SO much left to do!

First off, congratulations to Meghan from Third Grade in the First State for having the closest guess to the total of my little shopping trip last week!

Remember all of this?

Sorry, adorable brown dog not included.

Meghan guessed that I spend $34 on these goodies, and boy was she close! I spent a whopping....

$35!

That's it! 

(I'm not so sure about some of you...over $100?! Whoa-I'm planning a wedding, remember?!)

I am happy to report that the rug has made it into my classroom and looks FANTASTIC!

I mean, seriously FANTASTIC.

I'm kind of in love with it.

Except for the part where it slides across the floor if you step on it. I'm clumsy enough as it is, I don't need to have it trying to kill me. A rug pad (or something along those lines) is on my to-do list.

Sadly, those little green lamps are looking a little faded. I didn't think about the fact that they were sitting right next to the windows last year. Apparently the sun worked its magic on them. 

Sad face.

In other news, my poor, lonely, crate seats are finally getting a friend.

I got word yesterday that my grandpa had finished building my new table that will be the PERFECT size for these little crates! It still needs a couple coats of paint (which my AMAZING grandma volunteered to take care of!) before it can move in to my room, but it's going to be AWESOME!

 I'm thinking that it'll be the same lovely shade of blue as my zebra chair. Thoughts?

I mean, I have a gallon of the stuff sitting in the garage, it should probably be put to good use, right?

Right.

My pal/bridesmaid Mallory helped me start refinishing some chairs that I stole saved from the office's junk pile.

Unfortunately, I underestimated how much one can of spray paint can do, and ended up with one painted chair, one partially painted chair, and one untouched chair.

Oops.

I did manage to reupholster 2 of the 3 seat cushions and the back cushion (only one chair had one-weird). 

They're going to be super cool. 

But of course I forgot to take pictures of the work in progress.

I did remember to take a before picture.

That is on UGLY chair. 

But not for long. 

(Insert evil villain laugh)

I also finished printing, trimming, and framing my PBIS posters; covered my "doesn't erase at all" whiteboard, and made super cute name tags.

And I forgot to take pictures of them.

Get your head together, Laura.

I don't plan on spending any time in my classroom tomorrow since it's supposed to be super hot (and I am going for my first dress fitting tomorrow!). And I'm also hoping to squeeze in a little end-of-the-summer pool time. There hasn't been nearly enough pool time in my summer.

Until then, I'm going to work on some schedule cards and some name/number labels (because I can never remember who goes with what number). I'll probably post them to TpT when I'm done, so make sure you're following my store.

One last thing that I've been meaning to do for awhile now-

Shout out to Melissa over at Teach-Bake-Love

Her blog was one of the first that I started following, and it's also one of the blogs that I look forward to reading the most! I was absolutely SHOCKED when I noticed how few followers she has-you guys are missing out! So when you get a minute, hop over to her blog-you can thank me later.

Successful Shopping and The Proposal Story

{Edit: I've decided that this post is a PERFECT candidate for Elizabeth's Fabulous Find Friday-come on, these are some FABULOUS finds!}

So as promised, I'm finally going to tell you all about my AWESOME proposal!

But before I do (Get it, I do, like wedding vows? I'm so funny!), I have to show off a few awesome purchases that I made today!

I've been trying to cut back, really, I have...

I made 3 stops today: Lowes, Staples, and Target (you can see where this is going).

Stop #1-Lowes:

I got this AWESOME rug that will be moving into my classroom (though Charlie has already approved it staying here).

Dark brown and off white chevrons.

Adorable.

You're jealous, aren't you?

It's ok, it's an awesome rug. I'd be jealous, too.

Wait until I tell you how much I paid for it-you'll be even more jealous.

No joke.

Stop #2-Staples

Come on, it's school supply season. I can't just ignore school supply season. That would be wrong. And sad.

So to prevent myself from slipping into a deep depression from lack of school supplies, I stocked up on 25 pocket folders (which just so happen to match my adorable crate seats) and these super fun markers for anchor charts.

Did I mention that the markers are smelly?

I. Love. Smelly. Markers.

I see LOTS of anchor charts on my horizon.

Stop #3-Target

You know I can't pass up a trip to Target. And I needed coffee. And it just so happens that we have a Starbucks in our Target. It's heaven.

You should be proud of me-this is probably the cheapest Target trip I've had in months. (No seriously, months.).

I found these super fun picture frames (that match my classroom perfectly) at the Dollar Spot for $2.50 each. (Not exactly a dollar, Target. Shame on you.)

