Garlic Grilled Zucchini

This is an oldie but goodie!  :-)  I have been making this for a few summers now.  It's a very simple, summery side dish.  I usually make it with steak or burgers and hot dogs.  First you slice the zucchini into slices about a quarter of an inch thick.  Then you brush them with olive oil.  Sprinkle them with garlic salt, flip and repeat.  Then grill, flipping halfway through.  Simple, right?  They are sooooo good too!  

Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint!

On Friday we bought brass door knobs, hinges, and door stoppers, that were discounted.  On Pinterest we saw that you could buy oil rubbed bronze spray paint to cover them.  

 Will scuffed them with a metal brush and then primed them.  After they were dry I spray painted them.  They look great!  The picture didn't come out the best but here's one with what we painted then one of Will drawing out where to chisel the door for the hinge to go.  

 

Bathroom Closet

Will has also been working on the upstairs bathroom.  He built a closet between the tub and the wall that shares the hallway.  We brought our shower curtain to the hardware store for them to match the color for paint.  They did a good job!  This is our shower curtain...

The tan color is the one we were matching.  In person it looks more tan than it does in this picture... Here's a little peak into the closet and also a picture of the paint tray so you can see the color better...

I can't wait until this closet is done!  Right now we only have ONE in the whole house!!!  Next we are putting in shelves then Will needs to do the door trim and frame.  :-)  Getting closer!

 

More Craft Room Storage!

This is the other cube organizer we got for the Craft Room.  It's from Target and is a Closetmaid unit.  The bins are also from Target as well.  Both units and all of the bins were on sale, which was great!  Emily and I found the baskets at Bath and Body Works (kinda random, I know...) and the color matches perfectly with the dark purple crown moulding.  Also they are made out of a plastic material so they will wipe clean... perfect for the Craft Room!  

See how well they match!! :-)

 

More Craft Room updates. :-)

This afternoon I painted the door trim in the Craft Room.  Will is working on chiseling out spots for the hinges in the new door as we speak.  Here's the newly painted door frame.  

 There is a shadow on the door frame from the light... in person it looks better than the picture makes it look.  It took 3 coats of paint!

The Band Boys

We had such a great time last night!  Our friends Cathy and Todd got married and Will's band played during the reception.  It was a blast!!  Lots of dancing!!  This is an awful picture but here are the boys rocking out.  :-)  Everyone loved them!

The three of them plus a wife and girlfriend stayed with us last night.  It was nice to get to hang out with them today.  We went out on the boat for a bit.  Even though it didn't rain, thankfully, I wish the sun came out!!  Right after they left, two of Will's brother came and were here until about an hour and a half ago.  We have more family coming tomorrow and staying for a few days as well.  Busy, busy!!

Creative Teaching Press order!

I was so excited when my order came today from The Creative Teaching Press!  Thank you so much Emily for introducing me to this fabulous company!  Everything is great quality and the colors are very vibrant!  I have so many great ideas for the things that I bought!  I highly recommend getting classroom goodies on the website or request a catalog!  Loved everything I ordered!  :-) 

Cheesy Bacon Potato Rounds!

I made something tonight that was super yummy!!  I stole the idea from Pinterest and tweaked it a little bit.  First I preheated the oven to 400 degrees.  Then I scrubbed 3 potatoes and sliced them using my OXO slicer on number 3.  They were about a 1/4 of an inch thick.  Then I put the slices in a pot with cold water.  I placed that on a burner and turned it to high.  Once they started boiling, they boiled for 5 minutes.  Then I carefully drained them in a colander and spooned them out on a paper towel.  Pat them dry.  Place them on a pan with either non-stick cooking spray or non-stick foil in a single layer, overlapping them.  

Lightly spray the top of them with cooking spray.  Add salt and pepper.  Cover with shredded cheese (I used white cheddar from a block and shredded it).  Then add bacon bits (I used Oscar Myer Real Bacon Bits).  Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes or when the cheese starts to brown.  They were SOOOO good!  We gobbled them up!!  Enjoy!   

Calm and Peaceful!

This is what I woke up to this morning.  How gorgeous is this?  The lake was perfectly calm.  We love it here!  Views make this make everything worth it.  We are so lucky!

 

How relaxing!

Some of the teachers from school had a get together today (yesterday according to the date now) and it was so nice and relaxing.  Two of the teachers at school are sisters and they have seasonal campsites at a campground with a beautiful view.  It was great to get to see some of each other we haven't seen since school got out.  They made homemade fried dough for us and we sat around and talked.  It was perfect.  Also it was one of their birthdays so we also had birthday cake.  Happy Birthday, Lisa! :-)  It was a great day!!

