30 by 30

I have a big life change coming down the line, I am getting married. I am starting the next phase in my life as a married woman and I realized that I keep moving from one phase of life to the next quite quickly. College Student, Girlfriend, Teacher, Home Owner, Fiance....next up Wife. I don't want to just sit back and move from one phase to the next. I want to live in that phase and have an awesome time doing it. I realize I have a few years left before I will be leaving my Twenty-Something (3 1/2 to be exact) phase, and I am ready to fully live within those years. I decided it was time for a list, because that is what I do. So here it is the 30 before 30 list. Basically this is my bucket list on the short term goals list. Here is 30 things I am hoping to do before I turn 30
1. Run a 10K race
2. Run a half marathon
3. Complete a Sprint Triathlon....I can't believe I am even writing this
4. Teach in a foreign country
5. Take a hot air balloon ride
6. Canoe in the Boundary Waters
7. Finish all my schooling...only one licensure to go
8. Take dance lessons
9. Take a cooking class
10. Learn more about photography, take a class
11. Take a pottery class
12. Create a piece of art I love enough to put in my house instead of throw away
13. Learn to successful back up a boat trailer
14. Gain confidence with power tools
15. Build a piece of furniture
16. Learn to reupholster
17. Go watch horse races
18. Participate in the Warrior Dash
19. Write a Children's Book that may or may not ever get published
20. Sky Dive....shhh don't tell my Mom
21. See one of the Natural Wonders of the world that I have left to see
22. Step out of my sewing comfort zone and sew something I have never done before
23. Successfully grow my own vegetables
24. Run in the Freeze yer Gizzard Blizzard Run
25. Take a vacation with a friend
26. Visit a state I have never been to
27. Visit a state I have never been to
28. Visit a state I have never been to....one for each year I have before 30
29. Host a holiday at my house
30. Scuba Dive

There it is...my 30 before 30, let's see how I do!

Little Bee

Loved this book....wasn't prepared for how intense and violent it was but I devoured this book. I read this for book club and think it will make a great discussion book.

Bottom Line read it when you are ready for an intense book, not a summer beach read by any means.

Copycat

I love reading different blogs. They are such a fun way to read about different people and different families. One blog I have been reading pretty religiously lately is Young House Love a blog about a young family who buys and fixes up houses while they live in them....sound familiar???

I not only have been reading about their lives constantly I am now turning into a copycat of their decorating style. Maybe I should say they inspire me or something that sounds better than copycat but I guess there really isn't any reason to church it up huh?

Here is the Young House Love dining area of their last house. Check out the white shelves behind the table...love them? I did. So here is my rendition...

I took the same concept they had and added personal touches to it to make it very Mitch & Rachel.

Let's take a closer look shall we....
This project was not only super easy, just hang two shelves and stick stuff onto them, but it was really cheap as well. Here is the breakdown of what I spent.
Shelves: $15 each for a total of $30 from Ikea
3 Picture Frames: One purchased from Kohl's with some Kohl's cash from my Aunt and two black frames we already owned that I painted white total spent $0
Green Bottle: empty wine bottle that I soaked to remove the label total spent $0
White Dishes: Taken out of our kitchen total spent $0
White Vases: Taken out of our spare room total spent $0
Green Pottery: Gift from my Mom total spent $0
R&M Letters: from Michael's $4

Total Spent $34
Whoop Whoop!

Thanks Young House Love for letting me steal your style!

Father's Day

We spent Father's Day with Mitch's Dad Kraig. Kraig is an amazing Dad and I am so blessed to have him a part of my life. As part of his Father's Day gift we made him a candy card.

This was a super easy gift to whip up and Kraig seemed to get a kick out of it.

5 More

I have been reading....I have not been blogging.

My Mom says the book blog entries are lame, my friend Lexi likes them. So as a compromise here is what I have been reading the short and sweet version.



Lame...do not read this book. I read all 544 pages waiting for it to get good, it didn't happen.



Ohh these were good...I read all three of them in less then a week, and then I discussed them with the 12 year old girls that I work with in the summer. Apparently I have all the same interests as a middle schooler.



This book was soo soo good. I loved it. This one was a book club pick and it lead to really good discussion and we were unanimous, we all loved it.

Mother's Day

I love our Mother's Day Tradition, and this year Mother's Day got even more special by combining my family with my future family.

Every Mother's Day we wake up and participate in the Susan Koman Race for the Cure. It is an easy 3 mile walk with all the proceeds going to help fight breast cancer. My Grandma who was such a huge part of my life died of breast cancer in 2005. This is a beautiful way to remember and honor her.

It is so awesome to see a kazillion people all gathering together to fight the same fight.

I can't imagine spending this day in another way.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

About the Book: Oskar Schell, hero of this brilliant follow-up to Foer's bestselling Everything Is Illuminated, is a nine-year-old amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist, tambourine player and pacifist. Like the second-language narrator of Illuminated, Oskar turns his naïvely precocious vocabulary to the understanding of historical tragedy, as he searches New York for the lock that matches a mysterious key left by his father when he was killed in the September 11 attacks, a quest that intertwines with the story of his grandparents, whose lives were blighted by the firebombing of Dresden. Foer embellishes the narrative with evocative graphics, including photographs, colored highlights and passages of illegibly overwritten text, and takes his unique flair for the poetry of miscommunication to occasionally gimmicky lengths, like a two-page soliloquy written entirely in numerical code. Although not quite the comic tour de force that Illuminated was, the novel is replete with hilarious and appalling passages, as when, during show-and-tell, Oskar plays a harrowing recording by a Hiroshima survivor and then launches into a Poindexterish disquisition on the bomb's "charring effect." It's more of a challenge to play in the same way with the very recent collapse of the towers, but Foer gambles on the power of his protagonist's voice to transform the cataclysm from raw current event to a tragedy at once visceral and mythical. Unafraid to show his traumatized characters' constant groping for emotional catharsis, Foer demonstrates once again that he is one of the few contemporary writers willing to risk sentimentalism in order to address great questions of truth, love and beauty.

My Thoughts: I should like this book. As an American I should read about monumental moments in our country like September 11th. As a Special Education Teacher I should be fascinated with a book written from the perspective of a boy with Aspbergers. I should have liked this book but I didn't. It was too hard for me to follow what was happening and seemed to drag on forever even though it was only 200 pages. I read today that this book is going to be made into a movie with huge actors and actresses in it; Tom Hanks & Sandra Bullock huge. I will go and see the movie and hope they are able to put a spin on it that I can follow and understand but this book just didn't do it for me.