courtney rebecca

Here's a month by month recap of our year! January We started the year housesitting at our friends house. I made cookies to leave for them! They found the guy that hit us in a hit & run, and we got our $500 back from the deductible. Jason found out his first article was getting published! We recycled 3 of our Macs and bought this one iMac. We totally bought a bar , but it was a giant hassle to get it here. I pulled a muscle in my back moving it in. I read The Fault In Our Stars and it was amazing. I started writing in my Question a Day journal. February We started the month with a snow day! I made the curtains for our back sliding glass door and marathoned Revenge. We found out Brad & Hannah were moving to Denver! Teacher librarians got taken off the cut list and were safe for one more year. I did my GG Book Fair. I made my first Happy Christmas mix in years. Kyle & Liz came to visit! March I bought a Brother sewing machine. I interviewed for my own job for ...

Every year, I like to go back to what my goals were for the year and do a little update as to how I did on them. Here's how I did last year! 1. Find the right job for me You know what? I think I may have accomplished this, right at the very end of the year. It was exhausting to have my job be in jeopardy every single year I've been in education, and it's a relief to go to a "normal person job" that will hopefully just be there. I am taking a risk in leaving my school district and taking a leap to a non-profit, but I'm very hopeful that it will pay off. And that I'll be less stressed. The stress was not working for me. 2. Create something new every month I think I almost did this! I don't know if I did something every single month, but I definitely increased my creativity a lot! I made so many things this year. Ruffle pillow , Kindle case , 2nd Kindle case and sunglasses case , mini quilt , Kingsley's bow tie , Kingsley's quilt , maxi dre...

Christmas was so wonderful this year! We celebrated early with Jason's family when his parents were here for Thanksgiving. We decorated our townhouse really fast to have all the festive decorations up the day after Thanksgiving. It was so much fun having everyone at our house for Christmas, even though it was super early. Sweet Kingsley is the best present! Rachel & Jarrod about to open presents Our next Christmas event was down in Texas with my family! We drove down to DFW last Saturday and spent a few days there. On Sunday of course we went to church and saw my church family, then our friends Kyle & Liz drove in from Abilene to spend the afternoon and evening with us! We went out to Grapevine to see Carlee perform in her seasonal job, the North Pole Express. We even got to ride the train after Carlee's little performance. Carlee in her costume Our good friends! We had Christmas on Christmas Eve with my immediate family and Papaw! He drove fr...

Since my birthday fell in the middle of the week this year, we decided to celebrate my birthday the weekend before. I have been wanting to eat at this local restaurant with our friends, ever since I met up with some old coworkers there for happy hour a couple of years ago. We kept talking about it, but it never happened until I decided to make it my birthday brunch! We went to Root Down for a delicious brunch! We had scones and muffins for our appetizer. I had a mimosa and lamb burgers with sweet potato fries. It was all so good. It was super fun to spend the lunch with Jason, Jarrod & Rachel, and Bradon.  After our yummy lunch, we went by Target to get snacks, then we headed to the theater to see The Hobbit! It was super fun to see another LOTR movie for my birthday because the other ones all came out around my birthday as well. It just felt right to see it for my birthday. The movie was great, and I would recommend it! We didn't end up doing a cake or anything, b...

I got a new job! I am so excited to start managing the library of a non-profit health education organization in January. The opportunity was one that I just couldn't pass up; the job posting was basically ME on paper. While I'm very excited about this new opportunity, it is pretty sad to leave my two schools and all the people (and kids!) there. I spent my last week at work saying goodbye to everyone. It was a pretty miserable week honestly. I was so exhausted every night from the emotional toll that it took from telling so many people that I'm leaving. It will all be worth it though, because I'm very excited about my new opportunity. I really think it's going to fit my skills very well, and that I'll be very happy. I'm very hopeful that it will be a positive change for me.

So it's been a while since I posted anything about my ongoing fitness goals, but I've been working on it really consistently. After I did the full 30 Day Shred, I thought I would want to do another Jillian video. Unfortunately, I just wasn't seeing the results I really wanted with Jillian. It was a GREAT jumpstart, but I really want to be strong. So I decided to focus on building my strength and doing my cardio separately. I did some research (shocking, I know!) and decided that I would strength train 2-3 times a week and do interval cardio 2-3 times a week. I've been doing one of my Leslie Sansone videos that has intervals in it for my cardio, but I needed a new strength routine. I tried doing the strength moves from Jillian without the video, but it still wasn't what I wanted. And then I found Nerd Fitness . I've been doing this routine (3 circuits, 2-3 times a week) for... man, maybe 6 weeks? Maybe 8? It has made SUCH a difference! I feel like my ...

I have made some serious progress on Jason's quilt. But as I was working on it (for SEVEN hours today) I realized that maybe it was a big ambitious of me to attempt a twin size quilt for my second quilt ever. Yikes. I really love choosing a pattern, choosing fabric, cutting out the pieces, and piecing together the front and the back. And then we get to making the quilt sandwich. Ugh. This is the worst part. I need to do some reading about how to make this part not suck, because it makes me feel absolutely crazy! To make the quilt sandwich, you need a space big enough on the floor to lay the whole quilt out. Preferably on a hard surface, or when you start pinning, you'll pin the quilt to your carpet. We only have hard flooring in our kitchen & dining room, so Jason helped me move the table, then clean the floor really well so I could lay the quilt down. You lay the back down first, right side down. Then the batting. This time I used Warm & Natural cotton batting, a...