I just need a week!

Life is absolutely crazy right now. I think I have more things going on now, than I've ever had before.  Between issues with the kids at school (yes, BOTH older boys), house hunting/buying, wedding planning, and this cold/sickness that's been bouncing around my house for the last month...

With that being said, I'm going to take a break from this bloggity blog thing for a week. Right now I'm forcing my writing way too much and it's not good when I do that. I end up with fake boring writing. Not cool.

But I'll be back next Monday! Hopefully a little less stressed and with a lot of posts waiting to be written! 

Sunday Social

Linking up today for the Sunday Social!

Just a warning question 5 does have a bit of (really tiny bit) of profanity in it. So if you're offended by that stuff, skip it. :)

1. Biggest Middle school fashion mistake

I didn't really wear any mistakes. I was more of a jeans and t-shirts kind of girl, which isn't the most fashionable, but you can't go wrong with it. Although I do have a funny/embarrassing story about something I wore once.

It was PJ day at school. I wore my favorite Cow pajamas (baby blue with cartoon cows all over them). It had a matching tank top, but I was wearing a hoodie over it. I tried to show my friends the tank top and accidentally pulled up the tank top with the hoodie. Flashing my bra and stomach to the world (more so the small hallway we were in). MORTIFIED!

  

2. Who were your best friends in hs? Pics?

 My last 2 years of school I had quite a large group of friends. Mostly guys, but a few girls mixed in. No pics though. I think they are all boxed up in storage.

3. What was a typical weekend like for you in hs?

Typically I would pick up 2, sometimes 3 of my guy friends and we would head to the pool hall to meet a bunch of our other friends. We would play until late at night and head back home. We also had our occasional party nights.

 

4. Did you have any boyfriends/girlfriends? Tell us about that

I really didn't have anyone special enough to talk about. I had this thing that I couldn't stay with someone for more than 3 months. I always broke up with them at the 3 month mark. I don't know why. 

 

5. Did you have any secret codes with your friends? Spill your secrets!

No secret codes. Inside jokes though. One of my best friends and I had sooo many inside jokes. One of them was a long going on argument about what was better, being a Bitch or a whore. I said Bitch, she said whore. I even taped (with electrical tape) Whore on her car door and bitch on the passenger door where I always rode. We were horrible, but it was all in good fun.

 

6. If you could relive one day/moment/experience from middle school or high school, what would it be?

I can't even think of one specific night. I had a lot of good times. Lots of memories, but no specific moment that I can think of.

About me, in pictures

 I have some posts I need to write out, but my brain was not having it today. It was too...forced. Cheesy. Lame.

So instead. I'm going to talk about myself. Kinda. I'm going to post pictures that tell you about myself.

Woooo. You're excited, aren't you? I also figured since I have a lot of new followers, maybe it would help them get to know me a little bit better too.  So here we go...

On exercising...

On my hair...

On my Children...

On just random stuff about me...

 

Happy Friday, everyone! :)   

It's Ok Thursday

Linking up with Neely today for It's Ok Thursday. 

It's ok...that I have ZERO motivation to do anything today. 3 nights in a row of sleeping on the couch with a 3 yr old kind of destroys any "get up and go".

It's ok...That it took everything in me to drop my 7 yr old off at school after the...ummm...interesting conferences we had last night. Days like today makes me wish I had the patience to Home School.

It's ok...that for the life of me I can't figure out how the hell to work the Ipod thingy that pops up when I plug my Ipod into my computer. I just want to drag and drop damn it. DRAG AND DROP. 

It's ok...that I bought several groupons last night on my phone. At 2 am. While laying on the couch trying to get to sleep.

It's ok...That I haven't gotten any grocery/necessity shopping done this week because my 3 yr old is covered head to toe in Hives that just will not go away. We got enough scared looks at the Drs office, I can't imagine what we would get in a grocery store!

It's ok...that I feel like rocking myself in a corner, sucking on my thumb while having a mental breakdown. Right? We all need those moments, don't we?? 

