Monday, Monday

NaBloPoMo...  National Blog Posting Month.  You might have seen is blowing up on some blogs you read.  Basically, bloggers hi-jacked National Novel Writing Month.  I am not going to participate daily, but I might steal a few of the writing prompts as they tickle my fancy. 

Today's writing prompt:

If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

Ryan and I have talked about the possibility of moving to New Jersey.   We are both beach people and with me having summers off, we would love to live closer to the shore.  It is also important to Ryan and I that we not move more than a 2 hours or so away from family. 

Ideally we would love to live somewhere right on the the Jersey Shore, like Ocean City, but unless we somehow hit the lottery, that probably won't happen.  

Speaking of the Jersey Shore, I have my own "Tales from the Teachers Lounge" sort of story.  After the worst of Sandy passed over us and we returned to school one teacher was asking her second grade colleague if she had a chance to go and check on her shore house.  One of the second graders piped up "Yeah!  Did you hear?  Snooki is homeless!  Snooki doesn't have a place to live now from the Hurricane!". 

Poor Snooki....

Have a great Monday!

Quickies

I woke up today singing the Gummi Bears theme song. So random! I haven't even thought about that song in ages.

We are finally getting back to normal around here after being housebound for Monday and Tuesday. Power was out in some of the elementary schools, so I ended up being off Wednesday too (Isaac had a 2 hour delay). We weathered the storm by watching a ton of movies, clearing out the DVR, organizing closets, FINALLY catching up on the laundry, and cooking and baking. I was so lucky that I didn't lose power at all as we have during previous storms.  We also got our pumpkins carved (in the living room, so as not to miss any of the NBA game)

We didn't even really have damage to anything either. Before the storm Isaac pointed out that our little tree in the front yard had one little leaf clinging to it. We were definitely tickled to see that it hung on after the storm.

Halloween was a big success.  Ryan agreed to hand out my candy this year, so we didn't have to be the super lame people with a bowl of candy left on the front porch. 

 

 

He even rigged up a whole Halloween scene complete with spooky music and sound effects and a fog machine. 

I was impressed!  My little werewolf Isaac got a whole pile of loot, and as usual, about an hour in declared he had enough and was ready to go home.

 

 

You would think only having to work two days this week would be a piece of cake, but it was a particularly rough day back.  We were supposed to have a potluck lunch.  I showed up with my plate of deliciously decadent cookies, only to discover I had misread the email and the potluck had been rescheduled to NEXT Thursday.  So I had no lunch.  I was forced to go out for lunch (which is always an adventure when you only have 30 minutes), but due to a long series of unfortuneate events I had no access to any of my money, so I wasn't able to buy any lunch.  Also, earlier that day my Albright advisor showed up at school and yelled at me about some paperwork which was really a big miscommunication, but still left me in tears.  Needless to say, I packed up my stuff and pretty much RAN out of the school building. 

I finally made myself go out to Kelli's to stamp last night. I have only been once since the school year started, but after my terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day at school, I decided to go. Look at these cute cards I made!

If you are lucky, maybe I will send you one.

Happy Friday everyone!

 

 

 

 

Favorite EE cards..

I saw a blong link up a few weeks ago where you were supposed to compile your favorite EE cards. I missed the link up, but thought I would still participate.


This card is how I feel every time I am around the PTA mom's at Isaac's school...

Source: mommysavers.com via Lauren on Pinterest

Source: someecards.com via Lauren on Pinterest

 

Source: someecards.com via Brooke on Pinterest

Source: tumblr.com via Brooke on Pinterest

Source: someecards.com via Lisa on Pinterest

 

Source: someecards.com via Lisa on Pinterest

Source: a248.e.akamai.net via Lisa on Pinterest

Source: someecards.com via Brooke on Pinterest

And my favorite one EVER:

Source: someecards.com via Lisa on Pinterest

Happy Thursday to you!

All Grown Up

Second Grade - East Coventry Elementary School

Teacher: Miss Egan

Favorite Subjects: math

Favorite Special: gym

Least Favorite Subject: Social Studies

Best Friend: Eric

Favorite School Lunch: Wildcat pizza

Favorite Recess Activity: football and baseball

Favorite Snack: Cookies n Cream Hershey Bar

Favorite Thing to Wear: sports uniforms

Favorite Sports Teams: Phoenix Coyotes, New York Giants, Pittsburgh Steelers, Chelsea

Favorite TV Show: Sports Center

Favorite Singer: Mindless Behavior

 

Frankenstorm is coming!

So if you are anywhere near theeast coast at all you know it's all about getting ready for Hurricane Sandy right now.  Isaac already has school cancelled for Monday and Tuesday (as usual, my school district is still in session, despite the govenor declaring PA to be in a state of emergency). 

I learned a new fact about Ryan: he is obsessed with being prepared for extreme weather conditions.  He was concerned that I have no flashlights in my house.  Then I remembered that my mom had made me and Isaac 72 hour kits as a Christmas present about 5 years ago and I had only a vague notion of where I had store them and no idea what was in them.  So we drug them upstairs and went through them.

These are what they look like:

I believe most of these things were ordered from a website called The Ready Store.  Like I said, they were a gift from my mom, so I am not too sure about pricing or anything like that. 

 I will show you what we discovered in the kits. 

