Happy Sunday!

Hello readers! Here's just a little weekend re-cap:

Friday: Dinner with Chad at our favorite Mexican place (where I had just the skillet part of a chicken fajita to stay healthy) then went to see our old high school's football game. They won! :)

Saturday: I slept in after a long first week of student teaching while Chad was at a meeting all morning. Annnnnnd I cheated on my weigh in. I'm supposed to weigh myself on Sundays, but I got excited and did it Saturday morning. And I'm happy to say I'm another 2 lbs lighter! yay! :) Then we spent the afternoon getting ready for a cook-out we had with some of our friends. It was fun getting to hang out with everyone! :) Chad grilled some yummy smelling hamburgers, but in a effort to stay healthy, I cooked my own Bocca veggie burgers. They were still tasty!

Sunday: Church as always. :) Then me and Chad spent the afternoon watching a movie. Source Code... it was pretty good! Then we had rehearsal with our band for a few hours before taking our youth group out for tacos. And I had yet ANOTHER fajita skillet ;) But for those who don't know, Chad and I are part of a praise band called Selfless Praise. Chad plays keyboard, guitar, and sing lead vocals. I sing backup to him. Our friend Jeremy is on lead guitar, Caleb plays bass, and my brother Drew plays drums. We're playing this coming Friday night at a local church's "5th Quarter" after all the high school football games. Maybe I can get a recording of us on here sometime so y'all can here us!

Anyway, I'm getting prepared for another week of teaching! I officially start my music classes at the elementary school this week, and I'm so excited! I'll surely have many funny kid stories to tell later on. :)

Thanks for reading, and I'll blog at ya later! :) God bless!

A Little Crafternoon Delight!

What a day! I am exhausted! Today was my second day of student teaching, and though I love every minute of it, it is so tiring! Now I know why my mother was so ill when she would come home from teaching all day. Sorry for doubting you Mom! But, I'm so excited to see what this semester is going to be like!

Anyway, I thought I'd share with y'all my two projects that I worked on this past Saturday afternoon!

This first one is a little green chair I've had since I was 14 that I decided to turn into a cute time-out chair for my elementary music class. I call it the "Rest Chair." Get it? Like music rests?? :)

Started with this plain (ugly) green chair.

Painted it white.

Then added a few rests on the seat and painted the back.

Then I added all the little rests with sharpie because it was way to hard to paint! And that's the end! :)

While I was waiting on all the paint to dry, I worked on another little project inside. I started with this simple candle, some old sheet music, and glue.

I cut strips of the music to fit the candle and used all purpose glue to wrap it.

There wasn't quite enough!

So I cut more strips to cover the bald spot and......

VOILA!

Annnnnnnnd to top off all these fun projects and exciting new things going on in my life, Chad and I got new furniture for our den! FOR FREE!!!! I'm so excited!! Our den used to look like this...

And now it looks like THIS!!

We love it, and it's so amazingly comfy! Oh btw, the pallet shelf above the couch is an idea that I saw on Pinterest! I think my next project is going to have something to do with the old ceder chest in the second to last picture that has the basket of magazines on top. It's just so.... plain! So check back to see more crafts and more rants about my crazy life! 

God bless!

Summer Comes to an End

Hello readers! It's been a carazy weekend for the hubby and I! 

We started our weekend off with a back to school lock-in for the youth at our church which looked a little like this.

We had about 100 kids show up! It was fun but VERY tiring! But this little baby helped get me through it.

Yes that's right, a ZERO CALORIE monster energy drink! I know they can't possibly be good for you, but one per year should be okay right?

Anyway, Saturday was devoted to sleeping as long as possible and not doing anything all day! It was fabulous! :)

Today has been a great Sunday! Started my day off with a 2.2 lb loss! Then wore my favorite team colors to church for "tailgate Sunday." My colors were purple and gold for UNA! (For those who don't know, it's the University of North Alabama.) After church, Chad and I went to lunch with my mom, brothers, and Suzanne my brother Drew's girlfriend. It's so fun spending time with the whole family. Missed dad though =/ The rest of the afternoon was restful, and then at 5:30 we headed down to the park for our church's tailgate party where we had hotdogs, hamburgers, music, games, and a devotion. It was great!

