And the #1 Reason I'm Glad We Don't Live in an Apartment Building is.....

....because sometimes bedtime sounds like a death march, and any self-respecting person should probably want to call DCFS.

But let's face it, as parents, we've all had to grin and bear it while our children scream at the tops of their lungs, usually the same phrase over and over again, until everyone's ears are bleeding.  Today we suffered through two "I DONT WANT TO GO TO BED" blow outs, one at nap time (which wasn't worth the battle) and one at bedtime (which obviously I won....by the grace of God...), and thus I'm sitting here with some liquid relaxation reflecting upon my day.

First things first:  a huge round of applause to the fine people at Yellow Tail Winery for putting their wine in screw top bottles, because getting a cork out of a bottle was NOT on my list of things to do tonight.

Excitement of the day: two finished craft projects, a trip to the park, and a successful video chat with Nonnie (the kids kind of turn into crazy people when the camera turns on, but we made it work somehow!).

I finished Ollie's birthday banner today!  Here are some pics:

 I made the triangle template in Word and added the colors there, which allowed me to make some fun patterns without wasting my hard earned scrapbook paper.  In retrospect I probably could have formatted the white circle and letters onto the banner template as well, but I didn't think of that until just now.  Doh.

 Oh well, it was fun using the Cricut with Charlie to cut the 2" circles out of white cardstock - he was fascinated by the moving parts on the machine!  Then I cut the letters out as well (1 1/2" size), and Ollie got to help glue the circles and letters down, so she was part of the magic too.

 The first and last triangle on the banner has a small picture of the My Little Pony group on it, so if the color scheme works for next year I could always reuse it by gluing a new picture over it.  I say this now, but of course I'll probably make a new one next year anyway.  I punched little holes in the corners and attached them with curly ribbon I bought at Dollar Tree for - you guessed it - $1.  It worked really well, and I like it uncurled best (I tried it both ways, and even Ollie agreed on straight being better.)

I also have some 5" circle cut outs to glue together and then hang from the tree outside when we get ready for the party, which of course isn't until August 31, but I'm one of those plan ahead kind of girls, so here we are!  I may even start on the Superhero banner for Charlie's party tonight if I can't get motivated about school stuff!

My second craft victory today is my "Becoming a Bride" layout for my wedding album.  Honestly, it turned out exactly how I pictured it would and so I'm not sure why I had such a hard time finishing it, other than I didn't know what I wanted to write on the page or how to make the perfect title for it.  I'm not much of a perfectionist (just as my father in law about all the hideous cakes he's gotten for his Cake of the Month Club gift Ollie and I gave him at Christmas!), but when it comes to scrapbooking, I really become OCD about everything being perfect.  Maybe I don't want people to see things 60 years from now and think I did shoddy work!  Anyway, here are pics of the finished layout:

I was inspired by this original page that was in my Scrapbooks, Etc magazine (that used to come straight to my door until Better Homes and Gardens decided they didn't want to print it anymore.....but I'm not bitter or anything...), and just sort of tweaked it a bit to fit my own needs.  I hand-cut the title out after formatting it as a Word Art in Word.  (I really like Word, can you tell?)  I didn't use my Cricut because I'm cheap and only have one cartridge that doesn't cut pretty swirly fonts that I needed.

 I went over the title with glitter, because everything is better with glitter.

 I think the scalloped/lace trim adds some interest to the page without overwhelming all the other things I have going on...like the glitter!

This is some sort of fuzzy snowflake self-adhesive trim that my dear scrapping buddy Sam donated to me several years ago before she moved away, and I was stoked to finally use it!  I really loved how it looked over the aqua glitter.

So there are my two craft victories for tonight.  On the horizon.....

• As God is my witness, I will force myself to work on this writer's notebook!
• Homemade sour cream....it's gonna be big.
• Maybe the start of a new wedding album page...we'll just have to see...

The School Year Cometh...

Most people feel  like teachers have it easy.  We work from 8am-3pm for 9 months a year and then have 3 full months off to kick back and do nothing.

HA.  I don't even want to delve into all the inaccuracies in that last sentence.  Let's just say that as teachers (good teachers) we work hard ALL year long and earn the breaks we get.  I'm not saying that I'm not blessed to have a full summer off with my kids to spend at the pool and the zoo, and I wish my husband were that lucky, but I do think that I earn that break.  And it's rarely 3 FULL months!

It's usually around this point in the summer when teachers start having "teacher" moments, where we're constantly thinking about the up-coming school year and what we need to do to get ready for it.  Just the other day at the pool one of my teacher friends was telling me about the nightmare she had that it was the first day of school and the new principal was already mad at her and she didn't have any of her work prepared.....yep, it's officially school season.  Heralded by crazy school dreams and middle of the night panic attacks, back to school arrives well before the crazy school supply sales at Staples.  (Which I'm totally excited for, PS.)