"Love" Notes, Week 1

Those of you that know me, know that I'm not exactly a mushy gushy, lovey dovey person. I mean sure, I love people and I care deeply about my friends, but I'm not that great at throwing around the cheese. 

David definitely gets the brunt of my "love abuse". I don't think a day goes by that I don't make fun of him...all day long. Don't get me wrong, I love him with all my heart, he's just an easy target. No, he's really not. He just knows me and is completely accepting of my sarcastic charm so it makes it much easier to let the "love" fly! I always say, "I only make fun of you because I love you".

Anyways, back to the point. 

So I decided that I needed to start sending "Love" notes for David to find on his way to work. That way it starts his day off right. I also thought I would share these notes with you. Yay!

As fair warning, my handwriting sucks. I'm aware, no need to tell me. Comment on my writing and I'll smite you from afar. No joke. It's a sore spot.

So I give you....Week One!

    

  Isn't it sweet? Be sure to see what I write him next Week! It's a good one!

DIY Book necklaces

I love reading. Looove it. I read whenever I get the chance and typically stay up way to late enjoying a good book. When I saw these necklaces on Pinterest, from The Perfect Pear, I knew I had to make one, or 3. They are just so adorable!

For supplies you need:

Leather or Vinyl of some kind 

Paper (I used cardstock)

glue (I used glue sticks and super glue)

A leather punch or something to put a small hole in the leather (get creative!)

Jump rings 

 Fabric Paint, nail polish, charms to glue on

 and a necklace

First you need to cut out your leather or Vinyl. I made mine 1 1/2 inches wide and an inch tall.

Somehow punch a hole in your leather. I imagine you could carefully cut one as well. Just remember that your jump ring goes through this so you don't want to cut to the edge. I had David punch mine with a metal punch and hammer.

Next you need to cut little pieces of paper about half the size of your leather and individually glue all the papers together into a little stack. I found it was easier to trim them down nicely once they were all glued together. I didn't count how many sheets I used, I just kept checking the thickness against the vinyl to see if I liked it or not.

Once you have the stack all sheets together it's time to trim it up (if needed) and glue it on. You want to make sure it's not super snug against the back, since you have to fit a jump ring in there. But you want to leave enough room so the the leather/vinyl match up when folded over. My trimming isn't perfect, but you really can't tell once it's all together.

Glue the other side down and give it a minute to dry. Once it's dry, put a jump ring through the hole you made.

Then it's time to decorate if you want! I made 5 necklaces all decorated with different things.

Permanent Marker
I made 2 of these, but one of the monsters ran off with it before I could take a picture.

Nail Polish

Fabric Paint 
I made this one for the middle monster who has been reading a lot of Pokemon books lately!

And finally a flat little charm I had. It's not on a chain yet because I don't have copper chain. Yay! I get to go to Michaels!

The decoration possibilities are endless. 

There you have it! Go! Makes some book necklaces! Be sure to come tell me about it if you make some.


Today I'm Linking up with Amber, Sarah and Melissa for The Pinspiration Project linky party and Robin of Fluster Buster for Fluster's Creative Muster!

Lego Alphabet

We have an insane amount of legos. I could probably build a 3 bedroom house with the legos we own. Ok, maybe not a 3 bedroom, but possibly a 2. 

One day while brainstorming fun, playful ways of teaching the little monster his ABC's, I was staring at the legos and thought of this fun little game. We definitely would not miss 52 legos, so I got to work.

I picked out pairs for each letter and using a permanent marker wrote the upper and lower case on each of the pairs. So 2 blue legos, one had upper case A, the other had lower case A.

I tried to do a pattern of colors...but somehow I missed the letter J and got all the way to the end before I realized it, so my pattern got thrown off. I guess I should be studying my letters along with Corbin.  

  Doesn't he just have the cutest little face??

Basically I break them up, spread them around and Little Man finds the pairs.

He stacks them all up as he finds them until he has a big tower. Then as boys do best, he destroys the tower. 

We also use them for sorting.

  

And counting. Counting what we've sorted. Counting the dots. Counting all sorts of things. 

