Make It Yourself Monday!

I am so excited to be back on track with blogging (two days in a row)!  I do apologize as this post is going to be quite short this evening as I have accumulated a massive pile of homework after classes today.

As you may know, last Friday was my boyfriend Mark's birthday.  I really struggled with what to get him this year since he just had graduation and Christmas and received just about everything he could ever want and/or need.  So I decided to supply his fun for his birthday celebrations...

This project is really simple and can be tweeked in numerous different ways.  I put styrofoam in the bottom of the pot and glued wooden skewers onto the bottles to hold them in place.  With a paint marker and some tissue paper, we were good to!  (This project was inspired by Pinterest.)

What have you made lately?

I'm Back!!!

Life has hit me with a thousand to-do lists lately and I have been trying to get into the swing of things with my crazy semester but I have finally gotten things under control and organized... Hello Blogging World, I'm Back!

The past two weeks have been filled with trying to get used to my classes, all of my assignments, MY INTERNSHIP IN THE 4TH GRADE, and still trying to find time for myself and the gym.  Yikes!

Mark's birthday was Friday and he spent the weekend here, which was much needed and perfect!  After two stressful weeks a weekend with the one you love just makes everything better.  Next weekend, I will be going home to Charlotte to have some much needed family time!

Enough about my life, I would like to share with all of you about the life of someone else how I have found truly inspiring, Ron Clark.  I have been assigned to read his book "The Essential 55: An Award Winning Educator's Rules for Discovering the Successful Student in Every Child" and it is honestly changing my outlook on life and especially how I want to teach my students!  I highly recommend this book for anyone but especially teachers!  It is a super easy read and definitely worth it! 

Ron Clark was a Teaching Fellow in North Carolina and has gone to do so many great things in his teaching career, I can only hope to be as good of a teacher as he is one day!  In summary, his book gives 55 essential rules that should be upheld in the classroom; I thought this book was going to be boring and about discipline but boy was I wrong!  This book talks about teaching and enforcing respect and manners and helping your students genuinely care about others and themselves... I even found myself crying in some parts!

Goal for tomorrow, get back to my Make It Yourself Mondays! 

 I have a great new project that I can't wait to share with y'all!

Terrific Tuesday

After a great Last First Day of School as a student, I can only hope that the rest of my Tuesday's will be "terrific".  My day was filled with being handed stacks of paper (a syllabus should never be 15 pages long, this must be a joke) and being overwhelmed with assignments.  And remember the book list I had of books that I wanted to read?  Well that can be thrown out the window after I rented 3 books, and purchased 9...that's right I have a whopping 12 books for this semester to read. 

On a positive note, I got my placement for my internship...4th Grade!!!  More details on my internship will come soon but I do know that my teacher will be out on maternity leave later in the semester so hopefully I will get more time to actually teach the kids!

Oh and did I mention that we already have a field trip to Discovery Place planned for my classes!! Yep that's right, my professors would like to teach us how to "Plan and Implement a Field Trip".  Sounds like the best idea ever to me!

Hoping all of you First Day of Schoolers, Students, and Teachers, had a great day! 

Can't wait to see what tomorrow's classes bring!

Make it Yourself Monday!

School officially starts tomorrow so I wanted to keep myself motivated with my blogging and my DIY/crafting/Make it Yourself.  So here it is... the first Make It Yourself Monday!

Today I am going to share a project that I have already finished, Cornhole Boards that I made for Mark for Christmas.  These boards turned out sooo good and Mark loved them!  My Dad helped me build the boards and we used directions from Cornhole-How-To. I painted the boards myself... actually I slaved over them for two weeks making sure they looked absolutely perfect.  After the boards were completely painted I Mod-podged two decals onto them.  

I ordered custom Cornhole Bags from a seller on Etsy.  If you ever feel like taking on this challenge, I would be more than happy to give you a few helpful hints!

Goal for this week:

Monogram Canvases to go above my bed, they will match my room of course!

Thirty-One Gifts!

Okay so I'm in the progress of trying to become a Thirty-One Gifts Consultant and I wanted to go ahead and get the word out as soon as I could!  I know everyone is super busy right now but I would love it if you would be willing to look at a catalog or even book a party once I get started!

These gifts are perfect for Monogram Lovers, Teachers, Working Girls, and Gifts!

And for all those Teachers and Teachers-to-be, their super cute Lunch Thermal Totes are going on sale for $10 next week!!!! 

Let me know if you would ever be interested or if you know someone who would be, I'm trying to just jump right in with this and would love to work with all of my bloggers!

Check out Thirty-One Gifts!

A Whole New Look!

I was viewing my blog tonight and decided that the black background was kind of hard to read... so I decided to dedicate my night to a Blog Makeover!

