Ladies Night

Thursday night my lady friends and I gathered to help the beautiful Jordie to make some decorations for her upcoming wedding. I remember feeling super isolated and stressed when I was making decorations for our wedding, alone in Philadelphia so I definitely jumped at the chance to help out a friend. We filled confetti bags, and stamped some labels, wrapped letters and sewed photo booth props... all while chowing down on delicious snacks and chatting chatting chatting. My hope is that Jordie could feel even a LITTLE bit of weigh lifted off her shoulders when it comes to her upcoming wedding, and it's always great to have ladies night :)

Sammie and Jordie.

Sewing hearts.

full disclosure: I swiped these from Jordie's instagram. Too pretty not to share.

Jordie totally forgot about the cake she had made, so as we were leaving she packed me two pieces to take home... they didn't make it home :)

While we had ladies night, the boys got together for wings and beers at Buffalo Wild Wings... when I picked Keith up from Trent't house to go home we realized that Trent, Tytus and I had apparently coordinated outfits haha

Wise

I know I showed you some animals earlier this week, but here is a little taste of the rest of our habitat unit. The kiddos and I talked at length about owls, and learned some cool facts about them. I never pass up an opportunity to have them practice their cutting and pasting skills (which are decidedly awful most days) so we also talked about collage and then made these funky little owls. More than anything else this year, my students desperately pleaded with me to let them take these home haha.

Spontaneous Show

Now that Keith is working in the music business world he's been much more interested in seeing live music and making it a priority to see great bands when they come through town. I think that it was something we've always liked to do, we just got kind of lazy about pursuing it when he was a regular 9 to 5er. Regardless, I think I've been to more shows in the past 6 months than I went to in the past 2 years haha.

For the past couple months Keith has been talking about this band The Head and the Heart, and mentioned how he wanted to see them live, but both of their Nashville shows were sold out. Flash forward to Monday: I had a super long day and kind of wanted to just come home and relax with my husband, but when I texted him that, what message did I receive? I JUST SCORED 2 TICKETS FOR SUPER CHEAP! hahaha I should have known ;) Thankfully Keith knows how to get me on board for anything: filling my belly with Moes and getting me a king sized butterfinger for dessert haha. In the end I'm so glad that we got to go to see them live. It was SUCH an awesome show, AND my friend Sarah was there too. It was nice to have a spontaneous little week night date, and we were still in bed before midnight (which is way past our old married people bed time haha)

Habitat

For the last two weeks, the majority of my students and I have been talking about animals and their habitats. They each picked an animal and did some research on where that animal lives, which they then drew and then painted them with watercolors. I had done some watercolor painting with my elementary students earlier this year, but I feel like this was the first time they really spent lots of time with it. There were definitely some challenges, but I think they did an awesome job overall! These are my favorites:

Panda

Horse in a stable (not exactly their habitat but close enough haha)

Tiger

Elephant in the circus (again, not their habitat, but I appreciate the thought haha)

Kinder-turtle

Mega squirrel, or tiny tree?

Somewhere in here is a lion haha

Desert tortoise 

This sunset got a little out of control haha

another panda 

This one was one of my middle schoolers... I love foxes :)

Paradise

This Sunday, the evening weather was so spectacular that we couldn't justify eating inside but since we don't have a table for our deck yet, we did a little rearranging of the furniture and just brought our dining room table outside. The results were pretty magnificent:

I can't wait until we have a permanent table on the deck and we're able to host all of our favorite people. Did I mention that we're beyond thankful for this new house? I think we have seriously raised the bar for all future houses we will live in haha

Honky

And just because I've been so behind with blogging this month... I'll share some more photos from this weekend:

Saturday night after Chris and Jordan were done at their hockey game, Keith and his brother and I met them downtown to show them a little of the Nashville night life. Even though we were there relatively early (9pm!) it was still SO packed downtown. We didn't stay too long, just enough to hear one good band and for them to get an idea of what Music City is all about.

