Okay. Okay. I'm back. I promise!

Well, I’ve been obviously absent for the past, oh, four months. In my own defense, I've been student teaching.

If you’ve never student taught, you have no idea. I was told when I began that I should expect 60-70 hour weeks. Pfft. That would have been easy.

My average week day:

6:15: wake up. Blindly grope my way to the coffee maker. Drink as caffeine as possible. Quickly. Stumble into shower. Steam grit and sleep from my eyes.

7:15: wake up children. Stumble to coffee maker once again. Work on hair, finding socks, signing that one homework assignment. Remind husbandy face of the day’s events and chores (because I sure didn’t have time to do them!) and rush around printing/preparing my own lesson items for the day.

7:45: kiss kids and husbandy face goodbye and rush out the door to school.

8:00-3:40 teaching. Planning hour usually spent talking with cooperating teacher and/or teaching in another classroom. Lunch hour spent with my “lunch bunch” of students who hang out everyday and inadvertently remind me why being a teenager was fun/horrible/shocking.

3:40-4:30: School ends. Get as much actual work  such as lesson planning, grading, grade entering, prep for next day, etc. as possible. Rush to pick up kiddos from day care since husband has gone to work.

4:45-5: Get home, sit for 3 blessed minutes to check email/texts/phone calls that I couldn’t answer during the day.

5-6: Do Lily’s homework with her. Keep Sage from realizing her world domination and/or destruction intentions. Hopefully have the energy to make dinner from the non-existent groceries in the house (seriously, never let your husband shop because you end up with frozen burritos, capri suns, and pretzels). If not, the pizza guy knows your order by your phone number.

6-8: Bed, bath, play time to help my children remember that I am supposed to be raising them. Ignore the piles of work still waiting to be done.

8:01-10:45: Lesson plan, write 97 page paper (which I got a 100% on, woot!) and pretend to learn Spanish.  Husband comes home. Tries not to feel ignored as I keep telling him “just a minute” when he wants to tell me about his day.

11:30-2:30: Husbandy face finally falls asleep and I get back to work. Creating lesson materials, planning, grading, updating class website (I did blog, just not here!), or reviewing material I need to teach. Occasionally just stressing out and pulling out hair while also searching TPTs for a lesson plan.

2:30 ish: (yes, that's AM) finally just give up and force myself to go to bed. Sit awake for at least half an hour contemplating all the things I didn’t get done or forgot to do.

Weekends were more of the same – just a few more hours playing with my kids and maybe mad dash rushing to the grocery store.  For those of you that think teachers have a cake job, I don’t know if we can be friends anymore. Student teaching is worse because you don’t have the materials. You’re doing all the work from scratch. Whew.

I think I might get some sleep over the summer, but since I jumped right into sub jobs and working a second job as well, it’s probably a good thing my mom bought me dark circle repair makeup. HA.

I sound like I’m complaining and let me be clear, I’m not. I absolutely loved teaching. Even when I hated it. Sometimes, the kids would irritate me with their whining or I’d be really tired and the thought of working on my feet and running from one place to the other all day seemed like too. Freaking. Much. But I did it, and I did it WELL.

And the best news of my long time absence?

I AM A COLLEGE GRADUATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(breathe) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have officially graduated with not one, but TWO degrees. Two bachelors degrees. Two pieces of paper I can hang on the wall and admire. Two tassels to hang from my mortar board as I walked across the stage. I’m officially a teacher and a historian. I did it. 

So now that the dust and papers have cleared, I’m back! I missed crocheting and blogging and being a mom. I am so excited to have the summer to do all of these things and make a plan for grad school. (I’m insane, I know). I received a full scholarship for graduate school and will be also working as an assistant teacher for gen-ed history courses. 

I’m excited to talk to all of you again! Thanks for waiting for me!

My first GUEST POST!!!!!

I'm so excited to announce that I've just done my first guest post at The Pink Lab!!! Heather is a fantastically inspiring lady who is using her crafty skills and message to motivate the world. She's so successful, she's going to pull it off too!!! As a part of her Motivational Week, I was invited to write about the moment that changed my life forever. Go read it! I'm so proud to be a part of such a great week!

