Aeveryday14 - Weeks 2 & 3

I am trying to catch up on my everyday pics that I post to instagram so here are weeks 2 and 3 :)

 

My collage for the week :)

 

Day 8 - I wore my new Toms to work and by far the highlight of my day was a little girl in kindergarten who noticed them and with major enthusiasm stated "Ms. Garrison! You got new Toms!" It cracked me up that a five year old noticed my new shoes ;)

 

 Day 9 - We finally got around to hanging our new home decor on our walls and this is one of my favorite new items!

 

Day 10 - Friday means jeans and tennis shoes for me at work. I love a jeans and tennis shoe kind of day!

 

Day 11 - Frankie and I travel down to Warner Robbins to make a very important payment on our wedding rings! This was the day that we paid them off!!! Yay!! I love my rings and I love that they are paid for!!

 

Day 12 - It was finally nice and semi-warm outside so I talked Franklin into grilling us some hamburgers. My favorite food ever.

 

Day 13 - We were really wanting to try to make some vegetable soup and I finally found a recipe that I thought we would both like. We met at the store after work and shopped for everything we needed. The entire time we were at the store I sneezed and coughed and just all around felt like crud. So, after we spent all that time buying groceries for our soup my wonderful husband looked at me and said "There is no way you are going home to cook when you feel bad, I'll order us a pizza."

I'm so glad I married him :)

 

Day 14 - We finally made our soup. It was wonderful, and it will definitely be something that we make again!

 

 

Week 3 :) Unfortunately, I did miss 3 days this week...

 

Day 15 - I was still feeling terrible and honestly my day was so yucky that the only thing I could take a picture of was my new best friend which happened to be sudafed :(

 

I was feeling horrible and with sudafed being my best friend you can understand why days 16, 17, and 18 never happened. There's always next year.

 

Day 19 - Once again we had a rare and sunny day and Frankie worked on my car all day long and then being the wonderful and hard working and ocd man that he is he washed it for me. :)

 

Day 20 - Happy MLK Day to me! I can't remember the last time that I went shopping for new clothes for myself and I desperately needed something new to wear to work before they staged an intervention for wearing the same 5 shirts to work every week. This was a happy happy day!

 

Day 21 - I was craving a baking session. I do that sometimes, where all I want to do is bake something. So, I decided to bake my sweet babies at work a treat. They were super excited too. :) I was happy, they were happy. Mission accomplished.

More Wedding

I'm going to pretend as if my wedding happened last week instead of 3 months ago and try to write down everything that I can think of to help me remember it years from now.

I honestly don't remember much about the Friday before my wedding. Mostly because I worked that day. Bless it. Everybody and I mean everybody was like "I can't believe you are here today" "You are crazy for coming to work" and a lot of other quotes that I can't remember but that pretty much were along the lines of this girl is getting married tomorrow and she is working, as if something was seriously wrong with me.

I chose to work that Friday for multiple reasons. One of the biggest is that I took an entire week off to go on my honeymoon. When you are a teacher and you get multiple weeks off throughout the year and 2 whole months off during the summertime you just don't ask for weeks off. However, when you are getting married at the age of 28 and you pretty much have been planning your wedding since childhood then you know what you want. I knew that I wanted to get married at Christmas. Absolutely was getting married at Christmas time with lots of beautiful twinkle lights and candles. When it came down to it I would have to miss work and miss Christmas Day with my family if I wanted to stick with that plan. So, I scratched that. My family is my best friend - if that makes any sense at all - and there was no way that I was missing a major holiday just to go on my honeymoon. Hahaha, kinda lets Frankie know where he stands huh? :) Anyways.... I had to find a new time to get married, well; Fall is by far my absolute season and I wasn't willing to give up all my dreams of my pre-planned wedding and get married during the summer. When it comes to your wedding I don't feel like you should have to bend over backwards to accommodate your work schedule simply because you are a teacher. Anyone else who had a different job, especially a job that doesn't have so many breaks throughout the year, would not have to plan what they wanted around their job so I decided I wasn't either. I took a week off for my honeymoon and when we came back we were on our Fall Break for Thanksgiving. I had an amazing week in Jamaica and then I had an amazing week to get caught up and still enjoy Thanksgiving with my family. It was perfect.

Another reason I did not take off that Friday was because working allowed me to stay calm. I'm not sure if everybody feels this way before they get married or if it was just because I was older but I was very aware that my life was about to change drastically. I was about to live with a boy for the first time, I was about to have to share everything with a boy for the first time. I don't handle change well, even if it is change that I am so super excited about. I was a big ball of nerves and working helped take my mind off of - tomorrow my life will change forever- type thinking.

