red velvet...

Tonight we had prayer night with our high school students and I always make treats... so I made some yummy cupcakes!  I decided to do a trial run for tomorrow, so I made Red Velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting!  

They are soooo tasty!

Tomorrow we have Teacher Taco Night...And I am bringing dessert... Red Velvet Cheesecake Cake!  It used the same cake to make the cupcakes and used the frosting too.  The cake was so easy...all in one bowl.  LOVE those types of cakes!  

I found the recipe here on Recipe Girl... and it looks soooo tasty! 

Can't wait to try it tomorrow!  

midweek confessions 1...

Saw this idea over at Thoughts and Ramblings from a Crazy Person, one of my favorite blogs to read.  Love the honesty! :)  So today I am linking up to

Monday was my first morning with my student teacher.  So, in order to look good be super prepared, I was at school by 7:00 and when she walked in at 8:30, I was energentic, happy, and all set to go.  Tuesday morning?  Rolled in to school at 8:10.  Sat at my desk checking e-mails and looking at Pinterest teaching stuff until my first kiddos walked in at 8:50. 

This morning?  Went back to sleep after the hubby left and slept an extra hour.  Something about that hour that does miracles for my mood.

Tuesday while running a small group during Daily 5, we were talking about synonyms, or for those of you who may have forgotten 5th grade vocabulary, two words with the same meaning.  I asked if anyone remembered what a synonym was, and one of my sweet peas quick had an answer.  "Yes!  It's like when you call someone a witch, but you really want to call them a.... ".  She quickly faded out at the end realizing swearing in front of your teacher at all was not a good idea.  Enter: me turning my head quickly and moving on to antonyms while trying not to laugh.

I have been trying to exercise at least 4 times per week.  So last night, it was to the YMCA we went.  Again.  Two nights in a row!  We did the elliptical, and got a good workout in including 35 minutes straight on Fat Burner.  My screen told me I burned 398 calories.  However, when I entered my exercise into www.myfitnesspal.com, it told me that 35 minutes on the elliptical would count at 536 calories burned.  I went with the 536 as my entry.

Yesterday, my class at a 10 minute discussion about how having a horse in your house would not be a good idea.  Especially when they had to poop.  Welcome to 5th grade.  During the discussion, my students were able to make wonderful sentences using the complexor AND, which is why I just let it happen.  Should be exciting when today we using the complexor BUT. 

Happy rest of the week!

love-hate...

Ahhh.... working out.  We have a love-hate relationship.

Dieting.  Love-hate.

Tracking my food.  Love-hate.

I think the reason that all of these feel like a love-hate, is because it brings back lots of GOOD memories, and lots of BAD memories.

More about that to come...someday. 

But right now, I am doing this for me.

Working out at the Y 4-5 nights a week.  Sore, and loving it.  It feels... good.

Tracking all of my food on www.myfitnesspal.com.... feels good.  

Eating healthy, every day.  Good.

Not feeling like I'm going to be in trouble with someone if I slip up and eat something not so healthy.... great.

Down 10 pounds so far... and lots more to go. 

But learning more towards the LOVE part of this right now instead of the hate. 

the day the tanning salon burnt down...

I live in a small town.

Small enough that when a business is on fire, everyone and I mean EVERYBODY comes out to watch.

I was grading papers wasting my life on Facebook today, and a few pictures popped up of black smoke coming out of a building in the center of our town.

And for some odd reason, I have a strange fascination with things like this.  I know, weird.  And if we are being honest, I also have an odd fascination with polygamy, school shootings, and TV prison shows.  Glad I got that out. 

My wonderful husband, knowing that I am fascinated by things like this, offered to drive me down to the BIG SCENE so I could see what was happening.  We had to go into town anyways that day, and since our small town is pretty much two intersecting roads, we were going to go by anyways.

Fast forward 4 hours... we are back home now.  Yes, we ended up watching for FOUR hours.  

It went from being contained to one business, 

to spreading to the ones next door,

to taking over the whole building.