Brothers.

Chris and Jordan.

Christopher's

With a Flame

Like I mentioned, this weekend was CRAZY busy, and was full of awesome friends and family that were here visiting (all within like an... 18 hour span haha). Amidst all of that we finally found some time to put together our fire pit out back and celebrated that with our annual burning of the Christmas tree. My father and our good friend Ben both cleverly pointed out that YES we did move our dried out, 4 month old Christmas tree from our old house to our new house just for the purpose of burning it haha. I would say that it was pretty worth it :)

We stood very far back and watched in awe

It took a total of a minute for the tree to be nothing more than a puddle of ashes, but the boys put together a nice warm fire for us, and we spent the rest of the night chatting, listening to music and enjoying the great outdoors. 

Keith's makeshift cooler haha

We enjoyed the fire so much on Saturday night that after everyone left town we called up our friends Tytus and Jamie and invited them over to join us for dinner and another evening of enjoying this beautiful Nashville weather gathered around our fire pit. Tytus gladly built us a fire that was so warm we had to keep moving our stumps back haha. Still, I'm hoping that this summer will bring us many cool nights so that we can continue to enjoy gathering in our amazing backyard with all our friends and family :)

Obsessed

I think if I put this song on repeat I would have the motivation to clean our whole house twice... or just to dance forever. Needless to say... Keith showed it to me last night and I haven't turned it off yet. I always loved The Format and that has translated into a new love for Fun.

This weekend is a LITTLE crazy, we have 7 friends in town and spending the night, so I'm planning on tapping out and enjoying everyones company for as long as we have them here (and hopefully not getting too stressed in the meantime). Keith and I were able to get in a 6 mile run this morning in preparation for next weekends 10K AND we get to have burgers tonight from The Pharmacy which is always a treat. Hope you all have a great weekend too, and believe me, if you're feeling bummed at all: listen to that song. It will make you dance... or at LEAST make you shake your shoulders a bit haha

A Peek

Sometimes it feels like the new house is coming together slower than I want it too, but then I step back and remember that it took us almost the entire year we lived in the old house for it to really feel like "home". We have most of the rooms decorated the way that we want, and I think the next step will be to finish the living room, and our bedroom. Thankfully we have lots of friends and family making their way into town this Spring which I'm sure will help us find some extra motivation to fill up the walls (and we're making an Ikea trip in April, which is always an inspiration).

In the meantime, I snapped a photo of one wall in the living room because it just looked so perfect with the sleeping kitty :) Theo has been REALLY loving the new house, which he has shown by sleeping everywhere and anywhere haha

Friend Music

Last friday Keith and I had the honor of gathering with many good friends to celebrate the CD release of an awesome band: LULU MAE. Keith went to college with most of the members of this band, and we even got a chance to visit them in the studio as they recorded this album so we were especially excited to hear the finished product and cheer on our friends as they shared it with the world. I would highly recommend listening to the tracks on their website, and then downloading the album on iTunes. I've had it in my car since Friday, and STILL can't stop listening! Here are some photos from their set:

I had only ever seen them play an acoustic set before, but this album really warranted a full band performance and they totally delivered. Despite being completely exhausted, I couldn't walk about of that building without a smile on my face...

Speaking of exhaustion... Friday ended up being one of the busiest days I've had in awhile: I started super early with a doctors appointment, got called in to sub last minute, went straight to teaching an art class at a new community center, got home in a rush to change and then grabbed dinner at Mas Tacos, headed downtown to listen to the band Neulore that Keith needed to see for work, arrived at the Lulu Mae show, ran into the beautiful Jenny, heard some awesome tunes! then home to change into pajamas before the Tomlinson's and Cochran's arrived at our house to drop off a car on their way to Florida. CRAZY DAY! Which totally warranted a nice long morning of sleeping in on Saturday, and an afternoon of lounging on the couch haha.