While I was lurking around in the Dollar Spot, I found those super cute birthday cakes for my birthday display (that I am finally getting around to having for my 3rd year of teaching, sigh). Did I mention that they're reversible? They are. One side is blue, the other pink. Hello, color coordination.

And lastly, check out that super cute bunting that I got for a whopping $1.18. Even better-it's actually fabric, not paper! Woot!

I've decided that the first person to leave me a comment and guess the grand total of my shopping trip (to the nearest $1, because I don't know where I left the Lowes receipt) before midnight tomorrow night can pick a resource from my TpT store for FREE! (Don't forget to include your email address so I can contact you if you win!)

I know, I'm the best.

Now, onto that proposal.

The Proposal

Ok, let me preface this with the fact that Matthew is NOT a planner. He's just not. I'm lucky if I can get him to plan a cookout with close friends more than a day in advance.

So Matthew had been telling me for a couple months that he was going to plan a surprise day for me, because he knows that I LOVE surprises...and because he's not a planner.

Let me remind you, at his point we had been dating for about 2 weeks shy of 3 years, so this girl was itching for a proposal and he knew it. So he made it very clear that I was POSSIBLE that there could be a proposal at the end of my surprise day, but not to expect it and then be disappointed if it didn't happen. 

We met up for lunch downtown at Jimmy Johns that day, and he had worked from home that morning because he had a project that he needed to finish up without distractions. All through lunch, I was trying to talk him into just taking the afternoon off so that we could hang out, but he wouldn't bite.

After procuring cookies from a nearby cookie shop, we walked back to our cars, where I made a final plea for him to take the afternoon off. 

Didn't work.

Instead, he got a smirk on his face and told me to go sit in my car and wait about two minutes for an email because, and I quote, "Your surprise day starts now!"

He hopped in his car and drove off while I sat giddily waiting for the email.

I finally got the email, which had a link to a website.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Matt is super smart when it comes to computer stuff. Programming, the works.

The past week or so, he had been spending a lot of time coding in the evenings, which really isn't all that uncommon. He gets caught up in a project and can't stop thinking about it until it's done.

Well, turns out that he wasn't coding for work.

You see, Matt had been spending all of that time writing a web app. (For those of you who don't speak computer geek, a web app is like an app that you would install on your iPhone, except it runs from a website instead of a standalone application.)

So the link that was in this email was a link to the web app he had created. 

A web app for a scavenger hunt. I LOVE scavenger hunts. 

The scavenger hunt took me all around town to different places that were significant to our relationship (and included features like location verification to make sure I was where I said I was).

And since I'm a bit of a geek, I took screen shots of each step. (And I'm really glad that I did!) Since it would take me forever to upload all of the screenshots onto Blogger, I've posted the album to my Facebook page, so you can check out the whole scavenger hunt there.

You REALLY don't want to skip that part.

Remember, even though this totally SCREAMS proposal, I was told not to expect it, so all afternoon I was trying to convince myself to not even CONSIDER it.

So after the scavenger hunt, I got all dressed up for our dinner date. We went to a pretty fancy restaurant in town that we like to go to for our anniversary, Valentine's day, and other important events.

During dinner, he told me that he had a couple ideas for things we could do after dinner, but he hadn't decided which one he wanted to do.

I was convinced that the planning had ended and that he was simply winging it. Sigh.

After we finished eating, Matt decided that we needed to have dessert. 

I don't turn down dessert.

He then told me that we needed to kill a little time before our next activity, so we slowly ate dessert, and then went for a walk around Central Park (not the New York one...). After meandering aimlessly through the park and failing in our attempts to take a picture of ourselves, we finally headed toward the car.

After we got in the car, he pulled out a blindfold that he told me I had to wear on the way to our next location.

Now let me preface this with the fact that I do NOT like not being able to see. That's the main reason why I don't like haunted houses. I actually LIKE being able to see where I'm going-it freaks me out if I can't. I apparently never conveyed that to him. Whoops.

So the whole way there, I'm bugging him about taking off the blindfold and whining about how I hate not being able to see. You guys, I was paying attention to every turn trying to figure out where the heck we were going. 

Apparently I did a pretty good job, too. I found our later that we took a few trips through some parking lots to throw me off. (I knew we didn't have any roads that curvy in town!)

We finally park at the mystery location and Matt comes around to help me out of the car (and I'm still really wanting to take that blindfold off). We walk around the car, and then up 3 stairs (NOT cool while blindfolded) into this building.

As we walk in, I can hear on of our songs playing...go ahead and click play. You'll want the soundtrack for this one. I'll wait.

