Patriotic Pride

Pinterest, Pinterest, Pinterest. Praise the Lord for summer vacation from school! I am having a blast doing little things that I have wanted to do all year! I check Pinterest on my phone several times a day just to keep up with all of the new ideas. I pin many things, especially for my classroom, but many times I don't get around to completing these cool projects until much later. However, some things catch my eye and I am hooked! Do you ever find those posts on Pinterest that you love so much you have to make them immediately?? This was one project I had to do right away! 

I love making wreaths and try to make one for every season, but I've had the same one on my door since the spring and it was time for a new one! Luckily, this worked out perfectly with the 4th of July being next week! I found the tutorial for this Patriotic Pride wreath over at Sky's Blog! Though this wreath looks a little complicated to make, it was really very simple! However, it is a bit time consuming. It was a several hour project to work through, but I LOVED the outcome!

I'm so excited about this new addition to our front door to celebrate the holidays next week! Nathan's brother-in-law (Gentry's daddy) is currently deployed and serving in the Air National Guard in Oman, so this will be a very meaningful 4th of July for our family. We miss Kelly very much and can't wait for him to be back home in November, but we are also so very thankful for his commitment and service to our country.

Like I said, this is a simple, yet time consuming wreath to make and you can find the tutorial at Sky's Blog if you would like to make your own. If you would like to have one of these beautiful wreath's, but don't want to make it yourself, you can e-mail me at lynzielamb89@gmail.com and I will gladly make you your own for $30.00!

A Year With The Brewer's

On Monday Nathan and I celebrated our one year anniversary! This year has FLOWN by and has been full of so many new things, surprises, and joys. I graduated from college a month before the wedding, we bought our first house three weeks before the wedding, and I accepted my first teaching job two weeks before the wedding. So, thankfully, I was able to walk down the isle feeling very relieved and ready for this new stage in life! And the new didn't stop there! Here are just a few highlights from our first year of marriage:

--I began my first year of teaching first grade at the most wonderful school, Wooster Elementary.

--Sweet Morgan Summers was born!

--I spent my first holiday (Thanksgiving) away from my family.

--Nathan turned 22.

--Nathan went on a mission trip to Nicaragua for 10 days. 

--I turned 22.

--Nathan missed his first holiday (Christmas) away from his family.

--We stepped way out of our comfort zones and moved from our home church to First Baptist here in Conway as Nathan took on the role of worship leader/assistant for the youth and Thrive.

--We began welcoming a new member into our family as my brother, Taylor, proposed to his soon-to-be-wife, Jessica!

--We welcomed our sweet niece, Gentry Faith, into the world and have spoiled her ever since!

--We celebrated three years since we began dating.

--We got our first dog, Piper!

--We have celebrated with many, many friends as they walked into marriage.

--But most of all, we have loved every minute of learning how to love, live, and walk like Jesus in our relationship with each other. We have been so blessed by the way God has provided for us, lead us, and poured out his blessings on our marriage. We have realized more and more every day how inadequate we are to walk through life, but how more than adequate Jesus is to carry us. Obviously, we do not have marriage down to an art and have so many more things to learn as the years go by, but we are looking forward to this second year and all that God has in store for us!

So to celebrate all of our first year joys, Nathan planned a perfect day for us without any help from me! We started the day by going to Pinnacle Mountain to hike because I had been wanting to go back for quite some time. This is significant for us because three years ago the day after our anniversary, Nathan told me he loved me for the first time at the top of that mountain! It was definitely a hot hike and halfway through I turned to him and said, "Who's idea was this again???" Of course, it was mine :)...Here are a few pictures from the top!

After our hike, we were ready for lunch and where else would we have lunch on our anniversary but at Chik Fil A! We spent the afternoon running errands around Little Rock and then came the big surprise! Nathan told me we were staying at the Capitol Hotel where we stayed last year before going to the Bahamas! I was so excited! That area in downtown is so beautiful!

After we got ready, we headed out on the town! We walked around downtown for a while seeing some of the historical sites. I am the teacher nerd that enjoys these kinds of things! We toured the Old State House and some of the Historic Arkansas sites.

This is the old House of Representatives room--so cool!

With my new obsession with sewing, I thought this was amazing!

After touring the sites, we went to see a movie and had dinner at PF Chang's, Nathan's favorite!

And of course, a date night would not be official without dessert! Maggie Moo's is my fav!

