Change

It's been a while. I would blog about how the past few weeks have been, how the first week of class was, or even the awesome weekend that I am depressed is over now. However, sometimes when the most is going on, I refrain from blogging because I know that I will word vomit and say too much. So, in short, change is difficult. I miss my old students, but am trying my best to trust that the Lord has His hand on everything in my life, nothing is a surprise to Him! I'm praying that it calms down soon, but even if it doesn't, this is where God has me and I know He has a purpose for everything. I will add details soon. On a light-hearted note: Tomorrow is Boomer's 3rd birthday. I know it's silly to even recognize that it is a dog's birthday. Don't worry, we're not throwing a doggy birthday party or anything (although I know many of you wouldn't be surprised if we did, ha!) However, it's a reminder of the blessing he is in our lives. We love Boomer so much and are so thankful that he's part of our family! He is the sweetest dog ever and always brightens our day!

Excited!

*Disclaimer: I still don't know why my blog isn't showing my separated paragraphs and is making it one big chunk. Anyone have any idea how to fix this? Anyways...hey everyone! I know many people don't read this since I don't link/post to Facebook/give the address out anywhere, so sometimes I feel silly giving updates. However, I would like to give a shout-out to my Grandma, Bopi, who always emails me and comments on things that she read in my blog! It always makes me feel special! :) I will list 5 things that I am really excited about right now and then give an update on some of my projects (yes, I have become a crazy project lady because there's not much else to do right now!) 1. I am SO excited for school to start. I NEVER thought I'd say that. However, I'm feeling really excited and happy about my decision to switch jobs. I am actually excited to work at a bigger school and to be at a high school (don't get me wrong, I love middle school kiddos and miss mine more than words can express!) I found out a bit more about my schedule this week. I will be teaching one ALS (academic life skills-my position) math class, one ALS English class, and I will do inclusion for one period. The teacher who I am replacing also taught a Dyslexia class, but unfortunately I got hired too late to go to the training for that, I would have loved it. He also coached bowling, which I will NOT be doing, haha! However, I am going to help another teach with homecoming for the freshman class. Also, I am talking to another Special Education teacher and we are considering starting a Circle of Friends club. This is a group that works with the students in Special Education at the school. It's something that Mitchell and I were involved in in high school and one of the things that made me want to be a Special Education teacher. Having COF also made a huge impact on Emily since she was in that class. There is still so much information that I don't know that I'm a bit worried about, but that's just my type-A personality. Overall, I can't wait! 2. This one is pretty awesome I am going to dinner at the Former President George W. bush and Laura Bush's house next month! AHH! I am so excited. They invited the 2010 TFA alum corps members still teaching in the Dallas area. Hopefully it should be a smaller group of us, so I'm hoping to get to meet and talk with him. Unfortunately I can't bring Mitchell with me, but I was so excited I pretty much screamed when I opened the invitation. I had to give them my social security number to RSVP, haha. 3. I am running two 5K races in September! If you know me at all, this is pretty humorous. My family likes to crack jokes when I mention something like buying a pair of tennis shoes or doing anything that would require them. However, much to their surprise, I've been running for almost two months now and am really enjoying it (eh, most of the time). It's just been so hot out! I just signed up for the Lewisville rec center after being appalled by the price of gyms, and it was $20 for 6 months, woohoo! Anyways, I am running the Color Me Rad run in Ft. Worth and the Vineyard Run in Grapevine. Can't wait! 4. We're going to Oklahoma this weekend! I can't wait to spend some time with the in-laws, sweet friends, and hang out on the beautiful OU campus. It should be a good time! 5. Okay, this is a stretch. However, I might be going to London in the Spring! My cousin is going to be studying abroad there and my Aunt already lives there. This got my Mom, sister and I thinking how it would be the perfect time to visit. I've never REALLY left the country (I don't really count getting off of a cruise ship on our honeymoon), so I'm hoping it works out. We could stay with one of them so all I would have to pay for would be airfare and food. As you can see, there is a lot to be excited about. And here are some recent projects of mine: 1. Mari and I made some teacher signs for our classroom doors. We had a lot of fun! Thankfully, Mari already had the paint and ribbon, so the project only cost about $10 total. We were pretty proud of work!

I also made this sign because I had an extra wooden thing and some paint leftover from something else. I think it looks a bit tacky, so I may not keep it up.

2. This is one of my favorites! We made super desk organizers (we saw it on Pinterest). This project cost about $17, the cost of the organizer at Home Depot. It was really fun and an easy project!

3. This is not a project, but this is the outside of my classroom door! They have been waxing the floors all week so I haven't been able to set it up. However, I will be sure to post pictures whenever I get everything ready. The second picture is another Pinterest project I found.

