I have tried to come up with a clever title for 10 minutes now. I give up.

Take a look around? Like what you see??? This little makeover was my Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday gift to myself. I really liked the design from Kelly Avenue's Design, but after seeing so many other bloggers getting a face lift, I decided I wanted one too. I wanted something fun but still kind of light and airy. (I don't know if that makes sense to you, but look around, I found it) After spending a ton of time on etsy looking at Blogger templates, I some how stumbled on GreyLovesDesign. After a few emails back and forth, I am so happy with it!

Here's something I am not so happy about. I cleaned out our fridge. Again. I feel like I do this once a month or so. And every time I get so mad at how much food we waste. I admit, I go a little crazy in the produce department, and then a lot of the times we don't eat it all. Grr. And then  I had to throw out a package of chicken breasts that we didn't eat, and I didn't freeze. That was $7 literally thrown into the trash. The Mister and I are super fortunate that we don't really worry about money. We pay our bills each month, put away a chunk in savings and have money left over for some fun. We are not rich by any means, but that doesn't mean that I like throwing our money away.

Things are usually better when I meal plan. Since I made my grocery list, I have been doing much better at sticking to the list and planning ahead. But there are nights when I have no energy to cook anything (on the list or not) so it's either PB&J or I call up the Mister to pick up teriyaki. That's where we get into trouble with the ingredients that we already have purchased.

I know there has to be a better way, that doesn't involve me going to the grocery store several times a week. What do you do to keep from wasting food?

Just another random Wednesday

We can't be friends if you don't like the Bangles.

The other night I had a dream that I found a spot on my ankle that I had missed shaving. Not crazy, but it was like I had missed the same spot for years and years. The spot was about the diameter of a quarter and the hair was dark and thick. Like my husband's leg hair. Gross. What do you think that dream meant?

I really like my car. I have a 2008 Toyota Rav 4 and it is fantastic. Except I feel like parts are always being recalled on it. Toyota fixes them for free, but that means that I have to go to the one local Toyota dealership, which I hate. They have the worst service department ever.

My brother-in-law and I have the same name. That never gets confusing.


I have been experimenting with my nail polish lately. I posted about my (self done) holiday manicure already. Now look and what I did to my nails

Love the accent nail!

Is it normal to have a freckle on my middle finger? Weird.

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This Weekend I was Pinspired

This weekend I...

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... stayed far away from black Friday! Instead a friend came over and we had a Christmas Craft-a-Palooza! In a few hours of crafting, we both managed to knock out several projects on our shared Christmas Pinterest board. My favorite?

This was super easy to do. I took a wire wreath frame and wrapped two red feather boas around it. I probably could have just used one, but I wanted it to be fluffier. Then I took a thick (1 1/2 inches I think) black ribbon and wrapped it around the center. To make the belt buckle, I cut cut out a rectangle out of a thin Christmas box and covered it with rhinestones. Can I tell you how in love with this I am?
Here's my pinspiration:

Pinned via etsy

I really do like the "ho ho ho" across the top. I haven't decided if (or what) I want to put across the top of mine. Here's a preview of the rest of the Palooza:

This weekend I also...

baked the Mister some cookies: oatmeal with peanut butter and chocolate chips.

How was your weekend? Did you do any Christmas/holiday crafts?

        

Sunday Social: The Power of 4

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4 Jobs I have had...
Before I was a teacher I

waitressed, worked at Target, was a housekeeper and worked at a Summer Camp.

4 Movies I would watch over and over

The Mister says I only like mediocre movies. Whatever. These are great. Sweet Home Alabama (or any Reese Movie for that matter), Welcome to Mooseport, Con Air, and Dave. (I also have a soft spot for Sandra Bullock movies.)

4 places you have lived

I grew up in Portland. Moved to Monmouth for college, then Salem after college. Now, I'm in Independence. 

4 of my favorite foods

Asparagus, mac & cheese, zucchini and pumpkin pie. Yummy!