The last reason I wanted to work is because I actually enjoy my job. I love to teach, I love my kids, I love my job. Don't get me wrong there are times I want to really put someone in their place or pull my hair out and there are days that I'm like I hate my job, but everyone has those days, and deep down I love, love, love my job. I was about to not see my little sweeties for 2 whole weeks. That's a long time for me. So, I wanted to work so I could hang out with them.

After work, I made sure my classroom was ready for my para and I went home to get ready for our big night. I started getting packed up for our honeymoon and just took it easy with my parents and my sister and her family until it was time to go to the church. As soon as I walked into the church I was overcome with emotion. HA! I'm a crier. I'm not ashamed of it. My wonderful friend and coworker is an amazing singer and she was already there practicing her songs, and hearing her sing songs that I had wanted in my wedding for a few years now on top of seeing my wonderful bridesmaids all proud and excited for me I just couldn't control it. I was happy and I was finally getting my happily ever after so yes, I shed some tears that night. :)

After getting myself under control and actually getting through the rehearsal itself we made our way to Barnstormer's Grill for our rehearsal dinner. We had a blast and the food was excellent. The menu was Chicken marsala, green beans, broccoli and cheese casserole, mashed potatoes, rolls and a salad. The dessert choices were banana pudding or striped delight. It was wonderful. Sitting there and watching your best friends all laughing at some story and seeing your family smiling and everyone having a good time makes you realize how blessed you are to have these people in your life.

Here are some photos of our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

 

Frankie's mom is standing in for me at the front of the church :)

 

 

 

One of all my bridesmaids

 

Sandra

 

Lauren

 

Mary Jane

 

Garrison

 

Austin

 

Some of the pictures did not turn out good on here and the ones of my bridesmaids and Mary Jane are not my favorite but I have those in frames and I don't want to take them out. ;) All in all though we had a great time and we both felt so very blessed by the end of night. 

A-Everyday-14

Although I do not update my own blog that well, I am an avid follower of other blogs. And, I get lots of pretty cool ideas from these other blogs. One idea was to take a picture every day in 2014 and document it through instagram. I downloaded the instagram app back when it first came out and then never did anything with it until this year; but this year I have used it every day (minus three days that I missed).

I always make a cute little collage of my photos of the week and send it to my mom, sister, and best friend every Wednesday. But starting soon I am going to be putting my little collage and pics up here on the blog every Wednesday. My sister gave me this idea and this way she can understand a little bit more about the pictures. Since tomorrow is the start of a brand new week (this year New Year's Day was on a Wednesday so the week goes from Wednesday to Tuesday) I decided that I was going to try and update all of my pictures of the year so far onto the blog. Hopefully, within a few weeks I will be updated and on track.

I hashtag each of my everyday photos Aeveryday14 - and I am pretty positive that I drive some people crazy with my everyday pictures but at the end of the year I think I will be pretty excited to see my year through my pictures. :)

Week 1 :)

 

My collage for the week. January 1-7

 

 

Day 1 - My sweetie pie Emma was born on January 1st in 2007.

Here she is enjoying her birthday chew stick.

 

Day 2 - It was just beginning to be a winter of crazy temperatures and weather and I was enjoying the cold with a nice cup of hot chocolate.

 

Day 3 - My love. That's all.

 

Day 4 - We had a date night in Macon at one of our favorite restaurants.

 

Day 5 - At the time of this picture my thoughts were "Why in the world are we getting out in this crazy cold?" Who would have though that this temperature just a few weeks later would feel like a warm up??

 

Day 6 - I used some of my wedding gift cards to buy one of my favorite additions to our yard.

I love this flag and I love my new initial.

 

Day 7 - This was the day that I finally got around to cleaning out the junk room and making a guest bedroom. :) Yay for being productive. And, please do not judge me for the color on the walls.... this is the color we moved in to and it will most likely be one of the last rooms that get painted - but! It will definitely, without a doubt get painted....eventually. :)

 

7 Months Later....

I know! Its a shocker to myself that I am even writing anything. :) But! When everything is said and done I have realized that I need something to occupy my time and something to keep me from being super lazy all day long on the couch. So... I decided that I should update this little blog here and let everyone know what has been going on the last few, ok, 7 months of my life. :)