Tomorrow I have my orientation for student teaching (which I start on TUESDAY!). I'm pretty excited, but a little sad at the same time because I know my summer has officially come to an end. But, I'm ready to get this new chapter of my life started! Plus, after my internship, I GRADUATE! December 16th!!

And now, I'm spending the rest of my Sunday night doing some of my favorite things. Reading Self Magazine, having a WW dark chocolate raspberry ice cream bar (DELISH!) and a diet mountain dew, watching Family Guy, and of course BLOGGING! :) Wonderful end to my glorious summer.

Be on the lookout for my post showing how I turned this candle...

into THIS!

AND, how I'm going to turn a small, ugly, green chair into a cute time-out chair for my elementary music class called the "Rest Chair."

Thanks for reading and God bless!!

Guitar Shelf

I'm so excited to share this project that Chad and I finished this week! Well actually, Chad did all the work, but I coached him through it! haha I found the idea on Pinterest to turn a guitar into a shelf. There wasn't a tutorial, but Chad looked at the picture and thought he could figure out how to do it, and he did!! So here's how he did it.

First he to the strings and pegs off of the guitar and used his dremel tool to cut just below the neck.

Then he cut around the edges.

After he cut all around, he was able to get the front off. We actual meant to leave part of the bottom attached, but he fixed it later.

Then he used the front of the guitar to cut out shelves.

It was going to look like this.

But after a few tweaking, we came up with this final product!

We're trying to decide if we're going to leave on the ground or hang it on the wall. I'll post pictures if we hang it! I'm excited that we actually completed a project, and I can't wait to find things to put on the shelves! :)

It's the Little Things :)

Isn't weird how little things can make your whole day or even week better? Today was going to be just a normal Wednesday, but when I got up, I had the sudden urge to do some excersise. Now normally, I do a quick ab workout in the mornings and go about the rest of my day. But today I wanted something different. So, I turned to excersiseTV and after looking through some different selections, I chose a dance workout. Thankfully no one else was home to watch me make a fool of myself while dancing around my den. After my endorphins were kicked in, I took a shower and decided it was time for a new hair cut. So, I called up the salon and made an appointment for that afternoon. Here's my before and after pictures. Pay no attention to my goofy looking smiles. haha!

Before

After!

I felt so good after getting  it cut, I decided to go to Walmart for some groceries and stop at Sonic for a Diet Cherry Limeade. Coincidentally it was Happy Hour ;)

It's the little things in life that make me happy. A workout, a hair cut, and a limeade. And to top it all off, I made it home from church in time to see tonight's episode of Big Brother!! For all you fans out there, who do you want to win?? I'm rooting for Jeff, Jordan, or Shelly!

It's a Lifestyle Change

Okay, so normally I would not be posting two days in a row, but I just coulding help myself! I mentioned in my last post that I've been an on again off again dieter for about four years. Mostly I've done Weight Watchers, but some of the lesser diets crept in when I wanted faster results. Here's a little more of a background on my past diet experiences. But, a little disclaimer, I'm not too comfortable writing about my weight for all the world to see. But, I'm going to just go for it, so bare with me.

 I started Weight Watchers for the first time in the sping of 2007 with my best friend Jessica. We each lost a pretty good amount of weight. I can't remember how much I lost, but I know I got down to 150 lbs. For my height, my healthy weight range is anywhere between 135 lbs to 165 lbs, so I was in my healthy weight range, and it didn't seem like I was able to lose much more. The only time I got below 150 was when I had an emergency appendectomy that following summer and coulding eat for days. I think I got down to about 145 lbs. Once I started college, I began to slowly put the pounds back on. I'd try to go back to WW to lose the lbs, but I just couldn't stick with it. It wasn't until after I had a thyroid procedure done and was put on special meds that made me gain another 20 lbs that I decided to get serious. At the end of summer 2009, I weight over 200 lbs. (ouch. that hurt.) So I got back on WW and by May 2010, I had lost 50 lbs. Ever since then it's been a struggle to stay there. I usually fluxuate between 155 and 170. I'm tired of having to stay on a diet to stay at my ideal weight.

