2012 A new Beginning

Well, here we sit at the beginning of yet another year. I am excited to say that many of the goals I set for myself last year did end up coming true. Let's take a few moments and revisit...

Goals for 2011

• To blog once a week, something thoughtful or prayerful & possibly something clever (I don't feel very clever very often, we shall see)

Well didn't quite hit that goal, however I did work toward it and I will attempt this one again this year, with the added goal of learning more about blogging.

• Post a photo blog at least once per month

Yeah, so that didn't happen at all...ooppss forgot about that one...

• Download at least one new song per month

I did download music this year, but I don't know that I got one song per month...

• Learn to play the piano, or at least some worship on the piano

I have learned a couple songs on the piano...still working toward this goal...

• Spend more time in prayer and bible reading than I do on the computer

I must confess, I don't think I have been as faithful to this goal as I need to be...

• Finish at least one craft project a month (and blog about it :-])

I have been doing many more crafts, not always blogging about them...

• Save for a house

Done :-D

• Purchase our first home

Done :-D

• Read through the Bible this year!

Still have a few chapters left, however I'm in CA and I might get it done before midnight here...

• Continue to keep track of my goals and my progress toward reaching them :-)

Well 2011 was the best year yet, don't get me wrong it did have ups and downs, however there were many ups and I am going to try to stay focussed on those.

We bought our first home.

 We got a dog :-) his name is Harvey

I am teaching in Sahuarita, and Brent has a job working for the state that definately provides our needs.

We are the Junior High pastors at our church.

I got to go on a road trip with my sister after Christmas and am spending New Years on the couch with her :-) I have/get to go home tomorrow. I'm happy to be heading home to see my hubby and puppy and church family however I will miss her and spending time with her (as well as not having any responsibilities).

That definitely wasn't all that happened this year, just a few of the highlights...so here we go, goals for 2012...

• Continue to read the bible DAILY
• Spend more time with the Lord than I do on my computer (I worked toward this however did not achieve the goal as I would like)
• Exercise regularly
• Take the dog for a walk daily
• Go to the gym every other day, or run, or do a routine at home
• Find someone to keep me accountable and push me
• Improve my piano skills
• TUNE THE PIANO
• Learn how to properly use the camera I was blessed with!
• Blog regularly
• PRAY AND OBEY

If you choose to follow me this year I hope I am able to stay true to my goals, better than last year, it is kinda frustrating to realize that I only really met two of my goals that I made for myself. Lets hope I have a better outcome this year!

Christmas Wreath

So two posts in one day, what are you going to do with me. My new goal is to do at least one FUN crafty project a week and blog about it. Now leading up to Christmas it may be a bit more often than that...

I needed a wreath for my front door :-D so for about $7 I made myself one I like pretty well. Here's what I used...
Glue Gun
$3 Flowers from the mart
$2 Basic Wreath from the mart
Some left over ornaments from last year

Here is what is looked like partially finished

Pretty much I just hot glued everything onto the wreath...

 And there is the finished project, I glued the Peppermint stick upside down on purpose :-D because Jesus is the reason for the season!

Enjoy, I had a blast!

I'll be sharing some tree photos tomorrow (I hope)

Melted Crayon Art

It's been quite a while since I've posted...I have been kinda keeping up my teaching one...

Well I had a really stressful week and decided to take today to craft and decorate for Christmas. I'm not very good at posting true tutorials of how I did things so I apologize if you really want to know how I did these, feel free to comment and let me know if you have any questions.

I have an idea for a couple Christmas presents involving crayon art, and I started on one today...

I want to make a sunset, with a silhouette in front of it. I'm going to work on the silhouette next need to find a nice picture I can use to draw from. I can copy well but when I try to draw from memory it doesn't work. So what do you think of my sunset?

I used a blow dryer to melt the crayons, it only took about a half hour to do the melting process, I had already hot glued the crayons onto the canvas earlier.

