Give a Little Bit

A very close member of my family will soon be blessed with a baby boy. Tomorrow I have her shower to attend. I hate buying from a registry as well as gift cards. I know that sounds crazy because why not give a person exactly what they want. I just think it's impersonal. I've been racking my brain trying to think of something for this woman who is so important to my family and my life and it hit me~ scrapbook!

At Christmas time a talented friend of mine gave me what is basically the skeleton of a December scrapbook. It was just a basic scrapbook with paper and chipboard and ribbons added to the pages just waiting for the pictures to fill it. I found it to be a perfect gift. It forced me to take pictures over the month of December so I can fill the beautiful pages. It also is very personal and shows how much you value the person. When my girlfriend gave it to me, I was on cloud 9 for days and showed anyone who would look this beautiful album without any pictures in it. 

After Christmas I asked her about the level of difficulty involved in a project of that type. She let me know it's not really hard at all you just need materials and maybe an hour or two. I'm here to tell you she's right!!!! Tonight I sat at the kitchen table with all my random scrapbooking materials I have along with a few I purchased and in less than 2 hours I had a personalized album ready to go for the shower tomorrow. I have a present to give tomorrow that I can feel proud of and as an added bonus for the recipient all she'll have to do after her baby boy arrives is snap the photos, print them out and slap them in!

Materials:

• blank photo album with paper inserts for the pages (I like the 8x8 size)
• decorative papers
• embellishments
• adhesive
• time :)

I'll post pictures after the shower. I don't want to ruin the surprise!

Today was one of those days...
Every once in a while I have a day where I wish I wasn't a teacher. I typically love what I do but sometimes it just frustrates me. Today was one of those days. Due to my job as a special ed teacher I have odd responsibilities and meetings I have to attend. Right now we're in the middle of report card reviews so I've been sitting to look over the grades and growth being made by all kids. I then had to attend meetings where we again discussed the growth (or better lack of growth) of students. This meeting went on to last until 4:30. That means I sat in one meeting or another from 8:30 am until 4:30 pm with a 30 minute lunch. That is painfully mind numbing. Good came out of it but still...

Here's the awesomeness that came from it though. Earlier in the Summer I had made the decision to dabble in the idea of prepping meals in bulk to be eaten later. I happened to pull one of these such meals out of the freezer late last week and was able to throw it in the oven tonight and feed my family a good dinner. I'm starting to gather resources to continue this journey. My favorite one so far is Once A Month Mom. They have a massive data base of recipes and include sections for "whole" foods, gluten/dairy free, vegan and traditional. They recently have gone to a pay format but you can access recipes for free as well.

The recipe I used tonight was Unstuffed Pepper Bake and was thrilled with how well it had held up in the freezer and how yummy it was. Changes I might make or did make include NOT using onions (I HATE them) as well as swapping the tomato sauce for tomato soup. Whenever my grandmother and mother made stuffed peppers they used the tomato soup to top them and it just makes me feel good all over.

I'm jumping on the bandwagon... No judgements :)

Lately, I've been feeling a need to have a place to share my thoughts, ideas, recipes I'm trying and any other up or down in my life. You can chose to read it or not, you can comment or not the choice is yours. At this point I'm not sure what direction this is really going to go but I want to give it a shot. I'm doing more cooking, crafting and teachering (you know, making things to use with kids) and thought others might find some of the information helpful. Maybe one day this can be a link for pinterest :)