The Best of 2014

It is hard to believe that 2014 is already over! I know people say that every year, however this one has flown by!

I remember last year with teaching, I was so excited to have "made it" to December, but this year...December seemed to sneak up on me!

I did not post a lot this year so there are many pictures I want to share!


January: 
-The year started out with us putting more finishing touches on our house. We moved in our house November 2013 and we are still loving it!
-Joey and I's 5th year anniversary! There is nothing more to say except, I am so incredibly blessed to have Joey as my husband! :)


March: 
- I got my painting on, I inherited paint, an easel, brushes, and some canvases from my grandma. I decided to create my first painting.

It's not perfect, but I like it! 

We also went to visit Joey's Dad. He had just moved into his new house, so we were trying to pick paint colors for the exterior. (Decided to go with a more white/cream color in the end)

After that, Joey and I went around Galveston and I got to take pictures with my DSLR:

April: 

My clementine tree started blooming! I ended up getting 5 clementines off the tree in its 1st year!

It had many more blooms, however I didn't want to the tree to be stunted in it's growth because of the fruit. 

We went and saw my dad sing with his band. 

I love seeing my dad sing and play because I know he likes it and has fun :)

 May:
- Tried paintball...fun, but I still have the bruise from it!

May the Fourth 

Oh yes...Princess Leia buns! 

Oh.My.Gosh! Comicpalooza was AWESOME this year!!

WE HAD STAN LEE VISIT!!

That's right! Stan Lee! The creator of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and most importantly...

X-Men. 

(see his whole list of 332 characters here)

Stan Lee was not even at the humongous Comic-Con in California(due to illness), 

but he was in Houston!  

For this nerdy girl, seeing Stan Lee was amazing!

 June:
 - I turned 26. Seriously do not feel like I have actually aged since I was 23.

Blue hair!

My first sewing project on the inherited sewing machine.

New kitchen window inserts

(they are a aqua blue, due to the green lights it looks a little different. 

I tried my hand at making another piece of art. 

This is going to go on a gallery wall in our master bedroom. 

August: 

- We went to Vegas! I love going in August, right before school starts. It helps me relax and it is like the last hoo-rah of the summer! Each time we have gone somewhere different and I love adventuring with Joey! 

This time we stayed in Mandalay Bay. 

We loved staying here! 

The rooms were nice, it had great amenities, and it was casual. 

The other amazing places we have stayed were great, but not casual. 

We went to 

This is a speak-easy styled bar. 

The entrance is hidden with a mall. 

The car is near the entrance of it. 

It was really neat! 

The Border Grill's brunch

If you are in Vegas and are very hungry...I recommend this place!

The Bacon Jalapeno PBJ...so delicious! 

We visited the Shark Reef in Mandalay Bay. 

It is one of my favorite aquariums! 

The MGM Lion

Sigfree and Roy's Secret Garden

It was okay, just very warm!

So Vegas has a new ferris wheel called The High Roller

It is the tallest one in the world at 550 ft. 

The whole experience was amazing! 

I highly recommend it! 

You get into these like giant pods (has AC, seats, etc)

and it slowly moves around. The whole thing takes about 30 minutes!

I loved going at night and seeing all the lights. 

This was taken from the Foundation Room at the House of Blues. 

Beautiful view!

First day of school!

 September: 

Mom and I took pictures. These are our selfies. Lol!

 October: 

Anberlin's Farewell Tour

Such an awesome band!

Such a great show!

They ended with "Fin" which is my favorite song by them!

We went birding with some friends at Brazos Bend State Park.

I haven't been there in a long, long time. 

We saw birds, alligators, and some frogs!

It is very beautiful there! 

 November: 

Lone Star Biker Rally

We love going because of all the great people watching! 

Our big Black Friday buy!

An inflatable hot tub!

We decided that this would be a good test to see if we would want to buy a real hot tub. 

We love it!

 December: 

Cooked my first whole chicken and used my dutch oven for the first time!

It turned out fantastic! 

Plus it wasn't as gross dealing with a whole chicken as I thought it would be.

The project we ended 2014 with...

A paver patio! 

It is still under construction since we just started on it this week. 

I am so excited about relaxing on the patio and watching the birds!

Happy 2015! I am excited to see what God has in store for us in 2015! 

My classrooms

I've been wanting to post about my 1st year's classroom for the longest time and I never got around to it. Well, now I have this year's as well!

The thing about my classroom, I feel like it is always evolving in what it looks like. Things are added or moved.

So here is my very first classroom as a teacher!!

It started out like this. I share my room with the math specialist, so the left is my side.

Bookshelves were full of books and old things 

This was the 1st week I was able to get things done. 

The left brown bookcase was full of old materials and books. My things were mostly on the one by the filing cabinet. 

This was by December (note the Christmas things)

My desk

I used the brown door as a To Do list. 

By the end of school

• The basket on the top of the bookshelf was my treasure box. The little green buckets held the student's name slips that I use for reward system. 

• The pink line around my desk was to help a student with boundary issues

I liked the little cart in front of my desk bc it helped me be a little hidden while I was at my desk from the door.

• I used the foldable board for a lot of my instruction. 

The thing I liked about this lay out was the bookshelves right behind where I taught...any materials I would need were right there. 

• Yoga balls had a boundary or "home" and once the students were finished sitting on them or having their bounce break, they would be put up in their "home". 
• On the brown shelf is my library. It has grown this year! :)
• The black shelf held leveled readers(which I had no idea what they were last year. I use them now)

After my first year, I had to move to a classroom that was just on the other side of the wall (the wall behind my desk). As weird as it sounds, I was happy to do so simply because I was able to look through all the things that were left behind and see what I had. Some things did not travel, they went and visited the recycling bin. Others I realized how great a resource they were and organized them!

