Kelly Finally Joined the Blogosphere!

Hey readers, if you want to follow something that truly is delicious, check out my husband Kelly's brand new blog "Kelly's Belly"! He is an excellent cook and decided to share his delicious recipes with more than just me. Check out his stuff at whatscookinatkellys.blogspot.com.

Meet Libby!

(hee hee, I blabberized our new cat! Blabberize.com)
http://blabberize.com/view/id/308039

Kelly and I got a cat! (Almost two weeks ago now.) She is the cutest, silliest, craziest thing I've ever encountered in my life. Poor Libby was 9 months old and a stray when the volunteer group who have a tiny room in our local Petsmart saved her. Since April, she's been living in a little kennel and only let out occasionally, but only in the tiny tiny room. She was sick a long time ago and got an ulcer in her left eye that left her a lavender spot and partially blind in that eye.

Kelly and I saw her through the glass and immediately thought she was adorable. She's a muted torti, which means she is striped gray and tan. She's about a year old now, but quite petite and a little bow-legged in the back. (It's cute.)

When we brought her home she explored EVERYTHING, including jumping in and out of the bathtub about 50 times. Now she's figured out that the longest stretch in our apartment is from the corner of the dining room to the bathroom. Everyday she runs laps from corner to corner a couple times. It makes us sad she hasn't had room to run for a long time. She is playful and enjoys batting at Starburst wrappers and carrying them around in her mouth. Sometimes she sits on our couch like a chubby couch potato, right on her kitty-bum with her back legs in front.

She likes our windows and sits behind the blinds of our sliding door to get a her spot in the sun, and every time we come home she comes up to the door and then goes after her scratching post that is right there. I guess it means she's happy we're home? We got a new vacuum and she LOVED the box and cardboard stuffs it came in...but didn't like the vacuum itself once it turned on and moved! Hahaha...she freaked out. It didn't help she kept trying to hide in the next place I was going to vacuum.

We don't let her in our bedroom. We call it our kitty-free zone when she's getting hyper. She is quiet all night, but when she hears our alarm go off in the morning, she starts sticking her paws under the door like she knows we're awake and she needs some attention. Everywhere we go, she follows us. When I am on the computer, she curls up in my lap or on the chair next to me to keep me company.

Sometimes when she is being especially cute, I call her Nermal. I don't really know why. I think it's something about how the back of her head looks?

It's fun having our little Libby as part of our family now.

Best Day Ever!

School was canceled today at about 9:30 because there was a gas leak in the building (it was bad! Just being in there for a couple minutes gave me a headache) and there's no school tomorrow because it's Primary election day! Sweet! Unexpected four day weekend!! So when I got home Kelly and I went out to breakfast before I dropped him off at school. I think this is going to be a good week.

Calling all Saucy Readers: I Need Your Help!

Hello my faithful followers! The time has come for me to start a new blog...don't worry. You don't have to follow it. Here's what's going on: I am in a class at Hopkins called Paperless Classroom, the purpose of which is obvious, and I'm super into it for many reasons:

Reason #1: I'm all for going green. I threw out so much paper last year and hauled home even more to recycle, but I'd just rather not use so much.

Reason #2: They are severely limiting how much copy paper each teacher is allowed at my school. Basically I have 1,000 sheets to last me a month. I have 120 students every day in 2 different subjects, so even if I make class sets I still have to make 60 copies. Also, I already spend too much money on my classroom. I don't want to spend more buying paper.

Reason #3: I HATE HATE HATE waiting in line at the copier in the morning. I have much better things to do.

Anyway, so for my class, I need to start a new blog that is for the class, and potentially can be my teacher-y tech blog, but despite all my skills, I am having a hard time coming up with a name for my new blog. I want it to be something that works for a teacher, but still sounds kinda quirky and, you know, like me. So, now is the time dear readers to contribute! Your mission:

Give me names, or give me "F"!
(for not starting a blog)

(Heh, heh, get it? It sorta phonetically matches.)

Or to ask more nicely, please leave lots of comments on this post with lots of ideas for names for my new blog. The winner will get a fabulous prize! Which may or may not actually be fabulous...or even a prize...but um...I will dedicate my new blog to you! (it's okay, you still don't have to read it.) So, let the ideas pour in!

Many thanks,

Teacher Dani

Hey Look! I DIY-ed Again!

I know my titled kind of looks like I died again spelled in lolcat or something, but in actuality, this is not what I meant. I was, in fact, referring to the acronym* DIY--as in Do It Yourself, which I'm sure most of you know, since, as far as I know, my readers are intelligent people. However, there is always the possibility that a dummy looking for a new religion could happen upon my blog, and although disastrous events most likely would not ensue, no matter how dramatic that sounds, I'm sure that at least the explaining process to said dummy could be annoying. Just kidding. There are no dummies. I'm a teacher, so I truly believe that.

*Side note on acronyms: why do we use them so much? I really don't know. I especially hate it when the acronym is harder than just saying all of the actual words, for example, SYTYCD (standing for an excellent TV show So You Think You Can Dance) I mean, that just takes longer to think about than to just write out the whole thing, and saying it is even more ridiculous since it has the same number of syllables. Even worse is when people say the the letter 'W' instead of the one-syllable word it is standing for. This just goes to show that my teacher philosophy of "there are no dummies" is wrong. One further thought on acronyms and me: as a member of both TFA and the LDS religion, I cannot escape acronyms, no matter how stupid they are. Thank you for reading my rant. Read on.

Believe it or not, the point of the post was not to get into the finer points of dummies, teacher philosophies, or the nuisance of acronyms. The real point of this post is so I can show off my mad skills: I created/upholstered/tufted a headboard for our bed! I got into the other stuff because I am feeling particularly silly and hyperactive at the moment. So sorry.

