A Weekend in Chicago

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Do you remember when I told you about how Princeton was protesting the month of October?  If not, you can read about it here.  Well, November came in with a big bang and a trip to Chicago.  Princeton was not a happy camper...

The good news is that he had a good time visiting with Grandmama and Super Pops (my mom and dad) and when we returned, he hadn't destroyed anything else out of anger.  It was a win-win situation!

Stephen and I had been looking forward to our trip for the longest time, and were thankful for a reason to get away.  We had friends who were tying the knot in Chicago, and we couldn't wait to get there!

As soon as we drove into the city, we headed to one of our most favorite restaurants, Joy Yee.  Joy Yees is a pan Asian restaurant located in Chinatown (I wrote about it here when my sister and her husband visited).  For the past couple of months every time Stephen and I go out to eat, Stephen has shared his craving for Joy Yees.  Thankfully we were able to satisfy this craving on this trip.  It was a night of a double win, as our good friend, Shea, joined us on our Joy Yee extravaganza!  Unfortunately, we have no pictures to document this :-/

Joy Yee, we love you!

Stephen proudly showing us what he's going to order :)

Our meal: Coconut Curry Chicken and Chicken & Shrimp Pad Thai

Stephen double fisting our Bubble Tea choices.  Mine was on the left: a Mango Freeze.  Stephen's is on the right: a Berry Freeze.

On Saturday we enjoyed time with our good friends, Matt and Amy before heading off to Carnivale (a great Brazilian restaurant in downtown Chicago) to enjoy a wonderful wedding!

It's such a fun and beautiful atmosphere, with DELICIOUS food!

They served our table family style with food that was out of this world!  

 Stephen and I are blessed to have such good friends.  Here are our good friends, Debbie and Stephen - both were in our small groups in Chicago. 

The Bride and Groom

After the wedding, Stephen and I headed to our dear friends, Mike and Amanda's apartment (Princeton's previous owners) to hang out with them and our other dear friends, Matt and Amy.  We enjoyed a great night of food (more food?!) and Balderdash.  You can never go wrong with Balderdash and this crowd!  We laughed until we cried!

On Sunday, we were privileged to worship at The Moody Church before we spent the rest of the day hanging out with friends and loving our home away from home even more. 

We even got a chance to drive past our old apartment...

 We love Chicago and miss it daily.  The people make the place, and God definitely blessed us with an amazing Chicago Family that we'll have for the rest of our lives. 

Have you ever been to this great city?  If so, what's your favorite thing to do there?

Crayon Wreath

The teacher inside of me was screaming to try this when I first saw the idea pinned on Pinterest:

My only problem with it was there was no tutorial.  No worries for this gal, I just decided to make my own up.  If you'd like to make a cute classroom wreath for your child's teacher for Christmas or Teacher Appreciation week (in May), here is the tutorial to make one just like the Hobby Lobby one!

Here are the supplies all from Hobby Lobby (except crayons):

-2 scrapbook pages - 1 with the alphabet and one light yellow

-Wide red ribbon

-3 wooden letters: an m, r, and s

-A bag of alphabet letters

-3 bags of miniature, colored clothes pins

-a bag of small, flat pieces of wood

-6 boxes of Crayola Crayons (got them for $0.50 at the beginning of the school year)

-1 10" embroidery hoop and 1 12" embroidery hoop (these came from my mama so they were free)

Step 1: Place your embroidery hoops inside one another on a flat surface

Step 2: Hot glue crayons to both embroidery hoops all the way around, leaving a small gap between each one.

Step 3: After all crayons are glued on the first layer, go through and add a second layer to hide gaps between each crayon. Do this all the way around the wreath.

Step 4: With all clothespins facing one direction, glue them around the perimeter of the wreath.

Step 5: Glue another row of clothespins next to the first row of clothespins going in the opposite direction (no picture - sorry!)

Step 6: Create the ribbon for the top of your wreath by cutting strips of your alphabet paper around the tops and bottoms of the letters.  You want these strips to be slightly narrower than the width of your red ribbon.  Take spray adhesive (I used Elmer's) and glue the alphabet strips to your red ribbon.  Then, using the layered strips you just glued together, cut strips out of your yellow paper wider than the ribbon.  Use spray adhesive to glue all layers together. You will make 2 strips, the width of your alphabet and yellow paper.

 

Step 7: Form your bow.  Take one of your strips and create a flattened circle out of it (lightly fold both sides down so that they overlap in the back) and hold it against the 2nd strip you made.  Wrap a piece of red ribbon around it.  Using a staple gun (and a pad of paper underneath it), staple your bow together in the middle.  Glue your letter block to the middle (I chose "K" for my first name).