  

I'm definitely glad I thought of our legos. This was a huge hit for Corbin and we've used them many times since I made them. Don't worry, the legos I used haven't been missed. 

  

Sunday Social Week 37

Linking up again with Ashley and Neely for the Sunday Social. 

This week is all about Valentines Day. I'm not going to lie. I was kinda..ugh..when I saw the questions were about Valentines. It's never been a huge deal in my life. I've never made a huge deal about it and honestly, they weren't too memorable! But I'll do my best to answer. Hopefully I don't bore you too much.  

1. What is the best Valentine's Day you've ever had?

Probably this year. Not because of the Valentines events, but because we have lots of positive things going on this year and a very exciting thing for us happened on Valentines Day! 

 

2. What is the worst Valentine's Day you've ever had?

I hate to rat David out like this but about 5 yrs ago he was a major ding dong on Valentines Day. We fought all day long. He bought me a present, but left it at work, which he told me he left it at work. I probably would have been happier if he hadn't gotten anything than I was with him telling me he "forgot". He continued to leave it at work for about 2 weeks, until one day we were at his work grabbing some stuff and he handed it to me and said "Oh. Here's your gift." Yeah...that didn't go over well. I told him I didn't want it anymore. He threw it away. We fought some more. Sigh. Don't worry, he's gotten better.

 

3. What did you do for Valentine's this year?

I ran around frantically all day trying to get gifts made for the kids because I majorly slacked. I was pretty proud of my last minute gifts, I made a post about it which you can find here. That night we didn't really do anything. On Friday David took me out to eat and we went thrift store shopping because I wasn't digging on the idea of going to a movie. Good times.

 

4. What is your best Valentine's idea if you're single?

Buy yourself some chocolate and stay the hell away from Facebook!

 

5. What is your favorite Valentine's candy?

Dove chocolates. LOTS of them. 

 

6. Favorite Valentine's memory from your childhood?

I think all of my Elementary school Valentines parties. They were so fun! I loved making my fancy little box for my valentines, opening all the envelopes. Secretely wondering if the ones from the boys were true...

Laminated love

I made a post before, which you can find here, where I rambled on about my Laminator my lovely friend bought for me for a Christmas/Birthday present.

I'm not kidding you when I tell you that I LOVE this thing. I think it should be a requirement to live. Like food, water and air. I've used it soooo much the past month. 

Here are a few things I have made with it. 

Dinosaur Alphabet flash cards. You can find the free printables here. What I loved about these is you can print them in Block letters or D'nealian, which is awesome since our school district uses D'nealian and it's so hard to find anything with it!

  

Alphabet writing practice cards. I made these myself on photoshop. I just typed the letter and used the eraser to create the line effect. They are dry erase so they can get plenty of use!

  Laminated faces. These are sooo much fun. You can find the tutorial on Play At Home Mom LLC. She has tons of fun stuff. So much I don't think I'll ever get through it. Ever.

Corbin loves to draw on these faces. Although he usually picks Dylan's face and draws boogers coming out of his nose. Whatever makes him happy, I guess.

  

Dinosaur letter match sheets and number clip cards. I found the printables at http://www.freehomeschooldeals.com. Lots of free learning printables at that site. It actually comes in a dinosaur learning pack with lots of other things, but those are the two that I found most useful to laminate.

Number flash cards, which were a waste of time because I guess Corbin knows his numbers 1-10. Who knew? You can find those here.

A name sheet for Corbin to practice his name. I found the paper template here, saved it to my folders and added his name with Photoshop. 

Dawson had this number grid sent home from school with no real instructions on what it was for. Dawson found some dice and taught Corbin how to play a game with it. Roll the dice, move how many spaces you get and keep going until someone wins. It was beyond easy and they played it for quite a while. So I laminated the grid to make sure they could keep playing without wrecking it.

   There is a lot more projects that I've used them for and a lot more that I have planned, but these are a few of our favorites.

If you don't have a laminator, you can use clear contact paper and laminate things that way. I've done my fair share of that, although the laminator itself is way quicker and easier. 

 Linking up with Sugar Aunts for "Share it Saturday"