What's Up Wednesday

                 Today I'm linking up with  Shay and  Sheaffer to talk a little bit about what's been going on around here!

Girl scout cookies!!!  We ordered from the CUTEST girl scout of all time and so can you!  She has about 100 boxes left to meet her goal and so click  HERE to support Anna and order yourself some cookies (they can ship!) and/or order for their "cookies for heroes" program and she'll deliver boxes to local heroes.

PS - when you click on her link MAKE SURE you watch her video!!!

FREE Printable Hearts

Hey, friends! Today I'm sharing some free printable hearts along with some ideas on how to use them.

Valentines Touches

I finally got around to putting out a few Valentine's Day touches around the house and LOVE LOVE LOVE them!

Friday Favorites

    Erika and I are so excited that lots of y'all are linking up with us every week.  Make sure that you're grabbing our graphic, linking back to us and sharing your own Friday Favorites post ;)

Last weekend Mason's basketball team won a local tournament and this picture of them after the final game is my FAVORITE!

All the HEART eyes ;)

I STILL haven't gotten my Valentine's decor out, but have plans to pull out my bin of hearts this weekend.  In the meantime, I've been perusing ALL THE HEART THINGS and thought it would be fun to do a little round-up.

First up is  this HUGE heart bowl.  I have two of them and use them all the time. 

 

 

Tomato Cream Cheese Tortellini

We have a local hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant that we've been going to for 25+ years (Sicily's in McKinney if you're local) and our VERY favorite dish their is their tortellini siciliano.  It used to not be on the menu, but we had friends that worked there in high school who told us about it and we've been ordering it ever since.  It's essentially a cheese tortellini with a tomato cream sauce and ham (their version also has olives which we omit) and it's just THE BEST!  We had some Costco tortellini the other night and I decided to give it a go and my entire house LOVED it!

FREE Printable Valentines

    My Valentine printable post is one of my most viewed and most requested posts every year and I love that the post just continues to grow!   This year I haven't had a chance to create any new printables as life has just been SUPER full and busy - but if I do I'll let y'all know and will add them to this post.  The great news is I have DOZENS shared below ;)

When I design printables I create them in a 4x6 format that you can right click, save to your desktop, upload to a photo printing service (I use Walgreens) then fold in half and staple to the top of a  cellophane bag with a treat inside or directly to the top of a snack (you can find the cellophane bags that I like  HERE or pick them up at Hobby Lobby).  The kids write their names (and the names of their classmates if the teacher prefers that) on the cards with Sharpie and we're done! 

It's the norm at our school to do little "favor bags" instead of just a card or candy.  Any of the ideas that I share today would totally work as a card if attaching a little favor isn't what your family or school does!

Pop-its are EVERYTHING right now and this would look cute with a large pop-it in a cellophane bag or with one of the little key fob ones looped through a hole punched in the card.

Christmas Card Pics 2023

 I just realized that I never shared the pictures we had taken to use on our Christmas cards! Better late than never, right?!?!  I booked a mini session with  Moments by Maredith at the most STUNNING greenhouse location and they turned out EXACTLY as I hoped they would! 

Friday Favorites

   Erika and I are so excited that lots of y'all are linking up with us every week.  Make sure that you're grabbing our graphic, linking back to us and sharing your own Friday Favorites post ;)

A favorite from the week was a quick trip to Fayetteville, Arkansas for a track meet.  We stayed at The Graduate Hotel which is officially a new FAVORITE because LOOK HOW CUTE!

Kitchen Sink Cookies

I made these "kitchen sink cookies" on my Christmas baking day and OH MY WORD were they a hit.  They're that perfect mixture of salty and sweet and they were really easy to put together.

Reading Recap

I'm back sooner rather than later because Christmas break provided a lot of time for me to listen to audiobooks as well as read on the couch.  THE BEST!  If you missed my last post you can find it HERE.

