Jessica and Taylor's Wedding Shower

We are now midway through July and summer is starting to wind down for me! School prep is about go begin and summer relaxation will be gone. This means that a very big day in my family is coming up: My brother's wedding! Taylor and Jessica are getting married on August 10th in Dallas and we are all so excited that it is less than four weeks away! To celebrate, my aunts and I threw Jessica a bridal shower today for family and a few friends. We started planning this shower a couple of months ago and I knew right away that I wanted to try and pull out my inner designer to decorate for the occasion. Now, I am not very creative on my own, but thanks to Pinterest and other blogs I follow, I knew I could get some ideas and run with them. I had a blast over the last few weeks visiting flea markets and finding beautiful treasures that reminded me of Jessica. I wanted to reflect Jessica's personality in every way possible and I think I succeeded as best as I could! Jessica loves to be girly, but is also very simple. She loves tea pots and old heirlooms. She has an obsession with reading and loves old books. So, put it all together and you get a vintage tea party shower! I took lots of pictures to share the day with all of you!

The table that our guests saw right as they walked in the door. 

Guests wrote marriage advice for Jessica and Taylor on wooden spoons to make the Recipe for a Good Marriage!

I wish I had taken a picture of this area after all of the guests arrived--they were extremely blessed with MANY wonderful gifts for their apartment!

My aunts, mom, and grandmother did a fabulous job of putting together our snacks for the day!

This was my favorite piece out of all of the decorations!

This one runs a close second!

My mom bought the decorative plate from Etsy as a gift, but it was too cute not to use as a decoration too!

Yummy petifores from Ed's bakery!

My favorite tea cup that I found in my flea market shopping!

Another favorite tea cup! I think my own tea cup obsession has started...

The kitchen table decorations. I loved getting to incorporate some of the doilies that my grandmother used for years and years. They were beautiful additions!

I had tea pots and rose glasses everywhere I could set them :)

Mom and mimi make the BEST punch on the planet!

All of the decorations for the shower came from shopping through wonderful Flea Markets in Greenbrier. I would highly suggest these to anyone looking for good finds! They were filled with so many beautiful items and I will definitely be going back to add some pieces to my home and classroom! Here are the ones I visited:

Country Time Flea Market

Through the Years Flea Market

Midway Antiques and Fleas

Collector's Cove

I think she enjoyed her vintage tea party shower!

Jessica and her mom

Jessica's mom, Jessica, and my mom

Our moms are quite the goof balls!

I hate that this picture turned out blurry! Me, Jessica, my Aunt Donna, and Aunt Renee--The hostesses with the bride!

Guests filled out this "How well do you know the Bride and Groom?" sheet while we ate and chatted for a while. Then, I asked the same questions to Jessica to see if she could answer them in the same way that Taylor did before the shower. If she answered a question incorrectly, she had to put a large piece of bubble gum in her mouth! By the end of the game she had 8 pieces of gum in her little mouth! It definitely gave us a few laughs :)

The bride and all of the many presents loaded up and ready to be stored until the big day!

We had such a great day celebrating the upcoming marriage of my little brother to the love of his life. I am so thankful for Jessica and her family and excited to see all that God does in this wonderful new stage of life!

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!

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!

It's Springtime!

I absolutely love Spring. Spring decorations just brighten my day. Especially Easter decorations! I think I can blame my Mimi for this. She has always decorated her house for Easter and it is one of the highlights of spring when I am able to visit her and see all of her adorable touches around the house. She almost didn't decorate last year, so I had to go over there and make sure she didn't slack off :)

To go along with my love for Spring decorations, I have come to love making wreaths! There are so many easy ways to make a wreath that I never even thought about. Thankfully, Pinterest has helped me find several wonderful craft blogs that have wonderful tutorials on how to make easy, yet adorable, wreaths for all seasons.

Today I made a spring wreath to go our front door! I haven't done well with keeping a wreath on the door since Christmas because we have been so busy, but I finally had time today to make our door look a little Springy!

The wreath I made today was inspired by a fall wreath that I found on Linda's Blog. She has some very helpful tutorials on how to make simple wreaths and other crafts! The neat thing about this wreath is that it is interchangeable. The flowers clip on and off so that you can change them out for each season while still using the same wreath! I actually used two of her tutorials to help me out today and you can find those here and here. Using both of them helped me understand a few of the steps that I was a little hesitant on!

I took a few pictures of the process so that I could provide a few helpful hints if you want to try this wreath too!

Materials Needed:

Any type of wreath form you would like

1/2 yard of burlap {Here is a very helpful hint on how to cut burlap in a straight line!}

Three different colors of felt {Linda used burlap for her fall wreath, but I wanted to have spring colors for this one, so I used felt! I works just as well!}

Three dome craft buttons

A small amount of fabric to cover your buttons, or you could paint them

3 Alligator clips

Hot glue gun

See the three extra burlap loops with the alligator clips?? I love that the flowers can be changed and I can still use the same wreath body! So clever!

Linda has a picture of a template on her blog for the petal pieces, so I just free-handed these and cut them out. You will need a small, medium, and large petal template.

To make it easy, I pinned each template to the felt, cut around it, and then removed the template to do the next petal!

Your flowers will need 6 petals in all. I did 3 small and 3 medium petals for the blue and pink flowers. Then, I did 3 medium and 2 large petals for the yellow flower to make it stand out a little!

The petals are so much easier to make than they look! This is what they look like after they have been glued together, but before the buttons are put on! I think I am going to attempt to make some headbands for my niece using these flower designs. They are so easy to make and would be so cute with a stone in the center on a headband!

I did not realize how easy it was to wrap buttons with fabric! It took about 2 minutes to wrap all three buttons with fabric. Then, I hot glued the buttons onto the flowers and the flowers onto the alligator clips. All I had to do to finish was clip the flowers onto the burlap strips!

I know this wasn't a step-by-step tutorial, but I had to give Linda all the credit for this one! I am excited about making different flowers and decor to clip onto this wreath in the future!

Cricut This and Cricut That!

So for Christmas, Santa brought me a Cricut! I was so very excited because I have heard so many wonderful things about them and I love to make cards and scrapbook when I have time. I had also heard that they are great to have as a teacher because of all of the sizes and shapes they can create! So a few days after Christmas, I had to organize and clean out my entire room just to make room for the fun new addition to my room. As I was organizing and rearranging, I came to the realization that I was going to need to get rid of some stuff before I get married or Nathan won't be able to bring anything with him! Anyways, I'm just getting started with using the Cricut, so I haven't gotten too creative yet, but I'm so excited about my beginning creations that I had to share! I've been making divider pages for my Wedding Planning Binder and here are a few! Kind of simple, but I'm still excited about them :)

Here is my cute little set-up that was added to house the Cricut. It also helped with my book collection!

This actually wasn't made with the Cricut, but it's the front of my Wedding Planning Binder!

This one is probably one of my favorites!

A few of them have Scrapbook Stickers. I almost like the ones without better!

Sadly, this is my least favorite page. Too many stickers and not enough Cricut magic!

I still have a few more divider pages to make, but this is what I have so far! This binder has been such a help as we've been planning the wedding! I am such an organized, OCD freak it's not even funny! I have to have things all in place, so this has been wonderful. Mom and I have been able to get a lot of planning done this week and only have a few more things to do for now. Nathan FINALLY comes back to Conway tomorrow, so I have a list of things for us to do this week before school starts back! Everything is coming together very well so far :)