Yummy Mummy!

I told you yesterday that I LOVE Halloween. Today for lunch I made a Mummy Pizza, the recipe is from Yummy Healthy Easy and it is definitely very easy, and super quick! Enjoy your Halloween!

A little bit of this... A little bit of that...

I have attempted a number of different blogs in the past year, most have them have been started in order to try and keep my personal blog personal, and my work blogs work related. Let's just say that I have failed miserably. I end up spending more time on one than the other, and let's just be honest, in many ways, work is personal. So here it goes, I'm just going to mash them both together.

Now for some, this wouldn't work so well, but I'm a preschool teacher/child care center owner, so most of what I do at work is what other people do at home.  I feel like my preschool activities and tips will fit right in on my own lifestyle blog, because even though I don't have kids of my own, I tend to relate to moms more often than not because my days are filled with the same things that theirs are.

One of my favorite resources is teachers pay teachers, and I have made it my mission to try and build their collection of preschool resources. Here is one of the activities on my site that is great for young children who are getting ready for school, and school aged children who might need a review (one pack includes numbers 1-10, another has 11-20) . There are also a large number of free items available for download across the site, and some really great clip art too!

What I've been up to

I mentioned in my last post that I've had a lot of down time, which has been the silver lining to this whole insane process.  I've spent the vast majority of it doing fun crafty projects.  I was lucky enough to score a great deal on a new sewing machine, which i am obsessed with! I wanted to share my latest projects with you - much of what I have been working on will eventually become Christmas gifts, so unfortunately I can't share those yet, but here are my recent favorites:

1. I taught myself how to knit, actually Kristin from Good Knit Kisses taught me how to knit, her videos are amazingly easy to follow.  I've wanted to learn how to knit for a while, and while I have a grasp on the basics, I am definitely in need of some more practice.  I keep starting the same scarf over again, but it has given me something to do!

2. I have started making hexagons and hand piecing them. It is my dream to make a giant quilt with all of my itty bitty hexagons (you know I have it all laid out in my head), but for now i'm happy to have a project that i can do little bits at a time.  I swear I have the attention span of a two year old! I have been following Mollie at Wild Olive for a couple of years, and her hexagon projects are so cute that I kept saying I would sit down and give it a shot, if it is something that you want to try she has a great tutorial.

3. I made myself a new wallet.  Well, technically I made myself two new wallets.  Since I took the leap and bought my nice new sewing machine, I promised myself that I would really learn how to use it. My first attempt was typical; I really wanted to do the project, even though I knew that I didn't have all of the supplies, I wanted to do it, and I wanted to do it now. It turned out ok, and I was proud of myself for attempting, and successfully inserting two zippered pockets, but after using it for a couple of weeks there was one major design flaw that was driving me NUTS.  See, I'm not really a pattern person, I don't have the patience to cut out all of the pieces and read the instructions, so I made up the pattern for this first wallet as I sewed.  The result was a wallet that had credit card slots that were just too big.  Every time I opened my wallet my cards fell out.  After a couple of panic attacks from thinking I had lost my driver's license or credit card (they were in the bottom of my purse), I decided it was time to ditch my very cute, yet highly un-functional wallet.

I decided to try again, but this time I found a tutorial (thank you That*Darn*Kat!) which gave me some measurements to follow, and some great techniques for creating card slots.  But I also personalized it a bit, including extra spots for coupons.  I had originally intended to create a tutorial for you, but to be honest, my favorite thing about making this wallet was that I could use some basic measurements and customize the rest to work for me, I think that is what DIY is really all about, not copying exactly what someone else has done, but taking a few ideas from a few different people and creating something totally new.  THese are photos of my second attempt, which worked beautifully. I am so in love with this wallet!

I'm sure to be busy attempting to finish these little projects. Hopefully they will help me stay sane while I continue to wait!

Thank goodness for great quotes

I've been busy busy busy since my last post, how's this for a quick update, I'm starting my very own child care center! I knew that this would be a huge undertaking, and I did not expect it to be easy, but I also didn't expect it to take this long.

I feel like I've hit a brick wall, you know the one, where you begin to doubt everything that you know to be true.  At this point I'm doing a lot of sitting and waiting, which tends to be the case when your become dependent on a state agency (I'm currently waiting approval for a day care license)' and we all know that waiting breeds the worst kind of anxiety.

