September is here!

It's been a while! First of all, this happened: My baby is in first grade!! It's been back to school in every sense around here. Isaac is attending first grade, I am teaching an incredibly lively bunch of all new first graders, and I am also taking a grad class as well. It was a bit of a shock to the system to go from the dog days of summer, to the insanity that is September, but we're rolling with it and doing well I think. I actually enjoy the busyness of the school year, but it takes me a bit to settle into it and get into a routine. By Thursday night I felt like I had been run over by a Mack truck, so I was grateful to have Friday off. So on our day off we were about to head out to Leola to see my mom when we discovered this:

(the flat tire, not the dent. That was always there)

There was a huge chunk of metal sticking out of it. My rear tires are almost bald, so I figured better that it happened on my day off from school when I had time to deal with it. We managed to get Firestone to squeeze us in and we got some new tires. I'm learning to live with the driver window never going down, so hopefully this will be our last car expense for a while *knocks on wood*.

Anyways, while we were waiting for the AAA guy to come and change my tire for me (yeah, super lame, I know. I get the steps in the process of changing a tire, but this is what my 40 bucks a year goes towards. I don't have to get down the ground a try to change lug nuts and whatnot.) I decided to clean out my trunk. My trunk has pretty much been a disaster for several years. Just to give you an idea of how long it has been since I cleaned it out thoroughly, I unearthed this:

back there, along with a receiving blanket. Anyways, all of the junk is gone and so are all of the Christmas tree needles and beach sand. It was a productive 45 minutes until the guy showed up.

Anyways, that was only a minor setback and we made it to Leola without any trouble. We slept over and then woke up early to go to Blue Ball Days which sounds gross but it's actually when the whole town of blue ball has a big yard sale! I scored some great deals. Brand new soccer cleat for Isaac for only .50, two Ramona books (I'm always on the lookout for those and Junie B Jones) but the jackpot was the lady who was dumping all of her Stampin Up stuff. A whole table full of stamps. I had to restrain myself. I got an Easter set, two Christmas sets and a invitation stamp. So that was exciting.

So what else? Oh! I won a blog giveaway! I enter them all of the time and I have *never* won. And this is such a cool prize too. Teaching in Pink is sending me this book. After only four days with this new group of firsties, I am open to any and all ideas on classroom management. So I'm pretty pumped for that.

Isaac and I watched a neat documentary series on Netflix streaming called "Circus". I guess it aired on PBS originally. It made both of us long to run away and live life under the big top.

One last thing, I was so excited to see these out on the shelves:

LOVE THEM!!! I'm was excited when we were driving home to see an Amish stand with gourds in it. I'm excited to decorate the house for fall and HALLOWEEN. When is it okay to start putting Halloween decorations up? Thoughts? Well, have a great week.

Cheap

Decorating on a (ridiculously tiny) budget... These were from Kohl's. Aren't they cute?

Thrift store find! This cute little trivet.

s I was inspired by this post but I had no marbles. I grabbed the frames at the dollar store and used pink scrapbook paper I already had. Just ran the paper through the printer and cut them to size.

My new collection.

Also, see my new paint color? Although you can't tell from this particular picture, I did do the whole living room. I inherited a gallon of that color leftover from my brother's house. We bought one more and went crazy. It makes the whole room so much more cozy. The stairwells will eventually be done in a complementary color.

Thrift store finds...

So my mom has been on this big kick lately searching for milk glass. She has been hitting up all of the area thrift stores and yesterday she invited me to trek out to a few with here. We started out at 2nd Avenue in Lansdale which was pretty amazing if you are looking for clothes, shoes, purses, housewares, etc. I ended up getting this placemats and napkins as well as that wooden hook thinger for about five bucks. The computer bag I already had. I don't know why I included it in the picture.

We also went to a small thrift store in the basement of a church in Norristown. That one had mostly junk but I did find this huge box of wooden blocks for four bucks. I'm going to let Isaac play with them for a few days and then bring them into school.

My mom made out better at that one though. She got a goblet for a dime that she says would retail on e-bay for 28 bucks.

I am typing this from the front porch as Isaac is running around with the frisbee. It's a beautiful spring day!