Part 1: "Always" Advice for the Bride and Groom

For Drew and me, planning for our wedding day was all about us (duh?). No rules to follow or standards to meet. Throughout the months of preparation I read a lot of articles explaining the etiquette surrounding various aspects of a wedding, and then I decided that most of the rules were silly or stress-inducing and that Drew and I would be better off doing things however we felt was best (live on the wild side!). Pinterest and every other bridal magazine would have you believe that do-it-yourself-all-the-way-country-chic is the way to go for weddings, and while it is a beautiful theme, it wasn’t for us. We did do a lot ourselves, because it was important to us that our guests got to see our personality as a couple through the little details of our wedding, not so that the reception looked as though it popped out of The Knot (and we saved a lot of money that way, too).

There is nothing more fun than celebrating milestone life moments with the people you love the most. And as much as the day was about the new Mr. & Mrs. Smith, it was also about the many people in our lives who helped us make it to the wedding day.

We wanted to give our special guests a chance to show off their personalities in the midst of being bombarded by ours, so we put a questionnaire on the back of everyone’s dinner menu:

We recently read and LAUGHED our way through each card. We are going to enjoy looking these over for many years to come. It's amazing how well some of our family and friends know us and how bold some of them were with their responses! The “advice for the bride and groom” section was quite entertaining, especially when we had cards from married couples; I have to wonder if some of them collaborated on filling in the cards! 

For example: 

(Husband) Always dance together, never remind your spouse you are right, and don’t forget you really are . . . just pretend for argument's sake.

(Wife) Always remind him you’re right! Never let him know you’re reminding him! And don’t forget making up is sometimes worth the fight!

And here are a few clever favorites:

Always have fun, never sweat the small stuff, and don’t forget it’s all small stuff.

Always go out (on dates), never walk out, and don’t forget to make out. 

Always kiss, kiss, and kiss some more, never stop kissing, and don’t forget to kiss and make me lots of nieces and nephews!

This advice is too good to be kept to ourselves so I am here to share it. Instead of typing out each card like those above, I am going to compile each of the three parts to make life easier for all of us. As you’ll see, some of the advice is serious and some of it is goofy (which may or may not have been alcohol-induced). Here are some of the shiniest gems from the “always” section that were appropriate enough to share:

My advice for a happy marriage is to ALWAYS . . .

• say, "good morning" and, "goodnight" to each other
• remember you’re in it for the long haul
• talk to each other (x3)
• laugh (x2)
• think before you yell . . . and compromise
• treat yourselves
• keep God first (x2)
• go to church
• hug
• find something in each fight for both to improve on
• make sure to visit Sarah in Kenya
• remember why and when you fell in love
• dance (like no one’s watching)
• plan for the unexpected
• be honest (x2)
• smile (x3)
• listen and be forgiving
• fight after you’ve eaten <= Why?
• say “I love you” (x3)
• live each day better than the last
• love each other for who you are
• love each other (x2)
• put the other before your wishes
• hold hands, commit to God, and forgive
• ask God for “spiritual eyes” to see each other truly
• say “thank you”
• forgive
• talk through a disagreement
• say “yes dear” (x2)
• respect one another and compromise
• make time for one another
• see the best in each other!
• kiss and make up
• spend time together
• be honest and loving
• assume she’s right <=obviously
• stay positive
• pray together
• try to attend Gator games!
• listen to the wife
• say “I love you” with phone calls
• ask the other about their day
• say “I love you” as much as you can
• have fun
• make notes for each other
• kiss each other
• remember the wonderful things the other does <= We were just talking about this last night. After only four months, we already know how important this is.

Everyone seemed to give rather sweet and touching advice in the "always" section. Tomorrow I will have the "Never" advice for you, which gets goofier, I promise. :)

Do you have any "always" advice for newlyweds?