Apparently, it started in a Dessert Sun Tanning salon.  A facial bulb EXPLODED while a girl was tanning.  It started smoking a bit, and she went out to the front.  The girl at the front came back to look, and it was on fire.  And because NO ONE had a brain knew how to use a fire extinguisher or thought about cutting the power, it quickly spread to the rest of the store.  And because the store is connected to a bunch of other ones... we lost a hearing aid shop, cigar shop, travel agency, beauty supply shop, and 

my favorite coffee shop.  The only decent drive through, my favorite place to meet up with friends, and a central hub in our town - gone.  

I saw more people today out there that I knew then I do going to church on a Sunday!  So that is the story of the day the tanning salon burnt down.   

gift cards...

I have a love-hate relationship with gift cards.

LOVE that I can pick and choose what I want....

HATE that I always forget I have them....

LOVE not having to pay for something with my debit card 

HATE having a wallet full of them....

LOVE not having to decide which envelope to take the money out of (thanks Dave Ramsey!)....

HATE having $0.53 cents left on it and feeling the need to keep it and not waste those precious pennies...

Exhibit A:

I went through and found all of my gift cards... including the ones I just received for Christmas and my birthday

 I have a gift card problem.  

Today, Ryan and I decided to go and return a wedding gift (long story... yes, we got married in MAY, but the post office lost the package and we JUST got.  Bad news is that we had already had that item), and I had them put the balance on one of my Macy gift cards (pictured in the right center on my board above). 

Because we had a pretty good size balance left, we decided to see if we could find a new comforter for our bed.  We had been wanting a down comforter to go in our duvet cover, but they are SO expensive.

After trying out many different thread counts, weights, down alternatives, and allergy/asthma sensitive ones,

we did a lot of thinking (yes, that is a thinking face, not a mad face) and found there right one!  And the best part was that it was 60% off, plus an additional 10%, so we got a $300 dollar comforter for about $70!  That also means I have $16.37 cents left on my gift card...guess it goes back up on the board.

We put our new comforter into our duvet cover we got off of our gift registry...so cozy!  Not exactly what our bed looks like, but we LOVE the design on our cover!

Tomorrow, I think we shall get Starbucks coffee (2 gift cards), maybe do some shopping at Old Navy (3 gift cards), eat at Red Robin (gift card), and then get some yummy Blu Berry fro-yo (10 gift certificates).  Ha!

high five for friday...

Here are five of my favorite things from this past week!

1. New earrings from Target...on clearance!  They are gold and silver...and covered in little flowers.  In the center of each flower is a little jewel...they are so dainty yet chunky at the same time...is that possible?    

2. Trying out this new cupcake recipe...yummy!  They looked so pretty, and tasted delicious!

3. Maybelline Baby Lips... I am in LOVE with the Grape one... the perfect amount of color...some gloss, and not sticky (which my hubby appreciates).  Plus, it smells great and makes my lips super soft!

4. Getting to spend my a few hours snuggled up with my hubby by the fireplace in our house.

5. By the end of this first week back to school after break, I was so happy it was Friday!

Now to relax for the rest of the weekend...and soak up these rare moments of peace and quiet with my man.

raspberry almond cookies...

When I was younger there was this shop in our local mall that had every kind of 'scent' you could imagine... I can't for the life of me remember the name, but there were tons of little jars with delicious smelling perfumes you could mix to make your own scent.

There was one in particular...It had a sweet, delicious almond smell that was out of this world. 

And so began my love affair with almond extract.

I found this recipe over at www.tastykitchen.com, and decided to make it last night.

I liked that I had all the ingredients, and it didn't take a lot of time... plus, eating fruit on my cookies makes them healthy and fit into my diet...right?

Raspberry Almond Cookies

  

Ingredients
1 cup Butter
⅔ cups Granulated Sugar
2 cups Flour
½ teaspoons Almond Extract Or Vanilla Extract
1 jar Raspberry Jam (I only had mixed berry...but it was delicious!)
1 cup Powdered Sugar
1 Tablespoon Water (I used part almond extract and part water...yumm!)


Cream together the butter with the granulated sugar. Mix in flour and extract. Scoop out a spoonful of the mixture and shape into 1-inch balls. (The mixture will just barely come together.) Put each ball onto a cookie sheet and press your thumb into each one to make an indention. Put as much jam as you can put into each thumbprint.


Bake 14-18 minutes at 350 degrees.
Once cookies are cooled, mix together the powdered sugar with the water and drizzle onto the cookies.
Makes about 24 cookies.