For me, I've been having these teacher fits all summer since I'm moving to a new grade and a new school.  I'm trying to organize a reading and writing curriculum for myself so that I don't feel totally lost come September, and it's been fun, but stressful.  There are too many ideas out on Pinterest and not enough time in the day, and I finally said to my husband, "Why do I spend all my time pinning new ideas when I just need to sit down and DO some of the ideas I have??!"  (His sage advice?  "I was wondering the same thing.")

So I sat down and started this Interactive Writer's Notebook.  I have grand ideas to have notebooks like it for reading and math as well, and maybe even social studies, but those will have to wait.  For now, I'm trying to focus on finishing up the Writer's Notebook.  It's got neat little flip-tabs where notes about punctuation go, some fun charts that we're going to make and glue in, and a few places where we get to bridge the gap between subjects and analyze writing within our social studies content.  My latest addition to my lessons (not necessarily to the notebook) are my Publishing and Peer Editing anchor charts.  Take a peek:

Truthfully this is one place where I scoured the internet and couldn't find anything that I was happy with, so I created my own.  They aren't gorgeous by any means, but I'm planning on creating them as large anchor charts with my class and these just served as a formatting guide for me anyway.  Plus now I can throw away the ratty notebook paper that I scribbled all my notes down on.

I'm trying to set up Daily 5 in my classroom for the fall, and these anchor charts and the notebook go along with the writing mini-lessons I'm creating to teach.  So far I have pretty much the whole year mapped out and I'm just going back in and actually designing the lessons and making the notebook entries so I have a sample book to teach from.  I'll be sure to add more about it once I get it finished.

I'm especially nervous this year because I'm going back to middle school, where I haven't taught since I was a student teacher.  It's common knowledge that most third graders are just pretty happy to be at school and have a teacher who smells nice and gives good hugs, but something tells me that the 6th graders are going to be a little more discerning.  I'm trying to gear up some more behavior incentives and some start of the school year activities that they'll enjoy.  And I guess the bright side is that if they don't like it.....there's always next year to get it right! (Good thing I'm a Cubs fan and am used to that mantra!)

So here we are again...

Hello again, blog world.  I must say that I'm pretty proud of myself today; I feel like I may have actually earned a bid for Mom of the Year - a REAL one, not just the sarcastic one I usually award myself when something devastating happens, like Charlie falling down the stairs and scraping his face up or Ollie eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches all day long.  No sir, today, I may have earned an honest-to-goodness Mom of the Year nod....or at least a Little Mom on the Prairie Award. 

I usually wake up with the birds but have fallen into a sloppy routine this summer (I'm blaming Jonathan's new and seemingly ever changing work schedule), but today I was up at 5:45 (still late by my standards, but I'm breaking myself in easy), did my cheesy early 90's workout DVD, showered, retrieved Charlie from his crib, made homemade blueberry muffins, made yogurt (in the crock pot!), washed some dishes....and that was all before lunch time!  Yes, let's just say I feel like I've had an insanely productive day.  Go me.

I never thought I'd be the chick to make homemade yogurt, but as I started realizing just how much I was spending each week on plain yogurt, it made me a little ill.  Compounding the sick feeling was the sheer amount of waste it was creating - 2 or 3 large plastic tubs each week??!  I tried making myself feel better about the plastic tubs by washing them and coming up with ways to reuse them: storing bulletin board trim at school, stashing craft supplies, creating station tubs and games for center time at school....all of those were great ways to use those 24oz tubs I was accumulating, but I was running out of storage room in my kitchen, and since I'm currently between classrooms (left my old job and waiting for the new school/classroom to finish being built so I can get in it), it was getting ridiculous and something else had to be done.  Cue pinterest (of course) where I started looking around for homemade yogurt recipes.  There was one in a Mason jar....seriously.....but it wasn't nearly as simple as turning on my crock pot, taking the temperature every hour or so, and letting the "live and active cultures" do the rest.  I was worried that the yogurt might taste funny, but today's batch is my 2nd, and I think it tastes even better than the stuff from the store.  And not only am I not wasting those silly plastic tubs, I'm also getting WAY more yogurt for WAY less money.  It's awesome.

So to get back on track here, the REAL reason I started this blog was to post about some of the cool things that I do/find/make/want, and one of the coolest things I've done so far is throw Ollie a pretty rocking Mario Brother's themed birthday party.  Now don't get me wrong, not all of these ideas were original, and certainly not all of it was my own doing, but it turned out super well, and since I was in charge of the application of it all, I'm claiming it all as my own personal victory.  Before I get too far into this, I should explain that we are OLD SCHOOL Mario at our house.  None of this new-age Wii Mario with their blue overalls.  At our house, Mario rocks out the red overalls, Luigi the green ones, and there's only ONE princess to save and that's Peach.  So this is the kind of party we threw.  Old school, vintage Mario a la Captain Lou and The Super Mario Brothers Super Show.