Peg People

For any of you who, like me, have been sucked into Pinterest, you know that it is the best and worst thing to ever hit the internet. If you thought regular social bookmarking was cool, the addition of pictures makes it so much easier to find what you are looking for and enter a fit of distraction! Pinterest and procrastination go hand-in-hand. On the flip-side, once you peel your finger off the scroll button and avert your eyes from the screen, you are often consumed by a period of frenzied productivity. The DIY & Crafts section is the best/worst, closely followed by the Weddings and Holiday & Events sections, which are basically more specific DIY & Crafts pages. And then there are recipes, but that is a whole other story. Every pin viewed produces the desire in me to drop everything, run to the craft store, spend thirty bucks on supplies, and launch into a do-it-yourself spree. If I am lucky, my finished products will come out looking like the pins that "pinspired" me.

Therefore, I fully blame Pinterest for what is, most recently, my biggest “problem.”

I am addicted to painting wooden peg people. (I alternate between obsessions with pegs and felt flowers, which you can see in the background of the picture above.)

It all began when I was planning my wedding. During regular browsings of the Weddings and Events section (which usually occurred when I was supposed to be sleeping, or grading papers, or planning lessons) I came across homemade wedding cake toppers. Given how expensive or cheesy or inappropriate or impersonal wedding cake toppers can be, I thought a handmade topper was a brilliant idea. After some Etsy-induced sticker-shock, I figured I could do the same or better on my own for a fraction of the cost.

So, during a summer off from teaching, these were the first two pegs I ever painted:

One year later, the little cuties got to adorn the top of the most scrumptious coconut wedding cake with raspberry mouse filling:

I had so much fun making them and they were probably my favorite detail from our wedding day! I was immensely proud of myself and, like a good bride, I didn't let Drew see "me" until the wedding day. He saw the completed project for the first time just moments before we cut the cake. Don't they look perfect up there? When I planned the project, I bought extra pegs, because I assumed that I would need room to make mistakes, like when I drive to a new place for the first time and there are lots of u-turns and frustrations and yelling at the GPS. The endeavor worked out better than I anticipated and since I needed/wanted to use the rest of the pegs, I made a nativity scene, a couple of sports stars, princesses, and superheroes.

I recently donated my princesses to an auction to raise money to help my sister-in-law's sister adopt a fourth child, leaving me the opportunity to revisit my Disney friends as a seasoned peg-people-painter. So, for about a week, the kitchen table was a mess of pencils, paint, pegs, paintbrushes, and paper towels. The whole process to me is so cathartic and relaxing. I get so much joy out of trying to capture the essence of each girl and the finished pegs are simply irresistible.

In both a fantastic and terrifying way, the possibilities are endless; I find myself making lists of the peg projects I would like to tackle in the future . . . I could be very busy for the rest of time. 

If you are looking for a fun and inexpensive craft to occupy some free time, I recommend finding some pegs, paints, and brushes and getting to work!

Laundry: A Lesson in Love

(Subtitle: They say finances are the thing married couples disagree about the most, but laundry is probably high up on the list.)

Today, Drew and I are celebrating four months of wedded bliss! The time is flying by, obviously because we have a lot of fun together. We enjoy our Monday date nights, which half the year consist of dinner and watching either the Bachelor or Bachelorette (don’t judge us too harshly; it’s our guilty pleasure and it’s all my fault). Since the Bachelor isn’t back on until January, we just wrapped up eight Mondays of Harry Potter movies, and now I am introducing Drew to Downton Abbey. We have also gone on a few adventures exploring the DFW area and each new discovery is a wonderful memory we create together. It goes without saying that in a marriage you will learn a great deal about your spouse, but I have also learned quite a bit about myself these last several months.

For the past 15 years or so, I have been responsible for doing my own laundry. (Advice to parents – teach your kids to do laundry at a young age. That way they can laugh at all of their bewildered college-mates who enter the laundry room for the first time and don’t know a washer from a dryer.) Although I have ruined my fair share of clothing, I generally do a pretty good job of cleaning my wardrobe and most things come out the other end with all the right colors and still fitting properly - an imperfect but decent track record.

