happy fall day!

i don't know if there are places somewhere that actually look fallish, but here in branson, it still looks like we're in the throes of a beautiful summer! the weather is markedly more mild, but when i think 'fall', i think changing leaves, crisp air, pumpkins on porches...
we still have a long way to go people.

what could be more summer-time than sun tea? nick LOVES sun tea, and swears he can taste the sun, steeped into every sip. i just love how it looks. every time i put a jar out on the sidewalk, i feel like i'm hearkening back to the times of horse-drawn buggies and laundry baskets that were actual baskets.

on sunday, we went for a walk, as it was perfect walking weather, and from these pictures you would think we went to some far off wilderness...

but we were actually just walking from our house down to our favorite dock...

which was flooded...

down some more busy road to this waterfall...

and then back past some lovely creeks.
water thrills my soul.
we're going camping for nick's birthday next weekend down by the buffalo river and i CAN'T WAIT!!

while we're on the topic of decorating...

why not take the wedding-picture tour?

we'll start in the living room with the new over-the-couch decor...

move on to the dining room...

the kitchen...

back to the living room... (the top picture of nick with noah is from the wedding -the other one on the bottom is my friend katie on her wedding day.)

go up the stairs...

and end back in the bedroom! a familiar sight if you already took in the makeover pictures.

the only rooms not bearing signs of our recent nuptials include the bathroom & laundry room. we'll have to see what we can do about that. it's only fitting that every single room in the house should display the photographic evidence of our wedded bliss.

the grand finale

after much hype, here they are, the 'after' pictures of our bedroom makeover!
nick and i are both exceptionally pleased at the outcome and love the new feel of the room.

before we were married, nick made this bed as a wedding present to me. it's beautiful. he's a craftsmanly miracle worker.
when mom & dad were here before the wedding, dad helped him stain it and put it together - a huge help as it was a huge project. they got it finished before the wedding, but we didn't think it would fit upstairs so they moved it into the basement bedroom. after being down there for a while, we realized it wasn't our favorite option for living - the cielings are too low, among other reasons. we'll probably just keep that room as a guest room.
after doing some measuring, nick figured we actually could fit the new bed upstairs after all, and here it is! just barely. the queen sized box springs didn't fit, so we put a couple pieces of plywood under the top mattress and it works perfectly. in fact, better than the box springs as it keeps the mattress lower and we can see more of the headboard slats that are so super cool. before, they were almost totally covered up with mattress & pillows. also, lower is better since standing room is a little tight on the sides with the sloping cieling.

$3 thrift store chair - LOVE it!! this corner makes me happy, aesthetically speaking.

if you hadn't noticed, we went with green and brown - coincidentally our wedding colors also! we like those colors. plus we're trying to drag out the wedding joy as long as possible.
we just finished hanging up wedding pictures in the living room over the couch and they look so good! but also just a tad wedding obsessed. i can't decide if we're a little 'o.t.t.' (that's 'over the top') with the pictures of us in our bridal regalia strewn throughout all the rooms of the house. they're just so fun! it's hard to resist!


here's our wedding quilt made by my lovely mother in all it's glory. we love it and will most likely use it until it falls apart around us when we're 90 years old. the only thing i've been longing for now to finish off the amazing look are pillow shams. perhaps red ones? our poor pillows look squidgy and unstructured. they need some shams to whip them into shape.

so there you have it! our new bedroom.

it worked!

i'm happy to report that after a good hour of playing their energy out, the kittens didn't wake us up a single time, all night long!!
somebody out there's a genius.
and i feel rested.
praise the lord.

in the meantime...

i did some googling of 'active kitties' and came up with a few good tips.
we'll try playing out their energy in the evening (to simulate 'the hunt'), then give them food (reward for hunting), then let them groom themselves (to be rid of any traces of 'the hunt' so other predators don't track them down), then they'll be ready for a nice long nap! we can also set a clock radio alarm to go off in the afternoon which will possibly help interrupt their daytime sleeping schedule.
what a wealth of knowledge can be found on the internet!
i'll keep you abreast of the situation.

and whilst you wait longingly for the bedroom makeover pictures, i thought i'd appease you with some shots of my new classroom and such.

here's my new id - i look rather hair-in-my-facey and vaguely hippy in the actual pictures. not as much in this tiny rendition.


some common themes you might be noticing from these pictures are...