Well, for starters, I got married! I had amazing showers and all kinds of special attention that all culminated into one amazing flash-by-in-the-blink-of-an-eye day that was so wonderful I want to do it all over again. I went on an amazing honeymoon to Jamaica. I celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas and somewhere between the two I got into my first ever major interstate upside down truck wreck with my new hubby. - And if that doesn't scream "We haven't been married one month and I almost lost you and I'll never let you out of my sight again" then I don't know what does. - I was diagnosed with two different health "things" (because I don't want to call them diseases or issues because I am refusing to let them be either) Which one of the health "things" led to my first ever surgery (unless you count getting your wisdom teeth out, which I am thinking I don't anymore) all in the midst of a crazy ice storm. Yes, seven months have gone by but they have not necessarily been a quiet seven months. But, now that things are hopefully calming down I am going to do my best to catch everyone up on the crazy happenings of my life.

The first being my most absolute favorite day ever - my wedding!! I should probably start this update of my life by showing some pictures of all of my wonderful showers but... I don't have any of those pictures. Hmmmm... I should really work on that. But! What I do have are some of my favorite pictures of our special day so I will show you those.

One of my favorite things about me finally being a bride was that I did my own makeup.

I wanted to look like me. :)

 

 

I decided that I just wanted to have a hair piece and not have the traditional veil.

The veil's just didn't look right on me.

Just look at that handsome man that married me.

 





 

One of my absolute favorite pictures of that man.

 

 

My shoes.

Since meeting Frankie my love for heels has gone downhill since they make me taller than him. :)

 

My bracelet - I love love love that bracelet.

 

I love this picture of the back of my dress. It really shows the details.

 

A good picture of my beautiful bouquet.

 

I like this picture next to the church doors with the two wreaths that were made for my special day.

 

We decided to see each other before the ceremony and have a special moment with each other before getting lots of pictures out of the way. This was Frankie's smile when he saw me coming down the aisle.  Love it.

 

This picture was one our photographer captured of our time together before anyone else came into the sanctuary. I love that it shows me and him as well as how the church was decorated.

Simple and Eloquent. Just perfect. :)

 

 

That is all for the day. I will go into more detail about our day and add more pictures of the wedding party and the wedding itself tomorrow. I just love revisiting this wonderful day that I honestly thought would never come. I told Frankie today at lunch that I sure was happy he married me.

Love him to pieces. 

Catching Up

I'm really kind of terrible at updating this...not because I don't want to, just because I have a hard time sitting down to actually do it. I look at everyone else's blogs that I read and they always have cute pictures of their families or projects or food and I just don't. ....something to work on!

Since I last posted anything a lot has happened. The best, of course, being that we went on vacation!! Yay! That was great, even though it rained, no, it flooded 2 days we were there - we still had a blast. I do have a few pictures that maybe I will put up very soon ;)

I actually started the week off doing great on vacation. I was watching what I was eating and how much and I was walking tons and doing small workouts. Then came the rain, and the boredom, and there was noting else to do but eat. Haha.  At least in my mind. All in all though I don't think I did too bad.

One of my favorite blogs to read is PeanutButter Fingers and while I was on vacation she was blogging about FitBlog, a blogging conference for those who blog about healthy lifestyles and fitness. I actually loved reading all about it and she linked some of her friends who also blog and that has been wonderful. I updated my list today and I am hoping that reading all of the blogs from those who live a healthy lifestyle will motivate me to do so as well.

I am now headed to the school to try to get my classroom in order. :) I'm so looking forward to my new crop of mini human beings who steal my heart. And, I'm kind of -in a weird way counting down until open house so that I can see my sweet kids from last year. They definitely have a spot in my heart.

Coming soon....hopefully ;) An entry dedicated to my wedding planning and ideas :)

A New View Point

This weekend was an eye opener for sure! Saturday morning I went with my mom and sister to David's Bridal to try on wedding dresses!! Very exciting! It was actually a little surreal. Most girls think of their wedding growing up and what it will be like to try on dresses and make decisions about that special day and I was no different. Sometimes I feel like I have my wedding all planned out and was just waiting on the right guy.

And yes, while I did think of my wedding throughout the years I just never really felt like I would ever have one. I never had a deep down feeling that I would without a doubt find that one special guy for me. I have had my fair share of not so great guys and some great guys just not great for me guys. That is until Frankie :)

So, yes trying on dresses and thinking about my wedding Saturday in such a real way was definitely a surreal moment for me. It was also a kick in the butt moment as well. My mom and my sister took pictures of me in every dress I tried on and looking at myself in those pictures was like someone finally hit me over the head and said "look at yourself, you look horrible."

