The Shine Project

You may have heard of The Shine Project which has been featured on some other blogs lately.  I'm proud to say that I'm participating!

If you haven't heard of it yet, go check it out here.
Basically, it's a way to track how a random act of kindness can spread to others and what they may do to pass on a random act of kindness to another person.

I love the idea, and so I ordered a pack of cards and today I used my first one!

I took pictures on my phone today at school and now they're not on there.  My phone and I are not speaking - I've never liked the camera and cannot wait till our contract is up and I can replace it with an iphone. There I said it.

So, what I did:
In our district we have one lady who makes all of the copies for all three building and she's the sweetest, most hard working person.  She always has everything done for each of us, and many times it's done earlier than needed.  She doesn't get mad or frustrated with last minute requests (and she gets a lot!) and she truly feels bad when the copiers break down.  I wanted her to know how much she's appreciated, so in the bin where we send down our copy requests I put a package with a few homemade cookies, a note that says how much she's appreciated and a Pass It Forward card.

I really hope it put a smile on her face!

If you're interested, here is what the cards look like - front and back.  You can get some here, for cheap!

I have a bunch more to use and can't wait to follow each of them to see how far they go!

Be part of passing on some sunshine in other peoples' lives!
It makes you feel good.

Kristin

Pantry Cleanup

There are not many things I like about our kitchen (think, typical '60's kitchen, with a tile floor that was painted and is now chipping and never looks clean)...but one thing I love is our pantry.  Growing up, in both houses I lived in, we had walk-in pantries.  While I would love that, I'm happy with what we have...although I would like to paint & spruce it up some in the future...

 
                             Before

I was shopping at Target and happened to come across a ClosetMaid pantry organizer while I was shopping for other things- which always seems to happen and I spend mega $...kind of like this shopping trip.

I tried to find a link or picture of the box and failed miserably...

It was a bit more than I wanted to spend ($30) but it's totally worth it!

Over the weekend I spent about 40 minutes weeding through the food and checking expiration dates and ditched a garbage bag...a garbage bag...of untouched, out of date food.

I hate. hate. how I seem to buy more food that we need.  It's a waste of money, and then when it gets thrown out, it reminds me that there are so many people that don't have any food let alone too much food.

I am now going to try very hard to only buy what we'll eat within the week.

I'm using the new door shelves for the things I'll need for dinners for the week, and snacks for Peaches!

It's so much easier to see what I have in there now 

The out of date food...tragic!

Please tell me I'm not the only one with this problem!

Kristin

MIA

I officially took my first unofficial week off from blogging since I started a few months ago.  It was completely unplanned and unannounced and if you were worried, I apologize.  I reflected over the week on the whole blogging process and why I'm doing it and if I want to continue.

I remembered why I began blogging - to stay in touch with family not so close by and to have something to look back at to remember our lives - and where I want my blog to go.  I felt like I was starting to lose sight of the most important reasons I began blogging.  I do want to continue blogging, but I don't want to be "sucked" into a common trend in the blogosphere of trying to get as many "followers" as possible and paying to do sponsorship's, etc.  I do love that people are actually reading the ramblings that I post and am so thankful for all the wonderful comments and inspiration.  I am also very grateful for the awesome women I have "met" since beginning to blog.  I just don't want to lose sight of the important things!



{hope that wasn't too heavy for a Monday!}



Anyway, I thought I'd share some pictures from Peaches' first 'hiking' trip we took in the woods behind our house over the weekend.

 

Our path crossed with a Dad and his kids picking up litter and he kindly asked if we'd like our picture taken

{please excuse my lack of makeup as I was not expecting any other human interaction}

 Can you tell that I thought the sky was awesome!?!  And I didn't edit any of the pictures either!

I can not wait for Spring!!

Happy Monday!

Kristin

Weekend Highlights

So, those of you who have been following for awhile may remember this post, where I shared that on the way to work one day a deer came out of no where and ran straight into the side of our car.

Well, over the weekend we were headed out to our nephew's birthday party and in pretty much the exact same spot, we were rear-ended.

We were all fine.  We had stopped at a red light- had been there for probably 30 seconds or so, then boom.  Hit from behind.  NO. WAY.  What is with this stretch of road by our house?  It's like there is a curse on it/us! And it's not like we can avoid this stretch of road either - it's pretty much the only way I can get to work.  UGH!

Anyway, again - just as I was last time, I am very grateful and thankful that it wasn't any worse that it was.  Really, I don't think there was any damage.  We can't really tell yet because the car is covered in snow and salt, etc.  So tomorrow we'll probably take her through a car wash so we can see better if there was damage or not.


Other than that....

There aren't too many highlights.  I've been having fun curling my hair since I got it cut a few days ago.  I mentioned that I might share a picture, so I had the husband take one for me quick.

I've had this cut for a few months now and love it...I just had it cut a little shorter than normal...and I love it even more :)



We spent some time outside this weekend.  It was nice to get some fresh air.  We actually had some snow to play in!  This winter weather (or lack there of) has been some of the strangest of my life!  Last winter we had record snowfall amounts (we were on the national news!) but this winter...total opposite.

So it was a change to actually have snow!

Peaches and I made our 1st snowman...we made snow angels...we sat by the creek and threw snowballs in and watched them get carried away in the current.  It was great!

(please ignore my camo pants - seems I'm in need of some real snow pants 

so I don't have to use the husbands from his Air Force years!)

Happy Monday!
(back to work today...but I've planned well and we'll be watching GATTACA today and tomorrow.  One of my favorite days of the year is the discussion we have after and students realize all the genetics stuff they've been learning could be come their reality some day)

Kristin