August 2017

Thursday Thoughts- Deep Thoughts

THURSDAY THOUGHTS

Happy Thursday, y’all!

I am definitely happy it is Friday Eve! Most of us have a long weekend ahead of us and the first college football weekend at that. Both of those things make me very happy about this coming few days.

Now for the Deep Thoughts

So, I got a reality check on Monday as I was getting ready for work, I was just not feeling it. I had a case of the Mondays for sure. I found a picture on Instagram that was of a girl dressed in a really cute fall outfit on a sunny autumn day with a cup of coffee and a book. She was sitting on a park bench reading this book, and I thought, THAT! That’s what I want to be doing today instead of going to work.

It wasn’t this exact picture, but a Google Image search gave me this, and it’s pretty similar.

I was just about to regram the shot when I scrolled down a few more and noticed more tragedy in Texas. And it just hit me that no matter how bad of a case of the Mondays I may have, my Monday is a cake walk compared to the people of Houston.

It’s been a year since Paul and I moved back to Greenville, and it’s also been a year since Louisiana had their flood. I know so many people that were affected by this. People who essentially lost their homes and have had to rebuild or restore, people who had mere inches of land left before water came inside their house, people who got in their boats and went to rescue others who were trapped on their rooftops. I can’t help but think about all of those people in Texas who maybe weren’t prepared for such flooding. I feel like people in Louisiana often expect it, especially after Hurricane Katrina. Maybe expect isn’t the right word…they just know it’s a real possibility that when the weather man says flooding, they mean business. People take precautions with sandbags and evacuations, but I wonder if the people of Texas thought maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.

My heart goes out to them. Paul and I were spared of any flooding last year. It literally just rained in our neighborhood. There was no real water accumulation in the street or any standing water too near our house. We were in the process of trying to sell it too. We were so blessed by God. I’ve seen the devastation flooding leaves behind. I’ve seen pool ladders hanging in trees along the road; I’ve seen furniture from an entire house piled by the road at driveway after driveway for miles. It’s awful.

I say all this because no matter how bad my Monday felt, how much coffee I needed and didn’t get to drink, how many times I yawned because I stayed up too late watching Game of Thrones, none of that matters. What matters is that I remember how incredibly blessed I am with the things I do have.

Pray, Y’all

Send out your prayers to the victims of Hurricane Harvey. There’s a lot that’s about to happen in the rebuilding process of the communities and families that were devastated. It’ll be long and hard, but I know that if Louisiana could come together to be #louisianastrong, then Texas can do the same. And I have to say how proud I was to see people on social media posting about the Cajun Navy (regular men and women from the gracious state of Louisiana) going out of their way with their own trucks and boats to help rescue these people from dangerous situations.

I’m not here to tell you to donate your money. By all means, if you have it, do it. I know of some reputable places that you can send your money to if you’re wanting to donate, but I’m asking you to pray. Pray for healing and restoration in the great state of Texas and for it’s people. And thank God for your blessings. Even if it’s been a bad day, I can always find at least one thing to be thankful for. I bet you can too.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

And War Eagle!

Elizabeth

Recipe Worth Sharing- Shrimp Lo Mein

RECIPE WORTH SHARING- SHRIMP LO MEIN

You guys…this recipe! First, let me preface this post by saying I am no food photographer. I have tons to learn in that department, but I need to share this recipe with y’all so bear with my amateur skills behind the camera.

I’ve been seriously slacking in the wife department when it comes to cooking, well pretty much everywhere else too now that school has started. Paul has been doing so much laundry. Bless you, babe! When you’re basically a sloth in the summer in front of Netflix all the time, you forget how to balance your life. Anyway, I am determined to get it back together now that I’m a few weeks in to school.

Yesterday I knew I had to get something to cook for dinner before heading home, so I headed to Pinterest for some inspiration instead of ordering pizza. I was sort of craving Chinese food, noodles, specifically, and shrimp and searched a lo mein recipe. I clicked on this pin from lifemadesweeter.com.

Ingredients

Her lo mein recipe used:

shrimp
red bell pepper
carrots

Very simple and delicious. Paul doesn’t love bell pepper, so I decided to do broccoli instead. But when I got to the store I found myself adding all of these things to my cart to add to my lo mein, so I used:

shrimp
green peas
broccoli
grated carrots
small sweet onion
water chestnuts

In the center is minced garlic and minced ginger which is part of her recipe.