Here are a couple photos of the process, I almost wish I had stopped sooner, however I wanted the crayons across the canvas so I kept going. It was a lot of fun and I'll probably do another one some time soon.

I had fun, hope you like it & more than that I hope the person I'm making it for likes it! I'll post an update when I get the silhouette on it.

Have a great night!

Using a new blog for teachery stuff...

I've created a new blog for my teachery stuff so if you'd like to follow me there that would be wonderful...I don't know what I'm doing yet. I'm still trying to follow other blogs and learn from everyone...

http://mrshallsfabulousfirsts.blogspot.com/

Check it out...we'll see what I end up figuring out...

One of the Cutest Givewaways Ever!

So in my quick blogging fury this morning before class I came across one of the cutest blog giveaways ever!

Over at Miss Kindergarten she is celebrating 300 followers with a GREAT Giveaway (both links go to the contest :-) )

So excited to have a chance to win one of these fabulous signs! Hope you hop over and check it out....

To Do Lists...

Here I sit yet again with a zillion (okay maybe not a zillion but a whole lot) of things today and I am blogging and making fun stuff for my classroom and for me...

I was just sitting here thinking I needed a To Do list to help me stay focused & I remembered a great post by What the Teacher Wants where she posted a link to some great To Do Lists

My only issue is I'm a daily to do list person and both of the examples that I found in those posts were mostly for weekly to do lists. So I did some editing and made some daily ones for myself.

I haven't figured out how to post them yet...maybe someday but I thought I'd share the idea in case someone else needs them...have a great day!

Teacher Appreciation Week & Random Thoughts

It's funny because my school doesn't really do anything for teacher appreciation week. But I feel so appreciated by all the blogs I'm reading and other resources it's AMAZING!

I have been in my classroom since school go out getting ready for the crazyness that is our mother's day program and tea tomorrow. It's so much fun and the kids love showing off the stuff "they've" been doing for their parents :-)

It's getting to be that emotional part of the year where I'm mega stressed because of all that needs to get done before the end of the year and the fact that these kids are all so much more grown up than they were when we started, and now I have to send them on and hope they are prepared for what's next ... tear ... I have started and not finished at least 10 projects since school got out. When I get stressed I get scattered, I was putting away something and found stickers so I scrapbooked the front of my albums of my mother's day photos from this year and last year (the ones for me not them :-) *add pictures here later* and then I never got back to what I was doing before...lol...

Well after tomorrow is done hopefully I can calm down and relax, oh wait have I mentioned we are buying a house and are supposed to close on the 18th...so yeah no relaxing for me nevermind.

Anyway back to why I started this post, (ADD much, maybe that's why I relate to them so well) I have been cleaning up my room and remembered that I need to print out thank you gifts for my parent helpers this year, and that reminded me I need to find the link to the teacher appreciation gifts I want to give to my team at the end of the year. Which caused me to open my reader about an hour and a half ago...and needless to say I'm still here and my husband is wondering if I'm ever coming home...and I need to print out my plans for next week and find all the work...oh well it never ends so I may as well go home now and come back tomorrow cause it will all be here then too...hopefully I can post some pictures of our projects and stuff soon. It's all so cute, just gotta get the pictures out of my phone :-)

Have a goodnight, any maybe someday soon I'll start blogging something useful instead of always just talking...

Tucson Values Teacher Day :-)

Well it's been a busy week, as most of them are at this point in the school year. I'm so happy to be only a few short weeks away from something new.

Well back to the title of this post. Yesterday I had the privilege to attend a Teacher Day at the University of Arizona Campus. It was a great day, got to spend it with two of my favorite people, my parents :-). It was a really neat event, pretty much UofA opened up a lot of the museums and resources they have available for teachers for free so teachers could go check them out. I'm blogging from my phone so I'm not certain how to tag people however I would love to tag Office Max, UofA, TEP, Macaroni Kids, Wells Fargo, many others & most importantly Tucson Values Teachers and its founder Jacqueline Jackson for showing how much they Value teachers! Made my day, well made my week for that matter :-)

Thanks for a great day if your reading this.