We had a great anniversary trip in Little Rock, but Piper sure was excited when we got home!

Since we were in Little Rock all day on our actual anniversary, we ate our cake topper the next night with my parents and brother! This worked out for everyone involved because not one person in my family actually got to eat a piece of the cake at the wedding! I have been waiting for this alllll year long! 

I surprised Nathan and kept it a secret all year long--our cake topper was Funfetti, Nathan's favorite!

We loved our wedding cake so much! Angelia at Cake Art by Angelia did a fabulous job!

Our anniversary also marked our last jar of green apple jelly beans! These were our wedding favors and we STILL have a jar left after a year!

Thank you for all of the well wishes for our anniversary! We are excited for many more years to come!

Ripe Bananas

One of my biggest pet peeves is when I let bananas get too ripe. I love bananas, but I also have pretty strong gag reflexes that do not like mushy bananas. I usually eat them pretty quickly, but I was struck with a stomach bug two weeks ago and bananas have been the last thing I've wanted to eat since then. So today, seeing that I needed to get rid of my extra ripe bananas, I decided to be resourceful and make some of my Mimi's amazing banana bread! I normally only eat this yummy treat once a year. Mimi always makes banana bread on Christmas eve so that we will have breakfast on Christmas morning. It's one of my favorite family traditions! Even though it isn't Christmas, I thought it would be a great snack to bake and freeze to have for breakfast throughout the summer. I love my Mimi's recipe so much that I thought I would share it with you!

Mimi's Hawaiian Banana Bread

Ingredients:

3 cups of all purpose flour

2 cups of sugar

1 tsp of baking soda

1 tsp of salt

2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1 1/2 cups of chopped nuts(optional

3 eggs beaten

2 1/2 cups of mashed ripe bananas

1 8oz. Can crushed pineapples drained

2 teaspoons of vanilla

1 1/2 cups of oil

Directions:


1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Combine dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nuts if you choose) in a bowl. Mix together.

**You really can just use a spoon to stir these ingredients, but I love to have any excuse to use my big Kitchen Aid Mixer!

3. In a separate bowl, beat eggs. Then, add other wet ingredients (mashed bananas, drained pineapple, vanilla, and oil). Mix together.

4. Pour wet ingredient mixture into dry ingredient bowl and stir just until moist.

5. Spray two 9x5x3 loaf pans with cooking spray. Then, sprinkle pans with flour and shake to cover. (I could not find my loaf pans, so I just used a deep cake pan!)

6. Pour batter into pans. Sprinkle tops with a little cinnamon. This isn't part of the original recipe, but I LOVE cinnamon, so I had to add a little extra :)

7. Bake for 1 hour and 5 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

8. Cool on baking rack for 20 minutes before removing from pans. Remove from pans and cool completely on baking racks. Since I couldn't find my loaf pans, I am going to cut my big loaf into smaller loaves and freeze to have this summer!

Then, it's time to enjoy!

If you plan to freeze your bread, simply wrap the bread in foil and pop into the freezer!

Summertime and Sweet Words

So summer is in session and I have to say that I am LOVING it! It is amazing what only two weeks of relaxation can do for a first grade teacher! I have been able to get so many things done that just weren't possible towards the end of the school year.

Towards the end of the school year my husband began asking me for a list of things I wanted to do this summer. That is a lot harder of a question to answer when you sit down and think about it. Now that I have had two weeks to unwind and slip into summer, I have come up with my list. I am hoping to refer to this list often throughout the summer and actually accomplish all of my plans :)

1.Walk with Jesus. I have already discovered that my favorite thing about summer will be having more than enough time to spend in the Word in the mornings. During the school year it was very hard to find the perfect time to sit and spend as much time as I wanted searching the scriptures and learning from Jesus. I have already found so much joy in starting my day digging deeper into Him and discovering how to live like Him.

2.Read every book that I own. I am an avid reader and love to get lost in a good book. I am also an avid book buyer. This means that I have quite a few books that I own, but have never read. I would love to take care of these this summer!

3.Learn to sew. I greatly desire to be crafty and creative. With my Pinterest addiction growing over the last year I have seen so many things I would love to make that require sewing. So, I pulled the sewing machine out on Monday and spent an hour or so learning how to use it in the basic ways. My first project is to make curtains for my classroom bookshelves. I would also love to make curtains for my own home and some adorable baby items for my niece!