How about you guys, anyone heard any great live music recently or listened to a really great new album?

Major Birthday

Last Wednesday marked one whole year since our friends Isaac and Carolyn brought their beautiful baby girl Sage into the world. I am still just beyond amazed at how fast this year has gone by and how much she has grown up! We could not feel more blessed that we have gotten to spend so much time with Sage throughout this year, and look forward to watching her grow and learn and mature even more! She really couldn't be cuter :)

Saturday night after the wedding shower, us ladies met up with our gentlemen and then headed to the Negley's house to celebrate Sage with a super fun 1st birthday party! Sage seemed to really love all the people, and the cake and the BALLOONS and especially the presents haha. We hadn't gotten to see her in a few weeks, and in just that short time she is already walking! All of the party guests took turns following her around wherever she happened to be meandering, which was seriously precious haha. It was really nice to get a chance to catch up with Carolyn and Isaac's families, whom we love dearly, and to celebrate Sage with sweet friends who we just can't see enough of. Here are some photos of the little one year old:

Getting stoked for that cake!

She was really pretty polite with the cake eating, just grabbed the frosting and licked it off her fingers like a lady haha

Loving all the shiny balloons

and all the new toys!

As much as she loved the new stuff, it seemed like she was just as content with tearing all the tissue paper out of the bags haha

Jordie, Trent, Jamie and Tytus :) 

and no: we're not ready to start making babies yet, we're more than content sharing our friends cute babies :) 

Shower

This Saturday was busy with parties, which means that it was full of friends and FOOD. The best! I started the party marathon by celebrating beautiful Jordana with a wedding shower. It feels like it was just the other day that her and Trent got engaged and now their wedding is just 2 months away! So excited for them both! The shower was a great opportunity to enjoy the gorgeous weather we had on Saturday, and to catch up with friends like Ashley, and my partner in crime, Jamie. Jordie's boss was so gracious to host us all for the afternoon and did NOT disappoint on the tasty goodies. I was so full when I left which is not always the case with tea parties haha. Jordie's friend Crystal took all the official photographs, but here are some shots that I snapped throughout the day:

That was not the only cookie that I ate haha

Jordie, Ashley and Sammie

Trent came by to open presents!

Taking fancy photos at the end of the party: I had to snap this because of how adorable the girl Jordie nannies for was being haha 

Stamped

Pheww, we finally have a taste of internet at the house again! (meaning at&t still hasn't figured their crap out, but we found some wifi to steal yay!) Anyway, while my husband slaves away on some dinner I'll do my best to catch you up on what has been going on with us.

Here are some photos of a project that I did with my art students this past week. I wanted to find a cheap and mass producible way to introduce them to making stamps/printmaking and I am very thankful that I found this post on pinterest because it was SO perfect (and safe!) I just gave the kids a small square of foam, had them draw a design in pencil, trace over it again so it was nice and deep, then they applied some paint and stamped away! Obviously there was some room for error here (for the kids that didn't draw their design hard enough, or the kids who ALWAYS put on way too much paint haha) Overall though, I felt like the results were MUCH better than they could have been. Best of all though... they really enjoyed this project and have already asked to do it again! (and my boss made a point to tell me she really loved it which is always a great pat on the back :)

These were stamps that I carved as examples, and I let the kids stamp them for me. 

An example of too much paint, but a decent attempt at a city scape.

One of my kindergarteners! She we so proud of these! 

More examples of too much paint, but I loved the colors all the same. 

Flowers, and a random Simpsons reference that another teacher made haha

This one was BY FAR my shining star. This kid really understood what we were trying to do, and made this AWESOME Nashville skyline... I might be a little obsessed haha

Also: this is what my car looks like when we paint haha anyone have a portable drying rack?

I have really loved being able to share my students art on the blog, and I hope that you enjoy seeing it! I just get so proud of my students sometimes, and they are finally getting to a point that they make cool things haha.