The Warm UP!! :-)

Two years ago, I was house hunting. I was stretching my budget and myself for such a big investment. Updating your home is a never ending process. We continually are generating new ideas to make things better. Painting the living room has been a discussion that has occurred several times and taking down the flowery curtains was something that just needed to be done. (This made my husband very happy.) Flowers are beautiful but we needed an update and thanks to my GORGEOUS Mamacita, who pushed me to start the project we did!  I couldn't of done it without you mom! Mom, I love you so much thanks for being my loyal blog commenter! I LOVE YOUR comments! I also noticed I have a new blog follower, thanks so much for coming along on this journey of life! I hope you all enjoy! 

School has ended and summer is in FULL swing and so is Grad School! I have 3 papers due on Friday, that I just found out about yesterday, and yet I am blogging, but I figure this is fun and will help my brain ease back into the formality of papers, yet once again. I honestly never thought I would go back to school after I finished my Bachelors in Elem. Ed./Early Childhood/Spec. Ed. I mean seriously those 2 majors and minor took me 5 years and I student taught in 3 different places. The good Lord knew just what to do with me though I don't regret where I am for the world and am so eager to get back into the swing of writing. Writing is soothing for me, and though I will never be published in the New York Times, being able to get my thoughts out is soothing! 

 June 4th the living room went from this look...

To This!!!  Do you love it? Can you see all the differences? 

What do you think? Mom and I found the leaf pillow at Target and just couldn't resist! And then I recovered all of the white pillows and went to Jo-Ann's to pick out fun fabric!

The pillows aren't done yet but there is another fabric for the valance in the kitchen and another brown for smaller pillows which I picked up for a quarter at a garage sale and took the cover off and just used the batting. I will post those pictures once the pillows and valance are done!

Kitchen! :-) I love green! All of the dishes are from dollar tree! :-)

Now we own baby gates because I am so protective of the living room. Kirby is now allowed hardly in the living room without me getting after him to get off the couch. Mom bought us beautiful new slip covers for the couch and love seat and I just love them! I don't need Kirby hair on them!!

Needless to say, he isn't quite sure about the gate thing yet! He keeps trying to push them down with his nose.

Before the spray painting of the coffee table and recovering pillows. 

What a difference little things make! 

It all started on Saturday night... the taping was the longest process and needed almost 3 rolls since we had to go around so much!

Here we go the before and after...

 Another update is the new work bench my husband built! I'm so proud of him! :-) 

** Changing topics***

Beautiful baby shower for Ann and Amanda!

Molly, Me, and Theresa!

Beau was zonked out! :-)

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We now have a place to keep out shoes organized and I love it! :-)

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The garden is growing beautifully and we are excited to see what it produced. We have planted too many tomatoes so let me know if anyone wants tomatoes because I'm sure we be giving them away very shortly! :-)

Can you see the peppers!! :-)

This past weekend we went on our date night for June. We try to have a date night at least once a month. We ate at Joe's Crab Shack and loved it! The waitress brought Husband a bib for his steampot and she really listened to him. I cracked up because if you know Nolan this is what he always says and the waitress wrote it on his bib! 

Then we went to the movie Super 8, which I highly recommend, very good! The day we headed to  Shellsburg, IA to go to Nolan's cousin's wedding! We had a blast! Congrats Jesse and Danielle!

The Benge Clan at the wedding!

A 4 generations photo! :-)

Us!

We are off to go on a bike ride in this beautiful weather! We are warming up Ragbri! No.. no.. no just kidding, I could never do Ragbri! I hear it's a lot of fun though! I'd rather just stick to my Yoga! Now my fingers are all warmed up and ready to do a lot of typing!! ;-) haha

Shining Bright!

Hello June,
     I'm so glad you could great us today with a bright sun and a little color to our skin. :-) With 2 days left of school and after a day like the past 2 days I've had I could really focus on all the negativity that occasionally surrounds us all. So in light of What I'm Loving Wednesday I am linking up and looking for the good in this beautiful day and a toast to starting fresh on a new month. Despite the large and ever growing to-do list.... I'm moving on... Here I go....

1. I'm loving my Hubby and his new switch to first shift to spend our nights together!:-)

2. I'm loving that I have 2 days left of school and my mom will be here Friday to help me pack up my classroom!

3. I'm loving how my garden is growing!!

4. I'm loving my new summer Daily Bread that started fresh today and my goal is to read it every day to grow in Christ and his word. If God is for us than who can be against us! AMEN!