When I lived on my own after college, I didn’t have a washer and dryer in my house, so I trekked home at least once a month to visit my family and commandeer the laundry room. During Drew’s weekend visits, his laundry sometimes got added to mine, and we usually tag teamed the folding. I used to hate doing laundry, because it always got worked in between homework and social activities when I was a student or lesson planning, grading, and lamenting the dearth of social activities in my life when I was teaching. I would dump the laundry basket of clean clothes on the bed so that I would HAVE to fold them before going to sleep, but it was way easier to shove them back in the hamper and repeat the routine until there were only half as many clean clothes to fold. Now that we are under one roof that we share with a washer and dryer, we I do laundry much more frequently. But, since I am taking some time off right now, I find a lot more fulfillment in daily chores, because I don’t have to fit them in amongst all the other stressors in my life. For the first time, I actually enjoy doing laundry! There is one thing, though, about laundry. One thing that makes me irrational and turns me into Miss Cranky Pants. One thing that makes my skin crawl. One thing that puts me a couple notches below Carrie in a coffee shop. (Not really, but I couldn’t resist!)

Fortunately, this one thing has recently taught me a lot about love.

Now that you are super curious, what is this one thing that makes me so crazy?!?

INSIDE-OUT T-SHIRTS.

Yep. I inherited this pet peeve from my Mama, who wouldn’t fold our laundry if we left it inside out. In a family of six, ain’t nobody got time for that! It was never a habit of mine to leave clothes inside out, so I lived very peacefully under Mama’s rule until my laundry became my own responsibility. Apparently her influence became ingrained in me and I didn’t realize it until I got married. From my perfectly logical perspective, folding laundry is a much faster and smoother process when you don’t have to turn clothes right-side-out. Okay, maybe not a lot faster, but at least a little bit. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

As you may have deduced, Drew sometimes leaves his t-shirts inside-out. He claims he does this to keep the designs on the shirts intact, but I have two comebacks to this assertion: 1) Plain t-shirts don’t have anything on them to protect so leaving them inside out, in particular, is illogical (my gosh, the Vulcans are in my brain), and 2) My shirts with designs on them still look good after years of right-side-out abuse.

(side note: As I am re-reading and re-editing this post, it is starting to sound a lot like The Butter Battle Book, by Dr. Seuss.)

ANYWAY, this post is not for me to complain. I am here to provide hope to other inside-out t-shirt haters. (I’ll be launching Inside-Out T-Shirt Haters of the World Anonymous, IOTSWA, in the near future.)

I am not proud of this, but for the last couple of weeks, my impulse when folding laundry has been to fold my husband’s t-shirts inside-out. That’ll teach him, right? Geez, Louise! Stubborn much?

Inside-out proof in all its folded shame.

I had a revelation yesterday, though, thank God. I was doing laundry when I picked up one of my t-shirts and, without thinking, turned it right-side-out. Excuse me - 

WHAT?!  

HOW DID IT EVEN GET LIKE THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE? 

In NO way could it have been my fault, because I NEVER put a shirt in the hamper inside-out. Okay... in reality, it probably was my doing, or maybe it got flipped in one of the machines, or maybe my Guardian Angel did it to teach me something. Why would I fix my own t-shirt, yet refuse to fix my husband’s? My hypocrisy made me aware that every t-shirt folded inside-out is an act of crankiness rather than love, stubbornness rather than compassion, and selfishness rather than selflessness. Yes, it is just a t-shirt, but the little things in life make the biggest impact.

So, I might not be happy about it, but I am resolving, from here on out, to fold all clothes right-side-out, regardless of how they come to me out of the dryer. And as I have told my students countless times, I will do it with a smile on my face and joy in my heart. Over time, I hope that I will view each folded shirt not as an annoyance, but as an opportunity to love my husband. Marriage is about compromise and give-and-take. That means that sometimes I have to give and I can’t always be right. 

I can’t always be right. 

I’ll say it again, to make it really sink in: I can’t. always. be. right. 

