Before and After: Bulletin Board

This huge bulletin board has been hanging around my parents house.... since as far back as I can remember, which means since I was a teenager, because kids don't care about bulletin boards, teenage girls DO.

My sisters and I have used it in our rooms in the past, but it was looking pretty raggedy.  So I gave it a paint job face lift from this:

To this:

Now for the rest of the Bulletin Board Makeover...

I was all about finding a fabric or some contact paper that I (or my parental unit) had already purchased.  In fact, this project cost me ZERO dollars, because the primer, paint and contact paper I used were all just sitting around from old projects.  This contact paper was from... redoing my grandma's house I think??

Works for me!!

Sadly I cannot measure worth beans, but I had plenty of contact paper to fix my mistakes.

BEST TOOL EVER!  My pampered chef scraper/squeegy/picker-upper-thingy.  (I also keep one in my car for squeegy-ing my windows!)  It worked great for scraping the paper perfectly flat, no bubbles here!

Here is what the board looked in its final stages.

Now I have this fabulous, VASTLY improved Bulletin Board area.

I used it for staging much of my wedding stuff, (all those boxes, and TONS of stuff pined to the board eventually).  Now I am thinking about putting it back behind my desk to create a better work station.

Before:

After:

Story of the Day

I substituted this morning for one of the first grade teachers at my school. (Sidenote, a few students have asked if this teacher is my sister) My school does walk to read, which means students sometimes go to other teachers, or come to me from other classrooms for reading time. I apparently forgot to tell the reading kids who came IN the classroom that I was subbing for their reading teacher. I just figured they knew who I was because I teach them science.

First grader comes to sit down at the reading table for small group instruction.
Student looks at me, "You look just like Mrs. Rude!"

Me, " .... I AM Mrs. Rude...?"

Student, "Oh..."

Apparently Mrs. V and I look alike. hehe



The other entertainment of the day was a comedy of catching the fly that was flying around. It finally got "cup caught" when it landed on a child, whose intrepid neighbor slammed a cup over it, onto the poor boy. The fly then went into a container with a caught daddy-long-legs spider. Gotta love teaching about spiders!!

Choosing a wedding photographer

Okay I know my posts are all over the place topic wise this week, but who cares?  NOT ME!

I was thinking today, while browsing my wedding photographers blog, about how we ended up using Jerome for our pictures.

Ours was not a nice journey.  But it is a good example of not being a "YES" person.  In fact I am rarely, if ever, a Yes person.  Even my Mother will attest to that fact.  (sorry mom!)

My In-laws have had a family photographer that they have used for every event, senior portraits, family photo's, and weddings.  Needless to say, I was encouraged to meet with the photographer, and even bribed with "contributions" toward that area of the budget, if we went with this photographer.

Unfortunately for my in-laws (sorry Netty!!!) I have been following Jerome's wedding blog for some time now.  Jerome was my boss a few years back, when I attempted to work an hour away from home as a crepe chef.  A yummy job with a horrible commute.   Luckily when I quit, Jerome remained friendly towards me!  Because the kid has got some serious camera skills.  I knew from working with him that he was a hard worker, and spent TONS of time editing photo's from his weddings.  I knew from his blog, that his style was what I wanted in photo's.

When I met with my in-laws photographer, their photo's were unedited, and they had no RECENT (nothing since the 90's!!!) wedding prints/albums/etc. to show me!  Nothing said "WOW" to me, which I felt horrible about.

Compromise people.    I told my poor hubby that we needed to compromise.  We went with his pastor, my photographer.  This was not an easy decision, lots of conversation went into it.  I hope my MIL still loves me!  (Ok, I KNOW she does!)  Also... our pictures are AWESOME (even though it rained hehe).

Choosing a photographer advice:

1. Find a style
2. Find a price point (or a really nice friend who does wedding photography... :D)
3. Find a photographer
4. STICK TO YOUR GUNS!

Story of the Day

Technically this story is from yesterday, but I still wanted to share it.

I teach science.  I'm kind of like a music teacher, but I come around to some of the classrooms at my school and teach science instead!  So sometimes during my teaching sessions we have school assemblies, as we did yesterday.   This assembly is where the story of the day comes from.

