Gobble Gobble

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! :)

Thanksgiving is one of my very favorite holidays! I seriously think I love it more than Christmas! The reason is because with Christmas, you have to worry about presents, but with Thanksgiving, you get almost all of the same foods, time spent with family, and a nice relaxing break from work! Now don't get me wrong, I still LOVE Christmas! But, sometimes it seems more stressful than fun. I like to look at Christmas as a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus with everyone I love. The presents and food are just bonus goodies. :)

Anyway, back to the real reason for this post! It's a "What I'm Thankful for Thursday/Thanksgiving!"

I'm thankful for soooo many things, but I'll try to stick with the most important ones! :)

1. A loving and supportive family

 They are the best. No questions asked. 

2. A wonderful amazing husband

He puts up with a lot of my craziness... and I don't know how he does it! :) 

3. A financially stable life

Chad and I have been blessed enough to have made it through half of our first year together without any major troubles. In the beginning, it looked bad for us, but we prayed and new God would provide. He certainly has! :)

4. A job waiting on me after I graduate in a few weeks!

I can finally make this announcement official! My contract for continuing on as the music teacher at G.W. Trenholm primary school was approved by the board earlier this week! I start in January!!!! :)

5. The willpower and strength to stick with my diet/healthy lifestyle 

I've been able to lose close to 25 lbs the past 3 months and have gotten down to 142 lbs! :)

6. Last but DEF not least, an amazing, loving, merciful, and forgiving GOD!

Without Him, I. am. nothing. He is the reason for numbers 1-5! He has blessed me SO much! :)

Well, I'm off to get ready for Thanksgiving feast number one for today! We are driving up to Shiloh, TN to visit my grandad's family and eat. A LOT. ;) Later tonight we'll be going to visit my dad's family where I'll be bring this little beauty that I made. (Recipe from Dashing Dish)

So we've got double Thanksgivings today! :)

I hope everyone has a fantastic Thanksgiving!!!

GOD BLESS! :)

3 Out of 4 Aint Bad!

Evening everybody! Hope your day was good!

I accomplished 3 out of 4 things on my list of things to do today, which isn't too bad!

The first thing I did was clean, because I wanted to get the not-so-fun stuff out of the way early! So I cleaned the bathroom, the living room, and the bedroom pretty well, and I cleaned here and there throughout the rest of the house. I also did some laundry!

On to the BAKING!

I made the low fat, low cal chocolate mocha cheesecake. 8 servings, 180 calories per slice!

I also baked the skinny orange creamsicle cupcakes! 125 cals! :)

I'll be sampling one of these after dinner. ;)

If you want either of these recipes, go check out the blog Dashing Dish and look in the dessert section! :)

As for the crafting I was supposed to do today, I got two scarves done but never got around to the Christmas decorations. Oh well, maybe tomorrow!

Here are my scarves!

First I started with two different tshirts

I cut the hems off the bottoms and cut from the sleeves up at the tops.

Then for the pink shirt, I decided to try a scarf that I saw another blogger do on her site. Her name's Krystina. Check her out, she's got really great stuff! :) Her version is a lot better than mine. I actually might go back and fix mine up a little bit better, but for now, this is what you get!

Then I used the white shirt to try my own creation...

I cut strips on both sides but didn't cut all the way through

If you make these, be sure to stretch out the fabric after you cut so that the ends will roll up a little.

So that leaves my internship projects..... yeah I never got around to doing those. But like I said, maybe tomorrow! ;)

 The rest of tonight is going to spent relaxing and probably going to visit with my parents when they get back from Auburn. And then tomorrow, Chad come home! I've been so lonely with out him!

Well that's all that I have for y'all tonight, so thanks for reading!

God bless! :)

Leggings as Pants

Good morning! Hope your week was great!

Mine was pretty average, so not much to talk about.

Last night however, was a little out of the ordinary because I slept over at my parents (which is right next door to us). The reason behind this sleepover was that my dad was taking my mom to see the Auburn game today with some friends, and they needed me to watch the dogs. So, instead of having to continuously go back and forth from my house to theirs, I decided to just stay there. Chad is gone all weekend to Atlanta, so everything worked out fine. I got to spend my night with these little nuggets...

