Things that I am loving!

I recently have been on a dress buying binge! I love dresses because they are so comfortable and they generally fit me so much better than pants do. I recently bought two dresses from J. Crew that I LOVE! I bought this dress first in blue and then I saw it in the black with white polka dots and knew I needed to have it! I just need to figure out where to get some cute red strappy heels now! I don't think I can wear the blue one till it is Spring time but I think I can wear the black and white one if the temperatre gets warm again (even if I don't have cute red strappy heels)!


J. Crew is one of my favorite places to shop but for the past year or so I have not been excited about what they have had. Luckily for me (but not my credit card) they are back in action with the cuteness! Look how wonderful this blue dress is! If you can't see you must go to the website and look so that you can see the wonderful little dots all over the fabric. I want to wear it to my linen shower in June but I'm not sure I will be able to since there is a good chance I will have already worn it a million times by then! If it is warm enough, I will definitely wear it to church on Easter!
Lately I've also been having a furniture bug! It is ridiculous because I might not even be in my home in 6 months but I keep wanting to get things to finish decorating it. I am in love with this classic break front from Cottage Home but I think I would want it in a different color, probably a wood stain! I think it would be perfect to house all of the pretty things I (we, sorry PW) could possibly get for the wedding! I am pretty obsessed with the Cottage Home web site right now and look at it every once in a while and imagine where I could put things!


On one last happy note it is almost Spring Break when I get to go visit my wonderful sister RHRB and her husband AMB in NYC with PW. That is a lot of initials! Only 17 1/2 more days of school and I will have a whole week and two days off!

heirloom knitting

Um...did you see that Martha had yarn made out of PawPaw's hair?!

Waiting . . .

Right now we are playing the waiting game to see if PW will get in to SMU to get his MBA or . . .

will he get into Rice to get his MBA starting this August!

I have to say this is more miserable that waiting to hear about getting into college or even when I applied for grad school. This is huge news for us because it will dictate where we will live next year, Dallas or Houston! It will decide if I get to keep the job I have now or if I will be applying for a new job. It will decide if I get to keep my home (and find some room for PW's things) or if I will be selling it and looking for a place up in Dallas! This is the week that letters are going out so basically I am just waiting to get the phone call to say that the letters have arrived.

On a different note I am waiting on something else (that is for sure not as important but very exciting). It is Girl Scout Cookie time! I have bought cookies from a third grader and from a second grader that is in the other second grade class. They continue to give me updates on the status of the cookies (they are still not in yet) and promising me that they will be in soon!

I attempted to put a picture here of my very favorite Girl Scout Cookie, the Samoa, yet blogger wanted it at the top of my post and not right here so unfortunately there will be no picture!

Ok, back to work to hopefully get my mind off of the grad school stuff . . .

Want it! NEED it!

OH MY GOSH!

This might be the cutest thing on the planet!

Where I spend my time . . .

This is my desk where I grade and lesson plan and procrastinate!

This is a view looking towards the reading carpet and the desks!

I am procrastinating from grading papers right now and have recently found myself obsessed with looking at other blogs. Well that made me realize that I have not posted anything since mid December! So since I should be working I thought I would post pictures of where I spend most of my time. Right now I am reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the kids and they LOVE it! I am really excited by their enthusiasm! I loved teaching Kindergarten but I am so happy that I was able to move up to second grade this year! Here are some pictures of where I spend my days!



I must say that I am very frustrated with formating this blog. I had placed the text at the top of the post and tried to insert the photos at the bottom but it would not let me. Plus it erased a picture on its own. So far, not impressed with the inability to do things how you want to and the fact that the blog picks how it wants things to look . . .

blog cooking

I did a bit of cooking from food blogs last night and it was deemed a success. I hope someday I will learn how to do photos, but for now..........just words.
I first attempted Ruth Reichl's chocolate cake posted by a blogger on Serious Eats. I left out the brown sugar......she said to add the sugar (not sugarS), and I had only measured the white, when the baby (RRR)called with some exciting news. I'm somewhat dislexic when it comes to reading recipes in the first place, and then when interrupted.....well, only the white sugar was added , then the eggs......one at a time.......then......oh, no.....the brown sugar! When was that supposed to go in? So I added it after the eggs. Was that the reason the cake came out so flat? I don't know. I had started the icing, but it was time to EAT. I suggested having the cake first (Cake for Dinner!!!), but the baby said to do it in the right order. Good baby.
So next I made 24 Boxes' Roasted Squash and Black Bean Quesadillas. Because I had seen The Wednesday Chef substitute canned pumpkin for roasted squash in a pie, I decided I could do the same for this recipe (aren't ya'll proud of me!). It worked wonderfully, and everyone was happy. I put together the quesadillas and the baby did the cooking. Don't move, baby (was that subliminal?) It was then that I discovered a note at the end of the recipe to "make roasted tomato salsa to go with the quesadillas"....... Salsa in a jar would have to do. Along with sour cream, it was a crowd pleaser.
Next, the icing for the cake.....it seemed like too little in the mixing bowl, but it was just right for the cake (I halved both recipes). The icing was not sweet enough for the baby (she suggested her own favorite buttercream to go with THIS cake, which she loved), but MJR and I enjoyed it a lot.
We were all stuffed! So......thanks food bloggers for our great dinner!
PS I also had a butter tasting yesterday! After investigating cultured and uncultured butter on the internet and then finding some of the butters at Central Market that I had read about, I bought three new ones to try. More on those later......