For the sauce, you have to use oyster sauce. That sounded positively disgusting, and I fully expected the smell to be very off-putting, but it wasn’t so bad, and it totally makes the sauce, AND I found it very easily in Super Foods. Woo Hoo! (As much as I appreciate a good Walmart clearance or just a good Walmart find in general, I was so happy to not have to go there on a Friday afternoon.)

So here are the other ingredients I used (all but the veggie oil and noodles are used in the sauce).

I followed her recipe just as she had written it, and I’m not going to post an in-depth description of what I did, since this is not my recipe. Please visit her website to see the full recipe. I just wanted you to see how I tweaked it.

Put it all together and what do you have? Deliciousness!

Okay, I mixed up the sauce while the noodles were boiling. I used thin spaghetti noodles instead of lo mein noodles because I already had those in the cabinet. I didn’t have the Chinese cooking wine or dry sherry, so I omitted it, and I never missed it. Also, Paul and I don’t like cilantro, so I left that out too.

The sauce only take a minute to put together, so while the noodles cooked, I heated a big skillet with some of the veggie oil, dropped in the shrimp and onions and sauted for a few minutes. Then I added all the other ingredients except the sauce. I let them all cook down and get a little soft. The recipe tells you to add the sauce and noodles next, toss, and cook for about two minutes, so I did that.

*I cooked the whole pound of noodles because, well, leftovers. But that means I doubled the amount of sauce that the recipe calls for.* It doesn’t look like it’s going to be enough sauce because my noodles did not get as dark as the one in her pictures, but it was perfect!

The beauty of this recipe is how customizable it is. I think bell pepper would be good in it, chicken instead of shrimp, baby corn, chopped asparagus, pineapple, rice instead of noodles, or even just leave it veggie and not put any meat in it.

The Verdict

It was a big hit! Paul loves Chinese food, but I just don’t love typical Chinese takeout. I like the veggie lo mein and fried rice, but I’m never just dying to go get Chinese food unless, well, honestly unless it’s at Ming’s Garden in Montgomery or P.F. Chang’s. I do enjoy the fried rice and lo mein at China Town here in Greenville, though. And their fried wontons. Yum! I get so sidetracked, I’m sorry. It was so delicious! I took one bite and shook my head because it was so unbelievable. It was exactly what I was craving, and I’m so happy to have leftovers and happy to make this again and switch up some of the ingredients each time.

Here are a few more amateur pictures of our food. 🙂

Please visit lifemadesweeter.com to find this delicious recipe. She has so many other scrumptious looking dishes to make, too. I’ll be going there for more Asian-inspired dinners soon.

Okay, go make this delicious dinner tonight! It was very easy and would be a quick weeknight meal. It would be even quicker if you meal-prepped early and had everything thawed (well, not the shrimp) and cut/grated.

Anyone else like Asian food? Paul and I love sushi, but haven’t gotten around to a sushi date night lately. Any restaurant recommendations for good sushi in the Montgomery area? Leave them in the comments.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

XO, Elizabeth

Classroom Reveal

CLASSROOM REVEAL

In my July Favorites post I told you guys I was changing jobs and heading to public school to teach third grade. Now that school has started and I’ve gotten into the swing of things (kind of), I’d like to share the makeover I gave my classroom.

The Before

I came into the classroom after the Beautiful, wood floors had been waxed maybe one too many times, so my classroom was in a bit of disarray. Please forgive the atrocious state of the room with the ladders and pile of literally everything in the middle of the room. The floors look wet. They are so dark and lacquered within an inch of their beautiful lives. The hallways are a lighter color, but still a lot of varnish there too. It is such a charming building, and I love that it is a place that has educated many, many people. I can’t imagine how many teachers have been in just this one classroom. I love that it’s a building with so much history. I do think Nicole Curtis needs to take a trip down to Alabama and come feature my school on Rehab Addict. She could make this place amazing!The picture below shows how bad the paint was peeling off. It really needed a face lift.
Okay, so I have to say that bright blue is one of my favorite colors. I mean, don’t y’all remember Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment in the Sex and the City movie…perfection. Also, my teenage bedroom was four walls of that same lime green as the cabinet. I love bright colors, but I wasn’t feeling it when I walked into the classroom. So I decided to head to Pinterest to find some inspiration. I saw this image and new right away that I was headed in a farmhouse direction. Of course Chip and Jo would do something as adorable as awnings and window boxes INSIDE the classroom.My search led to many more classrooms with a farmhouse theme. You can check those out on my Classroom Ideas Pinterest Board if you’re a fellow Pinterest nut like I am.

