always stock it with bottled water, sodas, and some snacks. 

It's the snacks part that get my husband excited. Sometimes we pick out our road trip snacks together. Other times, like the vacation we just came back from, I like to surprise him somewhere along the interstate by pulling a treat out of the cooler. The day before our trip I was perusing the cookie aisle. We're big on sweet treats. I was debating chocolate chip cookies, fudge grahams, oreos....all some of our usual go-to treat choices. 

Standing there in the cookie section I began to reminisce of days gone by --- 

PaPa (my grandfather) and I always went to the grocery store together in the summers when I stayed with him and Nanny. We'd walk every aisle of the store, carefully checking the items off the list that Nanny had sent us with. Then, my favorite part of the trip, PaPa would tell me to go pick out a treat for us. Occasionally I'd pick a can of cheese balls or maybe french onion dip to go with the chips we'd already put in the buggy. But most of the time, it was these cookies. EL Fudge Elf Cookies.

Snapping back to real life, I began to search the cookie aisle for my elf cookies. Hoping that they still made them. I searched and searched until I saw them on the very top shelf, almost out of my reach. And then they were mine! I was thrilled to have found them! 

Fast forward a bit through me checking out at the store, driving home, and packing away my road trip snacks so that the Cookie Monster in my house (aka my husband!) wouldn't find them before our trip, waking up the next morning, and about 3 hours of interstate drive time. We were hungry and ready for a treat. 

Out came the EL Fudge cookies and the Cookie Monster was confused. He'd never seen these cookies before. Never tasted the yummy-ness of the elves. Never fear. Five days later, we're home again. All the elves have been eaten, I shared the story of the elves with the Cookie Monster, and now scribbled on my grocery list for the coming week: "elf cookies". 

Those elves sure are sneaky :)

*All opinions are my own. I was not sponsored to write this post but if the Keebler elves would like to sponsor me in exchange for some cookies that would be awesome!

New Design

I'm so excited to have a new blog design...now to see if I can find something worthwhile to say :)

Midweek Confessions

I'm linking up with E, Myself, and I for Midweek Confessions today. I am very proud of myself for getting the linky button to work in my preview post. Hope it really shows up when I publish!

Getting right to the confessions....

-I made this candy tonight. But don't be fooled by the photo below mine look nothing like these! I couldn't find square pretzels so I bought the regular twisted shape. I was convinced this would be the easiest candy ever and started making them about 9:30pm. Did I underestimate the amount of time it would take to unwrap those kisses? Yep. Then, it took forever to bake and melt. But before that I sent half my cookie sheet of pretzel-kiss stacks flying when I put them into the oven and of course sent them flying again as I took them out. I was able to put the M&Ms in without problems, thank goodness! Then it was taking forever again for the kisses to re-harden. They are now sitting in the refrigerator and I have eaten way too many of the "not so pretty ones".

I 

Photo from FamilyFun Website

Busy, Busy!

Life is so busy lately! Good thing I like being on the go.

I changed my blog background. I'm not sure why it loads in as all black. Oh well!