Candy Kisses Oh My!

Can you guess which part of wedding planning I was knee deep in this weekend??

F A V O R S !!!

I was surrounded (along with bridesmaid Shannon and Kenny, who was WAY TOO EAGER to eat the candy instead of box it) with kisses (thanks Tasha for the idea!)! And white boxes and pretty red ribbon too! It was fun. Unfortunetly, we're only about 1/3 of the way done. I need MORE kisses and ribbon. I way underestimated the amount I would need. So that finished task will be procrastinated until further notice.

On to more important things.....putting a veil on puppy! How cute is she? I had to wait until she was napping in her crate to get a good picture. Otherwise, she was too hyper and too into trying to bat the veil off. It did get ripped in the process, but who cares, she's so cute!

Tomorrow is my first day back to work after a week off. I'm NOT looking forward to it. As always, I'll be fine once I get there and see coworkers and all that. But the first day back is always hard. I am sure the kids will be all happy and excited to get back to their normal routine.

I made an arrangement for one of my best friend's wedding. She's getting married March 8th in Tennessee, so I'll be going on a road trip shortly! Anyway, her bridesmaid dresses are a pale green, and the bride is carrying red roses, so this is what I came up with. The bonus is that I will use these same arrangements for my own wedding! I am really stretching those dollars:)

I also got to have lunch with Tasha and her lovely girls on Saturday. She is proudly sporting the pregnant tummy bump and is adorable! And completely glowing too! This has been a great week off. I'm sad it's ending:(

Crazy Eights Meme

CRAZY EIGHTS!
I was tagged by Vader's Mom to play along, so here I go!

8 Things I'm Passionate About:
1. The BOSS (GOD)
2. Kenny, my soon-to-be-hubs
3. Making our home "our" home
4. My 60 pound puppy
5. Family & Friends
6. Teaching
7. Making things (anything)
8. Exercising

8 Things I Want to do Before I die:
1. Have kids
2. Watch Kenny become a great papa
3. Work with Kenny full time
4. Vacation in many different areas
5. Buy a house that requires little-to-none remodeling
6. Own a vacation house up north in the woods so Kenny can hunt and I can relax
7. Teach in a different school
8. Retire and love it!

8 Things I Say Often:
1. NO! (to the puppy)
2. NO! (to my students...hahaha)
3. NO! (to Kenny....see the pattern here?)
4. I'll get to it later.
5. Ask me after school.
6. I forgot. (especially recently)
7. I love you.
8. Where are you?

8 Books I've Read Recently:
1. Any and ALL Bridal mags
2. T is for Tresspass by Sue Grafton
3. S is for Silence by Sue Grafton
4. Froggy's First Kiss
5. A Charlie Brown Valentine
6. Kenny's work magazines
7. MANY Jackie Robinson books (he's my favorite person to highlight during Black History Month)
8. The Collected Poems by Langston Hughes (another famous person highlighted during Black History Month)

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over:
1. When You Saying Nothing At All by Alison Kraus
2. Don't Want To Miss A Thing by Aerosmith
3. Big Girls Don't Cry by Fergie
4. Walking On Broken Glass by Annie Lennox
5. Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith
6. Building A Mystery by Sarah McLachlan
7. Good Old Boys by Waylon Jennings
8. Hey Jude by The Beatles

8 Things That Attract Me to My Best Friends:
1. Honesty
2. Can just hang out at home with nothing to do and still have fun doing it!
3. Make time for me
4. History
5. Gone through struggles and came out smiling
6. Like to eat out:)
7. I can fall asleep in their car and they think it's funny
8. LAUGHTER

8 People I Think Should Do Crazy 8's:
1. Tasha
2. Lori
3. Tee
4. Steff
5. Lindsay
6. La Bella
7. Erica
8. LaskiGal

Thirteen THINGS I Bought This Week

(trust me, the list is G R O W I N G)

1. Floral tape

2. Floral pins

3. Red beads

4. Shoes to wear on wedding day

(I know they aren't typical wedding attire, but do you know how hard it is to find CUTE flat shoes to match a wedding dress? It was a chore, and I got sick of looking. I'm not usually as dorky as these shoes, they kind of remind me something I wore in elementary school, except maybe mine were the jelly kind instead of fabric. Anyway, the good thing is, they are SUPER comfy. I promised Kenny I'd wear flat shoes because he's not that much taller than me....I HAD to keep my word.)

5. Hershey Kisses

6. Coffee

(Starbucks, Tim Hortons, a no-name coffee shop)

7. Gas

(don't even want to think about it)

8. Card for Kenny

(I was being sweet)

9. Dinner & breakfast with college roomie

10. Paper for printer

11. Doorknobs at Home Depot

12. New collar for puppy

(now 60 pounds)

13. Wedding gift for a friend

I have been B U S Y

As promised, a real post!