Storage for the Craft Room!

We put together two of the storage units we bought yesterday.  At Target we bought a nine cube Closetmaid storage unit and also a six cube, also by Closetmaid.  We bought the fabric bins to go in them in a teal color.  This is a picture of the nine cube one.  

The shadow from the light made it look funny on the left sides of the cubes... but it's just a shadow.

I am most excited about the storage unit we bought at Lowe's.  More on that soon.  We plan on assembling that tomorrow.  Once again I missed the midnight deadline so this will say it is Friday, but it's really Thursday.

My New Teacher Bag!!

I love my new teacher bag!  The one I used last year was also a Thirty-One bag, some style, different print.  It was stolen from our truck about a month ago so.  I was already ordering a new one to use this school year with my name embroidered on it.  I was going to use the old one for personal use (instead of for school).  My good friend Lisa was having the party and I called her to order another one to replace the one that was stolen and she said she would order it for me using her "money" she earned from the sales from the party.  That was so nice of her!  She is so sweet! Anyways, I love both of them!  The first one goes nicely with my polka dot theme classroom and as for the other, I love ANYTHING that is black and white!  They both are the "organizing utility tote" through Thirty-One.  They are very durable and made out of heavy duty canvas.  I highly recommend these for school bags!

 

Craft Room... again!

Will and I went shopping today and bought some things to start furnishing the Craft Room!!  Between Target and Lowe's we put a dent in it.  I still don't know what I am going to use for a chair in there.  Any ideas?  We also ordered the counter top for the L-shaped desk that we are going to install.  It's going to be 12 feet long, one side of the L will be 5 feet and the other will be 7. All of the three color samples we originally picked out were going to take 3 weeks to come in so I went with one that they had in stock that would not need a custom order.  This way it'll only be one week and should be in next Thursday.  I will give more specifics about what else we got today as we put them together.  I have to say, I was so thrilled that my husband was so wonderful today.  Will was being very patient and thoughtful.  He wanted it to be exactly what I wanted and was even pushing me to get bigger and better things to put into my new room.  More to come!  :-)

Craft Room update!

Once again I missed the midnight cut off.  We have been working hard the WHOLE afternoon/night!  It feels good to be able to sit down and relax.  :-)

The Craft Room is coming along nicely!  On Friday we had a surprise guest, one of Will's friends from high school that we hadn't seen since our wedding last year.  After Mike left we built a door frame, finished the base moulding, and shoe moulding.  Satruday we started to put up the crown moulding and Will had to build a header for the door and sheetrock and mud above the door frame.  Then we went to a wedding that afternoon as well.  Yesterday we had two more surprise guests, our friends that are getting married next weekend.  Then we worked more on crown moulding and finished sanding and mudding above the door.  Two of Will's brothers came later in the afternoon and were here for dinner.  Then Emily came to float in the lake and to watch The Bachelorette.  Today we finished mudding and sanding above the door (coat after coat after coat!) and painted it, AND FINISHED the crown moulding!  YAY!!!  It's now ready for a desk and shelves and all my craft stuff!!!  :-)  I am beyond excited.  I am so grateful that my husband worked so hard on it!!

I do have to say one thing before the pictures come.  I had bought some dark purple spray paint for a different project.  The other day out of the blue I asked Will what he thought about us spray painting the crown moulding purple.  He looked at me and said, I was thinking the same thing!  So, we tried it on a scrap piece and it looked great!  I am so excited about this.  It completely makes the room!  I love it!  The pictures don't completely do it justice, but you get the idea.  I am going to be posting more pictures shortly!  These were taken while we were still putting it up!  The first picture makes it look a little lighter in color than it actually is...

What a great ending!

What a great ending to The Bachelorette!  I think Jef is such a great guy!!  I'm so happy for them!!  My friend Emily and I have been religiously watching all season and since school got out we have been watching it together here at my house.  :-)

There has been a lot going on here working on the house and I can't wait to show a few pictures!  I'm not going to say anything about it yet, but you'll see!  This is going to show that it was posted on Monday, I just barely missed the midnight cut off, we've had a busy last couple days with some unexpected guests as well that we were very happy to see.  We had some nice visits with them and also were able to get some work done.  :-)  

Updates to come shortly!  

Breakfast Casserole

I found a recipe on Pinterest and tweaked it to fit what we like.  After I made it the first time, I no longer went by a recipe.  It is really delicious!  

 Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  I also line the glass pan I use with nonstick foil (if you don't, make sure you spray the glass pan).  First, you whisk eggs together in a bowl.  For a small 8x8 pan use 6-8 eggs depending on how moist you would like it.  I used 6 for this time and it was a little dry.  I then added a little bit of milk and whisk that in.  I added 4 cups of frozen shredded hash browns.  I added about a 1/4 cup of shredded cheddar cheese and 1/4 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese.  I then mixed in half a bag of Oscar Myer real bacon bits.  I poured the mixture into the pan.  On top, sprinkle the rest of the bag of bacon bits, another 1/4 cup of each shredded cheddar and mozzarella.  I also cover the pan with foil and bake for about 35 minutes.  Be sure to check to see if it is cooked through before serving.  

I forgot to take a picture of it before we dug in!  I also made a big pan of this when Will's family came.  That time I used an 11x13, 18 eggs and about 10 cups of frozen shredded hash browns.  It did take longer to cook.  They loved it.  Enjoy!

More Craft Room Progess

On Friday I painted the ceiling! :-)  Then we were away for the weekend at Will's band's gig Saturday and spent Sunday out on our friend's boat at their camp.  On our way back we stopped at Lowe's and got the baseboard that we need.  We also bought dowels and brackets to hang all of the ribbon I found for such a great deal! 

 

Yesterday morning Will was able to finish up the sanding in the funky corner in my craft room.  So... yesterday afternoon I primed and painted the rest of it!  It is all painted and ready to go.  It was SUCH a hot day for painting, but it was well worth it.  Emily came over white the primer was drying and we floated out in the lake for awhile.  Boy did that feel refreshing!

I have so many ideas for this room!!  I am getting awfully excited to finish it!  More updates to come shortly!

Homemade Sweet Tea

Today it was almost 90, which is pretty warm for Maine.  So while we were working on the house, I decided I would try out a new idea I saw in the local newspaper.  

I placed four regular tea bags in the coffee maker with the tags dangling out.  I then measured 4 cups of water with the coffee pot and poured it in the top, just like making coffee.  I turned it on and waited for it to brew.  While I was waiting, I got out my Pampered Chef pitcher.  It has lines on it for every quart, which came in helpful for this.  I put a cup of sugar in the bottom of the pitcher.  As soon as the tea was done brewing, I poured it in the pitcher and mixed it so the sugar dissolved.  It was now up to the 1 quart line, due to it being 4 cups of tea.  Then I added 2 quarts of cold water.  This brought it to the 3 quart line.  I found it to be a little on the sweet side, which I really like, but if you prefer it a little less sweet, you could add ice or more water.  It was GREAT!  

I went to my friend Emily's house today to drop some things off to her and told her about it.  She wanted to make some too.  She only has a K-cup coffee maker so we used her tea kettle on the stove.  Also she only had a smaller pitcher that wouldn't fit the recipe I made, so we cut everything in half.  :-)

Talk about super cheap to make... just a little sugar and a few tea bags... :-)  AND it's YUMMY!

Craft Room progress!

This afternoon I started painting my craft room!  Here's what it looks like so far. :-)  

Yard Sale finds!

I am going to brag for a minute because I still can't get over what I was able to get today at a yard sale. Emily and I love going to yard sales!  You never know what you can find.  First, I found a two bags of yarn.  They were both labeled as baby yarn.  There were a total of 6 large skeins, 3 medium size, and 12 smaller or partially used skeins.  I LOVE using baby yarn.  I make so many baby blankets for baby showers.  This is what was in the bags...

THEN... as Emily and I walked around that table, there was a file crate container (it came with the top too, but it took it off before I took the pictures) with a bunch of spools of ribbon.  I also bought that.  It looked like this... 

  

So after I got home, I sat and pulled out the spools of ribbon, rewrapping some and taping the ends.  As I did that I placed them by color.  When I was done I was absolutely AMAZED that there were 123 spools of ribbon!!!  About 3/4 of them were brand new!!  4 of the rolls were polka dots, which is my theme for my classroom this fall.  After I laid them out, it looked like this...

What a great addition both of these things will make to my new craft room... that is nearing completion!  When all was said and done, I added up a low estimate of how much I would have paid at retail price if I would have bought all of the yarn and ribbon in a store.  Don't forget that there was also a file tote box included too!  It was over $130 dollars worth of goodies.  For all of this...

