Summer has come to an end....

Well, summer if officially over in my book.... Today I had orientation on campus for my student teaching which starts tomorrow. It was a long day with 3 hours spent in the car, a few hours in orientation and an hour in class.... I feel as if I know a little bit more about what to expect, but I'm still nervous about what this experience is going to be like! I have so many questions--- and they're mainly detailed ones--- like what to do about lunch tomorrow! haha

To wrap up the summer, some of the women in my family took just a little trip to Springfield, IL. It was about a 5 hour drive and the city was filled with buildings and museums about Abraham Lincoln. I know, it sounds like it would be boring, but it was very interesting. We spent over 4 hours in one museum alone! I highly recommend it for a short weekend trip!

I got to see a bunch of friends from college again today, which was great. So many of them got married, got pregnant, etc.... all the marriages made me realize that by this time next year--- I'll be married! I'll be applying for teaching positions as "Krista Truelove." That is so crazY!!!

Well, it's after 10 pm and I have to leave for school at about 7 am, so I better be getting to bed. Wish me luck!!

Emotional Day

So today was quite an emotional roller coaster...... This morning we had the funeral for my grandma's brother who passed away on Sunday. The weather was beautiful and for being such a "country boy" without any children, he had a great turn out at the funeral and graveside services. After the funeral, several of my aunts and uncles went to eat to celebrate my grandma's 84th birthday (which sadly, was today---the day of her brother's funeral). We had a nice, relaxing lunch at the lake and spent time talking about old times.... It was almost what we all needed this week....

Now for the most exciting news of all----
When I got home and checked my messages online, I had a message from a friend saying that our Praxis results were in early...... my heart began POUNDING... my palms got sweaty... my whole body began to tingle and get weak..... my hands felt like they couldn't type and move anymore...... I went to the company's website and signed in....opened my test results.... and scrolled down to find-----"PASSED" typed into the results section of both categories...... What a RELIEF!!! I hadn't told but just a few people because I didn't want to have to tell people that I had failed, but now that I know I passed---- I just wanna scream it from the rooftops! I have to do a few more things in the next few months, but I will soon be a licensed teacher. I still have to take the test for my reading minor, but I haven't scheduled it yet---but soon will....

A new blog--Truelove Ideas

So.... I have a new blog--more of a "business" blog. My brother works online, with websites and all that stuff that I don't understand. When he saw my posts about my cakes and such, he suggested that I create a place to share my ideas. I don't yet have a website (but that is his goal for me) so I'm collecting all my ideas in a new blog--- http://ideasbykrista.blogspot.com/

It's definitely a work in progress but the idea for it is to become a place to suggest and share money saving tips and ideas for wedding planning, cake decorating, party planning, cheap lesson plans, recycling, inexpensive recipes and so on. I've spent a lot of time researching, collecting, thinking, questioning, studying, reading, creating, and experimenting, and I would love to share my findings with others! We could all stand to save some money, right?

I hope to get blog followers and soon, followers of the website. Wish me luck!

French Lick

Yesterday, Cameron and I spent the afternoon in French Lick. I start back to my last semester of college in 2 weeks (which will make me BUSY with student teaching!!), Cameron's interviewing at a few places for a new job, and we're getting into the time for more wedding planning.With all of this going on, we assume we won't have much free time together in the next few months, so we took a day to ourselves.

Cameron's dad is from the French Lick area, so Cam had tons of places to show me---where his dad grew up, where his family had lived, Larry Bird's house, places that he played as a kid, and so on. We also went up and checked out the new water park (at the top of the world's steepest hill!!), the hotels, golf courses and a few other places. I had been there before several times, but it's still fun to spend the day driving around and "sight seeing."

I took several pictures throughout the day, but I didn't have my camera with me for my favorite part of the day. Cameron and I walked around the French Lick Hotel and finished our walk with ice cream. We got our treats and went to find rocking chairs on the porch. Because we were going to the casino at the end of the walk I didn't take my camera with me, which I regret. We just sat on the porch, rocking and talking before going to the casino so I could gamble a whole TWO dollars! haha

Besides gas, our trip was pretty cheap. Our lunch at Chicago's pizza was about $20 (with leftovers for Cam's lunch the next day), our ice cream was $7 plus $3 for a Root Beer Cam really liked and then I spent $2 at the casino. Not too bad for a great date with my future husband.

Here are just a few pics from the day.

Great Weekend

This past weekend was a crazy one! My sister and I are really interested in yard sales recently because my nephew Karter is growing like a weed and needs new clothes often! Buying baby clothes can be so expensive, so we've embraced the idea of scanning the local newspapers for yard sale ads! This past week, we actually found more for the two of us than we did Karter, but it was still a GREAT day of sales! There was one yard sale we found actually after the time that the ad said it closed, but they were still welcoming shoppers. When we pulled up, we found a parking lot FULL of tables covered in clothes and miscellaneous home items. A woman walked up to us and said "all the clothes are 10 for a dollar." I guess we weren't really listening because a few minutes later, Kyla and I turned to each other and said "did she say ten for a DOLLAR!?!?" We went to a woman that was helping with the sale and clarified that that was in fact the price. We literally loaded our arms with about as much as we could carry after scavenging through the tables. We found a winter play coat with zip out lining for Karter this winter(originally marked $10), a few jackets, shirts, jeans and so on. When we went to pay, our total came to $3!! That's right---thirty items for $3 total...

The yard sale was being held in a store parking lot. After our good deals, we went into the store to do some shopping, but it didn't last long. When we came back outside just about 5-10 minutes later, the yard sale was OVER! The tables were empty and everything was loaded into trucks and cars..... looks like we got there and paid just in time! We've realized since that we never got a picture of all of the clothes we got---but I do know that they all FILLED two trash bags!

I think we hit probably close to ten yard sales that day in two different towns and got lots of clothes. She and I are both in desperate need of dress clothes---she got a new office job and I'll be student teaching in a few weeks---so that's what we tried to focus on buying.. And we got a lot of good stuff!

Sunday evening, we got my nephew's pool out and filled it for him.... he loves being in water---it makes him calm and he just hangs out in it! It's so funny!!

Here are a few pics of Karter from the weekend-

Living Room Re-arrange

So Kyla and I went to a 1st birthday party Saturday afternoon. The party was at a friends house and the couple just recently remodeled it all and moved in. The living room was very "home-y" and warm feeling, so Kyla decided that we needed to re-do her living room to try and attempt the same feel.

Kyla's house is the one that our grandparents owned for nearly fifty years. My whole life, the large living room was set up nearly the same way and when Kyla moved in, the furniture was put in a similar arrangement--with all the furniture along the outside walls and the center of the room pretty well open. The room is long and skinny with three doorways in it, so creating a warm feeling room could only be done in one way---by creating a wall with one of the couches and use only part of the living room for furniture and create an entry way with the rest of it.

Here are some before and after pictures (I think you can click on them to make them bigger). We're pretty proud of it!

Wedding Bands

Last week, I got to pick up Cam's wedding band so we both have ours now! :)

Here's a pic of ours together.... I'm sure Cameron would want me to announce this, so I will--- the inside of ring honestly has "One ring to rule them all" engraved. That was the only thing that Cam was determined to get in this wedding, so of course I couldn't NOT get it!


Both of our rings are just simple bands... Mine is white gold and a very skinny band and his is titanium that looks like a brushed silver. They are very simple but we both love them!

Cameron's Cake

Here is Cameron's 30th Birthday cake! The top picture is of his Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the rest of the pictures are the process of making it :) From start to finish, the cake took about 4 hours--including baking time and everything.

His cake was a white cake with buttercream frosting ...yuuummmmm!