Thanksgiving and Our Holiday Card!

We had a great first Thanksgiving as a married couple! We spent the weekend at Jeff's grandfather's house, which is where his mom and sister also live. I didn't get to take too many pictures, but here's a few!

Jeff being a goon.

We played a lot of Rock Band!

We color coordinated our outfits. We do this a lot!

We went out to eat a few times (I need to start running on the treadmill again and get back on track with eating starting tomorrow until Christmas), went bowling with one of Jeff's cousins who won both games (I came in last both times which is a shock to no one) and went out to a bar with some of Jeff's family. I was the DD by choice that night, but I had a lot of fun hanging out and watching everyone else act silly! We left this afternoon and sat in some terrible traffic! Now I'm lesson planning, (cannot believe I have to work tomorrow) doing laundry, and getting everything unpacked and back in order! I love visiting family, but hate all the stuff I have to do once I get home!

We also got our holiday cards made at Costco! Jeff's mom has a membership and it was much cheaper to do it there than anywhere else. Since our wedding was the biggest event for us this year, we just had to use a wedding pic for the card! I can't get it to rotate correctly, but here it is!

I plan to have all the envelopes addressed, stuffed, and ready to go by the end of the week! We've never done a holiday card together before, but now that we're married, I'd love to do a photo card every year! What is everyone else doing for holiday cards?

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a very happy Thanksgiving! I get out of work at noon (technically 12:30 because I have bus send off duty on Wednesdays) and Jeff and I are heading to Long Island to spend the weekend with Jeff's mom and her side of the family as soon as he gets out of work (hopefully he gets out early so we can beat the horrendous traffic.) We have been so blessed this year and have so much to be thankful for!

Wedding Dress Rejects

Anyone who reads my blog knows what my wedding dress looked like! It was a huge theme of this blog for a long time! I thought it would be fun to show you the other 4 dresses I tried on and call my "wedding dress rejects!" I tried on 5 dresses total, the 4th one being the one I bought. I got my dress and the bridesmaid's dresses all in one night! I knew exactly what I wanted for my girls and a really good idea of what I wanted for me! The other dresses were beautiful on the David's Bridal website and in person, but just did not work for me. It's a good thing I got the dress that I did, because when I showed Jeff all of the other dresses, he HATED them! He said all I needed was a pretty white dress, and that's what I got! I'm really glad I kept it simple and I could tell that Jeff really loved my dress, and that was really important to me!

This is the first wedding gown I ever tried on! It's an Oleg Cassini and I thought it just made me look blah and kind of chubby. It gave me no shape at all!

This was the runner up dress. I thought it looked flattering on me and I liked it, but it was a lot of dress and in the end, just wasn't me! I also didn't like how I had 3 different length veils on! Too much!

I haaaaate the train on this one! The dress itself was very sparkly and heavily beaded, which I liked, but the beading was actually itchy on the neckline and the dress was way too heavy for a summer wedding! I would have been sweating all day! This one was also obviously too small seeing as I couldn't zip it totally, and I don't think it did anything for my shape!

This gown was my favorite from online pictures. On me... it looked like a sack! It just kind of hung there and I didn't like how the corset bow was coming out of my behind! I wasn't a huge fan of the lacy patch designs on the entire dress.

Finally, here's a ridiculous picture of me in the dress I DID pick! Can you tell that I was excited?

My mom picked this one when I was visiting her one day and we were looking at dresses on the David's Bridal website. She loved the bow and thought this dress was very "me." Turns out she was right and bows became an unintentional theme of our wedding! I guess in this case mom really did know best! :)

Keep in mind that this is all my opinion. If any of you got these dresses, I'm sure they looked gorgeous on you. I just didn't like them on ME!

I invite all of you other newlywed ladies to share your "wedding dress rejects" too!