Be back to blog more later, have a blessed Sunday!

Math Card Game Ideas

When I was reading through some blogs tonight I came across this fabulous idea for a game of war on What's the Buzz - Math Fun

Which is really funny, because while I was driving home from work tonight I was trying to come up with some new math centers (addition and subtraction) and I thought up a similar game. Remove the aces and face cards from a deck of cards, and divide the cards evenly. Each player turns over two cards; if playing addition they add them up and the student with the highest sum gets to keep them. And if playing subtraction, they subtract the smaller number from the larger one, and the student with the largest difference gets to keep all the cards. Haven't tried it yet, I plan to tomorrow I'll try to let you know how it goes....

Adorable! Purseday Fun!

I love fun stuff, I was looking around for a cute bag to post and found this fabulous site Oh So Cheeky Boutique I really hope that I have some extra money to spend soon! Or that I can somehow drop a hint to one of my oh so fabulous parents...wink wink...

This one is my first choice...

With this one being a close second :-) Love it!

Here's a link to the ordering site in case your interested. Enjoy!
Cute Personalized Teacher Bags

Funny thing is... and an exciting (to me) giveaway

The last time I blogged it was about blogging and it is going to be again...

I have been reading around on some different blogs and found a very exciting giveaway to me as a teacher! So so excited to share this, Laura over at First Grade Fundamentals is doing a very exciting giveaway that I am sharing...she is giving away a gift card to one of three stores. Head over to her blog and read all about it...

Choose Your Own Giveaway

I'm really excited to be learning more about blogging. Last week I figured out how to at tabs to the top, we shall see if I can figure out how to add a blog roll...here we go...

Inspired and Challenged

Ok I've decided Blogging is AMAZING!!!!!!!!

I could sit here all night and read blogs and get new ideas...I wish I were this inspiring.

I have found many blogs, and ideas and each blog leads me to another or 10 more for that matter. Oh my goodness I'm so inspired however now I must get off and finish American Idol *scotty swoon...oh I mean I must fill out our title paperwork. :-D They accepted our offer and we should be closing on our house on the 18th of MAY!

So excited. I'll come and post some pictures soon. But now I should go fill out the paperwork.

Can anyone point me to a tutorial for really getting started blogging? Also I'd like to know some tips for personalizing my blog. I want it to be cuter. Like so many of the ones I have found. And also...hope no one minds but here are some of the blogs I'm loving tonight!

http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/ - very cute very fun ideas there is a small part of me that wishes I had more than 29 days left to implement before the end of the year...

http://aplacecalledkindergarten.blogspot.com/ - WOW...if only I'd found this sooner...did I mention very very excited about only 29 days left!

http://whattheteacherwants.blogspot.com/ - I want to have a week to look at all the ideas and resources on this blog!

http://kindergartenworks.blogspot.com/ - egads...they are all so good!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh 20 minutes later after reading more on the last blog...I should go switch the laundry.

If you have an answer and/or suggestions to help my customize my blog I'd love them!

Thursday Pursday Fun :-)

So blogging is becoming a more regular thing because of these fun little twitter trends :-)

Today my purse-day post is devoted to the purse I really want at this time...mine is getting to be really sad and old so I would love to have a new purse, it's really not that expensive just have to gather the money together to get it....payday here I come :-)

Here's a website you can check out these and other fabulous 31 Products! I'm so excited to have found them!

www.mythirtyone.com/beckyt

They have so many cool products I could spend way too much money there!

My First Tuesday Shoesday Post

I'm very excited to be posting my first Tuesday Shoesday post....it sounds like such fun. This last week I've really been enjoying the boots my students have been wearing and I thought I'd take today to share a couple of those pictures with you. They are super uber cute!

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do...

Little Kid boots are so cute...

And they love showing off :-)

So adorable!

