May...Captured on Camera

Hello friends! Did  you think I had disappeared for good? It has been a month since I last posted  so I thought I better take a few minutes to share what I have been up to. The last time I posted was May first and today is June first, so I thought I would share my month of May in photos. 

The beginning of May was teacher appreciation week and we had lots of special treats and events at school. One of my little sweeties bought me a bottle of Bath & Body Works hand soap with this cute note attached. He wrote it himself. :)

I bought myself a pretty miniature rose at the grocery store after work.

I made my own planner for school. I created all the inserts myself. I am loving it and can't wait to use it next year. I will share it soon. Here's the cover.

We had a really cool morning earlier in May. It has been really hot already, so this was nice!

I have a teacher's aide for an hour each day to help with literacy centers. She gave me this sweet cross made by another co-worker. 

This is a common sight where I live. I love fields full of hay bales and the wildflowers growing in the ditches complete the perfect picture.

The hubby and I had a yummy lunch out at Longhorn.

I bought myself some beautiful new washi tape.

I spent a lot of time with my fur babies! Rooster is growing like a weed!

I participated in the Relay for Life. One of the groups that participated had shirts made in honor of my friend Heather who has been battling Stage 4 colon cancer for 2 1/2 years. She is currently doing great! Tomorrow she goes in for a PET scan and I'm praying she gets good news again.

The day after the relay, I had a family reunion at Shired Island. This is a local Gulf of Mexico beach area that is enjoyed by everyone.

My sister and I had a girl's day out the following day and went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. blackberry French toast, YUM!

My kiddos had Field Day at school. I had several kids win various events. They had a blast!

My kinder team and I took a day off work to get together and plan for next year. We were excited to get to go out to lunch together off campus that day. A rare treat! We went to a Greek restaurant. I had Spanakopita which is a savory pastry filled with chopped spinach, feta cheese, onions or scallions, egg, and seasoning. It was tasty!

I made a new fruit salad when my friends came out for planner night. We try to get together every week or two and work on our planners and visit.

I also made homemade guacamole to go on the wraps I made. I have actually made this several times this month. I love this stuff!

I captured an adorable picture of Rooster asleep on the couch (which he is NOT supposed to be on...lol). He is not very modest!

My gardenia had tons of blooms in May. I imagine heaven must smell like a gardenia. 

I went to the dermatologist for the first time and afterward I took Mama out to lunch at Chili's. We shared some Southwestern egg rolls. 

My nephew Nathan graduated high school. So proud of this kid!

My Aunt Loretta invited my sister and I to eat a good old southern supper with her last weekend. I promise I don;t just eat all the time...but I do like to photograph my food at times. :)

Speaking of my sister...check out her beautiful hydrangea and hibiscus. 

I caught Rooster in my chair.....again! He loves my chair and sneaks up there every chance he gets. LOL! That white spot on his head is his recently acquired scar. He is a klutz and ran into something under our truck and cut his head. Silly boy! He falls up the steps constantly!

I put together a little parting gift for my kinders along with a DVD of pictures set to music for our year together. I cried and cried looking at them. My how they grew up over the past 10 months.

Yesterday was out Water slide party day. The fire truck came and sprayed the giant water hose for them to play under as well. Out kids love this day and look forward to it each year. 

After we came back inside and changed into dry clothes, I let them play. They were allowed to write on the whiteboard and I found this sweet message. It is supposed to say...Thank you for teaching us. Great job considering at the beginning of the year, some of these kids couldn't even write their name! 

And, last but not least, I made this for the teacher's aide I referred to above. She was a true blessing to me this year. I will miss her next year but I have another awesome aide coming to help. Excuse the background here but I almost forgot to snap a picture of it, so I stopped in the hall on the way to her room and took a picture to share. 

This takes me to today! Today was the last full day of school. Tomorrow is the last day and a half day. Most kids won't be there...in fact, I only had 6 today. We are having a breakfast for some faculty and staff that are transferring to other schools or moving away. I have been busy putting together some french toast casseroles for that. I am looking forward to tomorrow evening because I will be getting together with my sister and friends, Jeana and Heather to celebrate my birthday a little early. June is a busy month for all of us and this was the only day we could do it. We will be having dinner and swimming at Jeana's. She had a beautiful new pool put in last year. Sunday is my birthday and I leave Monday to go to Washington DC with our school Safety Patrol kids. I am super excited! So, chances are I will not be blogging for a week or two, but I will as soon as I can. I am looking forward to summer to catch up with blogging and some other things. Have a beautiful rest of the week!