SO, lately I've decided to change the way I diet. It's really not a diet at all. On any normal day, I wont eat more than about 1400 calories. I know what you're thinking, "Sounds like a diet to me!" But compaed to what I've done in the past, it's not. It's more of a healthy eating and portion control lifestyle change. I still get to go out to eat occasionally and have treats here and there. That's the difference between my past diets and this. If the opportunity arrises for me to have a giant bag of popcorn at the movies, I'll take it! I'm not going to deprive myself of life's little joys. I'm just not going to eat fast food all the time, or cook cheesy, fatty, greasy recipes for me and Chad. So far it's worked pretty well, and I'm excited to continue to blog about my journy to a healthy, steady, and long lasting 150 lbs. (or maybe lower!)

I'm going to be weighing in on Sundays, and I know that since I'm not on a strict diet that some weeks the scale will drop, other times it will rise, and other times it will stay the same. As of yesterday morning (8-14-11) I weighed 164.6 lbs. Let the journy begin!

I'm going to end this post with a set of pictures showing some of my stages of weight loss. I don't have a good "now" picture, sorry! Enjoy and God bless! (Oh btw, thought you'd like to know that Chad just asked me if I wanted to go out to eat. haha)

Summer 2006 Pre-diet- 160 lbs

Summer 2007 after my first successful diet experience- 150 lbs

This makes me cringe. Fall 2009. 200 lbs

April 2010 about 153 lbs.

New Life, New Blog! (Well... technically, first blog)

Well here it is. My very first blog and my very first blog post! I have to admit I'm pretty excited. I spent all day deciding on names and colors for my blog to make it perfect. It reminds me of back in high school when I spent hours looking for the cutest MySpace layout and the best profile picture of myself. How silly. But here I find myself feeling that same rush of excitement when I find the cutest template for my blog! Oh well, I guess things never really change.

Back to the reason for posting. I decided that since I've begun this exciting journey of marriage, job searching, and hopefully soon-to-be parenting, that I'd write about all of my experiences. I'm so excited to start this chapter of my life, and hope that with this blog, I can inspire, give tips, or at least entertain you readers! I've only been married for a little over two months, and I'm about to start my teaching internship where I'll actually be teaching music to K-2nd graders three days a week and middle and high schoolers two days a week. So, I'm sure there are many crazy, weird, fun, and exciting things to come my way!

I was hoping to use this first post as a kind of "get to know you" thing. But, really what more should you know besides the fact that I'm madly in love with my husband Chad, I'm a very devoted Christian and attend church regualarly where Chad serves as the youth minister, and I"m super excited to start blogging! At the moment, I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of my husband from a three and a half day long Christian retreat called the Emmaus Walk. It's actually pretty intense. There are no cell phones allowed, and Chad isn't allowed to talk to anyone outside the retreat at all. It sounds crazy, but everyone I know that's gone says it's an amazing experience and that it's all worth it. So, though I feel like I'm going crazy not being able to talk to him for 72 hours (but really, who's counting?), I'm glad that he was able to go. He should be home in about 3 hours and I can't wait to see him!!

Just a few more things. You will more than likely here more about this, but I have been on and off again dieting for years now, but about a year and a half ago I lost a good bit of weight after sticking with it. (About 50 lbs) So my life now consists of dieting here, normal eating there, and the occasional PIG OUT! (Hey, we all have them) So sometimes I may post healthy recipes and other times down right sinful sweets. Just be prepared for a rollercoster of food, weight, diet, and excersise talk!

(And if you're wondering, today was one of those pig out days! haha)

I'll end my first post with a few pictures to give you a glimps into our new lives together! Thanks for reading and God bless!

Chad and I with out wedding party!

My family:

Parents to my right, grandfather (also known as Gaggy) directly behind me, twin brothers beside Gaggy, and aunts, uncles, and cousins all around.

Chad and I on our stop in the Bahamas while on our honeymoon cruise

The rest of our family:

White w/ black spots is Lucy. She is a Beagle/Feist mix. She was my first pup and was given to me by Chad on my 18th birthday during our first year of dating. My family grew to love her though, so she still lives with them.

All black is Sasha. She is an AKC registered Chinese Shar Pei that Chad got about 3 or 4 years ago and she now lives with us.

Black w/ brown head and white legs is Buck. He is an AKC registered Beagle and belongs to my brother Rick. He got him this past Christmas for hunting. But, Buck has become part of our family too. We love them all!