Making House

This post was supposed to be revealed much earlier in the week but some of you know that I had a fall on my motorbike that delayed things.  I am still not entirely sure what happened to create the fall. All I know is it happened and I am alive.  I know I was stopped at a dead end, coming home from the grocery. I accelerated into the turn and somehow ended up on the ground.  Thankfully I wasn't going too fast nor was it raining.  My arm is scraped up pretty good and I have other cuts and bruises along the left side of my body, but it is manageable.

Anyway, I really wanted to share that Moe and I are finally settling in to our apartment.  While we have almost been here for a year we are just now starting to make our apartment our own.  While we have put in our own clothing and kitchen supplies and what not, we are just now starting to put up our own decorations and pictures.  It is a process that makes me very happy and relieved.

Before I show you pictures I have a slight tangent.... Moe has officially been accepted into university here in Chiang Mai in order to get his Masters.  The program is called Sustainable Development.  It will be in English and with people from all over the world.  Moe and I are both SOOOOO excited.  It is a 2 year program so that does mean that we will be for 2 more years.

Anyway,  here are the things we have done to the house, some being purchases and others being creations!  I hope we (lets be real, I) continue to do things to make our place a little more us!

We bought this beautiful bowl made out of mango wood and hand painted.  Moe and I both love it and hope to add other pieces to our collection!

We also bought this lovely rice container to decorate with.

We bought the vase to match the rice container and hopefully will get fresh flowers in there soon... hint hint Moe!!

Put all of those things together in our Dining Room and this is what you get!

I then made this collage of pictures of our friends and family.  It is HUGE.  Taller than me.  It hangs in our bedroom and makes us happy every morning and night!  

Finally, the piece I am probably the most proud of because it took the most work. I have been loving chevron and wanted something in our house that was chevron.  I noticed that our neighbors (the mechanics) sell spray paint.  So I got crafty and made this beauty.  I printed the letters, glued it on black and then onto yellow popsicle sticks.  Then I did the chevron which took FOREVER! I attached the letters to the board.  I am still hoping to find a better way to hang the picture but for now I approve of it leaning against the wall.

This is our new sitting area at the top of the stairs.  We bought the 2 chairs and the tablecloth.  The other pieces (yes even the flowers) were included in the house just in other locations.  I am very pleased with it so far, though it is not perfect by any means.  We are hoping to get a smaller table and maybe a bookcase for upstairs as well, but that is a little ways away.

Well that is where we are for now.  I have 1.5 weeks of summer school left.  We are hoping to travel here soon, but will keep you posted on that when it comes!

Teacher freebies

         I have had a wonderful revelation.  The network for teachers is unbelievable.  The past couple months I have been perusing the blog world, pinterest, teacherspayteachers store, and all sorts of other avenues.  Now that I officially (well almost) have my own classroom, the hunt for things has been much more serious.  And to make it even better there are sooooo many free things!! I love finding things that are FREE.

          I have been stocking up on spelling activities, math activities, labels, borders, free desgins, all sorts of things for my classroom.  I only spent money on ONE thing.  Which I think is pretty impressive.  I bought the owl themed classroom from Middle Grades Maven.  However, it was on sale!  It has soo many things in it.  I cant wait to use it.  I cant wait to use all of the things that I got, especially this poster.  

          I am going to have to reorganize my computer files.  It is time to get rid of all of my college nonsense and  get ready for teachery things galore!  (really teachery is not a word.  Its about time to update that one dictionary :)) All of the stuff I have already gotten, I cant imagine what my files will look like in the years to come.
          The other thing that I have been thinking about A LoT is what my classroom will look like in Thailand.  I have only really seen a few pictures from other teachers or on the schools website.  I am very intrigued.  I have been told of some things that I wont be able to get while in Thailand such as bulletin board borders and wall calendars, so I am stocking up on those things.  I also think I am going to take a few things that I know I want to use, just in case they dont have them there.  Plus I will be taking some of my gifts that I got earlier in the year for sentimental reasons :)
          Anyway, finding all sorts of things for free has made me even more excited to be a teacher.  I cant wait to get in my classroom and get things started. Not to mention how excited I am to meet my new class and begin this new adventure.  August 14th (the first day of school) is not that far away, only two short months!

First Anniversary!

          A year ago today my life changed forever. I married my best friend and confidant. It has been a crazy year.  But exciting none the less. We moved 21/2 times. We both had multiple jobs. We spent lots of time with family and friends.  We traveled all over...Ohio and Michigan at least).
         We are also very very excited about what our future has in store.  We can not wait to see what the future holds and what the years ahead will entail.  More than that though we are excited to continue to share in the journey together and be with one another.
          Ok thats enough of the mushy stuff.  At least you now know (hopefully) how much we really do love each other.  But this whole anniversary thing has made my craftiness come to life.  I wanted to do something to honor our anniversary but nothing too crazy.
Oh my word, my husband is launching his socks off of his toes.... Good thing I got the mushy stuff out of the way first... wow I married a mature man...
ANYWAY!!! I wanted something that we could take with us to Thailand and continue but also something that was fun and would last our lifetime.  I love the picture holding your previous anniversary.  Here is the only example I can find... sorry for the picture, I cant find the original :(  The only problem I have with this is I'm not sure if we will be able to maintain this while we are in Thailand.  The other bonus is that Moe likes this idea too!  That is always a plus when he is excited about something.  Unfortunately we forgot to take the picture today so hopefully tomorrow we can take one.  We decided we might as well take it and then we can later decide if we like it.  I thought it would be fun to do it for major anniversarys or every 5 years or something so that we dont have to do it every year.
          I also found this lovely idea which involves making an album specifically for anniversary pictures.  All we would have to do is take a photo every year and add it to the album.  We could add something about what we did or top events of the year or something.  I REALLY like this picture and concept original idea found here.  So I decided to start on this project.  Since we did not have a whole lot of time I quickly grabbed one of our wedding photos that we already love and added a block to the bottom.  I also took our picture from this year and added a count to the bottom of it as well.  What do you think?  Should we have something explaining what we did on our anniversary or explain what happened that year?  Do you have any other ideas for projects or fun anniversary things?

In case anyone actually cares, here are the pictures that I made/what we took today!  Any thoughts?