Sasha was with me too, she just doesn't like to be in pictures. ;) I piled in my parents' ginormous bed with all the doggies and had a grand ol' time. I slept until about 8:30, which is sooooo late for me considering my body usually tried to wake up around 6:30 on the weekends. So, I was happy with that! I took care of the dogs before heading back home to start the day.

Today I have lots and lots of fun things to do!

1. Bake for the school's bakesale

We're having a bakesale at GWT to help raise money for the music program, so I'm making a healthy "no-bake mocho chocolate cheesecake" that I found at Dashing Dish. What a great blog! I'm also making DD's healthy orange creamsicle cupcakes! I'll post the results of my "bake fest" later tonight!

2. Craft!!

It's been a while since I've done any DIY crafts and things around here. So I've decided that since I'm all alone today, I'll make use of my time and make some things! On the crafting agenda today are multiple t-shirt scarves and probably some Christmas decor! I'm pumped! :)

3. Clean

Okay, so I know cleaning's not very fun. But it really needs to get done. Parts of our house are just filthy. Bleh.

4. Work on internship projects

If you were an education major in the state of Alabama, then the following words will make you shutter. Project USA. That is all.

So I've got a busy but fun day ahead of me! And I will be rocking a look that I've critisized for a while now.

 That's right, leggings as pants. Oh well. It's COMFORTABLE! :)

But for now, I'm going to sit here and finish my breakfast:

A cinnamon raisin bagel thing with pumpkin butter

Delish!

Until later, thanks for reading! God bless!

Oh and btw, I lost another pound this week even after my weekend in Gatlinburg! That puts me down to 144 lbs! I'm pretty pumped about that, but I know that NEXT week will be the real challenge. THANKSGIVING! ;)

Gatlinburg Day 2 and 1/2

HELLO! Happy Monday night! :)

Even though Mondays may not be so happy for some of you.

The last time I posted was in Gatlinburg, and I know I said I would be posting the rest of our vacay, but I totally got caught up in doing absolutely nothing all weekend. In other words, I got lazy. ;)

Anyway, day 2 of our trip was so fun! I actually woke up early and hit the gym since I knew my food choices wouldn't be the most "healthy." After breakfast, we took the "funtime trollies" to get into downtown Gatlinburg.

There were tons of people there, so by the time we got into downtown we were starving! We decided to stop at a place called No Way Jose's. We'd never heard of it before. I am SO glad we went there because it was awesome! Everything was so fresh! Check out the salsa...

And this was my chicken fajita salad. SO GOOD!

After lunch, we explored the downtown area for a few hours before making another stop for some Edy's ice cream! The only bad thing about it was that there was no pumpkin flavor. :( I ended up rolling with the peanut butter cup ice cream. O.M.G. So good!

We stuck around for a little while longer (so we could walk off all the ice cream) and I really wanted to take this picture! Don't laugh at me ;)

After we spent all day in downtown Gatlinburg, we went back to our resort and relaxed until dinner. Since traffic was pretty bad, we didn't want to drive too far for dinner and ended up going to Buffalo Wild Wings. Not very unique, but who cares?? It was yummy! After dinner, we spent the rest of our night in the resorts hot tub just relaxing and talking about our trip. What a great day! :)

Day 3 of our trip was short, but still fun! We woke up, ate some breakfast, and checked out quickly. Then we got to hit up the Tanger Outlet! Yesssssss. Our first stop was at Starbucks, then we walked around all of the stores for a little while before they opened. After looking around and shopping all morning, we (well really just me) left with some goodies!

PUMPKIN BUTTER! So good!

Gingerbread Cookie Tea! 

Infinity Scarf! I've been looking around for a simple, but cute one :)

So, after a fun 3 day vacay, Chad and I headed back home to good ol' Tuscumbia. But we were glad to get home. :) 

Today it was time for me to get back to the real world. I went back to teaching and working on my internship assignments. But, next week we have two days of school and then Thanksgiving break! Yay! I'm hoping to be able to cook up some yummy treats to bring to all the families' dinners that we'll be going to. Maybe I can even make them healthy! 