Whew! Glad that is out in the open.

I love Drew a whole lot, and he knows it. He even finds my stubborn laundry tendencies endearing, and he will tell me I am being too tough on myself in this post, which makes me love him even more. Perhaps I have made a big deal here out of something small, but as a teacher, I believe real, humorous, and poignant lessons can be found anywhere. Remember the inspiration for this blog: "Whatever you are, be a good one." Learning about love while doing laundry- who woulda thunk it?

Gluten Free Banana Bread (Victory Never Tasted So Good)

Banana Bread has been a favorite treat of mine for as long as I can remember. My mom used to make a few loaves at a time and freeze the extras so we wouldn’t run out too quickly. When I went off to college, I only got banana bread when I went home. I wanted to make my own, but the recipe Mama used required a mixer, which I did not have. I began searching the Internet, hoping to find a recipe I could work with. Well, lucky me, I came across the mother lode of cooking sites, Simply Recipes. The banana bread recipe on the site is what kept me coming back for more and more culinary creations. I had the recipe memorized for a while, it's just that good. Finish reading this post, and then go check it out.

I have never been much of a baker, although I will say that my break-and-bake cookies and my Betty Crocker brownies are delectable. You laugh, but it is actually rather easy to screw them up, so let me be proud of myself, please! With all the accurate measuring and timing needed, baking from scratch is something I have to really motivate myself to do. So, when a little more than a year ago I ventured into a strange new world called “Gluten Free,” it was intimidating and scary and there was no wheat flour there. I thought it was going to be my worst nightmare. In fact, I have said several times in the past, “If I couldn’t eat bread or pasta I think I would die.” Well, I am still here, folks. I like puzzles and I like challenges, and the world of Gluten Free is just a big, challenging, wheat-less puzzle.

Initially, I despaired, thinking I would never again snack on (or binge on) the delicious banana bread that I missed so terribly. I tried making the Simply Recipes loaf by just subbing in a gluten-free all-purpose flour and I think I used stevia instead of sugar. I was not impressed. It was too dry and it just didn’t taste right. After resigning myself to a banana bread-less existence, I plucked up the motivation to do some more searching for the right recipe. One of them used rice flour and it was too gritty. Another one that used a mixer was too crumbly and cakey. I refused to give up and, inspired by Inigo Montoya, decided to go back to my favorite recipe.

"When the job went wrong, you go back to the beginning"

I looked at the Simply Recipes banana bread recipe and willed it to work with me. Since my last go-round with it I had learned a lot in the world of Gluten Free. I discovered coconut sugar and I had learned a little bit about some of the various gluten free flours. Almond flour and coconut flour are better at holding on to moisture and I wondered if they would solve my problem of the loaf coming out too dry and crumbly. Armed with my gluten-free allies, I began.

Here is the original recipe.  If you love gluten, give it a try. It's delicious.

Here are the ingredients I used:

• 4 bananas (mashed)
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• ½ cup coconut sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• a pinch of salt
• 1 cup Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour
• ¼ cup Bob’s Red Mill Almond Meal/Flour
• ¼ cup Bob’s Red Mill Coconut Flour

 

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Peel and mash your bananas (You can use a potato masher, a fork, a whisk - whatever you've got. It doesn't have to be perfectly smooth). Add the melted butter, beaten egg, coconut sugar, and vanilla to the mashed bananas and mix with a wooden spoon until well blended. You will notice that the batter has a dark, caramel-like color because of the coconut sugar. Next, add the dry ingredients - baking soda, salt, gluten-free all-purpose flour, almond flour, and coconut flour. Mix until well combined. Grease/butter a 4x8 metal loaf pan and pour in the batter. In my experience, a metal pan works best; I have tried using stoneware and glass loaf pans and the banana bread comes out rubbery. Metal is the way to go!

Pop it in the oven for 60 minutes. I checked the center of the loaf with a knife to try to gauge whether it was cooked all the way through. I feared it would burn on the outside if I left it in too long, so I couldn't wait for the knife to come out totally clean, but it was pretty close.

