Silent Night

Whew. What an exhausting week it's been!

I finished up my last days as an intern at DHS and started my first day as an employee at GWT! :) We've been working on our Christmas play that's coming up for GWT, and everything has been going so well, until.......

We got a fax from a lawyer in D.C. representing an organization for the separation of church and state saying that it's is unconstitutional for our kids to sing Silent Night in our program and that we have to take it out. I was speechless when I heard this. I mean seriously?? This is a Christmas play for Kindergarten through 2nd graders, and these people want to prevent the kids from singing a song that they absolutely LOVE! All of this mess has really stirred up our community, and everyone is mad. (Well, except for the one parent who complained to said organization) We have talked to our school system lawyer, but I'm not going go into anything else because we want to keep everything pretty quiet from now on. All the stuff I mentioned earlier was already on the news, so I figured I could share. Just be in prayer for our school and hope that we can continue with our song, because the kids will be heartbroken if we can't sing. :(

Other than that, everything is going great! Last night was the high school Christmas concert, and it went really well! Today is kind of my last day of teaching classes, and then we have our Christmas show Monday and Tuesday night! I'm so excited for the kids! And TONIGHT is the night I've been waiting on for the past 4 and 1/2 years...... my college graduation!!!!! I'm so pumped!! I have grad practice at 3:15 and then everything kicks off at 7:00! 

I'm off to my (sort of) last teaching day of the year! :)

Crafty Christmas Presents

Hello! Happy Sunday! :)

Hope everyone has had a great week! I feel like time is just going by SO fast. I cannot believe that Christmas is only two weeks away! So today after church, Chad and I have been doing a little crafting. We decided that most of our presents this year are going to be homemade since I'm still a student and we aren't exactly rolling in the money. ;)  I would show some pics of are crafties, but I don't want to giveaway the surprise! After Christmas, maybe I'll post all of our crafty presents so y'all can see them!

Later on, I'm going with my parents to my little cousin's birthday party. She's turning 5, and I can hardly believe it! She told her mom that this year she wanted a "cousins" party instead of a big party which I thought was so sweet. We have lots of cousins in our family: me, my 2 brothers, Anna and Tess from my mom's brother, and Peyton and Lyndi (the bday girl) from my mom's sister. We've always been very close and I really love when we all get together! So I'm looking forward to tonight!

Here's sweet little Lyndi at my wedding this past May! :)

Tomorrow starts my last 2 days as an intern, and then I become an employee on Wednesday! I'm SO excited! Also, my GRADUATION is this Friday!!!! I thought this day would never come! Then I'm going right back into school to start my graduate work, but I'm taking it verrrry slow this time. This has been a crazy and hectic semester, but I really have enjoyed it! I'm excited to see what else God has planned for me and for Chad and I together! :)

So like I said earlier, Christmas is only two weeks away! eeek! So that means lots and lots of Christmas parties, gatherings, get-togethers, etc. So far, I've counted 6 that Chad and I are attending. I'm really worried about gaining weight during all the holiday madness, and yes I know I should worry about it, but I'm still struggling with the fear. I always have a hard time with weight maintenance during this time of the year, but I'm just going to hope and pray that I can get through the holidays without overdoing it!

Well it's time to get back to crafting our Christmas presents! :)

Thanks for reading! God bless! :)

Boring Blogger

It's been over a week since my last post!! What's wrong with me???

Well, I've been completely stressed out and busy with finishing up my internship projects, helping get the high school choir ready for their Christmas concert, and getting the elementary kids ready for their Christmas show! I've been running around like a crazy person the past week and really haven't had anything terribly interesting to blog about. So that's the reason for my absence. Not that anyone cares ;)

My Thanksgiving was amazing and filled with fun, family, and lots of food! There was definitely some weight gain, but nothing that I can't fix! And to be honest, I don't even care! I mean, come on. It's THANKSGIVING! My favorite part of the break was definitely Black Friday shopping with my mom, brother (Drew), and Chad. We laughed SO much and had a lot of fun! We got a lot of good stuff too!

Chad and I have been slowly getting out house ready for the Christmas season since after Thanksgiving, and it's been so much fun decorating and planning for our first Christmas as a married couple! :) We decided that this year, we're not getting each other lots of presents. We each have a stocking, and we're going to fill each others' stockings with goodies and maybe some small gifts. It's just something fun and simple we can do with out spending a lot of money. 

Even though I just bought myself an early Christmas present. White North Face that is so amazingly warm! It was definitely worth it!

I only have about two more weeks of my student teaching left, and then it's GRADUATION and Christmas break!! I can't wait to graduate (Dec 16) and come back next semester as an employee! I have some really fun ideas for the kids next semester! :)

Okay well, this post has been nothing but random and probably just a little boring. So I wont torture you guys anymore! ;) Sorry for such boring blogging, maybe my next post will be better!

Thanks for reading! God bless! :)

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 :)