Click here to read my post, Jubilant Life at The Pink Lab!!!!

Remove anger. Replace with jubilation!

I have received a ton of feedback on my not so jubilant post about why I prefer to make my gifts, rather than buy "stuff." A big giant hug and maybe a sloppy kiss to all of you who have affirmed my choice in making the gifts I give you. I really love you. The joyful side of this Jessi is back and more excited than ever to sit down and cruise patterns for my Christmas gift giving list. I may have to make my own version of the 12 Days of Christmas song.

I was really quite surprised to find that my post was featured on Live Simply Free's Friday Faves posts. Apparently, I have an attitude. (Who, moi?) I love this blog. Tiny living, or living in small spaces is a bit of an obsession of mine and I adore hearing the stories of those doing it. The photography is stunning. I can't lie, I may be suffering from slight blog envy. :-)

This is a photo from Live Simply Free's blog. Stunning, right? Original here

So a big thanks is in order to Living Simply Free for the feature and again to all of you. You absolutely mean the world to me and won't ever get a gift card from me!!

Update: I've just found out that my rainbow bag was ALSO featured today! Buckets of giggly joy and one phone call to my mother who had no idea what I was talking about or why I was so excited.

For you crochet fanatics, you probably have been to Moogly's blog for one of her awesome free patterns. I was featured as #5 on a co-hosted Hooking on Hump Day Round-up. So cool! I need to give out one more round of thanks to Tamara at Moogly and Sarah at My Merry Messy Life. 

Now I am REALLY in a fantastic mood.  I gotta go crochet something.

30 Days Makeup Free.

Monday, July 8th, 2013.

That's my 30 day NO MAKEUP anniversary.

No face powder. No mascara. No blush (not that I ever wore it). No. Makeup.

I guess it was an unconscious decision to try this out. I have nothing against makeup. It's fun, it makes me feel pretty, it's quite often sparkly.

It's also a way for me to think bad thoughts about myself. Those sneaky, pesky "I can't leave the house because I haven't got makeup on!" thoughts. The kind of thoughts that make me think I'm ugly when I look in the mirror because my makeup is messed up or because I haven't put it on for the day. That's just not mmmkay with me. I didn't want to feel like I HAD to wear it anymore. When you HAVE to do something, it's no longer fun. It's something you're required to do. It's a pressure on your chest that makes your heart beat a little faster. It's an excess that we've come to believe is a necessity.

Over the past year, I've worn less makeup. That's a pretty dramatic shift for me. I used to wear tons of eyeliner. I used to wear foundation AND powder AND bronzer. I used to put on eye shadow in three different shades and then put glitter on top of that. I did do exactly that the last time I wore makeup. I had on more makeup than ever. I was in a wedding line and had my makeup professionally done.... it was fun... but I felt like I was wearing 10 pounds of crud (beautiful crud!!) on my face. I didn't like it.

The day after the wedding, I couldn't bear to put on makeup again.

The week after, I still couldn't do it.

Two weeks later, I stopped carrying my makeup bag with me everywhere I went.

Three weeks passed, I didn't even think about putting on makeup as part of "getting ready."

Now a month later, and I'm pretty much okay with idea of saving makeup for special occasions. For the days when I want to play with makeup. Night out on the town or feeling sassy? Add a little mascara, sure. Going to the grocery store? Fuhgetaboutit.

I have no idea if this is something I should be proud about. I'm always fighting a war against negative thoughts. They tend to creep in on me if I don't actively work on stopping them. Body image is something we all struggle with, so you can easily guess that's a sore spot for me. Letting go of the mascara is an experiment I'm trying out to see if I can be happy with the naked face I see in the mirror.

It seems to be working.

Anyone else ditching the face powder? Loving it or hating it? I'm thinking the best part is that it's been so damn hot and if I was wearing it, I'd be sweating it off anyway. ;)