4. Lastly, this is a simple thing that I made today but love! I found a bunch of free printables for subway art online. I used a frame I had sitting around and some paint I already had, so the project was free! I hung this in our laundry room:

That's all for now. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I hope everyone has a fantastic week! :) Katherine

Pallet Art

Hey everyone! Sorry for my lack of posts, but let's be honest,I don't have anything good to say. It has been a crazy past few weeks though. As most of you should know if you are reading this blog, I resigned my job at Williams and accepted a position as a life skills teacher at The Colony High School (about 10 minutes from our house). It's really sad to say goodbye to my coworkers and students at Williams, but we are praying that this ends up being a wise move for our future. Anyways, I've had quite a bit more time than I anticipated, so I've been trying to get some more stuff done. I'm not getting paid in August because of the lag in paychecks from different districts, so I'm trying to find things to do that are cheap or free. Yesterday I made my own pallet art!! I pinned this on Pinterest a while ago and had been wanting to make one for a long time. Thankfully, my sweet friend Anna has recently become an expert at making these. Yesterday we went to Lowes together, bought the supplies, and she helped me build the piece of art and get started on the project. Here is what you will need: -Wood (mine totaled $12 for a large piece of art, cut into 28 inch pieces at Lowes) -Nails (already had) -Paint (already had) -Wood stain (Anna let me use hers) -A small paint brush -A stain pad (or you could use an old t-shirt to put the stain on) -A Picture hanging kit 1. Anna constructed the art for me by nailing to boards to the back to hook all of the pieces together:

2. After we built it, we stained it. This took about 5 minutes. I had stained wood before because Mitchell and I stained our dining room table last year.

3. The next part is a bit time consuming. You have to download a font online, figure out what you want to say on your pallet art (we chose "In Christ Alone, my hope is found" because it's one of our favorite hymns), print out the letters, cut them all out individually, and trace the shapes onto your wood. Talk about hand cramp! Thankfully I had the Olympics to watch while doing this part.

Lastly, use your paint to paint all of the letters! I used leftover paint I had from something else. The paint is actually a light blue/gray, but it looks white here.

Now I just need to install the picture hanging kit and figure out where to put it. I'm thinking about putting it in our bathroom above the tub. It seems like a weird place to put a big decoration, but there's a huge blank wall space there that I think is needing a little somethin' somethin'. I also framed the two mirrors in our master bathroom about a week ago. Now that I know how to do it, it went MUCH smoother! They actually turned out pretty good. I only wish I had done the guest bathroom second. It's still covered in glue/paint that I don't feel like figuring out how to fix.

Today I am going to my new hire orientation for Lewisville ISD!! It's sad that I'm actually excited about this, but I just can't wait to get more information about my job so that I can start setting up my classroom and planning for the year! In Him, Katherine

How to Frame a Mirror

About a week ago I read some (a million) tutorials and decided that I was going to be crafty and frame one of my giant mirrors that the builder slapped on the wall. I was so excited, went to Lowes for several hours, picked out the trim I wanted, and got all of the supplies. I think the people there thought I was lost as I stood there staring at caulk for 30 minutes and looking extremely confused (because I was). I was hoping that I could share, "WOW! So easy and simple" like pretty much every other tutorial that I read about how to do this. WRONG. It turned out to be a big pain and not even look that great in the end. However, if you are more crafty than me, you will probably do a great job so I want to post the steps. The project was definitely cheap ($28 total) and makes a big impact in your bathroom. Here is a picture of my hall bath mirror before:

STEP 1: Measure your mirror. Then, go to Lowes (or wherever your heart desires) and buy the supplies that you need. Try to look a little less lost and confused than I did. You will need: -Trim (choose the design that you want as a frame and have them cut it down for you for free or it won't fit in your car) -Paint (I bought spray paint because it was $3, instead of buying a quart of regular paint for $12.) -Liquid nails -Caulk (paintable) -Miter (this is a saw like thing that will enable you to cut your wood at a perfect 45 degree angle. I was nervous it would be expensive, but it was $7.)

STEP 2: Cut your pieces of trim at an exact 45 degree angle and to the exact length you need them (or have your husband do it because you're a baby and using the miter saw is too tiring).

STEP 3: Paint your trim. I had never used spray paint before and was excited that it was so easy and quick! I am also very impatient, so I like that it dried fast. Make sure to paint the back of the trim as well, because a little bit of it will reflect in the mirror. STEP 4: Put liquid nails on the back of the trim like this:

Then, glue the pieces up separately. This is where I went wrong. I put the glue on exactly like I saw in other tutorials, but I didn't take them as seriously as I should have when they said that the glue would reflect in the mirror. It turns out the glue was not strong enough (didn't buy liquid nails for mirrors like I was told) and the glue was all reflecting in the mirror. Then you have to hold it up for forever like so:

Not fun. One of the pieces never completely stuck to the mirror. Now I'm going to just continue this tutorial with what you should do, rather than what I did (try to salvage, caulk too soon, paint, sand down, repaint, try every trinket in the house I could find to scrape away glue, try putting clear caulk in the gap, etc.) Really, you should be able to move on to the next step if you put the glue on correctly... STEP 5: Put your caulk on the edges where there are gaps. Wait for it to try, then paint over it and touch up any mistakes you made. It's really not a difficult project to do, you just have to be patient and meticulous, and I wasn't either. In the end, this is how it turned out:

This picture makes it look better because you can't see all of the small mistakes. There you have it, how to frame a mirror! Good luck! :)

Paint Chip Calendar

Today I made a homemade calendar! This is a Pinterest project, but I actually got the idea from a neighbor whose house we went over to last night. It was one of the easiest and cheapest projects ever. All you need are 35 paint chips (free from Walmart-although you may get some stares for taking that many paint samples!) and an 11X14 frame (mine was $3 from Walmart-one of the two colors in the $3 frames happened to match our cabinet color exactly). You cut the paint chips into 2X2 squares, tape them onto the backing that comes with the frame, put it all together, and wa-la! I decided to go with more neutral paint chips, because I always do and just love neutral colors. I would say that I will never have to buy a calendar again, but you better bet your bottom dollar that I am going to buy my six Chick-Fil-A calendars when they come out again next year-gotta get those coupons! :) I also made one for my office at work. I used my school's colors (blue and yellow) and just did alternating paint chips. I actually already had this frame, so the whole project was free!

Summertime Update

The summer has been going really well, and I've started doing some work to get ready for next school year. I have accomplished several of my summer goals in the past week! *Note, I still have no clue why my posts aren't separating out the paragraphs. Anyone?? 1. I read the entire Hunger Games series. I literally couldn't put them down. I even brought them with me in the car and read them on our way to places (don't worry, with Mitchell driving!) What should I read next? 2. I have been cooking a lot! We made cilantro lime chicken on Saturday, which was pretty tasty. This week, I made some homemade pizza rolls and also some homemade granola. These were both recipes I found out Pinterest. Tonight, I am making stacked roasted vegetable enchiladas, yum! I don't think Mitchell will like it, but he doesn't exactly like anything healthy. I'm trying to stop eating chips, frozen pizzas, and diet dr. pepper alone. This week we are also going to make some baked potato soup (yum!) and some lemon chili chicken. 3. I went running for the first time in YEARS! My sister likes to crack jokes like, "you own running shoes?!" I DO own some athletic shoes, although they are showing no sign of wear and I have had them for 5 or 6 years. We ran for about 30 minutes, but walked about half of the time. I was sore for days, yikes. Last night Mitchell broke the news that he may not want to run with me because he wants to run the entire time. Oh well, I'm still going to try to keep it up, maybe by going on a walk a few times a week at the very least. 4. I finished decorating our study! We got a rug in that we ordered a while ago on Overstock.com (best place ever!) and also put curtains up. The curtains are a burlap material and are from Target. The curtain rods are those same brand from Ross and were 5.99 each! I LOVE sitting in this chair and reading. It's probably my favorite room in the house. I think I'm done for a while, although I'd like to eventually do some more painting. I also changed some of the lighting in our house. I was always frustrated that it felt so dark, and come to find out that the bulbs the builder puts in are just really crappy. You guys know how crazy I am about Aldi, and it turns out that they sell florescent light bulbs for very cheap. Now I'm feeling a bit blinded by the bright light. The only thing I will do as far as setting the house up for a while will probably be to make sure that my plants don't die in this miserable Texas heat. I feel like half of the things I have planted have died already, so it's probably a waste anyways. Have a great week! :)

Projects Update

The next project on my list was to find curtains for the bedroom and study. I found these curtains at Target a few months ago and loved them, but didn't know how I was going to integrate yellow into the room. I ended up using tones of yellow in the framed scrapbook paper and using throw pillows with a bit of yellow in them. I do wish the walls ended up a darker gray, but oh well, I'm not about to repaint, such a pain! It was hard to get a good picture because of the light coming in, but here are the curtains we chose (yellow with a white paisley print): There really wasn't enough room on the rod to put two curtains on the outer windows, because the window is so narrow. I know it might look a bit weird with one on each, but it seemed to be the best option and saved us $40 not having to buy two more panels! I'm always surprised at how much curtains cost. These were $19.99 each, which is a good deal, but it still seems expensive. Thankfully, I got the rods for $5.99 each at Ross! At some point, I will look for curtains for the study. I was daunted at first at finding curtains for both sets of windows that needed 6 panels each, but now it's not so bad knowing I only need 4. I am thinking of getting a burlap looking curtain? Whatever it is, it can't be too girly. Mitchell keeps insisting that the study not have any paisley or floral print, haha! I think that's all I'll do for curtains right now, because I can't wrap my head around what would look good in the living room.