I love photography and look forward to the day when I get to have the AMAZING camera I want so I can really get those killer shots :-)

Ideas and Inspiration

I am loving reading blogs and perusing the wedding & photography blog world. It is inspiring me to attempt to become a better blogger and photographer for that matter. I've been thinking a lot lately about "what I want to do when I grow up" I think I want to do something with photography, wedding planning & things of that nature.

My first step is continue to read blogs and learn and save for a camera! I also want to create a photo blog so I can start posting some of the pictures I have taken and am taking and maybe get feedback and advise for things I can do better or different.

I LOVE taking pictures and I always have and think I may finally be at a place where I could pursue it and do something with it.

On another note, we have placed an offer on a house I don't know if I've talked about that much here...We made the offer in the middle of February and almost every week I get an email or a text from my Realtor that makes me think "Maybe we'll know this week" well we still don't know, however I did get a text this week that made me think for real "maybe this week" they asked when we want to close. My husbands response, "can we do it today" I laughed...no we can't, they haven't even told us if they are accepting our offer? Strange but I'll take it :-) so maybe the end of May (ahhh that's the end of the school year) or Beginning of June (that would be much better), we'll see what their bank says...

Well I'm off to a wedding reception...hope you all have a blessed night!

Love these Clutches!

#Giveaway alert on @theknottybride! Win the clutch of your choice! Ruffles, peacock, bows, you name it :) http://su.pr/1tCpjP

I found this through a friends twitter feed and love these handmade clutches...check out this website if you'd like to see more...

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/18lPOF/www.etsy.com/shop/mermaidsdream?section_id=7889894&order=price_desc&page=1

They are Beautiful! Hope I win, my favorite one is the Black and White Contemporary one!

Alone however never alone...

So I've really been struggling with feelings of being alone, again. I think that I've allowed the Lord to work this out of me and then it happens again. It's a little hard to explain because its not that I dislike being alone, but at the same time I don't like being alone. I know a bit of circular logic there for you.

When it comes to being alone at home and getting things done or having some alone time. I'm ok with that for a little while, but then I would really rather be somewhere with people. However when it comes to having to go to an event alone, church, wedding, going away party...yeah I can't stand that. I hate feeling alone! I know I'm not alone I have people all around me, and I know God never leaves me or forsakes me, He's always here, and I feel real bad saying however....however why do I feel so alone?

Is it because I want children? Is it because I'm not trusting God? Why, why do I feel this way & why can't I learn this lesson?

It seems that I end up alone a lot, camp = I ended up working in the jobs that only one person had to do, events = brent has to work so I have to go alone and explain where he is :-(  work = the only one of my grade level separated by distance and personality?

I really wonder why, what purpose does it serve? What am I supposed to learn? Lord please help me understand what I need to and just accept what I don't need to understand but I just need to accept.

Thanks for reading & for your prayers if your still reading...God bless

Weddings & Memories

Today Lisa White gets married & I believe she will be the first of several of my friends to take that awesome and wonderful leap.

Reminds me of my wedding day, while I don't remember a lot it was a great day. It's all kinda a blur until I pull out the pictures and then I begin to get a rush of memories. Other than someone telling me after my wedding that my pictures made them realize how much the colors in the church and the decorations needed changed, my wedding was a great experience!

I can't really think of anything I would want to do different, maybe being more specific about how much of the songs should be played & remembering to take my bouquet at the end :-), but other than that I have great memories! And can't wait to get my wedding scrapbook finished, only five years later.

Well I'm off maybe I'll post a little something later after the big shin dig :-)

-thanks for reading, if you made it this far. God Bless!

Beautiful Spring Day

Since I set a goal of at least one photo post per month I had better get started doing that. Better now than never right?

Went for a walk with Brent today and snapped this pic :-) enjoy

When I look at this photo again I see the parallel of the new life we can have when we accept Jesus into our hearts (tree on left side of sidewalk) and the the lack of life we have without Him (right side). Also could represent our lives living for him and bearing fruit and our lives just being, not doing.