Until next time.....

 

 

Heart Smiles

Hello friends! Once again, it's been a couple weeks since my last post. I just don't have much going on lately. Well, not really blog worthy happenings I should say. But this blog is about what is currently going on in my life, be it big or small, so I'm sharing. The little things bring so many heart smiles to my days and really are what life is all about anyway. :)

A couple weeks ago, Sadie and Rooster had vet appointments. Sadie for her yearly check-up and Rooster for his first visit. They had a great visit  with their new Dr. (out former vet retired) and they enjoyed their car ride over and back. On the way, the hubby held Rooster so he wouldn't be bouncing all over the car, but on the way home, he let him sit in the back with Sadie and he did great. Here's a picture of them, and yes, Rooster is being a copy cat or should I say dog, again. 

The wildflowers are in full bloom and so beautiful right now. I love these little wild phlox and have since childhood. Some of my sweet students picked these for me last week at PE time. So sweet!

I finished my cookbook project a couple weeks ago and am so happy with my binder. It is packed so I made need to start volume 2.

I designated a few pages to Christmas cookie recipes from my friend, Jeana's annual cookie party she used to host. It was such fun and I always enjoyed trying to come up with something clever and creative. The second from the left, is a recipe card I made into a bookmark. The cookies were displayed in a book shaped tin. The one with Santa on it was called Santa's buttons and the cookies looked like buttons and were displayed in my sewing basket. The snowball cookie recipe card was glittered white and made to look like a snowball. The orange one was made to look like a creamsicle because that was the name of the cookies. Such fun! I won one of the prizes many years.

When she was old enough, Miranda was able to attend the party. Her recipe "card" for one of the years is below...be sure to read it. Coffee stained and written on crumpled notebook paper...too funny! We had to make enough cards for every lady, so she hand wrote around 20 of these. Good memories!

This was such a fun project to put together!

We studied butterflies in kindergarten...well, life cycles. We had two painted lady chrysalises but one did not make it. This little beauty did though and the kids were so excited to release it.

One of my students whom I love dearly, left this on my desk after work one day. His mom works in pre-k so he was able to slip in while I was waiting for my other students to get picked up. I had done something special for him (he was recently hospitalized with his asthma) so he told his mom he wanted to give me the turtle he made in her classroom. She told him he could make me another one but he told her he wanted to give me that one because I do so much for him and the other students, so he wanted to do something nice for me. It brought tears to my eyes and made my heart smile. This kid is precious and I pray if I am ever blessed with grandchildren, they are as sweet as him.

We celebrated Earth Day in kinder. We painted and wrote our promises to help take care of the Earth. This student did a great job on her painting and writing. If you aren't able to read invented spelling, it says.....

I promise to recycle every day and leave the water off when I brush my teeth. So cute!

We made an anchor chart of ways to love the Earth.

My higher level students practiced alphabetical order and did an amazing job!

They make me sweet pictures all the time and I bring the really special ones home to hang on my fridge for a few days.

They made monsters in art class! So fun!

And, speaking of art, I hit Tuesday Morning, Target, and Hobby Lobby last weekend and bought some fun stuff! This stack makes me happy!

I went shopping and out to lunch with my sister, Nancy and our friend, Jeana to celebrate Jeana's birthday. We had yummy burgers at Square 1. I had sweet potato fries with cinnamon sugar on them with my burger. So yummy! 

We shopped a while and went for dessert before heading home. We had yummy pizookies at BJ's. Mine was lemon blueberry...wish I had another one now. Jeana had the monkey bread and Nancy has salted caramel. Theirs were good too but I liked mine the best.

Yesterday, the hubby and I went grocery shopping and out to lunch. Nothing too exciting, but I did pick up the supplies to start my new teacher planner I am creating for next year. I will share details soon. I have had such fun creating the pages for it. It is going to be a disc bound system. I can't wait to get it finished and put together. I found a few fun things at Dollar Tree, including these adorable washi tapes.

After we got home and I put things away, I tackled my bedroom closet. Oh my...what a job! It had not had a good clean out in quite some time. I was exhausted when I finished, but I am happy to say I got rid of more stuff than I kept. Clothes, shoes, purses, jewelry, scarves, and more! It felt so good to purge so much stuff. I also cleared out our winter clothes until we need them again. I am excited to remodel the closet when we start on out room in June. It will be much easier now that I have cleaned it out. 