I LOVED The Spy Coast!  The main character is a retired CIA operative who is trying to live the quiet life in a small town in Maine when a dead body turns up in her driveway.  She enlists the help of other retirees in her small town and "The Martini Club" gets to work.  This book went back and forth from past to present revealing more of Maggie's backstory as it went along and it was just an all-around great read.

Lego Storage Update

 Luke has been a Lego fan since, I believe, his 4th birthday.  While I thought some of his interest may wane over the years instead it's actually grown and now he's very much into collecting these super large and super detailed sets.  The dilemma???  WHERE TO PUT THEM ALL!!!  Over Christmas break we decided just to pull the trigger on what we consider the mother of all Lego storage systems and it has been the best decision EVER for Luke's room.

Friday Favorites

  Erika and I are so excited that lots of y'all are linking up with us every week.  Make sure that you're grabbing our graphic, linking back to us and sharing your own Friday Favorites post ;)

Happy Friday, friends! Today is going to be short and sweet because re-entry has been A LOT with work, kid activities, being gone last weekend, etc.  Luke and I are headed to Fayeteville, Arkansas this weekend and I've got a lot to do! hahaha

We made some deliveries to one of our FAVORITE local organizations...

 

Garlic Bread

 

I'm here to admit that I've always been a frozen garlic bread/Texas toast purchaser until a few weeks ago when I tried homemade garlic bread.  I'll never go back.  EVER.

Amazon Lately

Today's post is a DOOZIE because my Prime account has been BUSY since November when I last shared. 

I ordered this stadium chair to bring with me to Luke's track meet this past weekend and it was FANTASTIC!  So easy to use and so comfy!

DITL Teacher In-Service Edition

My plan was to do a "day in the life" during Christmas break but I ended up forgetting so I decided to do one on my first day back at work!  It was a teacher in-service day and I thought it might be fun to see what that looks like if you're not a teacher and maybe compare if you are.

First of all - my alarm went off at 6:30 and IT WAS BRUTAL!  We had been staying up super late and sleeping in daily and MAN did I pay for it on this morning.

Weekend Recap - Pitt State Edition

Happy Monday, friends!!! We snapped back to reality REAL QUICK last week with me heading back to work and then a weekend out-of-state track meet.  

Friday Favorites

   Erika and I are so excited that lots of y'all are linking up with us every week.  Make sure that you're grabbing our graphic, linking back to us and sharing your own Friday Favorites post ;)

Happy Friday, friends! Well.... the time has come and break is over!  I really don't know how the past three weeks went by so fast but I do know that we made the absolute most of it.  We slept in, stayed up late, ate all the things, snuggled up, watched movies, etc.  It was slow and perfect.

We got Christmas packed up and put away and these kinds of pics are my FAVORITE!

Three Things

- INDOOR TRACK -

Luke is trying indoor track this winter and had been absolutely loving it.  If you'd told me when he was in 6th grade that he would be loving running I would have laughed in your face but here we are and we love watching him find things he loves. He's been training 5 days a week and competes this weekend at his first meet.  Exciting times!

Unreal Mac & Cheese

I came across this recipe on IG back in November and have made it probably 6 times since then. I don't know what that says about me but it should tell you that it's delicious and so easy!  Somehow, despite making it that many times I have no good pictures of the finished product mainly because it gets gobbled up so quickly.

Top Posts of '23

Happy 2024, friends!!! I'm really not sure where the past month went but here we are ;)

Today I thought it would be fun to look back at my top posts of 2023 and then ask y'all what you'd like ot see more of over her on the blog.  I joke that i'm the world's worst blogger because I never really look at analytics until I write this post and then I'm always a little surprised at what my top posts were.  In some ways though I feel like it keeps this space authentic to me because I'm not particularly driven by what's bringing in the most views. hahaha

That said - here are my top-viewed posts of the year!

 North Pole Breakfast 2023

This post is always one of my personal favorites and y'all know that doing the North Pole Breakfast for my kids is a yearly delight for me so it makes me so happy that lots of y'all enjoy the recap.