Trying out a new blog app...

Well I am pretty sure I haven't made my quota of blog posts...if I remember correctly only one in February and this is my first for March :-/ We shall see, I guess one a month is at least better than last year. And I have been keeping up on my crafting, I'll try to get some pictures of them up here if it'll work.

I've been doing a lot of thinking and praying recently, and the result? Not a lot of really evident things but the Lord is definitely showing me areas in my life I can continue to work on. :-)

Ok....one confession before I go...it really annoys me when people send emails with no subject line, now I'll admit sometimes I have a hard time coming up with an appropriate subject line. But to leave it completely blank is really annoying for me. How am I supposed to sort my emails, or know which one of the ten from you is the one I need. Ok I think I feel better now that that's off my chest...

Thanks for reading if you did and I'll be back hopefully sooner rather than later...

Re-Focusing

Taking a few minutes today to review some goals I set for myself last month...I can't believe we are in February let alone more than half way through February. And not to mention it's 2011, I'm re-posting my goals that I set at the beginning of this year so I can keep myself accountable.

Goals for 2011

• To blog once a week, something thoughtful or prayerful & possibly something clever (I don't feel very clever very often, we shall see)
  
• Post a photo blog at least once per month
  
• Download at least one new song per month
• Learn to play the piano, or at least some worship on the piano
  
• Spend more time in prayer and bible reading than I do on the computer
• Finish at least one craft project a month (and blog about it :-])
• Save for a house
• Purchase our first home
• Read through the Bible this year!
  
• Continue to keep track of my goals and my progress toward reaching them :-)

I have been keeping with in a day of my bible reading, I found an app that allows me to listen to the word while I'm driving to work in the morning which has really helped me to stay focused on my reading, and on the word.

We have been saving for a house and made an offer on a short sale in Sahuarita, we haven't heard yet however we are praying if it's God's house for us we'll hear soon.

Well that's my update for today! Thanks for reading.

Praying for you

I love you all and pray for you often! God Bless!

Prayers & Coffee

Well I find myself thinking about blogging a whole lot more since I challenged myself to only use scriptures for my status'.

And today is no different, I just finished my first coffee/Starbucks in quite a while and I must say it was amazing! I think maybe I should explain why I haven't had coffee...

I started the month with a daniel fast and got sick. So I had to pray and re-evaluate what I was to fast. Well when I prayed I felt like I was to fast Starbucks/coffee & caffeine, I prayed a lot hoping I had heard wrong...well needless to say I didn't get a release from it. So I fasted from coffee and caffeine, let's just say 1. I realized how "addicted" I am to coffee 2. I was reminded to pray a lot.

Why was I fasting you may wonder? Well whether you do or not I'll tell you...1. To get a new focus for this year. 2. Prayer for direction for my job next year. 3. Direction for our living situation/provision of a loan program that will work for us/a house we love.

So where are we on those prayers? Definately feeling excited for what's to com this year. I believe I have direction for work :-). With our future home we are still praying and seeking, we've found a home we like and a loan program that seems that it will work so now we gather the needed paperwork and pray and wait.

Now all that was said because the coffee I just had was amazing!

*this post got lost on its way to blogger so its a few days late but it still applies none the less God is good.

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Cursor Blinking

As I sit here with the cursor blinking
I try to find the words to type
confused and perplexed
not sure what to put

You are just fine
nothings wrong
relax
breath deep
take time to reflect

The words just don't
seem to fit, they don't seem
to come out quite right, what
should I say, how should I say it?

Bloggable Moments

Well I would say I've had several bloggable moments in the last few days...

Today was one of them, I felt very discouraged when I attemepted to cross the monkey bars...well let's just say I didn't make it very far :-(

Let's just say we should really start working out again!

So far my challenge to myself of not posting status unless they are scriptures or an encouraging word, has been good albeit challenging. I feel like I don't get to talk about what's going on much its strange.

well signing off for now talk with you again soon...