5. I'm loving the new recipe I got from The Girl in the Red Shoes. This is so good and Nolan is in love!

Top view before the whip cream!

Top view! 

A couple more strawberries! MMMM!! :)

6. I'm loving the fact that my husband is building a workbench in the garage. :-) He is very manly and loves his power tools!

And wants to keep organized!

7. I'm loving that I got to lay out in the hammock today and I got a little color only on my arms.

8. I'm loving my handsome puppy and his new reflective Memorial Day collar! He loves to smell like grass! Pretty darn cute huh... :-) 

9. I'm loving the fact that we live in a small town close to the sound of a train, so it makes me feel right at home! 

10. I'm Loving these AMAZINGLY Gorgeous sunsets that God has given us the past couple days!

I hope you feel inspired to shine brightly and to be a positive light around those in your life! Always looking for the best in others! :-) Shine your light friends! :-) 

Manic Month of May/Memorial Day

Alright blog world.... I haven't quite been my usual regular try to blog once a week to get my creative juices flowing self, but if you are a teacher you know the about the month of MAY!!! It has been absolutely ridiculously high stressed to say the least. There is just a lot to do and many school related things that race through my mind and the month is almost over. I have 4 days left with students, and then teachers have to go back for one more day next Monday. Hopefully when we start earlier this year we won't be sticking around at the school until the first week of June. There is so much I need to get off my chest!!! :-)

First and foremost we had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend spending time with each other, friends, and family.

Thanks so much to our troops and their families! We visited 3 memorials this weekend for troops.

*** WARNING*** This post is long and random and filled with pictures from the month of May. *** So if you can make it through this I'm impressed!******

(Hubby's picture) Prayer is AMAZING!!

This was at a small cemetery outside of town that we biked too. :-)

Cheers to Beautiful Sunsets this weekend! 

A bull:-)

A calf :-) This was not in the slightest bit afraid it just came right up to us. 

We got the opportunity to snuggle our new nephew. Isn't he so cute!! :-) He's only about 2 weeks old and just so tiny. :-) 

My good friend who teaches across  the hall is getting hitched and man alive am I happy for her. She is the best! We are yoga partners too! :-) 

We grilled out on Sat night with 2 other AWESOME couples and had a great time. Hubby built us a fire and had a great time with them! 

I have been working on painting some of the flower pots and sprucing them up and kirby came running up on the deck and knocked this one over and I didn't really care but was a little in awe of how much it broke apart after only falling down 3 stairs. 

I got crafty with my good friends from school and had seen someone else blog about spray painting mason jars. Well I couldn't find mason jars at the time, and my spray paint was also defective so I need to re do it, but I don't think it looks all that bad really. Do you? 

I made this one for the centerpiece for the table on the deck. Once the spray paint threw off my smooth clean look to the jars my friend gave me the idea to sponge it and so this is how it turned out. I think I may have waited too long and I may or may have not been a little pouty about my dysfunctional can of spray paint. :-) 

Hubby's uncle's birthday celebration!! Our first time at Latin King! :-) MMMM... goood! :-) 

The garden is in and I'm proud to say it is looking magnificent! This year we are NOT doing corn, due to circumstances of a limited garden space. However, in the garden this year are the following.

1. Beans

2. peas

3. OKRA!!!! :-)

4. Tomatos

5. Peppers

6. Carrots

7. Watermelon and I may have put Pumpkin in too, we will see what comes up.

I'm EXCITED!!!

The annual ICUBS game! Always a good time! 

A gorgeous walk down the Raccoon River! Hopefully soon we can canoe down it! :-) 

A couple of other things are: 

1. I applied for a Level 1 position and will have a new batch of kiddos next year and all 6th graders!

2. I applied for Grad school and got in and my financial aid went through so whoo...!!! Happy day! I start classes this summer on top of teaching summer school! Lots of fun!

3. Hubby also requested to go to first shift at his work so we could have our nights off together and it was approved! AMEN! Prayer does AMAZing things! 

Another Amazing thing that I experienced this month is a random stranger in church leaned over and said she would be praying for me for whatever was going on in my life! WOW!!! We are on a love you DM series and the topic was about prayer that day, but still I was touched and it brought tears to my eyes. I was speechless! 

That is my Miscellaneous Monday! And Kudos to you for making it through a not clearly planned or scripted reading, but a lot of me Babbling and getting things off my chest! :-)