A: the enormously tall walls!!

B: the dreadfully bare and plain decor.

and C: the ghastly lighting!! there are windows EVERYwhere in branson high school (making up most of the ceiling in the commons area) but i think they're tinted or something because there's this perpetual dim sort of yellowish, bluish cast on everything. it's just a tad depressing.
you'd be depressed looking at people this color, too.
hopefully i'll get used to my newfound pallor.

ARGGgg!

okay seriously this time, the kittens are DRIVING ME CRAZY!!!!!

as i mentioned before, we don't have a door on our loft bedroom so they bring their rambunctiousness to our bed at ALL hours of the night - the last two nights they've woken me up at least 7 or 8 times. i'm almost to the point of dropping them out the window next time they pounce on my pillow and start scratching their head at 4 a.m.
any suggestions? besides kitty nyquil?
all i'm saying is, they're lucky they're so darn cute.

oh, and no 'after' pictures of our new bedroom decor today - maybe tomorrow.

makeover: home edition

well, after 4 1/2 years of living in this room on my own, it's no longer "mine" but it's "our's"... this weekend, nick and i decided to re-decorate to reflect that transition. it looks SO great!! i can't wait for you to see the 'after' pictures! right now i'll just show you some 'befores' since there's still a few things to do til it's complete (picture frames on the walls, etc)

these are from a LONG time ago, and funnily enough, not a whole lot has changed over the years. once i find a way to arrange something, i like it to stay that way. forever. or until i get married and re-do the whole room, color scheme and all.

mohinder was very interested in the whole process and kept prowling around all over the upheaval. here's his favorite position - breast bone resting on the corner, legs hanging down.
he's a seriously unique cat.

i painted the trim while nick fixed his dresser. we worked ALL day saturday and a lot of the day sunday after church - it was definitely not a relaxing weekend, but well worth the efforts!

on a slightly unrelated topic, the kittens are adorable lately - they're like these little toddlers, following us around everywhere just waiting for the opportunity to cuddle on our laps and get cozy. here they were perched on the window sill as we sat on the porch swing, longingly watching our every move.

the only time their attentiveness is annoying is at night. they snooze the day away then are wide awake and ready for action right about when we're trying to go to sleep. they love to accompany us to our bedroom (where we have no door to shut them out, darn it) and chase each other mercilessly around the carpet, under the bed, ON the bed...
we have a water bottle by the bed but when we squirt them, they just run behind something and bide their time until we're not poised, with bottle in hand. they probably think we're playing with them.
lately i've been taking them downstairs and kicking one of their toys across the floor. it seems to distract them enough that they forget about their favorite people upstairs trying to sleep.

anyhow...
stay tuned for the amazing 'after' pictures tomorrow!

thoughts on school, etc.

so i'm teaching at a new school now, y'know... i thought it was about time to fill you in on some of my thoughts as this new year gets started up.

i taught for 4 years at blue eye high school (behs) and am now at branson high school (bhs), and i tell you, that one little letter makes all the difference in the world!
for one thing, i'm now paid quite a bit more a year - little blue eye just doesn't measure up on the missouri pay scale.
there are a few other differences i've noticed also in these 2 1/2 weeks we've been in session.

i have two favorite things about teaching at branson vs. blue eye:

#1 the schedule - i have to show up to work at 7 a.m. (yikes!) but classes are over at 2:31!!
now, i usually don't leave right at 3 when we're officially allowed to leave since i have work to do, but even if i have several hours of grading or planning, i'm still home at a decent time. it's taken some adjusting to get up so early and be ready for coherent words to come out of my mouth at 7:30 sharp, but the trade off with having such an early ending time is worth it, by golly.