I started to get a vision of what I wanted, and with the help of my parents and my husband, the room was painted and things were on their way! I decided to go with a neutral palette for the room and accent with mostly yellow, but also some green. I used Kilz brand paint in Starched Linen for the walls and Kilz paint again for the built-in cabinet and free standing cubbies but in the color White by Glidden. All the paint came from our local Walmart. I mention the Kilz brand because, Holy Moly, did it cover those bright colors well! The walls only took two coats, but I did give the cubbies and the cabinet three coats. For the black trim, we just used a little quart of Rust-Oleum in Glossy Black for touch-ups.

You can see that the built-in cabinet has been painted many times in it’s day. I can totally understand painting a built-in, but when I opened this thing and saw the luscious wood inside, my heart sank. I can’t believe how gorgeous it is. Why would anyone want to paint that?!?! My dad did say he would try to get the outside back to what it was originally, but there just wasn’t any time. Maybe next summer…right Dad? 🙂

The After

Let’s start at the entrance. Out in the hall we have a Hollywood theme. Back to Pinterest I went for inspiration. I pinned so many ideas on my Bulletin Board Ideas board, so feel free to visit and see them all. My mom wanted to know what I was thinking about doing, and when I showed her the picture of the marquis I liked, she said she had everything and would gladly make it for me. Bless you, Mama! I love how it turned out! And, bonus, none of my students forget where my room is because of it.
Now come on in.

The director’s chair came from Mrs. Ellinor who was at that giant yard sale that goes on for miles. (I can’t remember the official name.) Mom told her to be on the look out for one, and I prayed she’d find it! She must have too, because she did!! Thanks for finding this for me, Mrs. Ellinor, and bringing it back home! It’s so fun and easy to move out of the way when I need them to see the entire board.

The rug is from At Home and makes the room feel a little warmer and welcoming. Mom and Dad scored that one for me one afternoon. I love it. Okay, let’s talk for a second about the SHIPLAP bulletin board paper! I saw it on Pinterest and just assumed I’d never get any. I saw it on Amazon, but I thought it was a bit expensive, so I decided I’d just use regular paper in black, green, or yellow. But a trip to Davie’s in Montgomery made my dreams come true! I love it so much! I’m trying to find a way to make it work in my house. 🙂 The cubbies look so great painted white. I know they’ll get so dirty by the end of school, but I just love how bright and clean they look right now. The sunflowers are those tissue paper pom poms from Dollar Tree flattened down. I made the rest of the flowers from bulletin board paper. My boarder is napkin squares stapled very close to each other. You just buy about 250 cocktail sized napkins, unfold them, and cut each napkin into four individual squares. I suggest watching Netflix while you do it. Haha! 😉 I just wanted something visually interesting, and when I saw this idea from Mrs. Sheila, who retired last year, I knew that I had borrow her idea. I found these precious numbers on a shiplap background on Teachers Pay Teachers. They were so cute, and being that they were shiplap, I had to say yes. And just a quick before and after of the built in cabinet.

Before AfterIt sure is an absolute delight to walk into a space that makes me happy. I want to thank my family again for helping me make this happen. I’m so grateful they are willing to help take on projects that I come up with and indulge my creative side. It was a lot of fun getting it all done, and I couldn’t have done it without them. To my fellow teachers who are in the throws of the first few weeks of school, I raise my coffee mug to you! Lord knows we are tired and need all the caffeine to get us going in the morning and sometimes keep us going in the afternoons. I know they say there’s no tired like end of the year teacher tired, but beginning of the year teacher tired is real and worse. I wish you all a wonderful school year. I’d love to hear how your first week has gone in the comments.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, everyone, and thanks for stopping by today!