I found this great template for FREE on Cutest Blog on the Block 

I also just added my "Grab My Button!"  It took me a really long time to figure out how to make this... probably more time than it should have.  I'm new to this whole thing but I would love to start linking up with some of you!

Hopefully this new look is easier on the eyes!

Loaded Baked Potato Soup for the Crockpot...Yumm

I took my second adventure with my new crockpot today and made Loaded Baked Potato Soup!  I was kind of nervous about how it would taste but it turned out to be a huge success with my family! 

Here is the recipe if any of you would like to try it...

Recipe:  Baked Potato Soup for the Crockpot

From the Kitchen of: Fix it and Forget It

Ingredients:

·         4 large baked potatoes

·        2/3 cup butter

·        2/3 cup flour

·        6 cups milk, whole or 2%

·        ¾ tsp. salt

·        ½ tsp. pepper

·        4 green onions, chopped

·        12 slices bacon, fried and crumbled

·        2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

·        1 cup (8 oz.) sour cream

Preparation:

·        Cut potatoes in half.  Scoop out pulp and put in small bowl.

·        Melt butter in large kettle. Add flour. Gradually stir in milk. Continue to stir until smooth, thickened, and bubbly.

·        Stir in potato pulp, salt, pepper, and three-quarters of the onions, bacon, and cheese. Cook until heated. Stir in sour cream.

·        Transfer to slow cooker set on Low. Top with remaining onions, bacon, and cheese. Take to a potluck, or serve on a buffet table straight from the cooker.

***Add several slices of Velveeta cheese to make soup

extra cheesy and creamy.

I would love some other Crockpot recipe suggestions!  I just got mine for Christmas and have only made two things in it so far (this and French Onion Soup).  The soup was super easy to make and I set out little bowls of cheese, bacon crumbles, green onions, and sour cream for everyone to add to the top as a garnish. 

Perfect meal for a rainy day!

Goals for 2012

Okay so life has been completely busy lately and I have definitely slacked off on the 30 Day Challenge... I promise I will catch up with this tomorrow.

Tonight's post will be short and sweet.

Instead of making tons of resolutions and goals to keep up with I decided to come up with something short that I could remember and actually try to achieve.

6 Goals x 2 Words Each = 12 Words for 2012

1. Love More

2. Stress Less

3. Get Fit

4. Read Many

5. Try Harder

6. Have Faith

What are your goals for 2012?? If we have the same ones I would love some support :)

So Many Wants, So Little Money

I filled my Friday running errands with my Mom this afternoon.  Our first stop was to Sam's Club (I wanted to go for the free samples).  I was very dissappointed to find little to no free samples, I will have to go again before I go back to school.  Next on the map was Kohl's... this is where the trouble began.  My Mom and I had plans to run in and return something and those soon changed when we starting scouting the clearance racks.  I have been on the mission to stock up my "Teaching Wardrobe" before I have to go into full time teaching.  I could not pass up some of these deals, my hands were soon very full of cute blouses, blazers, cardigans, etc.  Once again the dissappointment set in as I did not end up liking most of what I picked and I could not set my mind to paying some of the prices for the others... I left with one top. 

Kohl's did give me a great find though, Hardback Eric Carl children's books for only $5!!! These are a steal!  I did not purchase any yet, I wanted to check my collection at home and be sure that I do not buy doubles of anything.  For all you teachers/future teachers out there, check out Kohl's for this great deal!

Our last few stops consisted of TJ Maxx and Ross, I did not have time to go through everything like I like to do.  I did however discover Rain Jackets for Dogs... this will definitely be a future purchase for Sadie Lou.

Sadie Lou, my miniature dachshund just had her First Birthday yesterday!  Happy Birthday Sadie!  We bought her the cutest little purple sweater for when she goes "bye-bye".  Funny thing is, she looooves the sweater and when we tell her were going "bye-bye" she gets soo excited to put on her sweater!  I can't wait to spoil her even more with some cute new outfits (she thinks she is human and we love to play along).

Hopefully my shopping trips tomorrow with Mark on his day off will be a little bit more successful.  Have a wonderful Friday Night Bloggers!

Day 3: Your first love and Day 4: Your parents

Well it's January 6th and I am already a day behind on my 30 day challenge.. go figure.  I really am trying hard though folks!  I had to work late last night and when I got off I was just not in the mood; I figured waiting until today would give me a little bit more to talk about and it may be a little bit more pleasant to read also.