My Classroom

I thought I'd show you guys where I spend the majority of my time each week... my classroom! My school has 4 different buildings full of classrooms. I am in the newest building, which is 5 years old. Teachers can switch classrooms and/or buildings year to year, but I've been lucky enough to stay in the same building! I had this same classroom 2 years ago and I love it! I hope they keep me in this room next year too! The room is HUGE which is nice since I have big classes, but I also get huge study halls as a result and that's not so fun! One of my favorite parts of this room is the fact that it has 2 doors. It's the only room in the building that has that! I'm not big on tons of posters and cutesy stuff for middle schoolers. This is pretty common for upper school (what we call middle school) teachers where I work. 

Some of the desks, the back bulletin boards, and my desk.

The front of my room. A small bulletin board, my ActivBoard which is my favorite thing ever, and a small white board where I write the date, day, HW assignments, and the class agenda for the day. I have to change the agenda every period depending on the class!

Lots of shelves and nothing to put in them!

The counter where I keep all the HW and classwork for the day as well as my phone and ActivBoard plug-ins for my computer.

A close-up of my desk!

The counter behind my desk. I love that black tower thing I got for all my kids' folders of work! My goal this year was to be more organized with this and I definitely am so far!

My room looks so nice at the beginning of the day! Here's how it looks by the end...

I need to get my students to remember to push in their chairs!

Great Clothing Finds!

I adore shopping! It's one of my all-time favorite activities! I am so lucky to have a husband that supports my love of shopping and joins me in it! We spent a lot of time shopping for clothes this weekend! My MIL e-mailed me (she is the queen of coupons) a friends & family coupon for Old Navy for 30% off the total purchase, then ON gave us a coupon for 35% off the total purchase at the Gap! I used to shop a lot at J.Crew, but I really can't justify it anymore and Old Navy has ADORABLE stuff right now for excellent prices that don't cause us to go broke! You're going to notice that when I find something I like, I tend to buy it in a million colors, especially pink, black, and white! Anyone else do that?

I think I want this dress in a few other colors. Perhaps navy and pink? Since I'm almost 5'9", it's short on me, but not obscene as long as I remember to air dry it and not toss it into the dryer!

Got this jacket on sale for $45! It's back to $89, but I bet it will go on sale again! I needed a nice, longer, warm, black coat. My pea coat is navy and doesn't match all the black I wear in the winter!

Got this shirt in black, pink, and white. Might go back for the red and purple too! I could wear this to work in the spring with a tank top underneath it! I can't do too many ruffly shirts due to my chest size (which isn't huge, but too much for ruffles!) but these look great!

Love these sooo much! I wanted the blue one too, but decided not to get too ridiculous!

Aren't these cardigans cute? The buttons are faux diamonds! I love having a little more bling on me when I wear these to work (some of my female students love the buttons and have told me so too!) I have it in these 2 argyle patterns (bought yesterday) as well as solid black, pink, and winter white, which I bought weeks ago. I wore the lighter argyle one today with the black ruffly shirt shown earlier underneath and it looked adorable! I will definitely wear that combo again to work this week!

If this shirt from the Gap isn't me I don't know what is (remember my wedding dress detail and this necklace I want for my b-day?) I got it in this purple, black, and white which is every color they carry! I can definitely wear these to work in the spring! I also got some cute v-neck tank tops with lace along the neckline. I think they will look cute under cardigans or other shirts!

Jeff got himself a few baseball type tees (long sleeved, the sleeves are black the rest is another color), some solid colored long-sleeved tees, new jeans, some dress shirts to wear to work, and a few sweaters. He's definitely my favorite shopping partner! <3

Now all of you need to go shopping! :D

Great Books!

Last year for Christmas, my MIL got me "Vision In White" by Nora Roberts. I was planning my wedding and she thought I'd enjoy it, and she was right! I'd never read anything by Nora Roberts before, but this book was awesome! It's the first in a series of 4 about 4 women who run a wedding business. Each book focuses on one of the girls and how they find love, work, etc. This first one focuses on the photographer.



My MIL brought me this one on Thursday when she stopped by on her way home from Boston. I read it last night in 4 1/2 hours because I couldn't put it down! It was better than the first one in my opinion, and I loved it! This one focused on the florist. Both books so far remind me of a chick flick, meaning they're predictable, romantic, and have happy endings. They also have sex scenes, but I think they're well written... not too cheesy or graphic!