...I paid only $7.  :-)  I am one happy girl!

Craft Room Update

Will finished mudding and mudding my room... all but one of the funky corners (the room is kind of an odd shape).  I was able to prime 2 and a half of the walls in the room tonight.  The rest of the priming and painting will be done tomorrow!  I can't wait!!  YAY!

Painted Bucket

Originally I had bought about a half dozen of these tall buckets from a friend who had just gotten married to use for my wedding last summer.  At the time they were white.  I lent them to a teacher friend for her daughter's wedding.  They needed them to be black to go with their decor, so that's what you see in this picture.  

I scuffed up the paint with a metal brush and then primed it with an oil based primer.  After it was dry I used a dark blue spray paint.  I lost track of how many coats I did.  I believe it was about 10 to get it as dark as I wanted it and to completely cover the white.  I am going to put this in our dining room with some twig type decorations in it.  

The flash causes it to not look as dark blue as it really is... but I love the outcome... even if it took that many coats of spray paint!  :-)  It'll look good against the chocolate walls in the dining room!

Cleaning my hair straightener

My hair straightener was GROSS!!!  It was so sticky that I had stopped using it.  I saw a way to clean it on Pinterest and thought I would give it a try.  This is what it looked like before...

Gross, right?  So I put this on top of a plastic bag on the counter in the kitchen.  I also could have done it over the bathroom sink.  It's not super messy, don't worry.  I got out a glass bowl and in it I put 1/4 cup of baking soda.  I used a plastic spoon to mix it.  I slowly started pouring hydrogen peroxide into it while pausing to mix.  You need to put enough in for it to form a thick paste.  I put on disposable gloves and took some of the paste out of the bowl with my fingers.  I rubbed it on the surface of the hair straightener.  The gunk came off within a few seconds.  I was amazed!  I continued getting more of the paste and moving to a different spot to rub some more.  It worked GREAT!!!  The paste kind of turns brown and a little flaky as it gets the gunk off.  I wiped it with a damp napkin at first as I was working along and at the end wiped it with a dry one.  The only place where I had trouble was where my switch was, because the on off switch is sort of ribbed.  I used a toothpick to get out the paste that got stuck in there.  If I need to do this again, I think I would use painters tape on that part to cut out having to do that.  I couldn't be happier with how it came out.  As you can see, it looks new!!  Hope this is able to help!!  

  

Anticipation!!

Argh!  It's killing me.  I just want to PAINT my craft room NOW!!  Will is finishing up the last of the mudding and sanding as we speak!  I just want it painted so it is that much closer to being finished!! :-)  I guess I'll have to find something else to work on...

Reading and Relaxing

I spent a great deal of time reading in the hammock today.  I have to admit, it was nice to relax and enjoy the sounds of the lake.  

 

 

Our adorable nephew!

I just put this video on YouTube for my sister-in-law and wanted to share it here as well.  It was taken a few weeks ago when we were down at her house delivering the piano that my husband is playing.  His band just added this song, "Shape I'm In" by The Band to their set list.  I can't help by smile when I watch it.  It is too cute!  Enjoy!

Craft Room progress

Now that the wiring for the bathroom lights is done, Will was able to Sheetrock the wall behind it in what will be my craft room.  I am excited for it to be ready to finish mudding as well.  He has all of the other walls mudded already.  This room is a little bigger than it looks in this picture.  The wall to the right is the one that abuts the bathroom where the wiring was done. Here is a picture of the current progress of my craft room after tonight.  

 

Light boxes for the bathroom lights

Will and I did a lot of measuring and double checking before we found the correct spot for the lights that will be going above the double vanity and mirrors.  As you can see, the vanity and mirrors are not installed yet.  After some careful calculations, we found the correct spots for the electrical boxes for behind the lights.  He wired them tonight as well.  This is what it looks like so far.  

 

Little Bathroom Bucket

I had this little bucket from the dollar section at Target.  I came up with an idea to place stickers on it to make it say, "Wash ~n~ Fold 25c".  The letter stickers were from the Dollar Tree.  I put clothes pins in it as well.  It is on top of a shelf in the half bathroom/laundry room.  It was a cute little project for just over a dollar.  :-)  

 

Special Reading Seats

I am going to use these as special reading seats during independent reading time.  The students will be able to place these where they would like to sit during that time.  

This was another yard sale find yesterday with Emily.  I bought these four round placemats for $0.25 each.  The original tags were still on them from Target for $1.99 each.  They will go perfectly in my new polka dot classroom!