Day 3: Your first love

This topic reminds me of one of those MySpace surveys I used to take that would ask you any and every personal question about your life.  So I will not go back to those poor Myspace days and drag on about a boy from my past that I have not seen or heard from in years... Instead I will explain the present.  I have been dating my boyfriend Mark for two years now, we met at ASU.  Mark is a member of the Kappa Alpha fraternity and he was my date to my sorority's Homecoming Function my sophomore year (we were set up by mutual friends).  Ever since then Mark and I have been together at ASU until now, he has recently graduated and has taken on his first real job (exciting!).  These next few months of our long distance (2 hours apart to be exact) relationship will be interesting and I look forward to seeing what happens in the future!

Here is a picture of Mark and I on our first date! (Homecoming Function 2009, note the drinks in hand, ha!)

Now on to today's challenge: Day 4: Your parents

My parents are two of the most wonderful, caring, and hard-working people I know and I can not explain how blessed I am to have them.  They may get on my nerves sometimes but I know that no matter what happens, I have their support.  They have a relationship that I can only hope to have one day with my spouse.  The know each other so well and can predict how the other will act towards something, what they will say or reply in a situation, and just what to do and not to do to annoy the other.  

Here is a picture of my wonderful parents!

And that's about it for today's 30 Day Challenge post... intentions to post about some random stuff if I have time in a little bit!

Day 2: Meaning behind your blog name

I thought long and hard when considering what to name this blog.  I knew I wanted to talk about my experiences in learning how to become a teacher and my actual experiences when I started in a classroom.  I have also been using my creativity to enhance my crafting and cooking skills lately.  Between all of these different topics I figured I would learn something and that maybe all of the bloggers out there might learn something too (or be able to give me some advice). 

So I hope all of you bloggers out there want to "Learn with Lindsay".  I really hope to keep up with this blog and to keep with the idea of "Learning something new everyday," this quote in itself may be a challenge just as it is to keep blogging everyday; but I am up for the challenge.

Day 1: Introduce, recent picture of yourself, 15 interesting facts

Well here it is.... Day 1.

Introduction...
My name is Lindsay, I am 21 years old and a senior at ASU.  I am an Elementary Education major with a secondary area of concentration in Mathematics.  I can't wait to have my own classroom and finally be out of school!  I have two younger siblings, and a wonderful mother and father who raised us.  We have a new addition to our family, Sadie Lou, our miniature dachshund (she is almost a year old this week).  My boyfriend of two years just started his big boy job in the real world...scary and exciting at the same time.  The year 2012 has a lot in store for me and I can't wait!

Recent Picture of Myself...

15 Interesting Facts...

1. I am the oldest of three.

2. I go by my middle name.

3. My eyes are two different colors (brown and green).

4. I have never dyed my hair.

5. I love to procrastinate and work best under pressure.

6....

Okay so I got to six... that's a good enough start.  It's not very easy to find interesting facts about yourself. 

I have been working on the design of Learn with Lindsay a lot today and it seems to be coming together quite nicely; I would love any feedback, comments, or ideas that you may have for me.  I am new to this and would love any advice!

Special Thanks to Everyday AEM for telling me how to get the tab bar up finally!



Day 0: The 30 Day Challenge Explanation and Description

I'm pretty sure the title of the challenge is self describing and explaining, however I might as well stick to the challenge as it hasn't even started yet.

I am a first time blogger and I am using the "30 Day Challenge" to kick-off my blog.  I am hoping that giving myself something to write about each day will keep me motivated to keep writing.

Tomorrow starts Day 1... Here we go!

30 Day Challenge

I have decided to start off this blog with a 30 Day Challenge.  My life has been quite calmer than usual during Winter Break so I figure this will help get things started....

30 Day Blog Challenge List

Day 0: The 30 Day Challenge Explanation and Description
Day 1: Introduce, recent picture of yourself, 15 interesting facts
Day 2: Meaning behind your blog name
Day 3: Your first love
Day 4: Your parents
Day 5: A song to match your mood
Day 6: A picture of something that makes you happy
Day 7: Favorite movies
Day 8: A place you've traveled to
Day 9: A favorite picture of your best friend
Day 10: Something you're afraid of
Day 11: Favorite tv shows
Day 12: Something you don't leave the house without
Day 13: Goals
Day 14: A picture of you last year - how have you changed?
Day 15: Bible verse
Day 16: Dream house
Day 17: Something you're looking forward to
Day 18: Favorite Place to Eat
Day 19: Something you miss
Day 20: Nicknames
Day 21: Favorite Picture of yourself ALL TIME Why?
Day 22: What's in your purse?
Day 23: Favorite Movie
Day 24: Something you've learned
Day 25: Put your iPod on shuffle, first 10 songs
Day 26: Your Dream Wedding
Day 27: Original Photo of the city you live in
Day 28: Something that stresses you out
Day 29: 3 Wishes
Day 30: a picture of yourself this day and 5 good things that happened since you started the challenge