Hope everyone has a great week! Thanks for reading! God bless :)

Gatlinburg Day 1

Well, we made it!

After about 5 hours plus another hour of bumper-to-bumper traffic, we made it to the smokies!

Here's what greeted us at our Wyndham resort

On our way, we stopped at Wendy's for lunch, and I had a yummy bowl of chili!

I drove the rest of the way, which ended up being a terrible idea, because I get so stressed out in crazy traffic. And really, the traffic was CRAZY. It took us an hour to travel 10 miles! 

But once we were at our resort, everything got better. It's a really nice room with lots and lots of space! Here are some pics I took...

A great BIG bathroom! I love it!

There's also another room with two full beds and another bathroom, but we're not using it so I didn't take any pics. 

After we settled into the room, we had to go find some food because we were starving. We drove down the rode and stopped at one of the first places we saw, Fudruckers. Neither of us had ever been there before, so we didn't know what it was like. We were both surprised when we walked in and saw that it wasn't a normal "sit-down" restaurant. But, it looked and smelled awesome, so we stayed. 

Since I'm trying to stay healthy, I went with the garden burger, It was delish!

Chad had the 1/2 pounder with everything.

After dinner, we went to Walmart to pick up some things and then came back to the room. Now we're both enjoying our complementary hot chocolates and watching the new CSI: NY

I love being able to just relax and have absolutely nothing to do or worry about! This is how a vacation is supposed to be! (Even if it is just for 3 days)

On a side note: I wrote yesterday about my feelings on my weight and how I'm trying to just stay healthy and maintain my "true weight." Well, I decided to weigh myself this morning before we left (so that I'd know what kind of damage I'd done when we got home), and it turns out I've lost about three pounds! This put me around 145 lbs! I was SO excited to see that number! I know it may go up after this weekend, but I'm prepared to bring it back down! As of today though, I've stayed within my calorie range! I'm pretty proud since I'm on vacation and all :) Tomorrow I may not be so lucky.

We'll be hitting up downtown Gatlinburg tomorrow to shop and see the sights, and then hopefully I can convince Chad to take me to the Tanger Outlet! *fingers crossed*

I'll be returning tomorrow with a post on our 2nd day, so be on the look-out! Until then...

Thanks for reading! God bless! :)

Your "True Weight"

Happy Thursday!! 

But for me, it's like Friday! We're out of school tomorrow for Veterans Day, and Chad and I are going on a much needed mini vacation this weekend! We're leaving for Gatlinburg in the morning! 

I. Am. So. Pumped.

We haven't been on any kind of vacay/road trip/anything fun since our honeymoon back in May! We are soooo ready for this! I can't wait to take lots of pictures of the beautiful Tennessee scenery, especially this time of year!

But, that post will be coming in the future, so for now, I'm sticking to the past/present.

This week has been a really good week at work/school. Perhaps because I've been so excited about my trip?

 

Monday I taught all classes at the high school and middle school, and they all went really well.

Tuesday I went with my cooperating teacher to take some of our choir kids to audition for an all-state choir. It was long, but fun day!

Wednesday is was back at the elementary school teaching my kiddos all about music! And what do you know, after just one day, I lose my voice. But, I love them so it's allllll good! ;) 

And today was equally as good. We had some special visitors in my first class this morning. A reporter from the local paper came by to observe, take some pics, and interview some of us about our new music program at the elementary school We are all so excited to be given the opportunity to bring back the music program. And I am equally as excited to be given the opportunity to teach it! So after having a double first grade class complete with 3-4 visitors plus a reporter, I was pretty exhausted. And that was just my first class of the day! But all my classes today were great, so even though I was tired, the kids' energy kept me going! :)

So be on the lookout for an article about G.W. Trenholm's new music program in this paper. :)

So, I said in my last post that I've having some weight-loss troubles. Most of them are mental problems (not saying I'm crazy lol) and not physical, but I still thought I'd share.

