Finding Franklin

I'm just gonna go ahead and put this out there.... I'm not good at keeping up with a blog, okay?  I'm just not.  So, these are just gonna come when they come.  And here one is!

I just had the most wonderful day with my amazing husband!  We are coming up on our first wedding anniversary, and that just blows my mind.  I've been a wife for almost a whole year already!!!  What?!  Well, in this past year, we've learned that time is not always on our side.  Both of our jobs involve more than just the typical "work hours".  We don't have such a thing.  We don't clock out.  Our jobs follow us everywhere we go.  That being said, I have had to learn that time with my husband is very valuable, and we have got to be intentional in reserving time to just be us. 

Today was one of those times.  We both had massages booked at Massage Envy in Franklin this morning, and then we both got haircuts. (Tony at Salon P'NASH is the best!  He's been doing my hair since my Freshman year of high school!)  Since we were already in Franklin, we decided to make a day out of it.  Separately, both of our hairdressers asked us what we were going to do for the rest of the day, and we actually were able to say, "I don't know!"  We had no other plans today!  That RARELY happens!  So, we decided to head downtown and just see where the day led us. 

I have seriously missed this place.  It's quite unfortunate, but even while I was living in Franklin, I never fully took advantage of this beautiful town.  We mostly came to the square for Festivals and such.  This section of town is filled with wonderful restaurants, unique shops, and plenty of history.

We ate at Mellow Mushroom and ordered a pizza half and half.  Half Hawaiian (my fave) and half Red Skin Potato (a newbie).  For those of you who would like my opinion... The potato pizza was good... like a loaded baked potato... but it has this ranch dressing on it with a kick... and I probably could have done without that.

Then, we walked around the shops and found some unique treasures!  Too bad we are not rich and couldn't afford to take home any of those wonderful things...

One of my favorite shops is Philanthropy.  If you've never been, they have trendy clothing and other items that they sell and help provide money to different organizations in need.  Here's something funny I saw in the shop:

True story.  I need this... Check out the current state of our bathroom:

Seriously.  I just took that.

So anyway... My most favorite part of the store was this PRAYER WALL!  This store is amazing!  They have a wall with nails tapped in, and you can write a prayer request on a tag and hang it on the wall.  Then, you can take someone else's prayer request with you and pray for them!  LOVE IT.

This is the prayer request we took.  Precious child wanting to pray for his/her mom!  Whoever you are, we are praying for her!

We went into some antique shops and a SWEET vintage candy/sweets shop.  SO FUN.  D got ice cream and and orange cream soda.  I got some special goodies that I'll be using for the upcoming baby shower of my sweet sweet Caroline!!! (No pictures.  You must wait til after the shower for that!)

We did find a cutsie cute shop with precious little kids toys and things, and OHMYGOODNESS, I just want to spoil little Jude (Caroline's future baby).  D had to keep telling me no.  Or at least giving me the *stoplookingatthebabystuff* look.  But I just loved it all, so I will have to remember for future times to go back and get something every once in awhile!  I did almost get this letter train, but as you can see, the D looks more like and R, so we nixed that idea.  Sorry Caroline!

No Jure's for the Herron family!

P.S. We also the new Franklin Theater!!!  I remember when they were talking about tearing it down and how devastated so many people from the community were.  There are some good memories tucked away for me from that theater.  It was so different from every other one I'd ever been to.  You could see a movie for like $3, and they had tables and couch-like seats for the movie.  They were never the newest releases, but that made it even more fun to go see an older film with your friends!  Well, they didn't end up tearing it down (Hooray!), and this nice man brought D and me inside and told us all about the changes.  Movies are still cheap ($5), and they still have the tables in the theater!  But they have jazzed it up, and even added a stage for musicals, concerts, etc.  It looks like fun!  Maybe I can bring some of ya down there with me sometime to check it out!

