Marvelous Is… A Lot of Things (WIR)

Marvelous is…

An Accounting teacher who accidentally sends you the solutions to your take home quiz via e-mail.

My dear mother who decided that we were going to get festive and bake an entire turkey today for the fun of it.

The same dear mother who helped me package it all up to take to school with me for the week.

That my “week” only really consists of two days, Monday and Tuesday, and then I’m off for Thanksgiving Break!

Watching Catching Fire with my best friend.

Getting teary-eyed and goosebumps during my favorite parts of the book being reenacted in the movie.

The super deep conversations that I had with said friend on the 30 minute drives to/from the movie theater.

More thought-provoking conversations had later on with my dad over creationism and evolution.

Perhaps finding a new doctor to go see. Fingers crossed that it doesn’t take months to get in.

Christmas movies on the television.

Television. It’s kind of refreshing to watch TV shows on an actual TV vs. my laptop.

My dad finally turning the heat on in the house.

Adding even more puppy chow recipes to my ever-growing Pinterest board.

Strawberry Cupcake Puppy Chow

Apple Cinnamon Puppy Chow

Helping to set up the Christmas decorations at church today.

My aunt’s amazing care packages that she sends me at school (I’m planning on doing a vlog about these sometime soon!).

Hearing about my brother’s slam dunks in his recent basketball scrimmage.

My new Elf For Health partner Divya at Eat Teach Blog.

The #Elf4Health challenge that I joined! There are a ton of fun challenges to participate in starting tomorrow! I will NOT be participating in Day 1 because as you know I basically subsist on meat and vegetables so going MEATLESS would be a terrible terrible idea. But Day 2 is perfect for me and my inboxes stuffed with thousands of emails…

So…. Tell me! What is Marvelous about your Monday?

Linking up to Health Diva Eat’s MIMM

And what did YOU do over your weekend?

Also linking up to Clean Eats Fast Feet’s WIR (Week in Review)

My Weekend Baking Adventures

Did anyone else’s school have fundraisers growing up? Wrapping paper. Candles. Frozen pizzas. Chocolate. Magazines.

My brother is currently in the midst of a magazine fundraiser to raise money for when the high school band goes to Disney this next Spring.

I’m kind of a magazine addict. Really, I should show you all my stacks and drawers of magazines sometime. It’s ridiculous.

Currently I get Eating Well, Cooking Light, Seventeen and Nutrition Action. In the past I’ve also gotten Fitness Magazine and a few other less than stellar choices like Discovery Girls and some dog magazine… From library sales I’ve acquired back issues of magazines as well like Shape, Self, Prevention, Weight Watchers, Health, etc.

The main point of all of this is that I need some advice this year on what to choose. I’m looking for any suggestions on magazines that you’d think that I’d like. Whether they be food, fitness, fashion, whatever. Just leave your suggestion in the comments and I’d be really appreciative!

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Now onto my Week in Review and MIMM post to link-up with Healthy Diva Eats and Clean Eats Fast Feets. Let’s start listing, shall we?

• At school before I left for home on Friday I downloaded Part 1 of Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire on audiobook.

• Unfortunately I didn’t get to listen to it much though because I was too busy trying not to crash while it rained like crazy. Eventually I had to pull over at an exit and wait for the storm to calm down a bit.

• When I finally got home I was a little wiped out and decided to not go with my parents to the away football game. Instead I stayed in and made a new recipe. Pumpkin Pie Bars!

• Saturday was spent just lazing around and hanging with Lilly.

• We also did some grocery shopping and bought some delicious squash.

• Later my dad rented Now You See Me from Redbox. It was just as good as I expected!

• Sunday morning I made another pumpkin recipe… Pumpkin Apple Cinnamon Rolls.

• And promptly burnt my arm when removing the cookie sheet from the oven. Drat.

• Before I left for school again I also made some roasted chicken and vegetables. I had a bite of the squash from the vegetables, and some of the chicken de-skinned and it was so good!

• My parents were super nice and decided to drive part of the way back with me later that day. Surprise surprise though when it started to rain again. Hard. Like on Friday we had to pull over. My dad took the lead and my mom and I followed him in my car until we made it until the half way point where we go our separate ways. We stopped at Wal-Mart while there to get some new windshield wipers for my car.

• Thanks Dad for installing them for me!

• I didn’t get back at school until it was already dark so I didn’t have any time to write up this post last night and instead focused my efforts on Accounting and Astronomy.

In other news, I only have a three day week thanks to a Fall Break at my school. One day down. Two more to go 😀

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Magazine recommendations please!

What did you make over the weekend?

Was there any ridiculous rain where you live too?

