Mama said there'd be days like this...

What a day. 

What a day.  Wait...I already said that.  Oh well, sometimes you can't say it enough. 

It's been a rough day.  Remember me telling you about my incident with the coffee cup?  Well, the cut was worse than I originally thought.  It bothered me a lot over the weekend.  It started swelling, getting red, getting feverish and hurting.  I went to the doctor this morning and it's definitely infected.  They put me on an antibiotic, so hopefully it clears up soon. 

So, we get home and we are walking up to the house and Brady slips and falls on the concrete walkway.  He hurt his foot pretty bad.  It was raining and slippery outside.  So I took him to the ER and thankfully it was not broken, but it is sprained BAD.  He cannot put ANY weight on it, none whatsoever.  It's bad.  He tried to stand on it a couple of times today and he was screaming in pain.  It's been a rough day for my little man :(

We did not get to do any school work today, so tomorrow is going to be a busy busy day. 

It took me 4 hours to make this post.  Why, you ask?  A mom's job is never done.  It's 10:00 and I'm finally done for the night.  Time to relax for a couple of hours before bedtime :)

So, until next time...

"Somewhat" doesn't cut it.

Remember me telling you all about how busy I had been and I was "somewhat" watching what I ate...yada yada yada.  Well, "somewhat" doesn't cut it. 

I braved the scale this morning and.....let's just say it moved in the wrong direction. 

"Somewhat" watching what I eat and no exercise isn't going to work.  No matter how I spin it, or how many excuses I come up, it's not going to cut it.  And it never will. 

I accept it and I'm moving on.

So, my goal this week is to drop the pounds I gained and quit with the excuses. 

My new breakfast:  Carrot juice, homemade of course.  It is surprisingly good and it's super duper good for you.

Oh, and school is going well.  Our schedule is working out great and my son has been doing SO good!  I'm one proud mama :)

Busy.

I have a minute.  Yes, I mean a minute.  So, I thought I'd quickly check in. 

I have been super busy.  We started school Monday.  Monday started off great!  It was a little too great, if you know what I mean.  I was SO relieved that the day had gone so well.  We were down to our very last subject...math.  **Sigh** 

At least it was the end of the day and not the beginning.  All in all, I can't complain too much.  Today went REALLY well!  We had an awesome day :)

I just don't have a lot of free time right now.  Brady ended up going to see his Papa after school today(that was his reward for doing so good today!) and I was able to do lesson plans early today.  That's why I have time to make this post.  So, thank you Papa! 

I have been "somewhat" watching what I'm eating, but the workouts have been a no-go.   Maybe next week...

Oh, and I had a minor incident with one of my favorite HUGE coffee mugs.  Let's just say there is a chunk missing from my right calf.  Hubby bandaged me up and all is good now. 

So, that's it for now. Short and simple. Hope you all have an awesome week!

Life is about to change.

I've pretty much had a carefree summer.  A summer filled with sleeping in, watching movies, building forts with my son, wearing my PJ's all day.....basically a very lazy, relaxing summer.  We've stayed somewhat busy with church activities and so forth, but still....pretty carefree for the most part.  Oh, how I'm going to miss vegging out in front the TV watching HGTV. 

At the same time, I am ready to get back to a routine schedule.  I seem to function better (in all aspects of my life) when I have a schedule.  My son does online public school and this will be our second year with Georgia Cyber Academy.  We start Monday.  Although he has an "official GCA teacher", I do 95% of the teaching.  Teaching your own child can be quite a challenge.  He knows how I operate, he knows how far he can push me, he knows exactly how much he can get away with.  Let's just say it's stressful.  Finding the balance between Mama and teacher is hard. 

So, life is about to change in the McCorkle house.  A lot of my "free time" is going to be spent going over lesson plans and preparing for the next day of school.  So technically, I guess it's not "free time".  Fortunately, I have an awesome husband that helps me out around the house during the school year.  Especially at the beginning of the year, when everything is new and crazy!  He works full time AND helps out when needed.  He is my own personal Superman :)

So, if you don't see many posts from me in the next couple of weeks, you'll know why.  Hopefully, it won't take too long for us find our groove and get accustomed to our new schedule.

Thanks for all the support you guys have given me in my efforts to start up this blog!  It really means a lot!!

Crafting withdrawals....what to do???

Last night, after everyone else went to bed, I starting brainstorming for a craft that my son and I could do together.  I wanted us to make something together, something we could display, something that would make my son feel important.  I don't have the budget to go out and buy anything, so I started rummaging through the closets and looking for anything that we could use.  I found a canvas and some paint....what kid doesn't love to paint! 

If you have ever been on Pinterest, you have probably seen LOTS of chevron pattern art.  I have always wanted to attempt this, just had not gotten around to it.  So, I figured this was the perfect opportunity!  I thought it turned out really good!

What do think of our chevron painting??

Here's how we did it....

Supplies needed:  Canvas (we used a 16x20), painters tape, scissors, ruler or measuring tape, pencil, paint, paint brushes, and paper towels.



First, I measured my pattern grid and lightly drew it on the canvas with a pencil.  My grid ended up being in 4 inch squares.

Then I started taping the chevron pattern onto my grid with painters tape.  The grid is a MUST to keep it uniform.

