Christmas Aftermath

I really enjoyed the week after Christmas. It was a busy but yet relaxing week. 

My big gift from my parents was my KitchenAid mixer!!!

I am so thankful for my parents and all they do so I invited them over for dinner cooked by yours truly. Ever since we moved into our house over a year ago, I kept meaning to invite them over but it never happened.

I started with baking a cake from scratch. I messed it up because I used the wrong attachment on my mixer but they still ate a slice anyway. :)

It didn't stay together very well :(

This is what it was supposed to look like.

With the icing

Ta Da!?

I also made salad, chicken, and mashed potatoes.

I love the lazy susan on our dining room table.

We then taught my parents how to play Settlers of Catan.

This game is so much fun to play but it has a lot of rules and it takes awhile to get the hang of it. Needless to say it was pretty funny teaching my parents how to play.

Since Blake and I really enjoyed our first set of pull out shelves, we decided to set another set that was on sale since now is when I have time to install it. Thank goodness it did not take as long as the first time.

Before

This time I started sawing in the middle so I wouldn't be sawing at a weird angle.

All done! It only took me an hour this time to get the shelf down.

All the stuff in the drawers

I love these drawers!!!

I also started another project that week. My Christmas stocking. I have been doing cross stitch on and off since 5th grade. There is actually a video of me "helping" my mom cross stitch. I was about 2 years old and sitting on her lap while she was cross stitching. She would put the needle down and up and then I would pull it all the way up. I would also try and poke my mom with the needle when I brought it up. The camera pans to baby Kevin on the floor and my mom goes down there to spend time with him. When the camera pans back to me on the couch, I am putting the needle in and out of the cross stitch wherever I wanted. Hopefully my mom was able to fix that. :)


Since I have already started my stocking, I hope to have it done by next Christmas. I am trying to take pictures as I go and was trying to keep track of how long it takes me to complete it but I'm pretty sure I have lost count. I'm not going to post all the pictures here but here is a sample.

This is what the final stocking should look like.

Since school started back again, I haven't had as much time to work on it but I hope to get in a few hours here and there during the week.


Man, my life is so exciting. Cooking dinner, installing shelves, and cross stitching. But for whatever reason I enjoy all of it. :)

Christmas Project!

Since I have two weeks off of work and grad school, that means I have time to continue organizing my house!I have been wanting pull out drawers for our lower kitchen cabinets for awhile but they are pretty expensive. So with Christmas coming up, what better to ask for! 

Before they could be installed, we had to rip out the shelf already in there. The other Sunday, I was sitting on the floor looking at the shelf and trying to figure out how to take it out. I grabbed the cabinet door to help me stand up....and I ripped the cabinet frame off. :( (By the way, that was the 3rd thing I broke that day. I ripped off the toilet paper holder at my friends house, snapped her plastic spatula, and later that night, I through at pillow at (to?) Blake, missed and wiped out everything on his nightstand. Apparently I don't know my own strength.) Luckily for me, my awesome husband was able to fix it for me since the only night we had free to fix it, I was down with a migrane.

Needless to say, our cabinets aren't super sturdy (and I have been VERY careful when standing up) but they did get those shelves in there. After 4 hours of sawing and hammering, I was finally able to get the shelf out! BTW, Blake would have done it but he has been working crazy hours and I was home all day.

After I took the shelf out.

 My parents got us one of the shelves for Christmas and I took it out that night because I wanted to install it before we left for our other Christmases. Of course, it came with no instructions and the wrong top shelf. I found instructions online and was able to put it together. I started to screw it into the cabinet when I discovered that I wasn't as strong as I thought I was and needed a power drill. The next morning, I went and bought one (along with 4 super cool head lamps, Blake is very hard to shop for..).

Once I had the drill charged, I was able to get it installed, no problem! Well, there was one thing. My arms aren't super long so I had trouble reaching the back of the cabinet. Luckily, I was able to stick my leg in the cabinet and then was able to reach the back.:) I decided to use this first set of shelves to organize our Tupperware.

Tupperware before

All in the drawers

Ta da!!! No more searching in the back!

It has been a couple days now and I LOVE it! As soon as we are able, I want to install them in some of our other cabinets. They are expensive but TOTALLY worth it. 
 

Long Time No Blog

So I was sitting at my computer trying to motivate myself to work and be productive on this cloudy Wednesday morning and I just can't do it. So I decided to blog to help me procrastinate. (shhhh don't tell Blake)

It has been a month since I last blogged and as you can tell, there has been a lot going on. Luckily, I feel like I have been doing better about taking time for myself and my work for school has slowed WAY down since I went back to teaching only Math and Science. My course for grad school for the fall is almost done ( 1 and 1/2) assignments to go and my prof is awesome and basically just said to get in all work by 12/6 and it will be fine. I *might* be able to get it all down this break if I can motivate myself. I registered for my next course with is called Professional Development: Strategies for Teachers.The official course description is "principles of organizational management, instructional design, and change in theory in framing professional development programs." I feel that professional development is very important in the teaching profession but unfortunately, many teachers find them boring, useless, and a waste of time. I have been to both good ones and bad ones and hopefully will learn how to conduct interesting training where the teachers can leave without feeling frustrated. A lot of people have asked when I will graduate and I would say in 2 or 3 years but I finally sat down and worked out a time line. My goal will be to graduate in August 2012! This will allow me to only take 1 course during the fall and spring semesters and I will take another 3 next summer (2011) and 2 the summer after (2012). 

Enough about all that. So our weekends have been pretty much jam packed since the middle of October. We went to Fredricksburg over Columbus weekend and we had a great time. We stayed in this awesome bed and breakfast called Hoffman Haus which was wonderful, except for the feral cats that hung out around our room. (Blake is allergic)

 The weather was beautiful and I mainly enjoyed the cheese at the wineries :)

This snake was outside one of the wineries. Yuck!

Sarina and I :)

I turned around and saw this bug and screamed. The people at the other table did not appreciate my screaming :(

Oh Blake. I'm so glad you put up with me and my picture taking :)

The next weekend, we drove to Dallas to meet up with Blake's mom, his sister, and her family. Since we don't get to see them very often because of we live so far from each other, we try to make our time together memorable. We had an awesome weekend together and definitely made some memories.

Well, I'm late to meet Blake for lunch so I will have to come back and add captions to the pictures later....