4.Lose my shyness. Some of you may think, "What? She's not shy!" Oh, but I am. It is completely stepping out my comfort zone to introduce myself and get to know new people. Many of you know my husband and know that he is nothing like this. Nathan can meet anybody and know their life story in a matter of minutes. I, on the other hand, struggle with stepping out of my shell and greatly desire to do that this summer by spending time meeting and getting to know new people.

5. Cook and bake my little heart out. I LOVE to cook and bake. I love finding new recipes and trying them out, even if I have no clue what I am doing. My pinterest cooking board is full of recipes needing to be tried, so be looking for more recipe posts in the coming weeks!

6.Run my first 5k. I began training for a 5k several months ago. I've had several lags in the Couch to 5k plan from being sick several times, but I am still training! I hoping to run my first 5k in July and then hopefully (crossing my fingers), start training for the Soaring Wings Half Marathon in October. We'll see how I do through the heat of the summer!

7. Scrap my first year of teaching. Several of the sweet parents in my classroom went in together and gave me a scrapbook starter as an end of the year gift. They decorated the first two pages and gave me some pictures they had taken of the kids. I have always loved scrapbooking and am excited to make a book full of memories so that I will always remember my first group of kids! I've already gone through and printed my pictures, so I am already making progress towards this goal!

8. Go fishing. I am a girly girl. I don't like touching slimy creatures like frogs, worms, or bugs. But I sure do love to go fishing! I can thank my Papa for giving me this love. However, I do not like to touch worms and I don't like to take the fish off of the hook once I have successfully caught it. So, this year, my goal is to actually bite the bullet and touch the worm and fish. Those will be interesting pictures to post! :)

9.Love my family. The Lamb and Brewer families have experienced a lot of changes over the last year and they still aren't finished changing yet! Nathan and I got married last summer, Rachel graduated from high school and started college, Taylor got engaged, sweet Gentry was born, Kelly was deployed, and Taylor will wrap up our summer by marrying Jessica on August 10th. Change is hard a lot of the time, but I have two amazing families to walk through changes with. I want to spend my free time this summer talking, playing, taking adventures, loving, living, and experiencing life with them in very intentional ways.

10.Encourage others. With an increase in my free time these days, I can't help but notice how much "stuff" is going on in everyone's life. It only takes a few minutes reading through facebook, a blog, or the newspaper to see just many people are hurting, in need, and feeling hopeless. I look forward to using my time this summer to minister to others through encouragement. And speaking of encouragement...

I spent the last few weeks of school racking my brain to figure out something sweet and uplifting to do for my first group of first graders as an end of the year gift. Of course I saw many cute ideas on Pinterest, but one of them stuck with me and I had to do it! If you have never heard of Wordle you need to check it out soon! Wordle is a website where you can create word clouds. We used these throughout the school year as we discussed using adjectives to describe different objects. They are so fun to make and super easy! I saw the idea to create a word cloud for each student using adjectives to describe them. Of course, I loved this idea because of how personal, encouraging, and uplifting it could be! I hope my kids will keep these for years to come so that they can look back and know they were loved in the first grade!

To make a word cloud, simply go to Wordle and click on "Create your own." A typing box will come up and you simple type the words that you want on your word cloud. To make a word big (like the kid's name in my examples) you simple type that word over and over with a space between each. When you think of another word that you want to put on the cloud, press enter and type the next word. If you want the word small, only type it once. If you want it larger, type it more than once. Your text box will look something like this when you are finished:

Alicia Alicia Alicia Alicia Alicia Alicia Alicia Alicia
Bright
Kind Kind Kind
Creative Creative
Hard-working
Respectful Respectful Respectful

You can type as many words as you want! When you are satisfied with your words, click on "go." I like to select my text and copy it before I press go because once go is pressed, you cannot return to that text box. I copy my text just in case I forget something or make an error. That way I can go to a new text box, paste my words and fix any errors! Once you press go, your word cloud will appear! Along the top of the wordle you will have options to change the font types, colors, and layout. You can use pre-made color schemes or customize your own. You can also create your own layout or use the "random" button to see pre-made layouts! When I was finished, I printed the word clouds out and put them in frames from the dollar store! Here are few examples of the ones I did for my kids:

So, if you are looking for new, creative, easy-to-make, thoughtful gifts to give, check out the word clouds!

**That was a little bit of an ADD jump from my summer list of things to do, but I have been meaning to share the word cloud idea for a while! Be looking for new posts about my new summer adventures to come!