I am not just being mean to myself and having a bad body image like so many people do these days, especially young people; I just know when I look and feel my best and it is definitely, without a doubt, not now! These pictures have been like a gift from God, telling me to take control of myself and fix myself. I do realize that sounds really dramatic. However, I also know that from a doctor's standpoint I would be considered overweight.  There are some people who are constantly saying "you look good" and "you don't need to lose anything" which frankly makes me mad and hurts my feelings. I don't look good and quit telling me I do. There are also people who say "you've gained a lot of weight" and "you better hurry up and lose weight before you get fat" which hurts my feels as well.

In the past when I've been all about losing weight and getting in shape its really been about vanity reasons and my appearance. This time it is different. I mean of course I want to look good, especially for my wedding day, but that is not what is really driving me to get healthy. My wedding day is driving me to lose weight naturally. What comes after the wedding is what is driving me to get healthy. I don't feel healthy. I feel heavy and bloated and yucky about 90% of the time. Not only does that make me feel gross but it also scares me. Me and Frankie want kids. Frankie really wants kids and I know he will be such an incredible dad. I am worried that at this weight and feeling this unhealthy will make it hard for me to get pregnant. And lets be honest, we can't wait too long because neither one of us are spring chickens. (haha I made myself chuckle a little bit at that) I have this really can't kick it strange feeling that I am going to have a hard time getting pregnant. My parents had a hard time but my sister never really did with both of her boys. I can't afford to wait years and years to get pregnant because we aren't that young.

I am hoping and feeling that if I change my habits around and make myself a healthier weight and all around person that I won't have as hard as a time as I think I will. So, on that note I am trying to best to make better choices when it comes to food. I whole-heartedly believe that losing weight is 80/20. Nutrition and diet is 80% of it and exercise is 20%. I enjoy exercising but I want to see results so that means I am going to have to eat better. In the past I would get really crazy and decide that I was going to cut out all kinds of things and eat clean which works for a lot of people but I would also fall off my little clean eating wagon. So... I am going to approach it like the 80/20 rule. I will make healthy eating decisions 80% of the week and allow myself 20% to fall back on. That way I know I am free to still indulge a little bit but just a little bit.

This morning I am off to a good start. I went to the gym and did 30 full minutes of cardio switching the resistance up on the elliptical machine and also switching up going forwards and backwards. That helps me not get bored and it also helps my heart rate change (almost like an interval workout which is good for fat-loss) Plus I did about 20 to 30 minutes working abs and shoulders. For breakfast I made a smoothie!! Very different for me. I found the recipe on one of my favorite blogs and I actually liked it but I did not like the banana taste to it so I will try to tweak it to make it work for me.

Here's to a new view point of getting healthy... :)

We're Going to Try This Again...

The last time I wrote anything on my blog was in January of 2012. I really don't know what possessed me to start a blog in the middle of 3 jobs but needless to say I didn't really keep up with it. I was working at Gordon, going to school, working at the church and student teaching! I was busy.

Fast forward to a little more than a year later and I am out of school, teaching Pre-K at the primary school here in Barnesville and big news....I'm Engaged!!!! :) Super excited about everything that is going on in my life.

I met Frankie after student teaching was finished and I was back to parapro-ing for my kindergarten classroom. We went on our first date to the Braves game and we have been together ever since. I am going to try and post some of my favorite things about Frankie later on in some different posts. Anyways, once me and Frankie really got together and comfortable around each other the weight came piling on. It is what I like to call my "happy weight" because I have been so happy lately. Well... I am still happy but I'm ready to lose the weight.

Even in my last post over a year ago I was uncomfortable with my weight, and trust me it's a lot more now! I really enjoy working out but I do not enjoy eating right. I am super motivated right now though because we are going to be taking engagement pictures sometime in August hopefully so I want to look better for all things wedding.

I follow a lot of different blogs and some are healthy living blogs so I'm hoping I can use this blog to kind of keep track of what I'm eating and doing exercise wise. Here is to losing weight and getting in shape! :)

----This morning I went to the gym and did a cardio workout on the treadmill for 20 minutes which consisted of walking 2 min and running 1 min. I was definitely sweaty when I got finished. I then focused on my lower body. My favorite exercises right now are the kickbacks and ad and abductors on the cable. So far my eating today has consisted of a small bowl of cheerios.  I'm starting the Monday on the right track!----

Now, I'm off to get ready and continue the moving out process. (I'm leaving Gordon and moving back in with my parents before the wedding - It should be an experience :))