Back to the masterpiece: It all started with a piece of plywood, lovingly picked out at Home Depot and cut to 3x5' by some teenage jerk who doesn't deserve the job. Nah, just kidding. He just bugged me by telling me Home Depot doesn't cut things for you just because he was feeling lazy and chillin' with his friends. Good thing I knew they did from a previous online check--and the fact he was standing right by the saw.

After I got the foundation for my headboard, I spent a long time at JoAnn's picking out the perfect fabric (black) and buttons (after asking four people, finally someone knew where I could find the ones you cover with your own material. Success!) And I found a 10 yard roll of batting for $9. Sweet! Oh yeah, and at Home Depot, I also bought a staple gun (and staples so I could actually do some damage with it, of course) so I could develop upholstering skills. Something no one taught me, I just DIM (Did It Myself--acronyms: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em/make up your own to add to the growing ocean called alphabet soup.)

So I brought my loot home, drilled six carefully-measured holes into the wood, cut as many layers of batting as I could (8), and got it and the material situated under the board and started stapling like crazy. I mean, I started professionally upholstering a headboard to go in the blank space at the head of our bed to add to our reading-in-bed comfort and overall feng shui.

Then I used the buttons that I covered in the aforementioned material and carefully sewed them onto the spots where I had drilled the holes, using another button on the back of the wood to keep it from ripping through the batting and fabric. So now my upholstered headboard is tufted (which is a fun word to say).

Now, marvel at my beautiful tufted headboard:

Tufts!

Sorry for the spots on the lens. Anyway, my headboard! But I think our bed still needs some accessories, like some throw pillows...

...or Kelly. He accessorized our bed nicely, and enjoys reading while leaning against our new headboard.

Kelly is very nice and keeps telling me it's wonderful and looks professionally-made. So now I'm going pro. Just kidding. Kelly just lies to make me happy sometimes.

Thank you for reading my ridiculously silly post and letting me brag about my menial accomplishments. Hopefully the next post will be comprised of better stuff--like my birthday.

But to a more serious matter: I am awesome.

My staplegun madness!

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

My parents bought Kelly and me a giftcard to Ikea for our anniversary because they knew we really wanted a dresser from there. We set it up and it looks so good! But the wall above it looked blank. Like the rest of the walls in our room. I decided that a mirror above the dresser would be a good thing, so I set off on a quest to find a suitable mirror. The result was a $10 mirror from Craigslist. Awesome. I drove down to DC and picked it up from an ornery guy who had a hard time with English, but I had my mirror. The only problem is...it looked like this:

While it is kind of a quirky-cute sea green color, it was scraped up like crazy and didn't match anything in our apartment, especially our white-walled bedroom with black furniture and red bedspread and curtains, which was to become its home. A quick trip to home depot and that part of me that definitely comes from my mom remedied it, though. Two days of sanding, taping, and 3 coats of black paint fixed it. Mostly.

The only problem was when I took the tape and paper off the glass, the mirror reflected the unpainted back edge. Poop. So I got to work prying off the back which was stapled down by a crazy-strong giant, no doubt. Ask Kelly; it was quite a job. But I got it done, with some help from my trusty assistant, Kelly, painted the back, and cleaned off the mirror with a razor to get off the paint that Houdini'd through my tape the first time around. Fortunately, while the back had been haphazardly stapled on, there were these two metal bars that probably had been used to hold it to another (green, I hope,) dresser at some point and they were attached with screws. So I kept those, got out the handy drill that Kelly won in a raffle at our high school graduation party (I won a chair. It's still in Utah.) and fixed the back on way better than it had been! Hooray! I love that drill that Kelly won. He's never used it, but I sure do a lot. At least he didn't win a pedicure kit like his friend Aaron did. Ha ha ha. Anyway, back to my mirror. I hooked on some hang-it-to-the-wall-loopy-things (that's the official name for them, you know) and got it on the wall! Check out our awesome dresser with a formerly-scratched-up-green-mirror-that-is-now-new-looking-and-black!

I'm so awesome.

Oh yeah, by the way see those pictures on the dresser? Kelly and I also fixed some old ugly brown frames by painting the black, letting them dry, then painting a thick coat of red over the top, and then sponging it while it was still wet to make it look all cool and marble-y.

Then we stuck some of our baby pictures in them. Aren't we cute?

Happy Birthday Kelly!

Kelly turned 23 last week (I'm kind of late writing this; it was on the 6th) and we had such a fun afternoon together! I did an excellent job at keeping his presents secret, if I may say so myself. I gave him Star Wars episodes I, II, and III (and I even watched all three with him in the following week.) He thought that was all he was getting. Then I carried out a bigger box and said, "I know you think clothes don't count as birthday presents, but I don't know if shoes count..." And he believed me!

Yeah, it was a Wii.

He made his AWESOME! I'M SO SURPRISED face, and jumped up and kissed me. Well, tried to kiss me--he more like bashed his face into mine and I ended up with both lips bleeding, but I don't care. He totally loved his present!

When I was in the bathroom checking out my bleeding lips in the mirror, he came to tell me that it only came with one controller but I could play first, but there was another present--Wii remote number 2! Woohoo! I know this is bragging, but I'm pretty awesome.

We played Wii Sports for awhile and I kicked his butt in bowling and boxing, and he kicked my trash at tennis and baseball, and we tied at golf. Then we had dinner at TGIFridays. So tasty. On Saturday we celebrated a little more and had a little cake with 23 candles! And he blew them all out on the first try.

But anyway, Happy Birthday Kelly! I love you!