We were going to go bowling, but by the time we finally got back to our cars, we realized that it's TIRING going out for a day on the town like regular people!  So we decided to head back home to see a movie instead.  We decided to go see Looper because it looked enticing.  Here's my thing people: Please go online and check out movie ratings and the reasons they received that rating before deciding to go see a movie.  Hello.  I don't need naked ladies all over this giganto screen people!  So disappointing.  It's a great movie.  There is no need for all of that.  None.  Don't you remember days when they made awesome movies and they didn't even need to have ta-ta's hanging out all over the place?  Because I do.  And I miss those days.  D and I have made a pact.  We are going to research all movies before we see them.  If there is necked people (necked... what a terrible pronunciation), we aren't going.  End of story.  It's not worth it. 

Other than the unnecessary exposure, today was one of the most perfect days of our marriage thus far!  I love being a normal couple with limited plans and freedom to enjoy ourselves for a change! 

8 Days until I'm a woman with an anniversary under my belt!
Tick, tick, tick!

Live, Love, CREATE

Though I am a crafty crazed lady, I rarely find extra time to create all the wonderfulness I crave.  (That was a lot of 'cr' words.)  When I do get a moment to make something fun, or pretty, or...... whatever, I take a picture because the moments are rare!  Here are some things I've created recently:

(Let me preface... these don't necessarily fall under the "craft" category... but they are things that have enabled me to have a creative outlet...)

Lemon Poppy seed Cake with Lemon frosting!  Last year I had a bridal shower thrown for me by a few wonderful ladies back in Franklin.  Mariellen Sasseen made this DELICIOUS masterpiece and I begged for the recipe.  Fortunately for me, part of the shower was to bring recipe cards, and she already had this one ready for me!  It has two layers, so that was a first for me to experiment with, and I decided to decorate it with some fresh lemon slices!  I was super excited that the halves fit around the cake perfectly.  I was anxiously praying that they would all line up, and they did!  Unfortunately, this is not a cake that I got to eat.  I donated it for a cake walk at our church!  My lovely friend, Jordan, won the first cake walk, and she chose mine!  It was a proud moment in my life.

Using cleaned out baby food containers that were donated to me, I was able to create a class set of dice manipulators.  We can use these for ALL KINDS of math activities!  (addition, subtraction, place value, comparing numbers, etc)  The kiddos can shake the dice inside the container, so no crazy chasing of rolling cubes all over the classroom!

LOVED THIS ACTIVITY!!!  My bestest Caroline is gonna be poppin out a precious tot here in a couple of months.  Her sisters/moms helped to throw her first shower, and her sister Amy had such wonderful ideas for the event!  Everyone created a onesie.  I've seen this before, but it's normally with markers, and they don't turn out the best.  Amy provided a basket of various fabrics, scissors, and fabric glue.  They turned out SO cute.  I think little Jude might actually wear some of them!!!  This is the one I made.  It's a tree.  I hope you didn't need me to tell you that.  This type of crafting is totally up my alley.

For my classroom...  This is a Pinterest idea...  Last year, I used socks as erasers.  (WHAT?!?!)  Yes, socks.  Clean ones.  Tissues are wasteful, and they take time to pass out.  With socks, the kids can wipe easily, then stick the marker inside the sock for safe keeping.  Once they get passed the initial weirdness, they love it.  This year, I tried something even more fun... pom poms.  I hot glued them to the cap.  They are super cute and the students thought it was the best thing since Justin Bieber.  Well, here's my thought, "We'll see how long this lasts"...  Immediate problems I've noticed: once you use the poms to wipe, they start turning black (duh) which means they aren't as pretty as this picture.  Also, if the poms aren't glued super tight, they start pulling off of the caps.  So... cute idea... might be going back to the socks soon.

Fruit pizza!!!! I made this last night/today for our Fellowship Meal at church.  We were raising money for the youth, and so I helped by making a dessert.  A friend from our young married couples small group makes this all the time, and I cannot stop dreaming about the deliciousness.  So, I decided to go for it myself.  Incredible easy to make.  And look how pretty?!  Awww.... I mean, it's deceptive... Is it healthy or not?  I think the fruit balances out the cookie and cream cheese icing...  Right?