I am on mid-winter break this week, all week. And believe me, I feel BLESSED to have it. Not only did I need the break mentally, but I am getting tons of wedding stuff accomplished!

First, the invitations are mailed!! Yay! Big load off. Thank you NIKI for helping me sooooo much with it! There have already been additions to the list and more that I'm sure I'll be mailing, the but the bulk of them are done.

Second, here are all of our new fiestaware place settings...we received all of them from our registry and aren't they gorgeous?!?!? I LOVE fiestaware, especially the colors we picked out. They even look nice in the dishwasher!

Third, I made my wedding necklace. I made it with whote pearls and crystals, 3 18inch strands, twisted together. What do you think? I picked the pearls and crystals because that's what's on the dress. I looked and looked and looked for necklaces and couldn't find anything I liked, so I just decided to make it.

Fourth, I made corsages for my grandmothers and my stepmom....white roses with red ribbon. And then the corsages for my mom and Kenny's mom.....red roses and I don't know what ribbon to use with their's yet. Should it be red or white?

I have been busy!! And now I'm off to visit my roommate from college for the night and help her move. I also am in desperate need (not really) of a new sweatshirt from the college I graduated from. So I'm packing lightly to force myself to buy a new one....I love the way I think:)

I promise I'm still here....I didn't elope:) Way too busy, but I'm hoping to catch up today!!

Saturday??? Where did it go?

Ever have one of those days where you have a lot to do, and none of it gets done, but somehow, you were moving and going all day? That was my day today. I just don't get it. Well, I really do get why I accomplished nothing. I wasn't here to do it. I was everywhere else. And then when I thought I could be here to do stuff, nope, didn't happen. Huh. Another weekend half over and still not close to getting things accomplished. Whoever decided that weekends needed to only be two days long was smokin' the big one. Because two days is NEVER enough time to do ANYTHING. Nuff bitchin' about that now.

Vader's Mom linked to this neat little picture making thing.....go over and try it...

Here's my personality summed up in a painting.....PEERRRTTYYY!!!

More fun pre-marital stuff coming tomorrow morning!! I'm so excited I probably won't be able to sleep tonight:)

Unwinding

Today I finished up a science unit about solids, liquids, and gases. Lori gave me an awesome idea to use rootbeer floats to end the unit with. Ice cream as the solid, rootbeer as the liquid, and the fizz and reaction as the gases. The kids LOVED it!!

They didn't do so well answering their questions about the little experiment, but it was the last thing we did on a Friday, so I'll have to go over it with them on Monday. But they had so much fun:)

It snowed again the other day and we played outside with the puppy...she's so entertaining! I know I yak a lot about her, but she's our "baby" so she gets lots of attention from us. Taking out the garbage (and getting rid of the old dishwasher-yay!!) turned into playtime in the snow for the dog, so it was for us too. Here she is intently watching her "father" ball up some snow to throw at her. Don't feel bad for her at getting snow thrown...she's no angel!! She is in that play-biting stage, where she latched onto shirt sleeves and sometimes gets the skin....OUCH! She's not being mean, just a pain in the butt. But we still love her:)

I love the way the trees look in the winter when there's snow and ice in them. Kind of a crazy-scary picture I took here. It was completely dark outside, as dark as it can be with snow which seems to light everything up. And I didn't have the flash on, but it still came out somwhat light. I heart winter!!

It's Raining It's Snowing

No wonder people are sick all the time around here!! The weather changes so fast! I got up this morning and the backyard was flooded. No snow left, just complete wetness. And it was raining. Now look at it!!

These pics aren't great, I took them from the comfort of being INSIDE the house, not out in the madness. Gotta love this wacky weather. That's Michigan for ya.

Kenny captured me lovin' on the puppy the other day. Again, not great shots, not really flattering to me, but you can see the puppy in all her glory. She is the cutest lab baby ever! And she's not really a baby anymore, she's OVER 50 whopping pounds now. Can you handle the pink pants and blue socks? Can you tell it was Sunday?? Check out flickr for more of these lovely pictures:) Excuse the messy hair. That's what it looks like on Sundays. After church, of course.

I wasn't so stressed out at work today. I had the "who cares" attitude. I still got interrupted a million times, but I let it slide all day long. I came home and STAYED home. Those of you who know my habits know that I am anything but still when I come home from work. I usually don't come home, I'm busy running errands or finding Kenny or something. Not today. I think it was the weather. I just wanted to be warm and inside. So I watched what was on the DVR (Kate & Allie, Nip Tuck, Wedding Stories) and messed around on the computer. What a nice way to end the day!!