After letting the loaf cool for about 10 minutes, I held my breath and flipped it out onto a cooling rack. It held together in one piece! It was a good sign! I hollered joyfully to my husband, “I made a gluten-free banana bread that didn’t fall apart!” Then I did a happy dance.

 

A few minutes later, we sliced into the loaf. It was only slightly crumbly on the outside and it was still moist on the inside. Better yet, the taste and texture were FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC! It might as well have been the recipe I had been making for the last few years. I did another happy dance.

I wanted to make sure this wasn’t some freak accident, so I stocked up on bananas and gave it another go, and the second loaf was EVEN BETTER. Drew had his first taste of it and declared, “This is the best banana bread I have ever had, gluten-free or otherwise.” He has been with me on this banana bread journey, so he knows that this is a very sweet victory I have won.

20 Things I Love About Fall

I hope I don't end up thinking of more things, because then I'll have to change the title of this post. In honor of my favorite season of the year, here are 20 things I love about fall!

1. The other name for fall, autumn, is pretty neat.
2. It begins in September, a couple of weeks after my birthday.
3. Bye-bye, humidity.
4. That “fall” aroma in the air that is so refreshing after a hot summer.
5. My candles from Bath & Body Works that imitate that fall aroma.
6. Being super jealous of your neighbor because their BBQ smells so good.
7. Being super jealous of your neighbor because you know their fireplace has got it going on.
8. MARCHING BAND
9. COLLEGE FOOTBALL
10. The World Series
11. All of my favorite tv shows begin new seasons.
12. Trees changing the colors of their leaves.
13. Walking on previously mentioned leaves when they are fallen and crunchy.
14. Lots and lots of scarves.
15. Cardigans in every color.
16. Peacoats. Can’t get enough of ‘em.
17. Hot soup on a cool evening.
18. Being able to open the windows!
19. THANKSGIVING and the whole month that follows leading up to Christmas.
20. Making crafty things like this:

Fairytales Are Stressful (And They Are Supposed To Be That Way)

Happily Married!

When I look at my husband, I find it hard to believe that I am actually married to him. We met online (which is the part I really can't believe), met in person (stranger danger!), fell in love (woohoo!), he proposed (I said, "yeah"), we planned a wedding, we are living a marriage. Pinch me, because I must be dreaming. Drew is brilliant and handsome and hardworking and loving and adoring. I am the luckiest girl in the world!

Marriage is a wonderful vocation and I love my husband very much. Amidst all of this love we are going through a lot of change - we moved halfway across the country, we are combining all of our belongings and merging our lifestyles, and we are having to manage our finances as we balance living with what we have and looking forward to the future. It is blissful, but also challenging. I was pondering all of this the other day when I said to him, “I feel like I am in a fairytale . . . a very stressful fairytale.”

Drew’s response to my statement was perfect. He replied, “Aren’t all fairytales stressful?” I had never thought of it that way before! I always hear the phrases “happily ever after” and “fairytale ending,” but the ending isn’t the entire story. For example, (SPOILER ALERT) in my personal favorite, The Little Mermaid, Ariel doesn’t see eye to eye with her father and when she falls in love with a human, things get nasty. She risks swimming into the creepiest cave ever so that an octopus named Ursula can transform her tail into legs in exchange for her voice. So, when she finally gets on land and meets Prince Eric, she can’t actually talk to him. She then has to watch him fall in love with Ursula disguised as Vanessa and she is barely able to stop their marriage. Then Ursula and Prince Eric try really hard to kill each other, Eric wins, and he is able to marry Ariel who was made human by her father, who changed his mind about her loving a human. She then leaves behind everything she is familiar with to be with her husband. I would bet that had it been available to her, Ariel would have spent a lot of time in therapy as a result of all the stress she experienced.