4 things I always have with me...
a pen, phone, extra hair ties, chapstick

4 places I have been on vacation

Disney World, San Diego, Las Vegas, Kauai

What's your favorite vacation spot? Do people make fun of your favorite movies?

My Holiday Manicure

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We spent it with the Mister's family, but both of us are feeling kind of crummy so we cut it shorter than we wanted to. Today I am linking up for the first time ever for nail files. This is my first attempt at nail art ever. I got the idea from Pinterest, and now the link to the original pin is gone. Here is my holiday manicure :)

I used China Glaze "Ruby Pumps"

This was my first time every doing anything than just painting my nails. There may have been more than one attempt. Here is one of my outtakes.

Seriously. It was way harder than it looked!

By the way, did you see Rashida Jones on Jimmy Fallon last night? Here is a clip of their holiday mash up they sang. It made me smile!

What Would You Do? Teacher Conferences Edition

Next week is our first set of conferences for the year. That means I get two 12 hour work days in a row. The payoff? Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off.

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I'm going to share with you a few things that actually happened to me during previous years parent teacher conferences. What do you think you would do in each of these situations? (I totally stole this idea from Bonnie. She is a much better blogger than I am.)

1. Let me set the stage for you. I was 24 and teaching PE in a pretty affluent school. A mom of a 6th grade girl came up to me during conferences so upset that her daughter had recieved an F. I was confused, since I was pretty sure her daughter was getting an A. She proceeded to tell me that her daughter got a 2/5 on her football throwing test (an F in the gradebook.) She then went on to tell me what a horrible teacher I was and how I was going to ruin her daughter's educational future and how it was going to be detrimental to her self esteem.

What would you do?
A. Get defensive about how PE is a class, just like math. (I didn't get an A in math for showing up with my pencil did I?)
B. Stammer "she has an A" until the vice principal shows up and whisks the parent away.
C. Change the kids grade to make the parent happy.
D. Other.

I went with B. After the fact, I was "A"ing all over the place. By the way, her kid seemed unphased with the 2/5 score on the one test and was pleased with the A in the class. She also went on to get a 5/5 on her volleyball bump test. We can't all be a quarterback, can we?
Lesson to learn from this: Look at the big picture

2.  After explaining that this year in health we will be talking about puberty (among other units) a parent started to tell me that she was glad I was teaching that because her son (who is in 8th grade) was starting to grow hair "down there" and he was getting erections in the house. Please note that her son was sitting right next to her.

What would you do?
A. Say something like "this is the age for that."
B. Turn bright red
C. Say something like, "this is not an appropriate conversation."
D. Other

Pretty sure B is impossible not to do, but I also tried to brush it off with A. I wanted to run away from the conference with my fingers in my ears yelling "la la la! I can't hear you." (And it almost came to that when the lady wouldn't stop talking about it.)

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Take away lesson: Try not to embarrass your son/daughter. No need to bring up their growing bodies. 

3. I believe this was an IEP meeting, or a meeting to see if a student could qualify for special ed services and there were several of his teachers there, as well as a vice principal and the kids parents who were in the middle of a divorce (or recently divorced.) The dad started yelling at the mom about how it was her fault that we were all in this meeting. He continued on this rant in front of his son.

What would you do?
A. Step in and defend the mom.
B. Take the kid away from the situation.
C. Sit there in shock
D. Other

I totally just sat there in shock. I really had no idea what to do. The V.P. (who was a collegiate wrestler and had tried out for the Olympics) stood up and put a stop to the dad. The dad actually lunged at the VP, who didn't step down, and then he sat down.
Take away lesson: Leave the domestic issues out of the meeting. We are all there to do what's best for your son/daughter.

4. After explaining that our next unit of study would be drugs and alcohol, a father starts saying that his son should be really good at that unit. And starts to ask me if I watch Cheech and Chong.