Here's what it looked like after taping the entire canvas.  I used my pencil eraser to lightly erase the grid lines.  It's okay if you can still see a little bit of the lines.  You are about to paint over it. 

We just started pouncing our paint colors on.  We used a REAL difficult technique.  You blot the paint color of your choice on with a paint brush, then very very carefully, crinkle up a paper towel and blot over the paint.  Hard, right?!?!  Bwahaha...yep, that's how we roll.  All joking aside, the paper towel gives it a cool texture.  You really can't mess this up.

We ended up using red, turquoise, gray, and just a little hint of green in there.  We had the best time doing this!  There is no rhyme or reason to this.  The messier the better. 

This is what it looked like when I pulled the tape off.  Not as clean as I would have liked it.  I also lightly erased the lines left on the white part at this point. 

You can see that the tape didn't work as well as I had hoped. 

No problem, though.  I just got out the white paint and cleaned it up.  It didn't take long.  The white paint also covered up any lightly visible pencil lines. 

So, here it is hanging above our mantel.  And if you are wondering what that is, sticking out of the wine glass tea light candle....it's a feather.  My son got a feather from his papa the other day and he wanted to display it.  It makes an interesting and unique addition...don't you think?

This project was pretty easy.  The only thing that was a little tedious was drawing out the grid and taping the pattern.  But listen, if you don't want to go to all the trouble of taping out a distinctive pattern, you could just randomly throw on some strips of painters tape and paint it like crazy.  It would make a nice piece of abstract art. 

We had so much fun doing this and more importantly, my son got to paint and create something for everyone to see :)

Older Craft Projects

Okay, so I know I promised that my next post would be super positive but this is as good as it's going to get.  At least it's not negative :)

So, money has been a little tight in the McCorkle house lately and I haven't been able to work on many projects.  I thought I'd post a couple of pictures of some projects I did earlier this year.

I love to paint!  Especially love painting trees.  I love whimsical, curly, off-beat trees.  I can't paint a "realistic" tree to save my life though.  My niece got married in November of last year and she really wanted me to paint her a tree to go in their new house.  I'm sure you've all heard of Pinterest....if you haven't, you are SOOOO behind the times!  I love browsing through there looking at the art.  I came across this tree and loved it!!!

From etsy http://www.etsy.com/listing/77751424/48x24-original-modern-abstract-heavy

This painting is beautiful, but it wasn't the right colors for my niece.  So I decided to do my own version of this painting.  I decided to do it on 2 canvases instead of 4.  My reason for this was because I wanted to represent TWO becoming ONE....I thought it was a neat idea.  So, here's my version.  It's not as pretty as the original, but I was still really proud of it. 

So, here's my version :) 







We rent an apartment and, as you know, decorating can be super tricky when renting.  We can't paint or permanently alter ANYTHING in our apartment.  The kitchen is super plain and quite honestly, it's boring.  I HAD to do something.  So I searched Pinterest (of course!) for temporary ways to update an apartment and I came across this "faux" kitchen back splash.

It's made of stainless steel contact paper!  Can you believe that!  http://mygoalissimple.com/2011/06/08/contact-paper-tiled-backsplash/

Here's the before picture.  The dark spots were from the cleaner I sprayed to wipe it down.

Here's the after!  I got the contact paper from Lowe's.  All I did was cut 4x4 inch squares (the back of the contact paper had a grid pattern, so it was REALLY easy to cut).  I started at the bottom and I alternated the grain of the stainless steel squares each time so that when the light hits it, it looks like a checker board pattern.  This is just my small counter top area.  I did my entire kitchen for less than $40. 

Our pantry doors were also pretty drab.  So I ordered some chalkboard contact paper from Amazon to give them a little character. 

Here's the before picture.  Pretty sad, right?!?!

Here's the after.  I just measured each section of the pantry doors and cut the paper to fit.  It really dresses them up and you can also get creative with the chalk and write down dinner menus, grocery lists, favorite quotes, personal messages to your loved ones....the possibilities are endless. 

I hope you enjoyed seeing my little projects.  I really enjoy doing this kind of stuff.  Hopefully, I can get back to some new crafty projects soon!  



 

Balance

Balance.

How do you achieve it?  Feel free to chime in here if you have an answer because I am clueless.

I've spent my whole life trying to find balance in weight loss and fitness. You would think, by now, I would have it figured out. 

So, here's my predicament.  I have been low carbing (for the most part) and have been doing quite well with it.  But, I'm finding that I just don't have the energy that I need to complete my Couch to 5k workouts.  I am running out of energy before I even finish the warm up walk!  Something has got to give.

I REALLY want to focus on fitness and my Couch to 5k program because I am signing up for a 5k in December and I have a long way to go until I'm ready.  I am currently on week 4 of the program.  Week 4 is kicking my butt!  I will probably be repeating it.  I see no other option than to start adding some carbs into my diet.  I simply cannot jog without some carbs for fuel. 

I've also been really stressed lately, so maybe that is playing a part in my energy loss as well.  Who knows?

So, my plan is to add some carbs in and keep on trucking!  Hopefully that will do the trick.  Sorry this post isn't very positive.  Sometimes it's hard to be positive.  I promise, the next one will be super positive :)

Until next time....