Friday!

For being on summer vacation, this week went by FAST and slow. I'm sitting here, slowly waking up and thinking to myself, man it's already Friday! while simultaneously thinking darn Friday, what took you SO long?

So here are my five great things this week!

um, didn't realize how tan I've gotten

My bachelorette party was a BLAST! Just had to reiterate that.

Sushi lunch with the bro and his girlfriend was DELISH.

My 28th birthday (eww, I feel OLD!) was just chock full of yummy food, most of it FREE.

For weeks, my mom's told me that my birthday present would be a Vera Bradley weekender bag with a matching toiletry bag. When we went to Artsy Abode, the pattern above was on MEGA sale (like buy 3 items get 60% off each) So instead of the 2 items in the original pattern I wanted, I got the two items, plus a cute travel purse and wallet in the cute pattern pictured. Plus, the weekender has my new married name on it! YAY!

TWO WEEKS! GAH! Seriously?? I can't even wrap my head around it. Let's just hope when I take pictures by the ocean, the above does NOT happen.


How was your week??

As always, linking up with Lauren!

Birthdays!

There were a few moments today when I kind of forgot it's my birthday! Crazy right? I think I am saving all of my excitement for the wedding.

J and I had a really low key day. (In case you are new around these parts, J and I share a birthday. One of our quirky facts!) We met for lunch.

Did you know that if you show your ID at a Firehouse Subs, you get a free one for your birthday??? And if you don't know what Firehouse Subs are, you are DEFINITELY missing out. I got a Turkey Bacon Ranch Sub.

It was AMAZING. Especially for the low low price of FREE!

J and I hit up Sweet by Holly for some more free goodies. Any of you ever watch Cupcake Wars? Hollis Wilder has won the show THREE times and she has a shop here in Jacksonville.

The cupcakes are yummy but so insanely rich. I get a sugar rush with one bite. :)

Later that night, we met up with my family at Cheesecake Factory. J and I normally try to be somewhat healthy, but tonight we said SCREW IT! And ordered all of our favorites: white chicken chili and sheperd's pie. Plus Wild Blueberry White Chocolate Cheesecake. YUM!!!

J and I entered a major food coma when we got back to his place and ended up watching some Big Bang Theory.

So like I said, low key birthday. No tropical storm business. But a good one. Plus! We had our walkthrough at our venue. 15 days to go!!!!!

Have you ever just had  a low key birthday?

What happens at the bachelorette party stays at the party!

Whew. I'm finally feeling like me again. This weekend was a BLAST but man was I feeling it Sunday when I woke up.

I'm not going to divulge ALL of the details on here, because let's face it, we need some secrets from the bacehlorette party right?

Kaylee, Lauren, Me, Larissa, Jessica

My fellow party girls! They got me the cutest gifts and decorated the hotel room awesomely. Larissa, my future sister in law and the tall gorgeous one in the black dress, didn't let me know ANYTHING that was happening until it happened.

We started the night at BB's, one of my favorite restaurants in downtown Jacksonville. It was in walking distance. I drank a yummy peach bellini martini. The stick? Rock candy. YUM!

Back at the hotel we met our ride for the night:

Poppin' bottles!

The girls paid for a limo and it was so much fun! I've been in a limo once before, so this excited me. At first I thought we were just hitting the King Street pub area so imagine my surprise when we pulled into Metro.

The best bachelorette party planners EVER!

Metro is a gay bar in Jacksonville and seriously one of the most fun places. They host a drag show nightly. The hostess brought me and the other bachelorettes on stage.

The show was hilarious! And made me kinda jealous at how tight some of their bodies were!

Loving the lights!

After dancing on stage we made our way to The Loft, this bar/club in Riverside. I love Loft because their DJ plays the best music. Everyone around us kept asking me if I was getting married or birthday. In the beginning, I said married, but then it hit me: I should say BIRTHDAY too because I turn 28 on Wednesday! Got lots of double high fives after that. :)

One of the many groups of guys who bought me a drink!