No party is complete without a birthday banner, so here I made one out of squares to mimic the blocks that Mario is always breaking apart.  I flanked it with 2 Piranha Plants with a Goomba trapped between them.

It was pretty easy to construct all of these items using construction paper and various shapes that were easy to cut - I didn't even use my Cricut!  The pots were just rectangles overlapping, then the stems and leaves.  I cut big red "U" shapes and topped them with white hearts and polka dots of different sizes (using my 3/4" and 1" paper punches).

Food is always super important.  The fare this day? Italian, or course.  A yummy pasta dish from a Kraft magazine I had lying around, salad, bread, plain noodles for the youngsters who were opposed to saucy pasta, and some fruits/veggies.  Now I know you're looking at this and thinking...."yes, but what about that GIANT Mario head poking around back there???"

What? This guy?  Just an awesome paper machie Mario head that one of my friends from school made.  Pretty sweet, huh?  He was destined to be a pinata, but I didn't have the heart to smash him to bits, so he made a great table decoration instead.  And there's a vintage Mario coin bank standing next to him.  Cute, huh?  I'm sure glad my brother decided he didn't need such a childish collectible anymore!

The cake (made by my awesome mother-in-law) was a real hit.  Simple, but really spot-on for the party, even if the characters ARE wearing their new-age blue coveralls.  She got the little figures at the local party store and cut the stars and dots out of fondant.

Cake is never enough, so we also had some Question Blocks made out of rice krispie treats.  Clearly I made these, which is why they are lopsided.  Had my mother-in-law made them, they would have been precisely trimmed into perfect cubes.  I'm more of an estimator, myself.  Especially when it comes to measurement.

Extra cake batter meant little star-shaped cakes too.  The cupcakes aren't pictured, but they had the same blue icing as the cake with little cake toppers made from stickers and a 3" scalloped paper punch.  Super cute.  And before you ask, the answer is No, there is NEVER too much cake.

 Ollie was just turning 4 and so most of her friends are the same age, which means they're too young for any crazy party games, but we did have one: Smush the Goomba.  I think I snagged this one from somewhere else online, but I decorated orange balloons with Goomba faces, attached brown feet to them, and set the kids loose to try their hand at Goomba Stomping like the Marios do.  Ollie told me it was her favorite part of the day.

 More Goombas and Piranha plants decorated the windows!

 Such a fun idea.  WE made mustaches out of black felt, hot glued them to color coordinated straws, and let everyone wear their mustaches in pictures.  You can't really tell, but the Mario mustaches are extra ruffly on the bottom (like his real 'stache is) and the Luigi ones are smoother.  It was a huge hit, even with the adults.  My fantastic sister-in-law made Mario and Luigi hats for the kids out of fleece, so the kids had hats to wear for the party too.

All in all, a super fun birthday theme, and Ollie totally loved it.  Here we are as a family sporting our mustaches and Mario/Luigi hats.  The Toad hat was left over from the previous Halloween when we all dressed up as Mario characters.  Ollie was Mario, Jonathan was Luigi, Charlie was Toad, and I was Princess Peach.  We got quite a few compliments.

Maybe that gave someone out there some ideas for their own Mario party!  For now, I'm off to tackle my still unfinished Interactive Writer's Notebook.....

Blogging Rookie...

So, here we are computer...it's just you, me, and this crazy blog that I've been thinking of starting for a while now.  See, the thing is that I have tons of super ideas, and let's just face it, I do tons of awesome things that probably everyone needs to know about.  Sadly, if you post about it on Facebook, then you're just some girl who likes to brag, but if you post about it on your blog...suddenly you're some sort of awesome superstar that people follow on Pinterest. 

I'm hoping that blogging here will help me ease my addiction to the old FB and help me make better use of my time, especially because schools kicking back up again and I need a way to motivate myself to complete all of the fantastic projects that I think of while I'm in the shower.  It's going to be a pretty random blog that's filled with things that make me laugh, craft projects, school stories/creations/tips, birthday parties, and whatever other crazy things I choose to write about.  That's why I titled this "From Out of Left Field" - because basically everything will be coming at you from left field!

My newest projects?

• An unfinished wedding scrapbook - specifically a page about getting ready on the big day
• A half done Interactive Writer's Notebook that I started for school in the fall
• My Little Pony decorations for Squirt 1's birthday party
• The family garden, which is growing surprisingly well considering I'm NOT a gardener

I've got to say that I'm pretty pleased with myself on all of these fronts..I just wish I would actually finish something!  It's the time of the summer when I have too many things whirling around in my head and can't stop to focus on just one of them, so instead I turn into that guy at the circus who juggles plates, and working on the writer's notebook leads to trying to piece something together for my Teachers Pay Teachers store which leads to adding a touch here or there to the birthday banner.....oh well, it'll all get done, right?  And then I'll start on my classroom website.....


(I'd hoped to post the banner template I made for the party banner so anyone else could use it, but I couldn't figure out how....so maybe next time!  Until then!)