Step 8: Paint your wood.  I wanted to make my little wood plaque look like a chalkboard. Using painter's tape, I made an edge to my board by painting the inside black and the outside red.  After it all dried, I wrote with a metallic Sharpie my last name on the chalkboard.  I painted my letters that spelled out "mrs." a pale yellow and put red, green and blue polka dots on them using the tip of my paintbrush.  Then, I glued the "mrs" to the top of my chalkboard.  Lastly, I assembled everything onto my wreath.  I took floral wire and wrapped it around the top of my embroidery hoop in the back to use as a hook and hung it on the inside of my classroom door.

I hope this tutorial helps and that you're able to use it to make the day of a teacher!  Let me know if you have any questions or if you make one yourself.  I'd love to see it!

A Great and Crazy Week!

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I got ahead of myself last week when I told you how much I loved my dog....good thing love is unconditional.  Someone is protesting how busy we've been:

I had to tell my sweet students that MY dog ATE their homework...yup - you just read that correctly.  Apparently it does really happen and it happens to teachers, not necessarily just students.  This week he has "eaten" some reading logs, some scholastic book orders, as well as our checkbook.  He knows what he's doing is wrong because he'll immediately go and put himself into his bed.  He's silently protesting the month of October, which happens to have been the busiest month for us.  

In other news, we had a pretty eventful week.  Every Monday we enjoy dinner with my family (including my 1 year old nephew), as well as Bible Study on Tuesdays and Young Life College Fellowship on Wednesdays.  This Thursday was extra busy, as we had the Louisville Young Life Banquet and then I packed up my stuff and headed to Lexington to celebrate one of my favorite friend's  wedding.  My best friend, Laura got married!  I didn't take a single picture, so I had to go and steal borrow from my other best friend's uploading FB pics.  The pictures below will show you some of the highlights (or just what was available to me from my friend's album :) )

On Friday night, after the rehearsal dinner, I spent the night with my BFF, Donielle.  This picture documented our slumber party :)

Donielle is fabulous at doing hair.  Here you can see the fantastic up-dos she did for me and my friend, Elisha

Here is a picture of the wedding in action - if you look to the bottom left, you can see me at the end of the bridesmaids.

Here's the gorgeous bride and handsome groom after the wedding and on our way to the reception (Donielle did her hair also)

Here's a picture of Donielle and I right before they announced the bridal party into the reception.  Because Don-Don is so handy at doing hair and she's also a friend of the bride, she was behind the scenes a lot at the wedding, making sure us bridesmaids (and bride!) looked fantastic at all times.

These next pictures document our love for dancing and acting crazy.  Enjoy!

(my other bestie, Katie, enjoying the act of crazy with us)

Roomies reunited!

Stephen with a weird red-eye reduction mishap ;)

Last picture of the night - what a great time celebrating love and friendship!

Now it's time for me to embrace reality and do some lesson planning and paper grading.  I hope you have an enjoyable week!

A Weekend with the Prince

This post about how spoiled and loved my dog is and the great weekend we had together! Thank youwww.dogfencediy.com for making this possible.

You've met one of the loves of my life, Princeton - in case you haven't, here he is!

I figured a good post to get back into the swing of things was one on this handsome fella'!  I love dogs, always have...but I really love this dog, for many reasons.

1. He's a great companion.  This weekend I was sewing my Saturday away.  My sewing machine is set up in the basement, away from the hub-bub.  All day long, Princeton kept coming downstairs to check on me and to get a good pat and give a big kiss.

2. He loves to snuggle.  We often fall asleep all curled up on the couch next to this snuggle bunny.  Don't believe me?  We have proof:

It doesn't matter the size of the couch, it's inevitable - if you're on it, he's going to join you!

3. The last reason that I'll share as to why I love Princeton is because of how much fun he is.  

If we pretend to howl, he'll join us:

Sorry this video is so dark, you can still hear his talent.

I always enjoy the weekend because that means I can sleep in and lay low.  I know that Princeton enjoys the weekend because that means he doesn't have to wake up at the butt-crack of dawn and we're going to stay home with him all day.  Man, I love that dog!

Do you have a canine man or lady in your life that brings you joy?  Can he/she howl on command?  I'd love to see it!

Here's to hoping that I'm able to share all the 16-ga-zillion things on here that I've been waiting to share.  I'm trying to get back into the swing of blogworld.  I've been gone far too long!  I've missed you blogland and I'm excited to return!