Panchos, hand warmers, candy (I am assuming to keep your blood sugar up, but the candy in my kit was all melted), little flash light, matches, emergency blanket,  a card with survival tips. There was also water purifiying tablets, but I don't see them in this picture. Then  the top the photo are pouches of drinking water and, this gross block of lard or something that you can break pieces off and eat every few hours. 

SO GROSS.  I would have to be in some serious dire straights to eat that. 

The only thing in the front pocket of the backpack was this whistle.

The other backpack was FILLED with all kinds of supplies.  There was this little tent.  Who knows how to set it up, but I guess if we really needed shelter this could do in a pinch...

There was this candle that burns for 100 hours-- could be pretty handy to have this week as I am sure we will lose power at some point.

This backpack was filled with food...

More candy... tons of MRE in those brown boxes and lots of random little foil packets of foods.  The one pictures above is "fortified snack bread"... whatever the heck that is.  I am sure if I am hungry enough, I would eat it.

Most of this looked totally disgusting... but I was kind of excited about those little squarish packets on the top right.  They are COOKIES.  Does my mom know me or what?  There were also lots of these little kits baggies with napkins and plastic silverware.

 More first aid supplies...

More handwarmers...

And finally, the ever important roll of TP. 

I was feeling rather prepared when Ryan discovered another rolling suitcase in my garage that turned out to be a part of the kit too.  BONUS.

The outside pocket had another roll of toilet paper.  And this is what we saw when we opened it up:



It looked like food we might actually WANT to eat!!!

Unfortuneatly, pretty much all of the food was expired.  This is the pile of stuff we had to throw out: apple sauce, Chef Boyardee, granola bars, juice boxes, cereal, canned tuna and chicken salad. The next picture shows the stuff we were able to save:

Pretty self explanatory except for the little bottle. 

So I definitely need to replace the food that actually looks APPETIZING that expired.  Ryan and I also discussed adding a heavy duty flashlight, a change of clothes for each family member, possibly some cash in case ATMS are down, and some additional batteries.

What do you do to be prepared in extreme weather?



A few randoms

* Ryan and I were so proud of ourselves for getting his brother and sister in law the seven piece cansister set from their registery.  They texted Ryan tonight that it only came with four canisters.  Oops.  #awkward.

*We went up to Dorney Park for the last of the season this weekend. We have sure gotten our money's worth out of our season passes (thanks Ryan!) They had Boo Blast during the day and then at seven at night it turns into Haunt (super scary).  Isaac and I were taking off around 6 (a full HOUR before it was supposed to switch over to scary) and we stopped to use the bathroom.  When he came out there was a crazy looking man in a costume who absolutely terified Isaac.

 He began to cry right then and there and it took about 20 minutes for him to calm down.  He tossed and turned in his bed until after midnight that night until I finally let him come sleep with me.  Poor kid. 

* We had waffles and eggs for dinner the other night.  I'm broke and lazy.  It was a huge hit.  No points for domesticity were scored, but we all enjoyed it.  We also had dinner with my parents on Sunday.  Then my mom came in last night (Tuesday) and watched Isaac so Ryan and I could have a date night.  We have a Groupon that expires soon that we have been trying to use for AGES.  Everytime we go to use it something happens and we can't.  Same thing happened last night.  So we decided to just go out to eat and we stuffed ourselves SILLY at PF Chang's.  So yummy and delicious.

* We went swimming at the Y the other night on a whim.  We usually go on Friday nights, but decided to change it up and go on Monday.  We had so much fun.  It was the kick in the pants I needed to finally get Isaac signed up for swim lessons again.  He is not a bad swimmer but he could be stronger.  He starts lessons again next week. Add a point to the "good mom" column for me.

* We sent parent teacher conferences home the other day.  I can' believe this school year is almost a quarter over!  October is always a nice lull between in the insanity of September and the craziness of gearing up for holidays.    It is already time to think about Christmas shopping and where we will be spending holiday meals and how we will share the kids.  I love it though. 

 

We have been trying to get our holiday decorations in order.  We had a few small pumpkins left over from a Fall Fest at Isaac's school. 

 

We took the girls along and they made pumpkins too.  (Does Gabby look EXACTLY like Ryan or what?).  More fallish things are on the agenda:  tonight is the Pottstown Halloween parade, which is always fun.

 

Lucky me-- my mom showed up four more pumpkins.  We will have to find some time  for carving soon. 

 

Have a happy Wednesday!

 

try it tuesday - eyeshadow tutorial

This is an eyeshadow tutorial I pinned on Pinterest. I have both the Naked and Naked 2 Eyeshadow palettes. I love those palettes-- the colors are so pretty and the shadows are highly pigmented. BUT I feel like I always use the same one or two colors, the same ways.  Here was the inspiration picture from Iworeyogapants.  She also uses one MAC color as a highlight, but I just blended Naked and Virgin from the same palette instead.




She calls it an every day eye look.  Personally, I am far too lazy to do liquid eye liner as an everyday look, but I tried this look for church this past Sunday.  (I also pinned her smokey nighttime look, using the same palette, but I haven't tried that one yet.) 

 



It was pretty hard to get a picture of my eyeshadow that wasn't embarassingly awkward (all of the closed eye ones I attempted were pretty humiliating).  Overall, I liked the way it turned out.  The darker brown in the corner and crease didn't really come across on camera but I thought looked quite pretty in real life.   Ryan gave me a spontaneous compliment on my makeup, so I guess it was a step up from my usual Sunday look.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Linking up with Jamie.