Organization in the Art Room

I am an art teacher, I keep no secrets about that, and last year I was moved to a new school (there was a shuffle for everyone, I was not alone) and every time I'm in a new classroom (this is the 5th classroom I was in in 4 years) it presents challenges of organization, layout, and how to make things work for me. I did not like how I had my classroom last year, I made it as fun as I could but there were just too many things that frustrated me. Plus, I has to organize EVERYTHING stuff was just thrown around. So over the summer I thought long and hard and probably perused Pinterest a bit too much.

Picture Heavy (and word heavy!) Post after the Jump

Household Organization ahoy!

What is this monstrosity you ask? Well, this was my walk in closet in the extra bedroom/reading room in my house. It was clean at one point but then the hub had to take over the office closet with business stuff and all of the brand new storage stuff I SPECIFICALLY bought for that closet had to get crammed into the extra closet. Everything was shoved in and you can see the result, but I took care of that and more! Picture heavy post after the jump!

Jewelry Storage

So this is the pile of jewelry I have decluttered from my accessory storage, this is essentially half of everything, so imagine twice this and then stuffed into a crap 3 drawer plastic storage bin tangled up in baggies. This was my life.

The story of how I fixed it after the jump...

Goodwill: The Skirts

Here is the 2nd post about my Goodwill fashion sense and clothing (Scroll down to the next blog if you haven't seen my first post!). In this blog we'll be looking at skirts I have bought at Goodwill and how I wear them. I do want to note that these are not all of the skirts that I own from Goodwill, over the course of styling and taking the photographs I had to make the decision to get rid of six(!) skirts. Three of the skirts didn't even make the initial cut, they were cute but I never figured out how to wear 2 of them and one hit me in the middle of my shins and made me look dowdy. Two more made it into the photos but upon looking AT the photos...those skirts did nothing for me. The last skirt was one of my favorites but it's a size too big and kept slipping down 3-4 inches making it very frumpy, so it went with the other.

Also: I had to start taking pictures inside the house, summer in Arizona, have to love it being over 100 degrees by 9 am.

Picture heavy post after the jump!

Goodwill: The Dresses

I have a confession...I love shopping at Goodwill. There. Go ahead and attach whatever stigma you have to shopping there to me because I LOVE SHOPPING AT GOODWILL. GO AHEAD AND JUDGE. *ahem* The biggest reason I started shopping at Goodwill is because of my profession. I'm sorry, I'm not going to buy a 50 dollar pair of pants and then get ink or paint on them from my students. It would be wasteful and I just can't justify that. Anyways, I got an idea to pick a blog post theme a month and I decided I would document my outfits that I specifically bought from Goodwill. Yes, there might be stuff I'm wearing not from Goodwill but the main pieces are from there and I wanted to show that with a little bit of shopping perseverance and a good eye for colors and patterns that you can create outfits that: A) Are stylish and cute and B) Don't look like you got them from Goodwill!

Warning: Picture Heavy Post after the jump!

The Lost Dutchman Marathon

The Lost Dutchman Marathon 2012

So on February 19th, 2012 I ran a marathon. I’ve blogged about previous races that I’ve done but this, THIS was the one that this was all for. I trained for 23 weeks to run a marathon. I ran a 12k, a half marathon, and a 5k, in preparation for the race. I ran for hours every Sunday building up mileage, every Tuesday I upped my time training in speed and hills (mostly hills), on Thursdays I built up slowly with regular running. For 23 weeks I ran 4 days a week. I only missed ONE run due to illness and if I couldn’t do it on the day I rescheduled my week and made sure I got it all in. I did stretching, yoga, ice baths, ice packs, reading and more reading, juices and gels. Then I went and did the cutting back at the end, the wind down, so I could heal and have all my energy for the race. I was full of panic, thinking this was going to hurt me in the marathon, I was going to lose my running ability, but I did not…

 

Emerald City Comic Con, Seattle you could have surprised me and NOT rained.
So Connie and I got to Emerald City around 10:30 taking a cab from her friend’s house. We had all of our wares (we had wares this time!) to sell in a suitcase protected from the many elements of Seattle (what am I talking about, one element: RAIN).  We got our badges and set-up shop.

Hello to any new readers I've gained from Emerald City Comic-Con! I had a blast at the show and I just wanted to acknowledge how awesome the folks I talked to all weekend were. No creepers! YAY. Thank you!

A recap of ECCC 2012 will be appearing within the next week and I will be working on making my prints available online as well, by the end of the week. There were a few of you interested in commissions so drop me a line please! I'm still very interested.

Just a quick hi to everyone for the moment!

P.F. Chang's Half Marathon Recap

So I ran my first official half marathon on January 15th. The race was awesome and I wanted to write about that day. So let's start at packet pick-up the previous day on January 14th.

Connie and I drove to Phoenix to the convention center (the very same convention center that Phoenix Comic-Con is at!) At the start I got my race number off a board and went inside to turn in everything to pick up my actual bib and shoe chip. We then meandered in further where I got to get a technical shirt (actually very nice to run in and have run in it several times) and a swag bag (lots of neat free stuff, plus the bag is awesome for carting around my laptop). We walked around and got lots of free samples (Larabars = AWESOME AND DELICIOUS) and bought some things as well. I got this water backpack for my marathon and I've been using it while training and it really holds a ton of snacks and water. The expo was really fun and it was really interesting to see all the different runners and what they were buying. I also registered for real time facebook updates as I was completing the race (which didn't work!) and had fun in general. Our friend Rochel met up with us and we met up with another friend, Rebekah, and her friend who was running the full marathon (jealousy!). After we all had walked around a bit we left for lunch and then headed home.

Biggest Loser

TEACHER EDITION

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 So every year at my work after the first semester they do a biggest loser contest. Every school in the district (including the district office) gets a team together with 8-12 people. There are weekly weigh-ins done by each school's nurse and it lasts for quite awhile. I have tried to be apart of it the last two years but was sick on the day the invite went out the first time and then next time the team filled up instantaneously and I didn't want to be on the "miscellaneous" team with three other school's teachers.

I got in this year with the school I am at. I'm actually quite excited. While I don't have that much to lose left (like..10 lbs? I'm really close to my goal) the fact that I could enable a bunch of us to win some money? Hey, I'll play those odds. I'm already in the midst of weight-loss why not try for the prize?

I am somewhat worried though. I had an exchange today which was, albeit funny, I'm concerned that this will be a continuing trend.

Secretary talking to Head Biggest Loser Person: I want to join!
Me: Yay! I've joined too!
Secretary: What do you have to lose, a leg?

See? Yes it's funny but it is the kind of comments that I get that start to eat at me after awhile. I get the same thing when I turn down a treat at work because it contains dairy (of which I can consume NONE of)  lots of side commentary of "THAT must be why you are so skinny." Um, no. I'm more fit because I eat right, treat myself only occasionally and kick my bum exercising and running. Please don't diminish my successes because you feel bad about yourself.

Speaking of running I am progressing quite well for my marathon. I was sick yesterday but did my 5 miles of hill and speedwork in good time today. Tomorrow I'll be heading over to Tempe to run 9 miles on the trail around the lake. Really hilly, no cars. I'm really pushing the hillwork these last few weeks before I taper. I'm up to an 18 mile Sunday this weekend, but 13.1 of those miles will be the half-marathon I'm running. It's the PF Chang's Rock 'n' Roll Series in AZ. So I'll be running those 13, coming home, running five. I might be slightly insane. Ah, well.

Marathon Countdown: 38 Days until the marathon.