Kaylee reminding us that what happens at the party STAYS at the party!

And that's the last thing I remember. There's a HYSTERICAL video of my proclaiming my love for J ("I love him SOOOOO much! He drives me crazy, but I LOVE HIM! He's phenomenal! He's the best! I'm so excited to marry him!") and pictures on my camera where I have no idea how I took them.

But isn't that how your last night out should go? I wanted a fun and crazy party and it's exactly what I got! I'm blessed that I have the best friends and a future sister-in-law who's seriously one the most fun people I've ever met!
Last night will probably NEVER be repeated, but it was completely worth it.

Have you ever been to or had a crazy night out?

Linking up with Carly and Molly for Funday Monday.
And Sami for Weekend Shenanigans

(Cuz what's more fun and shenanigy than a bachelorette party!?)

PS. Be on the look out for my first anniversary blog giveaway!!

3 weeks...

Eeeeeek! Three weeks to go until my wedding. I am still completely dumbfounded that it is SO darn close.

I'm pumped, because sometime today my BFF from college Lauren, and her awesome BFF Kaylee will be arriving from Tennessee. They are down here because tomorrow is my bachelorette party! I have no idea what's going to go down, because J's sister has done a fantabulous job keeping it under wraps.

This week ZOOMED by, but all in all was still pretty fabulous. Hit it!

J and I signed the lease on our townhome. We move in two weeks. Woot!

Source: Uploaded by user via Nikki on Pinterest

I've kept to my goal and stayed within my calorie count all week. It was pretty easy to do when you're still able to eat somewhat fun stuff, like buffalo veggie burgers and diet soda cake. Plus I worked out almost everyday.

Felt awesome to pay for my family's Father's Day lunch on Sunday. Plus we had a great time! (As proven by the fun faces on my uncle, bro and dad!)

Finished season 3 of Pretty Little Liars. It's funny because I don't really know why I like it so much. But, heck, I do!

Source: smalltownlovestory.tumblr.com via Nilda on Pinterest

Pumped for tomorrow and to be spending time with my closest friends. :)

Have a great weekend! As always, linking up with Lauren!

So what do you think J?

J loves my blog. At least I think he does. I know he reads all of my posts (or at least the ones that I tweet about!)

So when I saw this link up idea, I knew that I had to participate, mostly just to discover J's opinions of my blog!



Mal and Stephanie came up with this neat idea to get to know the guys behind the blog. Every month they post five questions for the guys to answer. 

1. Does your wife/girlfriend/fiance use your real name or a nickname on her blog?
    Kind of fun to know I'll be his wife in 3 weeks! She uses a nickname, J. She started it because she wasn't sure how I would feel about her having a blog and now it's just stuck. 
2. If you had a blog, what would the title be? 
    Lifestyle: Jimmy's World. Techie: Depends on the tech!    
3. Do you ever feel ignored by her because of the blog?
    Sometimes. She gets into writing her posts or reading her blog feed!
4. How has her blog changed or evolved throughout your relationship? 
    Her design is more unique and her title changed. I think for the most, it's stayed the same. It's about her.
5. What is your favorite post on her blog?
    Our engagement post. Fun to look back and read it!



None of the answers really surprised me! :) Guess I know him pretty well and know he supports this hobby of mine. 

Our new place!

I'm sitting here thinking, what to blog about? When it hit me: J and I signed the lease to our place on Monday!

Originally we were just moving into an apartment. But then we got inspired to look for a townhome. We met a realtor at one but didn't really love the parking situation. (If we ever had guests, they'd have to park literally half a mile down the street!)

So J and I drove around and saw a FOR RENT sign in front of the cutest townhome. Best part? Plenty of parking!

So we called, and Kumar, the owner of the house agreed to come show us the place. We fell in love with it and told him we were interested. Kumar worked quickly and called us Monday to sign the lease. Kumar and his wife are the sweetest people and J and I feel lucky that they will be our landlords.

After we signed the lease, we got to take some pictures! (I totally forgot to take a picture of the front!)