I love that my husband reminded me that even though things are a little bit stressful sometimes, this IS my fairytale. I would much rather go through all of this with him than be all by my lonesome. Who cares about the fairytale ending? Riding off into the sunset – that’s called a vacation; it isn’t real life. We watch and read fairytale stories, following characters through ups and downs and rooting for their success by the end of the story. We wait for THE END. Remember, it’s the WHOLE journey that is important, and that is the fairytale come true.

9/11 - From Student to Teacher

I was a freshman in high school, two days shy of fourteen years old, on 9/11/2001. It was probably the scariest day of my life so far and the memories of the fear and sadness I felt are permanently embedded in my heart, mind, and soul.

As a teacher for the past three years I had the great privilege and responsibility to teach my students about September 11^th each year. I looked forward to being able to share such a weighty historical moment with them. In my head, I was back in high school with my band teacher, bonding over tragedy, and I thought maybe I would have a similar moment with my students. I quickly realized, though, that this would not be the case.

A few days before September 11^th of my first year teaching I asked, “How old were you guys on 9/11?”

They thought for a moment and replied, “Second grade.”

Second grade. Only seven or eight years old. How many headline-news-events do you remember from that age? This would not be the lesson I played out in my head.

I began class on September 11^th with a simple question, “What do you remember from 9/11/2001?”

Students recalled being in class and their teachers turning on the televisions (in some schools) and watching, but being a little confused, as events unfolded. Students who lived closer to the attacks or who had family affected had stronger memories, but for most students in the small Florida town where I taught, 9/11 was an event that stuck in their minds, but they didn’t really understand it. After all, they were so young when it happened and their teachers and parents tried to shelter and protect them from the evil truth – that we were a terrorized nation. Later, I showed these students videos to give them a better idea of what actually happened that day, since that was what they wanted to know most, and then we learned about the memorials and new buildings being constructed to remember the attacks. The students then designed their own memorials and I think they felt a bit more connected to the history.

The second year, my students were even further removed from the events – they had only been in first grade. They were aware that bad things were happening on 9/11, but were even more sheltered than my students the year before. I felt like they were familiar with all the usual footage, so we watched a great documentary about a handful of the artifacts that have been donated to the Smithsonian and the people and stories behind them- a cell phone, part of a plane, a badge, and so on. I asked them, “If you could pick one object from your life on 9/11/2001 to tell your story from that day, what would it be?” Many of them mentioned the television, or an object from their classroom, or a comforting blanket or stuffed animal. Again, I think they felt more connected to history after this activity. I kept thinking, “They were so young. So innocent on that day.” My students wanted to hear my story, so I told them that I chose my clarinet, because I was in marching band class when I really learned what was going on. I stifled tears, and maybe I had that bonding moment I was hoping for.

Last year I was almost despairing over what my lesson would be. Those students were only in kindergarten on 9/11. For the third year in a row I asked, “What do you remember?” Almost nothing. I noticed that the younger the students were, the more their memories revolved around the adults in their lives and how the grown-ups acted. They mostly remember getting to go home early from school.

Over three years, responses evolved from, “I watched the news and I was scared because the planes were crashing and the buildings were falling,” to “I was scared but I didn’t really know why,” and finally, “I saw that the grown-ups were scared and it was confusing.” The thing that blows my mind the most is that there was only about an eight year age difference between me and my students. If I had been teaching this year, I bet those students would have recalled almost nothing.

It is frustrating from a teacher’s perspective, because the events of 9/11/2001 mean so much to me and I wish I could truly convey to my students what that day was like. At the same time, I am so grateful that they have had nothing to compare it to in their lifetime, yet I fearfully wonder what this generation’s “9/11” will be. Every age group has its defining historical moment, whether we like it or not.

So, on this day when Facebook statuses and news headlines proclaim, “Never Forget!” remember that there are young adults and children among us who don’t even know and will need us to teach them what happened and what that day was like, not just to rehash the same footage over and over again. They will need to the stories and the details in order to feel connected to the history. They will also need us to support them and to be there for them during their crisis, though I pray it never comes to that.