Ironically, the thing that has kept me going (bedsides my amazing husband, who I swear believes in me more than I believe in myself) is the same thing that I turned to constantly when I found out that I had lost my job, which is what started this whole journey in the first place: quotes on Pinterest.

Some people just know how to say exactly what I need to hear, thank goodness! Here are the two that are sticking with me tonight. Maybe I'll make them my mantra :

Traveling queen!

Call me a jet-setter, I spent the morning in Fort Wayne and tomorrow I'm on a plane to Philadelphia! This girl has been busy busy.

I'm going to Philly with my co-teacher (who also happens to be one of my favorite people in the entire world) to accept a grant/award from the Terri Lynne Lokoff Child Care Foundation. We are so excited because she received this award 2 years ago and we had an amazing time on that trip, we totally deserve a little fun time, so hopefully all goes well!

I am also very impressed with myself because I have managed to pack three days worth of stuff in my carry on. I get that people do this all the time, but those people are not me, so this is a huge deal. I am a notorious over-packer, so to get clothes for an open house, luncheon, awards ceremony and flight home all in one teeny bag has been my major accomplishment of the week!

Moving on

Wow. It's been a while. Lets just say my life has been a bit nuts lately, which has left me feeling lots of ups and lots of downs. BUT I am so over it. I'm ready to move on and this is the best opportunity to do so, seeing as I have a whole week off!

I started today with a trip that I've been meaning to make for a while - a local baking supply store that I've *gasp* never been to. I have a friend who has been raving about this place and I finally took it upon myself to check it out. Let me just say one thing; how did I not know about this?! Oh. My. Goodness. Every kind of pan, cookie cutter, wrapper, sprinkle, extract, tool, you name it, you can find it here. I was honestly in this tiny little store for at least an hour. If you find yourself in Maumee Ohio you MUST stop in The Baker's Kitchen, and forewarning, there is an actual bakery attached to the store and if you don't faint from the sugary sweet amazing smell then you just may have to buy baked goods before you leave.

The other fun thing that I did to start off my week was to try out the Popsicle molds that I got at Ikea not too long ago. I used a recipe from the Cookie Dough Lovers cookbook - cookie dough Popsicles! Also amazing! I took a picture but it did not do the Popsicles justice, and then they started melting, so I ate them, hence, no pictures, but I promise that they tasted amazing.

Now I'm off to bed early because I am getting up at 3:30 in the morning to embarks on a pilgrimage - Vera Bradley outlet sale here I come!!!!!

Thank goodness for the weekend

To say that going to work has been difficult this week would be an understatement, which is why I am so glad that it is the weekend. At least on the weekend I can pretend that nothing has changed, I can still be myself and do what I enjoy. And thank goodness, I can revel in doing nothing at all if I want.

I did get a couple of things done today. I finally got the rest of my Easter decorations out, and I dyed eggs. I came up with a bit of a brainstorm this year, if I may say so myself. See, I haven't dyed eggs since I moved out of my parents house because no one in my house eats hard boiled eggs, and I just couldn't see buying them, dying them, and then never eating them. This year I decided to go ahead and dye my eggs without hard boiling them first. I figure, I have a ton of baking to do this week, so at least I can enjoy the pretty eggs when I crack them into a bowl.

That said, I wanted to make sure that I used dye that was food safe, because I wasn't sure how much of the dye would actually touch the egg inside of the shell. I had considered dying them with coffee, but I really wanted fun, bright colors. I found a ton of different spices and berries that I could use, but I really didn't want to buy all of this stuff, so I used something that I already had plenty of in my cupboard - food coloring.

Genius, right?! It was so simple, I put a blob (really technical and precise) of gel food coloring in a bowl, added a half of a teaspoon of vinegar, so that the color would adhere to the egg a little better, then I filled the bowl with water and whisked until the gel was dissolved. I added a couple of eggs to each bow and then put the bowls all in the fridge for at leas two hours. When I rinsed them off I was pleasantly surprised. Some colors definitely worked better than others, the pink and purple were super bright while the yellow barely showed up at all. That said . I would definitely do it this way again! Now I can't wait to bake!