Snapshots When I Was Sick (WIR)

Stock photos make me cringe. This is the #1 reason why I have not looked back on my last post since it was published. The #2 reason being that I can’t believe that I forced all of you to read what was probably 1000 words on my swollen sinuses and wacked out dreams (oh ya, if you missed Wednesday’s post it was a really doozy).

Going back to problem #1, the reason that I had to use photos that I just found around the internet was because my computer decided that my phone didn’t exist when I tried to plug it in and import my photos. Usually a little box pops up identifying it as a flash drive or something to that effect. Now nothing happens. Zip. Nada.

On Tuesday night when I was feeling sick I didn’t really have any desire to manually e-mail myself each and every photo that I wanted to use and then go edit them on PicMonkey. So instead I resorted to stock photos instead of leaving my whole post pictureless. So really you should be thanking me for not making you read a post with 2689 words (I just checked).

I was not however under the weather enough to choose this one… Until now. Again, you’re welcome for the mental image that has now been burned into your mind for the rest of the day.

Today when I finally do have the desire to take the extra effort to post those photos I had to decide whether to go back and edit my old post or just show them off on this one. I chose this one.

So, here are my photos from the past weekend, in all of their strange and blurry glory. I think an experiment should be created where you give 6 professional photographers a camera and ask them to take pictures at the park. As one little amendment though I think that each photographer should be in a different frame of mind. As in: just woke up, ready to fall asleep, hyped up on caffeine, starving, and sick. Oh, and the sixth would just be wide awake, caffeine-free, healthy as a horse (another little history tidbit for you on that one) and not hungry in the slightest.

In the end, I bet it would be hilarious to compare the photos and would be quite easy to pick out what pictures were taken by which person.

Here is quite possibly what the pictures may have resembled of the sick person:

Me after my awards ceremony on Friday afternoon… Look how blissfully unaware I was of what was to come!

This is just a quick picture that I took at the wedding reception. I have no idea who any of those people are, except for that’s my brother’s arm in the bottom right corner 😉

And this would be one of many plates that my dad got from the appetizer table. So much fruit. It all looked so good, and there was even little tiny metal forks to stab them with!

The retained earnings column that I texted a girl from my class when we were going over our take home quiz answers together.

Peppermint tea = lifesaver.

Such a classy mug. The poor lighting is due to the unholy hour that I was up at on Sunday morning (pun intended).

I was extremely fascinated by the quickly melting ice cubes in my tea. Time lapse- 60 seconds.

Here is Lilly checking up on me when I was trying to take a nap while my parents and brother were gone for church.

Here is the bread that I made. It looks on the outside, right?

 

The inside… not so much. This slice was about perfect after baking for about an hour longer. Ha!

3 lbs of fish! Getting the pieces is such a good deal because they are super fresh and the least expensive in the whole market because everyone wants fancy WHOLE fish.

My trash can stuffed with tissues. It just keeps piling up man.

I will be linking up these snapshots to Meghan’s Week in Review next Monday. I better see all of you there because the party is fun, fantastic, and just what you need to start the week off right.

Have a fantabulous day and an even better weekend! I know I will… Sleep is already on my mind and in my dreams (did I mention that I think my dreams have not been as funky since I’m starting to feel better?!)

Oh, and shout out to my dad even though he isn’t allowed to read my blog. I hope you feel better!

I think I may have gotten him sick too 😉

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Which of the six photographers would you be? I think I’d be both sleepy and sick.

What’s your favorite snapshot from the week?

Are you going to be linking up to WIR on Monday? You should start on your post now so that you don’t forget!

I Just Remembered… (MIMM + WIR)

I just remembered that I have about one bazillion plus one pictures that I haven’t shared on here from my summer and back-to-school antics. Among these are the rest of my weekend trip in Michigan with my family, some pictures from a recent shopping excursion with my mom and her friend, as well as just some random these-don’t-belong-anywhere-else photos that I have no where else to put.

(Source)

Notice that none of these lay mention to my dorm room. That time will come eventually. I just need to clear out my computers from my internship and that will give me a ton of extra space.

Right, about that… It turns out that my school requires a username/password to access their internet, and the phone that I run through the internet is not setup to require a password. Ergo, I can’t do the internship any longer.

(Source)

I have two main thoughts on this:

1. Oh my gosh. Money!! I really needed that money. Like A LOT.**
2. This will free up a lot of time for studying and just doing whatever I please. Already in the two weeks since school starts without taking any calls (what I did for my internship for those that don’t know) I haven’t once felt like I had too much time on my hands. I also never feel rushed. So maybe it really is for the better.

** So that’s just me being melodramatic. I have enough money to cover my school bills in my bank account as of right now, and it won’t kill me to take out a loan. I know that there are people out there with actual money concerns and mine are not even near as dramatic as theirs.