What would you do?
A. Act clueless to the Cheech and Chong reference and try to end the conference as quickly as possible.
B. Begin to recite lines from Pineapple Express.
C. Continue talking about the student's progress.
D. Other

I  went the clueless route. The kid was a stellar student so I felt no need to continue with the conversation. I was uncomfortable and wanted the dad to leave me alone.

Take away lesson: Your kid's teacher is not your friend or your buddy. Let's keep the conversation kid centered, 'k thanks.

One more little "gripe" how come all the parents I see are the one's whose kids have A's? Where are the parents I really want to talk to?
So, what would you have done?

Time for another edition of...

Smiling is my favorite!

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For reals:

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There are some people on my friends list for this very reason:

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I snorted when I saw this one:

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This brings me back to Spanish class:

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Who's kid can I give this to?

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I know I posted this picture this week, but really, we all need to see it again

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What's made you laugh lately?

My Celebrity Fashion Crush

Yesterday I posted about my celebrity crushes from back in the day. Today I am sticking with that theme but this is all about my current celebrity fashion crushes.

Celebrities have always set fashion trends. Two classic examples?

I don't think anyone would argue that these two beauties are not fashion icons. 

More recently we see the likes of Jennifer Aniston, the Kardashians and Reese Witherspoon.

While I love a lot of the fashion choices of two of those, my real fashion icon is a fictional character:

What can I say, I'm a sucker for a cardigan.

The Mister and I watch Big Bang Theory together, in fact it is one of the few shows that we agree on. He laughs at me when I say things like, "Look at her outfit. It's so cute." Usually we see her in a printed dress (mostly floral), a solid colored cardigan and colored tights. The Mister told me to write a blog post about my love of her clothes (I'm pretty sure he was joking) so I decided to do a little research and I found Wornontv.net

From the looks of it, the website is run by one or two people. They take a handful of shows and try to find similar outfits that the characters are wearing. Big Bang Theory is one of the shows (I saw Glee, HIMYM, Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars among others.) On a picture of the outfit it will say something like "exact match found" or "3 similar items" you click on it and it takes you to links. They had links to dresses similar to Bernadette's as well as her cardigans and tights. There were some exact matches as well. A couple of the dresses were no longer in stock. Sad day for me.

One postive, most of the links for Bernadette's clothes were taking me to shops like Forever 21. When I clicked on Robin's links (from HIMYM) they were to some much higher priced items.

This is an $879 top from Neimen Marcus. For reals.

If anything, the worn on TV website is a fun time waster :) Enjoy.

I was inspired after I wrote this post to head to my closet and see what Bernadette-style outfit I could put together. Here I am in all my fashion blogger glory.

The floral dress and belt is from Modcloth. The blue sweater is like 10 years old or something. I think I would like this better with a brown cardigan and maybe some mustard colored tights. And if my dress wasn't wrinkled. That would make it much better.

Who is your celebrity fashion crush? Is there a character you would like to see on Worn on TV?

Worn on TV doesn't know me. In fact, I didn't know about them until this weekend. They didn't give me anything for this post. 

My weekend review

This weekend I...
heard a seismic rumbling. The movement was caused by the sound of millions of girls shrieking over the news that Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber broke up.

This got me thinking about my preteen and teen age crushes and of course what they look like now.

First up, Home Improvement's Jonathan Taylor Thomas. JTT grew up into a pretty good looking adult if I do say so.

Then and Now

Boy Meets World was Epic. I'm not sure about the sequel, but I will watch it. My favorite? "Bad boy" Rider Strong. Somehow is eyes turned very blue now that he is older.

Then and Now

Oh gosh, who didn't love Zack Morris?

Then and Now

And of course my biggest celebrity crush and most favorite celebrity couple of all time:

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I did more than just Google celebrity crushes this weekend:

This weekend I...
saw Wreck It Ralph (cute!)
went to Target (and spent an appropriate amount of money!)
took some naps (much needed!)
ate at Red Robin (yumm!)

Who was your celebrity crush growing up??