The third book comes out in May 2010 and focuses on the pastry chef! I can't wait to read it! If you're looking for some fabulous, easy to read chick lit, I highly recommend these books!

The Little Couple

Does anyone else watch this show? I got hooked on it during their first season and I love it! I think Jen and Bill are absolutely adorable and it's so nice to see how in love they are with each other! In case you don't watch, it's on Tuesdays at 10:00pm on TLC: Jen is a doctor who works in the NICU and Bill is in business, they've been married a little over a year, and I love watching them work and just go about their lives. There's no ridiculous drama with them, which is refreshing! I love me some Real Housewives, but it's nice to see people who genuinely love each other too (which is part of the reason why I also watch the Duggars!) The big focus of this season so far is if Jen should have a biological child or not. Due to her size, there are some pretty serious risks. I hope they can come to a decision that they are comfortable with and I think they will make amazing parents someday!

What are you watching on TV?

On a different note, head over to my recipe blog to get a yummy chicken dumplings recipe that I used to make dinner for Jeff and I tonight! :)

Fun With Photo Booth

During Game 6 of the World Series last Wednesday when the Yankees were starting their ass kicking and we had a feeling a 27th championship was only a few innings away, we got really giddy and decided to play on Photo Booth. We had a ton of fun and laughed a lot! Here's the result:

Licking my face!

Face smoosh!

Jeff needed a haircut! He had a faux-hawk going!

This is the funniest one of the bunch!

Woo hoo!

Our cat joined in on the fun!

I married this man.

Ahhhhhhhh!

There are more, but these are my favs and I think this is more than enough embarrassment for one day! Hope you enjoyed it! :D

Hockey Game!

When we first started dating a few years ago, Jeff took me to a Bridgeport Sound Tigers game. The Sound Tigers are the minor league (is that what it's called?) of the Islanders. I had never been to any sort of hockey game other than a few at Marist, which weren't a big deal. I had so much fun, so we've made it a point to go to a few games each year! We went last night and watched the Sound Tigers play the Hartford Wolfpack, which is the minor league version of the Rangers. The Sound Tigers lost 4-1, but we had fun and will definitely catch a few more games this season!

The rink is at The Arena At Harbor Yard. We got there early and got to watch the zamboni, which is Jeff's favorite!

Us. It was cold in there, so I kept my jacket on all night!

The Sound Tigers are in orange, blue, and white.

There were several hard hits into the boards and some of them knocked things loose! This is the crew fixing it the first time! I think it happened 2-3 more times!

It was a hockey game, so of course there were fights. This was the second one and it was broken up quickly! There was one later when one of the Sound Tigers really beat the crap out of another guy! I never understood the point of the fights and how players in any other sport would be suspended and fined, but in hockey the worst that happens is you get kicked out for the rest of the game if it's a really bad fight (like the one Sound Tiger that beat that guy later in the game.)

The Sound Tiger's mascot, Storm.

During the 20 minute break between periods, people shot t-shirts out of guns! Jeff caught one many years ago, and he's in desperate need of a new one, but last night was not his night!

During another break between periods, people threw numbered hockey pucks onto the rink, trying to hit the small target in the middle of the rink. The 3 people who get the closest win a prize.

Jeff double fisting his ice cream cone and a good portion of the huge hot fudge sundae he bought for me! I can't believe he ate all that!

Earlier yesterday, we went out to Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch, and to see "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" which was adorable! We were going to see "Men Who Stare At Goats" but Jeff read reviews and they were all terrible, so we decided to skip it!

Today I am doing laundry, cleaning the house, and lesson planning! 

What did you guys do this weekend?

This Is It

A few friends and I went to see "This Is It" last night! One just came along for the ride, the other one really likes MJ's music and really wanted to the movie, like me! I thought the movie was awesome and very well done! It was fun to listen to all of his songs and get a bit of a glimpse into Michael Jackson's personality. He seemed very sweet and a perfectionist. It's such a shame this concert never happened. It would have been absolutely amazing and the man could still sing and dance very well. The world has really lost an incredible, talented performer.