This would be our living room. The front door is to the left. My favorite part about this place are the HUGE windows. 

This would be the living room, facing the kitchen. I just really like how open everything is. To the right there is a half bathroom and the stairs. 

The kitchen's a little small, but they just redid the counters and backsplash. I'm excited to cook in this kitchen!

See? More huge windows! This will be our bedroom. The second bedroom is super similar and we are going to use it for an office.  

The bathroom. Pretty spacious. The only thing I didn't like was the paint. But when we came back downstairs, Kumar's wife said if we wanted to we could paint! So I will definitely be painting this more neutral. 

I'm just so glad everything worked out the way that we wanted to. Now off to pinning home decor ideas!!!

Actually doing something...

I pin A LOT of different things. But usually the only ones I do are things for my classroom. I decided to change it up!

Source: shopbop.com via Nilda on Pinterest

It's an understatement, but I'm OBSESSED with mint. In the last few weeks, I 've purchased two tops, a pair of shorts, a pair of pants, and jewelry. So I've been pinning mint pant ideas. I actually wore a version of this yesterday:

Top: Forever 21
Shorts: Target
Necklace: Charming Charlie (only in stores)

Ignore the blurriness. My mom's not the best at taking iPhone pictures. And I am most definitely NOT a fashion blogger by any means. At dinner last night, my friend immediately said, you look so SUMMERY! And I agree. I will definitely wear this outfit again.

What's your fashion obsession?

Linking up with Shanna for Random Wednesdays and Lindsay for What I Wore Wednesday

Ever snuck out of a restaurant?

You know how on comedy shows, the characters are hanging out, just doing there thing at a restaurant? When all of a sudden, someone walks in that they DON'T want to see or interact with? So they come up with some scheme to get out of the restaurant without being seen? And you think, HAHA, that's funny but that would NEVER happen in real life?

Yea, that was me up until last night around 8 p.m.

Sophomore year lunch

Senior Year AP Bio

So about once a month or so, I get together with one my nearest and dearest friends Jessica. Despite the fact that we have known each other about half of our lives and I truly consider her to be one of my best friends, I don't have any recent pictures of us together! Hence the throwback photos. :)

Anyways, last night Jessica and I met up for dinner at Pei Wei (aka PF CHANGS but faster). We were catching up on our respective lives like we always do, when I glance up and GASP. What did I see? BBMak, our favorite boy band from high school? No. A zombie? Nah,definitely not. A cool rainbow? Nope. The parents of our "close" friend from high school? The one who made us crazy because she acted so perfect yet in reality wasn't? Why ding, ding, ding! That would be correct.

Now I ran into the mother a few months ago. Jessica on the other hand, hasn't seen them since said friend and she were roommates in college. Needless to say neither one of us really wanted to talk to them. So we ducked our heads, watched until they went up to the counter to order, put on our sunglasses and literally crept/ran towards the door. We didn't stop moving until we reached Ulta. 

I'm sure the people sitting around us thought we were completely CUCKOO. But hey, you gotta do what you gotta do to avoid people you really don't want to talk to. 

Besides, if it wasn't for that encounter, we wouldn't have left Ulta several dollars poorer with fun new nail polish and make up!

Moral of the story? If you have to avoid someone, at least duck into Ulta!

Reading my life away...

One of my FAVORITE things to do is read. I've always been a bookworm. Summer allows me to do a lot more of that. It's fun to just get lost in a book.

I'm a big fan of chick lit for the summer time. They're easy and they're fun to read and isn't that what you want for summer? Here are a few that I've already finished:

This one tells the story of Charlotte, a twenty-something woman who is getting ready to jet off to Paris with her fiance. When she discovers that he's cheating on her, she decides to go to Paris anyways and just live life and date like a man. I saw the ending coming, but the journey of Charlotte was really fun to read. The setting made me want to book a trip to Paris ASAP! There's a sequel coming and I will definitely be adding it to my Kindle very soon.