For some reason, even though I weigh less than I ever have, I still feel like I need to lose weight. =/ I've been freaking out ever since I hit 146, because this scale just will not go any lower. And to top it all off, after having two really bad food days over the past two weeks which has caused me to gain 2 lbs. Though it may not seem like a lot to y'all, it feels like 20 lbs to me, and I don't know why? :( It's so frustrating. 

BUT, I had a good realization today. I heard about this diet called the Dukan Diet and went to the website to check it out. The first thing you do for this diet is calculate your "true weight." The "true weight" is supposed to be the realistic healthy weight that you can maintain. And after entering in all the required info, I was told that I was already at my "true weight," which is apparently 147 lbs. (Even though technically I'm 148 right now) So, this really helped me feel better about my weight-loss struggles! I'm going to try my best to maintain this "true weight," and if I lose any in the process, then good for me! :)

Well, I'm off to take dinner out of the oven and pack for a fun-filled weekend in the mountains!! 

Thanks for reading! God bless! :)

Better Late Than Never!

Happy Monday night everyone!

Okay, so I know that Monday nights aren't normally a time that everyone loves, especially me. I've just started back to work after the weekend, and it's only Monday night, so I realize that there's still four more work days until the next weekend. But, this week is only a four day week because we are out on Friday for Veterans Day! I love long weekends! Plus, Chad and I are road tripping to Gatlinburg, TN for the extra long weekend! I can't wait! I seriously need a vacay, no matter how short it may be! :)

But this post isn't for me to brag about my fun weekend ahead, I really wanted to do a little recap of my past weekend. I know it's late, but better late than never! :)

Saturday, Chad and me went to a friend's house to pick up some tickets to the UNA game that he was giving us (so nice!), and they were having a yard sale. So we thought we'd buy something since we got the tickets for free! After doing a little searching, I found something that I really thought I could use...

The slap chop! Now I don't have to cry while I chop onions.

Over the weekend, Chad and I also discovered a way to "spice up" our boring lunch sandwiches. We pulled out the ole' George Foreman and made hot turkey and swiss sandwiches for lunch, complete with one of Gaggy's homemade pickles! Very yummy :)

Saturday evening we went to the game to cheer on the lions! 

We left a little ways into the 3rd quarter because 

1. it was obvious we were going to win

2. we were starving!

So we headed to Olive Garden and feasted on soup and salad. So good!

Sunday started off like usual with church, and afterwards we went out for lunch with my mom and brothers. Then that afternoon, I went to sing at a special service for All Saints Day in a very old, but beautiful Episcopal church called St. Johns. It was a really nice service.

Sunday night we had a bonfire/hayride for our youth, and it was a blast! Chad and I both feel so blessed to have such a fun and very unique youth group. We love them! :)

On another note, I've had a lot on my mind lately about weight-loss and things related. So, be expecting a possibly emotional post on the subject. But for now, I'm getting off to go wait for Chad to come from a meeting so we can cuddle and talk! Too mushy?? lol ;)

Thanks for reading! God bless! :)

Bed Warmer

Happy Friday all! :)

Fridays just make me so happy! I feel happier at work/school/whatever I'm doing on Fridays.

Yesterday was a doozy though. I started getting sick while teaching throughout the day(I'm thinking sinus infection), which made for a not-so-enthusiastic music teacher. But, I powered through and made it to the end of the day. I did have to skip an opera rehearsal that I had later that day, but my director was understanding. I ended up napping when I got home and woke up just in time to fix Chad and me a quick dinner before he had to leave for an interview thingie in Moultan. Once he was gone, I took a shower, some sinus medicine, and sat down with a bowl of pumpkin ice cream until the meds kicked in and knocked me out.

I did manage to warm the bed before I got in it. Chad and I discovered a fabulous trick to making our bed warm before we go to sleep. I really enjoy it if you can't tell.

  Heater under blanket = happy (sleeping) Grace :)

Anyway... I was asleep by 8:00 and STILL felt tired when I got up at 5:30. That's 9 & 1/2 hours of sleep! Shouldn't that be good enough?? 

Today I feel much better, just a little puny. But I'm ready to take on the day and make it great! Hope everyone else has a fantastic Friday!!

Thanks for reading! God bless! :)