Overall I think I am also a lot less stressed without the addition of work, but that’s both good and bad. Yes, I don’t want to be OVER-stressed; however it was good practice for the real world outside of college and having that constant commitment kept me on my toes.

I’m going to be taking back my computer and phone equipment in the next few weeks and hopefully get to chat and say goodbye to my intern coordinator. She was such a nice lady and always responded to all of my questions (which were quite numerous as you can imagine). This trip will also lend itself to a trip to Whole Foods and/or Trader Joes so if that happens there will definitely be more Pictorial Deposits in the near future 😉

That’s all in the future though. Let’s wrap up the past and get crack a’ lackin!

I’m linking up today with Katie at Healthy Diva Eats for MIMM and Meghan at Clean Eats Fast Feets for Week in Review.

I took a lot of self portraits at work.

Obviously.

But instead of being obnoxious and posting one every day… I decided to bombard you with them all at once.

It’s proof that I did not wear a t-shirt/jeans/shorts every single day. My parents will be so proud (if they read my blog 😉 ).

It seems that I have an affinity for long sleeves, stripes and plaid. Hmm. Go figure- I actually have a “style.”

Before I get too retrospective and lose everyone’s respect let’s move on. After all, this blog is not about fashion!

(Source)

Now here is Part 2 of my weekend with my family up in Michigan this past summer (sorry in advance for the inordinate amount of photos).

After going to Greenfield Village at the beginning of the day, we took a short break recouping during lunch and messing around on our respective technological devices. Then my dad got it in his head that it would be fun to walk around a nearby college campus. You can just imagine my brother’s groans in protest and my mother’s dubious looks (I probably complained too but must have just blocked that part out… 😉 ). Upon explaining that the campus was well-known for looking like the grounds of HOGWARTS though we were all on board!

Instead of driving I pulled the directions up on Map Quest and suggested that we walk since it was only about a mile away.

Once we got closer I became increasingly more excited because it really DID look like Hogwarts.

The weather was absolutely perfect!

I felt like I was a student at Hogwarts… Just waiting for Harry Potter to walk around the corner.

Way far in the distance you may be able to spot a person in a light-colored shirt. There were actually two kids getting there senior pictures taken that day on the campus grounds. I bet they turned out amazing!

My mom.

Thing #1

Thing #2 (I’m guessing they were supposed to be monks?)

Me in front of a “passageway.”

Whomping Willow anyone?!

There was a lot of construction going on while we were there, which I tried to avoid in all of my pictures because it just kind of ruined the mood.

Madison Street!

I’d highly recommend for all of you Harry Potter fans out there to visit the campus whenever you’re in town. It didn’t take very long to walk around but I would love to go back there some time and have a picnic, take some more pictures, and if classes were in session maybe even take a look inside!

Alright…. Now let’s skip forward a few weeks to first of the September when I went shopping with my mom and her friend.

As I’ve mentioned before, coming from a small town we don’t have many specialty stores around to shop at. That limits the variety of things that we can buy as far as clothes, food, etc. More importantly, for my mom at least, it really puts a damper on the school supplies that she can buy for her classroom. We used to have a really great teacher store around us but that closed over five years ago so now we have to trek over an hour away to get to the nearest one.

Some may have found it boring, but growing up a teacher’s daughter I’ve gotten accustomed to teacher stores, quick trips into town for last-minute supplies, and helping with back-to-school crafts (<< one of my favorite parts aside from helping her grade tests!).

I know that there a few teachers that also blog out there, so this is for you all. I guess if you really like shopping/books/stickers you’ll like all of the pictures too… 😉

You Know You are in a Teacher Store When…

There are bulletin boards in the bathroom.

There are aisles upon aisles of books.

And stickers…

I guess I should also specify that these stickers are AWESOME!

Look closer… That’s right! Scratch and sniff. Stickers scented with the best foods known to man: Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Pizza, Grape, Popcorn, Strawberry, Cola, Lemonade, Apple, Taco, Bubblegum and there was even MORE on the other side. Heaven.

I even came across these. I think it’s safe to say though that our homemade versions were just as good and much cheaper 🙂

Now to wrap up this post a little something to remember from a scientific genius who we have all learned from over the years:

Well said Einstein. Well said.

I think I will take his advice and catch up on my fairy tales with Once Upon a Time this week to prepare for the new season. Who’s with me?

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Questions for you:

Have you ever gone anywhere that has reminded you of the set of a movie?

What scent would you want your scratch and sniff stickers to be? Cookie dough or cupcake. Duh.

What shows are you excited for this Fall? Or sad to see leave from the Summer? Excited for Once Upon a Time (but I’m WAY behind on my episodes…) and sad to see Rookie Blue end.