I love British Chick Lit. Not really sure why, but my favorite chick lit books ALMOST always by British authors. This one has  fun premise: Natalie is someone who just doesn't like to cause trouble ever, so she tends to not be honest about how she feels. One day she gets hypnotised and all of a sudden, whenever ANYONE asks her a question, she must tell the truth. There were definitely LAUGH out loud moments and I almost didn't want the story to end.

I don't know about you, but I LOVED The Devil Wears Prada, both the book and the movie. So I was PUMPED when I heard she wrote  a sequel. And yet. It was a total let down. I finished it, because I don't like to NOT finish a book, but the characters bugged me. I didn't understand the title, because while yes Miranda shows up, she's not really a huge part of the book. The plot isn't really about her. Times like these I wish I could return ebooks.

I do read smart books to, just saying! I just tend to get lost in these fluff pieces during the summer. What books do you like to read?

Keeping busy...

Summers are for relaxing, but I've been go go go since I woke up this morning. I missed Zumba class (I think I shut my alarm off whoops!) so I'll be heading to the gym to work out on the eliptical after publishing this post.

That would be my seating chart, table number list and wedding binder.

Here's my to do list for the day:

• Order reception items. DONE!
• Call EdFinancial to check on loan forgiveness. DONE! Amazing how it takes following up for them to do ANYTHING about giving YOU money. 
• Head out to mall to find the following items:
• White dress!
• Cake cutter and toasting flutes (will be using giftcards for this!)
• Exchange J's shirts. 
• Eyebrows (they're beginning to look like furry caterpillars!)

I also need to get my butt in gear and pack and clean some more. My bff from college let me know on Saturday that she's coming down from Tennessee for my bachelorette party. So pumped, because I haven't seen her in over a year.

Have a good Monday everyone!

Linking up with Carly and Molly for Funday Monday!

Living for the weekend!

Summer vacation, every day is technically a weekend. But I can only spend time with friends and family on the weekend, because most of them have normal jobs.

I spent all day yesterday with my friend Jennifer and her adorable daughter. We went to the beach, where everyone seemed to want to chat with us? I don't know about you, but I can't stand when people I don't know just randomly come up and talk to me when I'm talking to someone else.

One person asked me about my bathing suit. (which was nice, but still) Two other girls wanted to talk to us about church. Which I do believe in going to, but I also think it's a personal thing ya know? It was just random!

We had some Rita's Italian Ice. (Yum!) There was a group of disabled children and adults ordering some treats. This sweet boy was enjoying some ice with his grandma. He gave up his seat to the group. It was just the nicest thing and made my heart warm!

The night finished at the mall. I WAS on a trek to find a cute white dress for my rehearsal, but everything is either too dressy or too expensive. We ended up having sushi at Sake House. I love that Jennifer is JUST like me and could eat sushi every day if she wanted too! Best part? Her daughter (who's five) loves sushi just as much!

Today was Father's Day, and my whole family went out for brunch at this Italian restaurant Brio. The food was AMAZING and we had such a blast. My dad is hilarious and I'm so glad he's a part of my life.

That would be my uncle on the left, my brother in the middle, and my dad on the right.

After brunch and drinks, J and I headed back to his place. I'm in TOTAL summer vacay mode, so I took a nap. What? Am I sometimes an 80 year old in a 27 (almost 28) year old body? Yep, and I have no shame. :)

The day ended with a visit to the pool. Which was relaxing, until I had to pull out my teacher voice. The cutest three year old girl asked this other little girl "May I please have my water thing back, please?" Bratty girl told her no I'm gonna spray this guy (J) with it. So I went excuse me, she asked you nicely, please give her back her water toy. Little girl proceeded to throw it at the 3 year old! I just don't get it. Teach your children manners please!

Now off to watch some RHONJ. My future mother in law got me hooked on this show. It's really the perfect summer show: totally brainless yet entertaining.

Hope you all had a fantabulous weekend as well!

Recap shall we?

Admist the wedding CRAZINESS, I want to get back into blogging. It will be my blog anniversary next  Sunday. Maybe a giveaway in the works?