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Personal Challenge for the next 30 days

I feel like I've been allowing myself to be too negative about life and things like work lately. And I've been letting it out through comments on my statuses.

So I'm challenging myself that for the next 30 days I will only post scriptures & encouragement I find. If I feel myself getting frustrated I'll do my best to find a scripture that's an encouragement or speaks to the situation.

Feel free to join me on this journey its going to be real :-)

With love, Jenn

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One of January's Crafts

So it's a pot holder that I crochet & then felted :-) the picture didn't turn out that well but its really cute. It's brown....I can't decide if I need to make another so I can sell them as a pair? Or if I could sell them alone...what do you think?

I made another dish cloth but forgot to take a picture before I gave it away...

Well that's my big post for today. As well as a step in the direction of continuing to reach my goals! It's a photo blog and a blog about my crafting endeavors :-)

Anyway, nothing of any real consequence to say tonight so I sign of and say good night.

An Aha Moment...which leads to a lot of questions

Well tonight I had an Aha moment and I wonder what I should do with it...

2 Peter 1:4 (New King James Version)

⁴ by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

God's promises are exceedingly great AND precious! I trust this, I know this. However tonight I began to wonder...has God promised me these things that I'm praying for or is it just something that I want. Something that I've asked Him for?

Has He promised me a child....or do I just want one? Just another question I have and I am asking God...

Then while I am praying about this, this scripture comes to mind


Psalm 37:3-4 (New King James Version)

³ Trust in the LORD, and do good;
Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
⁴ Delight yourself also in the LORD,
And He shall give you the desires of your heart.

Do I trust You Lord? Do I trust in You enough to have the desires of my heart? Do I delight myself enough in the Lord?

Lots of questions, I just wonder...

So much to do so little time...

Well it is that time again, I have to finish report cards this week and it seems that I'm not having much time to get them done. It's been a good week at work, I feel like I've been doing well with my classroom and such...

However instead of doing my report cards here I sit, blogging...it does mean I'm working toward my goal of blogging once a week. I wish I could write as well as my brother and sister do, however here I sit just writing.

I did finish a craft project, I need to take a photo of it and post about it...it was fun. It's for a friend who just got an apartment and needs some goodies for it.

Anyway I'm going to go and print some things for work and hopefully finish my reports cards or at least a few of them...

1-1-11 A New Year, A New Start

Even though I already posted once today, I want to actually start with a real post, to work toward my goal. I pray that I am able to continue the trend!

My reading today took me to Genesis 12, I know I've read these verses many times before and today I wanted to share the first few verses.

1 Now Jehovah said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto the land that I will show thee:2 and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing;3 and I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse: and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.4 So Abram went, as Jehovah had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran. - Genesis 12:1-4

I want to be willing to do whatever God tells me to do, I am thankful that He hasn't told me to leave my home & family. However I pray that if He did I would be willing to go, just to pick up and go like Abram did. Because along with that command/instruction, there were promises, promise of blessing and protection!

Another verse that I came across today, I want to be a new creation, and for the old to be gone! Lord help me to accept the new!

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” - 2 Corinthians 5:17

New Year, New Goals...

Someone somewhere told me that a goal isn't a goal until you write it down. So here I sit in the wee hours of 2011 ready to write some goals for this year. Some may seems small and or silly, however I pray that God would guide me to the completion of each goal that is His will for my life.

Goals for 2011

• To blog once a week, something thoughtful or prayerful & possibly something clever (I don't feel very clever very often, we shall see)
  
• Post a photo blog at least once per month
  
• Download at least one new song per month
• Learn to play the piano, or at least some worship on the piano
  
• Spend more time in prayer and bible reading than I do on the computer
• Finish at least one craft project a month (and blog about it :-])
• Save for a house
• Purchase our first home
• Read through the Bible this year!
  
• Continue to keep track of my goals and my progress toward reaching them :-)

Looking forward to many great things to come in 2011! It's going to be the best year yet!