Teaching Mambo

Oh my stress level from work is SO HIGH today. I just want to teach!! That's it!! No committees, no meetings, no after school activities that we are forced to man, no more!! Just let me teach and leave me alone! Ah! The one complaint I have with being a teacher is that you are constantly being pulled in 300 directions ALL DAY LONG. No breaks, no moments of peace, it's ALL DAY. I asked for 10 minutes with any questions, tattles, or bathroom needs. 10 minutes!! Never got it:(

There, I got it out. I should start feeling better with that said. That, and some wine. Yummmm. I was sooooo good yesterday and today. I went to the gym both days, working hard on adding tenths of a mile every time, and two miles won't be all that tough soon! Did you know that fat people really can run?? I'm living proof! I'm not ripping on myself, I promise, but most people wouldn't believe that I can do it. I can! And I keep stretching that endurance every time too. Now I just need to get back to no carbs for a little while. That's the trick for me:) Anyway, I was going to the gym 3 times a week, and my new goal is 4. We'll see:)

I bought some more wedding magazines today in hopes of inspiring something in the jewelry department. I just don't know what to wear. So I keep looking. I might "MIGHT" try to make something myself. We'll see just how ambitious I'm feeling!

In class today, I was looking over some haiku poems the kids have been working on. One of the girls wrote her title, the first line with 5 syllables, the second line with 7 syllables, and the third line with 5 syllables. Then she invented a fourth line, which was "w w w . j e s s i c a . c o m." That is her name. She added that BELOW her poem. What do you make of that?? Is that what she thinks should there because she sees websites all over the place? Oh my gosh. She wasn't here today for me to ask her about it, but you know I'll be asking tomorrow!!

This is totally random, but a few weeks back Kenny & I had to take a pre-marital counseling class (8 hours long) and there was some psychological testing at the end of it. I've been dying to know the results, which we won't get back for a while yet, but when we saw the reverand who gave us the test (it was actually a paper test, multiple choice, machine scored) and who is also marrying us, I asked him about it, and his response was, "You will be surprised." That's it. No expression one way or the other, no hints, no reassurance, no nothing. Ugh. I know it doesn't matter really, and that they will marry us regardless (I made sure that if we failed they would still marry us!!), but come on!! That's cruel!! So we wait....

Shower

The wedding shower given by my mom was yesterday!! It was so much fun too!! It was actually hosted by my mom, two cousins, two aunts, Kenny's mom, and my grandma. I didn't know that I wasn't going to get much time to talk to the guests...I guess that's all in preparation for the wedding day, right? I know I won't have much time on that day, but I didn't know the shower was going to be the same way too!! I barely even got to take any pictures of guests either!! But that's okay, because I'm sure there will be plenty of chances in the next couple of months for that. Kenny and I registered for a full line of Fiestaware dishes, in 4 different colors, red, green, blue, and yellow. And we received most of them yesterday. They are GORGEOUS!! If you are not familiar with Fiestaware, google it and start drooling. It's so pretty! I usually am the person who makes people gifts, like quilts, aftgans, scrapbooks, whatever, but I actually RECEIVED a homemade gift at the shower! It's an aftgan made by my great aunt, who chose green because I like frog stuff. Isn't it cute? I already used it last night!!

I (we) also received heirloom pillowcases from my grandma, the kind with the lacey ends on them. I'm not sure of the proper description of them, but they are so pretty!

The night before the shower I made badges for the bridesmaids to wear.....they turned out so cute! Take a look!

I used the fun foam, cut out the shape, and use the sticky-back pins on the back of it.

Then I took tulle and tiny beaded garland and wrapped around the waist and glued it down. Easy as pie!

I really have the best bridemaids ever. They rock!! There are really 10 of them, plus a junior bridesmaid, and two flower girls, but here's one group of them and me!

And there are a couple girls who got away without group pics....Nik and Jules....you know who you are!!!

We came home and passed out almost immediatly. Hard work opening presents! The house is in complete diarray today because I couldn't just put things away you know. First, things had to be washed, and then the cupboards had to be reorganized and all that stuff, and I have spent the whole day in the kitchen and it's still not unpacked. It takes so long to box up old dishes and other things and then put the new stuff in!! I spend way too much time dawdling too. I know I do. Oh well. I had a great weekend. Maybe another snow day tomorrow? I need one again!

Guess WHAT???

I got my wish.......

SNOW DAY TODAY!! There was big talk about the amount of snow we're supposed to get this morning, and even though we don't have a ton of it right now, it's on its way!! So even though I'm already showered, I'm going back to bed!! Talk about a great wish coming true!!