And, that brings me to now. I have just been piddling today and taking it easy. This week will be a busy one. My kinders will be taking the Stanford 10 test which will tell if they are ready to move on to first grade in the fall. I pray my kiddos do as well as I think they will. I have such a great group this year and will be so sad to see them leave me. I will enjoy the time I have left with them though and am so proud of the growth I have seen in them over the course of the year. Hope you have enjoyed a wonderful weekend. Prayers for a beautiful week.

Until next time.....

A Before & After and a Few Thrifty Finds

Hello friends! I am taking a few minutes to blog on a Thursday night. It's been a busy week but tonight I decided to carve out a little time to post. I have a few thrifty finds to share with you. I haven't been thrifting nearly as much as I used to but I do enjoy going on occasion in the spring. The first thing I am sharing is the dining chairs I purchased back in February. I had totally forgotten to share these. I have been looking for some used chairs for months but I really wanted to purchase some before Miranda came home last month, so I got serious in my hunt. II really liked the style of these. I discovered it is not easy to find a set of used chairs that are in good condition and something I like, so when I happened upon these, I bought them. The man wanted $15 each for them but I asked if he would take $50 for the 4 and he agreed. The left is before and the right is after I recovered the seats.

I plant to use chalk paint and paint them white this summer. 

The toile is so pretty. I fell in love with the colors. This is Waverly fabric and I found it at Wal Mart of all places!

Last weekend, my sister wanted to go thrift shopping, so I happily agreed to go with her. I bought just a few things since I am being much more selective with what I purchase. We went to a Hospice Attic to shop. My sister is a Hospice nurse and gets a discount with them. She paid for my items so I could have her discount. 

I know it doesn't look like much, but I really loved the shape of the piece below. It has three feet and is a large, egg shaped piece. It was so dirty though and I didn't know if it would come clean, but for $0.60 I was willing to try to clean it. I thought I could spray paint it if nothing else. 

When I got home, I took some dish detergent and a scrub brush to it and went to work. In no time, it was spotless. I believe it is crystal instead of glass, but I'm not sure. I placed it on my vanity/desk in my bedroom to hold pens and highlighters for my Bible study time. You can see the pens through it and tell that they do not stick out of the top. It is probably around 7 or 8 inches tall. I'm so glad I gave this piece a second glance.

I also picked up 3 vintage pillowcases to add to my stash. 

They are all so pretty, but this one is my favorite. I just love the colors and the basket weave design. 

This was by far my most awesome find of the day! I have wanted some brown transferware plates for ages. A year or two ago, I actually found 4 saucers in this pattern. Saturday, I found 8 dinner plates!

Such a great find and even better deal. They were $0.79 each but remember I got my sister's discount, so I only paid around $0.63 each for them..,,,score! Less than $5 for these beauties! They are in pristine condition...no scratches or chips at all!

They will be so pretty in a fall tablescape this year. 

My last find on this day was two adorable little bear figurines. This one will be used for any American holiday. He was around $0.23 after the discount.

As was this little Irish cutie. He will be perfect for Saint Patrick's Day next year.

The next day, the hubby and I had to go buy some groceries so we decided to run by the flea market since we hadn't been in quite some time. There is one booth that never disappoints me there. This lady has been there for nearly 30 years and always has great items at very reasonable prices. I thought this wooden ruler was the cutest. I love the golden rule.

And it was put out by Coca Cola years ago. I paid $2 for it.

This pretty pie server was also $2.

And I couldn't pass up this adorable kitten mug. It is milk glass. I collect black and white mugs so this was perfect. The kitten is sitting on a book. He has green eyes and is just the cutest. I paid $1 for it. 

So, not counting the chairs that were purchased 2 months ago, I spent just over $11 last weekend for some pretty awesome things and enjoyed two fun outings as well. I am blessed with a loving sister and hubby. 

Before I go, I just had to share these cute pictures the hubby took of Rooster. They are just precious to me. He is such a cutie. He has captured my heart just as Sadie has. 

Who could resist this face? 

I pray you are all doing well. I have been trying to visit a few of you each evening and am off to do just that right now. Have a lovely Friday and weekend. 

Until next time.....