Anyways, here are my top five for this week.

1. SCHOOL'S OUT! I love my job. Really I do. And I'm sorry to those who don't get the summer off. But I'm just glad to relax, get married, and rejuvenate. I always joke that summers off are to prevent anything to happen to children. If I dealt with them all the time, I'd hurt them. And if parents dealt with them home for more than 2.5 months, they'd probably hurt them too. :)

2.

Seating chart is done. Unless people decide to come that said they weren't. I've been really proud of how I've been handling any wedding stress.  (Oh and FYI this seating chart app is on TheKnot.com)

3. Jimmy and I found a place to live! Well, we had already found one, but we found an even better one. A super cute 2 bedroom townhome a hop skip and a jump away from our work. Eeek! Can't wait to move in!

4. 

Speaking of wedding, in EXACTLY four weeks, I will be getting married. Seems far away but RIDICULOUSLY close at the same time. J sent me a text saying he's getting impatient for our lives to begin and I couldn't agree more. 

5. 

So my favorite chocolate is WHITE chocolate. I know, I'm weird but at least my closest friend and fiance share in my love. My favorite candy bar is Hershey's Cookies and Creme and J told me yesterday that they made it into a cereal! It's quite yummy and actually not HORRIBLE for you. 

Have a fabulous weekend y'all!

And so it begins...

wedding preparations that is! In 50 minutes it will be OFFICIALLY 30 days until my wedding. Cray-cray!

I've spent the last hour working on this:

Seating chart. I'm actually kind of AMAZED at how easily I was able to put this together. I guess it helped that different tables have different numbers of people sitting together. Glad to check something else off my list.

I'm still not feeling 100% so I can't sleep. While scrolling through Netflix, I found this little gem:

Just like every other girl growing up in the 90s, I was OBSESSED with the Babysitters Club. I even still own a few copies and the new rereleased copy that updates things like Walkmans to MP3s.

Sometimes you just need a little cheese in your life, ya know?

Like clockwork,

I was just saying the other day... I made it through the year without being severely sick. Cold here and there, but nothing that made me want to just sleep all day.

I totally jinxed myself y'all. Today was the first day of post-planning and I don't know if it was the weather or the millions of dust bunnies in my classroom, but I am so stuffed it's not even funny.

The more I think about it, the more I should have seen this coming. I think I've been sick every last week of school for the last few years. It's like my body knows it's about to relax so it starts it off with a bang!

So off I go to take a hot steaming shower (my mom's favorite cold remedy) and just snuggle into bed. One more day and then it's summer vacation!

School's Out For Summer!

School's out forever! Haha, that song always pops into my head during this time of year. So as you're reading this, I'm finishing my kids memory books up, grabbing some lunch for them and sending them on their merry own way.

This has been an incredible year, full of ups and downs.

The ups:

• I love my ESOL babies. I love teaching them and watching their eyes light up when they get it. This year reinvigorated my love of teaching and I made the BEST decision to transfer. I miss the people I worked with at my old school, but other than that I know I'm in the right place. 
• I survived working on a 7 member team. 
• I handled 24 kids this year. I will never EVER complain about class numbers again! I managed a lot with these 24 kiddos. I know I can do even better next year!
• My evaluation was fantastic and I met my own personal professional goals. 

The downs:

• 24 kids. It was an exhausting year. I had 16 show up yesterday and was like "Wow. My room would have been SO much quieter." :)
• Principal number six. I've taught for 6 years and worked for 6 different principals. He likes me but I'm still waiting. All principals show how they really run things when they get to start a new school year from scratch. 
• Discovered I can be a bit impatient with people who just don't get it. That impatience turns into bitchiness and I just don't like that. 

Once I turn in my keys next Tuesday, my focus turns to WEDDING. The countdown hits 30 days on Wednesday! Eeek!

Happy weekend everyone! What's your favorite last day of school memory? Mine's playing video games in my Algebra 2 class sophomore year!