Yay for making things!  I've been stalking Pinterest.  I have boards full of things I want to make.  Let's all come together to ask God for a couple of extra hours in the day.

Amen.

Let me backpedal a bit...

Okay, so blogs are so much easier to maintain during lazy summer days.  Seriously, I have been so busy I have not even read anyone else's blogs either!  ***GASP***  However, it does help that my husband is out of town for a week, so I am going to have some extra downtime to go blogtastic on you!

Well, I'm certainly not going to sit here and share every last detail of my life since my last post, even though I know you would skip all the way through the post and only look at pictures read every last word.  So, I will simply break apart a few pieces of the past couple of weeks in a couple of different posts to update!

First of all... I have a job, and that is GREAT.  Our school board was in a financial battle with the county commission, and it's been such a bumpy ride.  We finally started school a week and a half after the original start date.  Unfortunately, the budget was not accepted, and so we have had to face massive cutbacks across the county.  It's very disheartening to see our commissioners ignore the pleas of our community (you know... the ones who voted them into that position in the first place) to help support the financial needs of our schools.  We are extremely underfunded, especially compared to comparable school systems across the state.  I am so grateful to see have seen our Director of Schools stand up for what is most important: our students.  After all of the madness, we are still waiting to see what jobs will be cut over the next month or so, but we believe that our school is secure as it is a smaller elementary school and those will be the last to have to make cuts. 

One positive out of the delay was that teachers had extra time to prepare our classrooms.  (Which is what makes me laugh because there are some people that think we shouldn't have been paid for those days we were out.... How many teachers worked anyway!?)  Though my room is never finished, this is what my classroom ended up becoming before the kiddos have come and exploded all over it!

This is the door into my classroom.  I have a movie theme, so my first grade stars got to take a walk on the red carpet as they entered!

Here's the classroom as a whole...  Scary crowded... So many things in a small space!!!  Make it work, people!

Computers:  One that's up and running.  Two that are only monitors.  Thanks to budget cuts, it makes it so difficult for us to get technology in the classroom!  There is also my puzzle/game station, shelf full of books that looks like madness, and the backside of my classroom library.  I want to get some fabric to cover some of that up!  Take notice of the behavior chart with numbered clips for my Red Carpet Ready friends!

Big Book station on the left, Book Nook in the background.  It's for reading under the stars with the "stars" of children's stories (Clifford, Arthur, Curious George, etc).

A better look at Book Nook. 

Close up of the book organization.  On the right are my tubs organized by author, character, topic, and theme.  On the bottom are the leveled books that the students can choose from during station time. 

This is the cubby area/listening station ("Hearing Clearing").  I don't have storage in my room so you get to see all my junk on top of the shelves!  Don't look at it.  Seriously.  Stop.

Cabinet with as much little crafty-junk crammed in as humanly possible and Word Wall/Word Work station.

Carpet time... Hardly any room for my white board, but I make it work.  This is where I keep my Popcorn Words (Spelling words), sight words, weekly poem, etc.

Calendar time and shelves with materials I use throughout the day

On the left is my Math shelf (that I'm trying to hide) with manipulatives on the bottom.  Then you have my station board with Art Mart station underneath and the Write Site table on the right.

This year I decided to get rid of my desk and use my Reading Group table instead in order to save space.  I am FREAKING OUT with how on earth I am going to keep it clean enough to also have students sitting around totally organized and able to keep all things straight and orderly so that the Reading Group table is an inviting environment for my precious little ones.  Don't let the mess in the back trick you into thinking that's plenty of space for my junk.  Do you know how many piles of papers and randomness end up on my desk by the end of the day?!

Well... that's my room!  Some of it has been tweaked already, but I'm not gonna retake all of those pictures to show you.  So... deal.  

Let the chaos begin!