Time: 3:00PM
Location:  School Gymnasium
Event:  ASB elections.

After all of the ASB candidates had given their election speeches, the principal came on the microphone and asked the school to give all the CANDIDATES a big round of applause.

Second grader yells over the clapping to his neighbor, " CANADA'S?  Did she say CANADA'S?"
And then he proceeded to laugh hysterically over how funny Canada's was. He turned to me and said again, "What are Canada's????!!!?!?!"

Me, " I'll tell you later."  (smile)

Trying new things

So I am currently trying out the website Swagbucks.  I have heard about it before, but it was mentioned on one of the blogs I follow this past week.

If I understand the FAQs I've been reading, you earn swagbucks for doing things through their website.  Then you can cash in those swagbucks for prizes and other things in the "swag store".  When I read the blog, my mind thinks... FREE STUFF??? Say what?

So far I've been trying to remember to use it (you can add their tool bar for easy access), you can do searches through their website (pretend it's google) and then you earn more swagbucks.  I've been signed up for 4 days already and I'm at 100 swagbucks.  A $5 giftcard for 450 swagbucks...can you say hello Christmas?  Birthday?  Thank you presents?  Yes?  I thought so.  You also get swagbucks if your referrals earn swagbucks.  There are also bonus codes, if I catch any I'll be sure to pass the love on!

Give it a try, sign up here!

Changing your mind...sort of.

I am one of those people who really sees things in black and white.  So I usually am very set in how I think about things.  Rarely do I change an opinion, but occasionally it does happy.

As of this week, I am officially a Crocs lover.  But these are not the original bright colored clown shoe crocs.  NO, these babies are SOOO cute!  No clown shoes here folks.  Check them out!

(photo courtesy of Crocs.com)

These are the new Croc style, called Crocband flats.  I have NEVER owned crocs before (and I have never wanted to), so wearing these rubbery flats was a new experience.  

Let me give you a little background on how I ended up with these babies.  I was in desperate need of new white flats.  My previous white flats were some ridiculously old Payless white flats with NO support, ripping out sole linings, and honestly they were no longer white.  So before work one morning I was cruising through Zappo's white flats to see what styles were out there.  I clicked on this flat, but was turned off when I realized that the brand was Crocs.  Seriously 2 hours later I was at work and one of the other young gal teachers was wearing these shoes and I got really excited when I saw how cute they were on her, with pants.  She told me she really loved them because they were so comfy and she could put them in the washer with a load of clothes, so they stayed nice and white.  UM, LOVE IT!  A white flat that stays white!??!  SWEET!

Best purchase in a while.  I have not taken them off since I got home from work!   Hubby even said he was pretty skeptical of the whole Croc thing, but he said I should see if they come in a nice red color too!  And so, I change from a Crocs disliker, to a Crocband lover!   

Planning Ahead

As I read Centsational Girl's blog today one of her little reminders really popped out at me. (Mostly because we are only borrowing our house right now, and we WILL eventually have to give it back to it's owners and move back to my parents house).


The HOLIDAYS are coming up.  Hubby and I are SO unprepared this year.  With him starting a new job we are unsure of how much time he can take off over the holidays.  We have been planning on having a wedding reception back in MN where his parents and a ton of family and friends live.  Question being... how on earth are we going to get back there long enough to have one?   We are hoping to get this figured out soon, but seeing a remind to get your holiday travel plans figured out really worried me!



In other news... do I need to wear my wedding dress for a reception that is months AFTER the wedding.  I mean really, who keeps going to the gym AFTER their wedding?  (not me! *tisk tisk*)  Besides holding my shoulders back for my entire wedding day didn't go to well.  Gotta love them strapless dresses... SIKE!  Also... I have fully trained my MOH to put my into it, who in MN can do that?  :D

IN other planning ahead news... we are also trying to plan our honeymoon trip to Norway this coming summer....only we aren't sure how to take a month off of a job that doesn't give you paid vacation the first year...ummm?  We sure like being employed, we are sure NOT enjoying being worried about vacations!  Can't we be like Norwegians who get a whole month off a year?  Please?