My Second Year

 After a little work: 

The yoga balls got deflated for this year and put in a closet. 

That poor globe was in the lounge...nobody wanted it, so I took it. 

The chair belongs to a coworker and it is stored in my room right now. 

Got my library organized 

• Orange bucket has prizes the kids can pick 

You can also see the books I got organized on top of the green cabinets. That was one of the many resources I had, but didn't know of the previous year!

 What it looks like now: 

• Up on the wall are things that we are learning about or have learned about. 
• The yellow "ABC" holds our vocabulary for the week
• The blue chart next to it holds math vocab right now. 

• The little cart at the end of my desk holds the pencil bucket and materials that I use during groups. 
• Materials are on the white shelf to the left of the picture. 
• Teacher materials are in the smaller white bookshelf. The green basket on my desk holds timers, sharpies, post-its that I might need. 

• I utilize the metal on the front of my desk to hold examples of good writing and other materials that I might need to show to the students. 

My library is labeled with the genres, I am trying to get my students to understand the different ones. 

The rug on the right is the "break spot". AKA cool off zone.

No one has had to use it yet, but I created one this year just in case!

My desk area!

I love having the side table! 

I have 2 clear file organizers, a blue hanging holder and then not pictured is a plastic hanging file holder. 

There is a lot of paperwork with my job and it is key to keep it organized!

This is my desk all clean. 

This was a busy day! 

That side desk is a hard worker at times! 

(Under the desk is my actual treasure box!)

Notice: a cute picture of all three kitty babies in-between my owls. 

My view from my desk! 

I wanted a picture of Joey and I on it this year!

I love looking at it when I am having a hard day!

Here I have a picture of us when we were in Vegas and also my cup from when we were in Vegas. 

There you have it! My classroom from last year and then from this year so far! I am sure the room will change before the end! I love documenting what it looks like and how it changes as I need it to. I am sure more photos will be added once this school year is finished!

Have a great night!

Hair Adventure

It has been a while since I have blogged. Why? I am really not sure! One of my goals this summer was to blog. Sadly, I didn't get to it. Perhaps it is all the things I want to blog about that just snowballs and I get over whelmed when I think about what to post.

Anyways.....



So this summer I finally decided to take the plunge. For about two years I have wanted to do something fun with my hair. After much research and Pinterest searching, I finally decided to dye my hair!

I did not do it myself....since I have natural medium brown hair, I figured bleach would be involved for any color to look good. So instead of trying and it looking horrible, I went to Visible Changes.

I talked to Joey about it and I decided on blue. I went to the nearest Visible Changes after having lunch with Joey in June and made a walk-in appointment that afternoon.

It took 2 1/2 hours to bleach bath my hair (which is less harsh than just straight bleach I was told). It took three bowls of it to get to a color where the blue dye would look best. I was hoping I would look like Daenerys Targaryen....instead it turned a more Cersei Lannister. Meh.


Like a good blogger, I took Before, During and After photos! Warning: a lot of selfies...no other way to get hair pics! :)

Before

This is about the second of three bleach baths they needed to do. Issue was that summer of 2013 I dyed my hair black...the black was still on the tips from being grown out. As a result, more bleach needed to be used on the tips and the blue was the darkest there. 

Waiting for the dye to set

The day of. It is blue, but looks more purple here. 

It would look different depending on the lighting. 

Next day

One of the things I loved about the way my hair turned out was the different tones. One piece of my hair in the front received more bleach and as a result, the dye turned that section a beautiful aqua color. 

The saddest part of this color is the fading and the roots growing out. My roots grew out a blonde color so they were pretty obvious. The color really didn't look bad as it faded until about a month and a half or two months after I dyed it.  I made sure to use a special shampoo/conditioner for dyed hair. The reality of it is though, each time you wash your hair some of the blue comes out. 

The first time I washed my hair after it got dyed, it looked like I killed a Smurf! So if you want to do this as well...wear gloves. 

Blue gets everywhere!

Since I needed this color to fade out/grow out enough before school was to start up again, I didn't get it touched up. If I could be a blue haired teacher, I would be!! 

This is the process of it fading. 

It turned a pretty blue/green

Eventually the blonde was so much, it started to look not so nice. Again, I went to Pinterest...but this time for a haircut style. Another thing I have been wanting to do since the beginning of this year (ever since I saw Snow White's pixie cut in Once Upon a Time) was get a pixie cut! 

I knew that if I were to cut it short, it would be much easier to dye to a brown color for school. Plus it would be much easier to style/manage. 

Before

Notice all the blonde

My hair was 12 inches long in a pony tail. However I was not able to donate it, since it had been bleached and dyed. That still kinda makes me sad, but I do not regret dyeing or cutting my hair. 

After

I thought most of the blue was gone...however when I got it cut, the back was all still blue! It looked AWESOME! Plus the blonde really went with it. 

Ack! I still love how the lady cut my hair! 

As school neared, and I was about to meet the new principal of our school, I decided it was time to go back to normal. 

So much blonde! 

I dyed it and now I'm back to a normal brownish color. 

Will I dye my hair again? YES! It was a lot of fun!

The most awesome thing about it was it gave me a new found confidence and people seemed to be more open to talk to me. Wither that was just telling me they liked the blue or asking me where I got it done. It was pretty neat. 

My hair definitely changed a lot this year, but I am so happy I took the risk. 

Quick Look: 

I hope reading this gives you confidence to try something you have been wanting to do for a while. It doesn't have to be hair, it could be something as simple as hanging that picture on the wall which you've been too nervous to hang or trying new food. Take that risk and you might find that you love it!