#2 i sincerely think the kids like me better here. at first i figured it's because they don't know me yet, but the more i think about it, the more i think they really do just like me better! perhaps the reason is because branson is a little less 'country' than blue eye, if you know what i mean. the most typical reason for a student to be gone from school in rural blue eye was to go hunting. the favorite color of most students was john deere green, and i don't think i'd ever seen more wranglers all in one place.
having never taught anywhere else before, i thought these characteristics were normal, or at least not extremely abnormal...
turns out they might be a teeny bit outside the norm.
of the 1,300 students at branson high, i think maybe i spied a camouflaged hat the other day. blue eye's student body of 200 usually sported somewhere around 199 of them...
:-)
just kidding.
they're just not the same kind of folk as i am. i don't judge them, by any means, but i think branson kids are just more my kind of people.
it's nice to be liked.
i'm still keeping in mind though, that it really only has been 2 1/2 weeks... this theory of mine could go downhill fast, you never know.

other differences...

i teach with 2 other art teachers here. there are pros and cons about this, but the main pro is that i feel more of a constant motivation to pull out the A-game with my teaching. for one thing, some of my art foundations freshmen will most likely go on to take painting or photography with the other art teachers and they're going to find out how well i did or did not educate them in the basics.
also, every friday we have an hour of collaboration time to discuss what we're teaching, etc, and that little jolt of accountability is going to be good to keep me wanting to do my best every week.
i always wanted to be a good teacher at blue eye, but i didn't have anyone caring a whole lot about what i taught.
accountability is such an important thing all around.

my classroom walls are much less interesting than my blue eye walls... no colorful murals to give splashes of vibrancy here. they're very boring white, and also about 40 feet tall, i think. the ceilings are waaayyy up there, making for huge expanses of wall. it'd be nice if i had huge artwork to display on them, but i don't. therefore, it looks like i teach in a warehouse. i'll try to come up with ideas on that topic. i don't think the branson administration will go for painting murals. even if they did, we can only reach about 12 feet high without risking our lives... that would leave an awful lot of wall.

my class sizes are bigger - i currently have two classes with 30 kids in each, one with 32(!) in it, then a 23, 24, & 25er...
comparatively, at blue eye i always had at least 3 classes with 15-20 kids... but i'm not really minding the bigger classes. having a few years of experience makes a big difference in the whole 'classroom management' department. i seem to be doing okay. big classes are more tiring, but so far, not too much to handle.
i'd really like to learn new ways of dealing with large class sizes though. i wish we had the opportunity to observe other teachers in their classes to see their unique ways of dealing with certain issues that crop up when 32 kids are all painting at the same time...

maybe the reason why i'm not stressing too much over the huge class sizes has something to do with my very favorite thing about teaching at branson - i only have ONE prep!! that's pretty amazing! i only had 3 at blue eye, which is still not that many. but here i only have to prepare to teach one class, art foundations, so i have it every single hour, 6 classes in a row. it can get monotonous somedays, but my whole attraction to teaching art is really about the relationships anyhow, so i'm paying more attention to the kids and enjoying them more than anything. i still pay attention to the art i'm teaching of course, but i love getting them started on projects and then walking around and interacting with them while they're working on it for a few weeks. this new year, i've actually been trying to go back to that basic love... it's easy to get tighter and stricter and end up annoyed in general with kids and schools and administration... i'm really wanting to stay relaxed and not so strict and just enjoy being a teacher. it's been easier to do starting at a new school. i have a hard time going back on myself - like if i never allow iPODs in class, but then the next year i do, it seems inconsistent. at blue eye, i never let them listen to music while they were working on projects, i would just put on music in the classroom. but after thinking about it, it makes more sense to let them listen to their own music if they want to. #1 it gets the troublemakers and noisy kids plugged in and out of your hair (especially in such big classes), and #2 it keeps people happy. so i just started out that way here, and i like being less of a strict person.
granted, there's some things you have to be strict on, but i don't want to be authoritarian just for the sake of establishing authority. i don't like power struggles. there's no legitimate point to them, and they're exhausting.

anyhow, all that to say, so far i'm having fun at branson.
:-)

AND i get to go home to my favorite person of all time every single day!
poor guy, he developed a cold the other day and now he's feeling a little junky.
he came over to the school and jogged with me in the exercise room on wednesday - we're going to try to do that 3 times a week. it's been too long since we've been lazy couch potatoes. it's time to get our rears in gear! for some reason he's lost 10 pounds though, since being married to me. i found those lost pounds - i've gained around 6 since the beginning of our wedded bliss...
my personal theory is because when i cook for us, i serve our plates up and give us both about the same amount of food, which is more than i normally eat, but less than he normally eats. so we're both going to end up weighing the same amount eventually.

maybe eventually we'll figure out the balance of portion control and getting back into exercising. then we'll both be healthy! that's the goal anyhow.

time to stop rambling. if you made it this far, kudos to you. you're a trooper.