I'm totally clueless as to where we are, there's a musty smell like an old building, but I just can't figure out where we are.

He leads me into a room that has a concrete or tile floor, and then onto carpet. We dance around for a few minutes (still blindfolded, sigh). 

Then he takes off the blindfold and I'm...

In my classroom which he and some of our friends had decorated. They had strung lights from the ceiling-he had been waiting for it to get dark. They had taken one of my rugs and put it in the middle of the room and moved one of my tables to the middle which had the ring box.

And then another one of our songs played...you know the drill.

Yup, that's right-he proposed in my classroom. I know. Gets me choked up, too.

After I said 'yes,' he walked over to the door and asked if we should go see everyone-our friends who had helped decorate had been sitting down the hall in the computer lab the whole time. And apparently, one of them recorded a video of me walking into the building blindfolded, you know, when I was complaining (oops).

Of course, orchestrating a proposal at school, during the summer, and at night required some collaboration. Apparently my principal was in on it as well as our district's head of MIS.

Yup.

Turns out that Matthew can be a bit of a planner after all.

Just a quick update...

So I'm off to spend a few more hours in my classroom this morning (hopefully with some coffee in tow), but I just wanted to remind you to become a fan on Facebook so that you can get all sorts of little mini-updates! My classroom is finally starting to come together, so I think my Facebook page would be an excellent place to maybe give a few little sneak peeks at my classroom before my big reveal (don't you agree?), and you KNOW that you're dying to see my masterpiece.

It also occurred to be last night that I never told you how Matt proposed! (How could I have possibly forgotten to tell you about that?!) So, to fix that major error, I'm planning on posting about that sometime soon (maybe tonight?).

So hop on over to my Facebook page and Like it, and I'll try to pull together a post about the proposal for later today!

Monday Made It/Wedding Planning/Other Assorted Stuff

So...I have a problem.

I'm super excited about being able to get back into my room and being able to start decorating and putting the room back together, but when I actually get there...

I don't feel like working anymore.

Ok, so that probably has a lot to do with the fact that it was 88 in my classroom today, but still. I have so much to get done. And it's not that I'm really crunched for time yet, so my motivation is a bit lacking.

I know, I know, I make no sense.

So I've been keeping pretty busy with wedding planning and setting up my classroom. The wedding is almost planned, I just have to order the bouquets, pick a flower girl dress, convince the guys to finally go get fitted for tuxes, and start putting the decorations together for the reception (though they have been ordered).

Wedding planning tip:
Flowers are INSANELY expensive. I mean, seriously, $175 for a relatively ugly fresh bouquet?! You ARE kidding, right?! They die! And wilt! But, I seriously have a thing against fake flowers. I know, it's petty, but I just don't like 'em.

Solution: Bouquets of DRIED flowers. Genius, right?! They don't wilt, they don't need water, and they can't die because they're already dead! Oh, and did I mention that I can get all 5 of the bridesmaid bouquets and mine for less than it would cost me to get ONE fresh bouquet?! I call that, my friends, a wedding planning win.

Go team.

I'm going to attempt to finish this post quickly so I can actually claim a Monday Made It (for once)! I never make it in on time. Sigh.

So. Teri and I have been trying to figure out a way to handle school supplies this year. We've tried having the kids keep them at their desks, we've tried collecting them and only handing out the supplies when they're needed, and without fail, the supplies mysteriously vanish into thin air. Mass chaos ensues.

We've both decided to try supply boxes this year. Each student will have a plastic shoebox sized tub with his or her number on it to keep supplies in. But, the supply boxes will be stored on a shelf and will only be gotten out when we actually NEED the supplies. So there shouldn't be crayons, scissors, markers, glue, or any other distractions in their desks. And, in theory, they shouldn't "disappear."

Well you know me, I can't have boring labels or ugly tubs.

Duh.

Lucky for me, Target had the shoebox tubs on sale last week, so I got 30 of them for less than $30. And, they're that awesome hot red to match my crate seats. And that's what I call a school supply win.

So I set to work Sunday afternoon on some awesome labels for my boxes. And then, I laminated them using my handy dandy new laminator (thank you credit card points for making that a totally free purchase).

Pretty cute, right?

They look really wrinkly in the picture, but I promise they aren't.

I wouldn't be able to handle that.

At all.

So I used some glue dots (which are pretty much my favorite thing EVER) and stuck those puppies to my glorious boxes.

And they look pretty darn awesome.


Not that I'm even remotely biased or anything.

Oh, and I posted the labels on my TpT store. And they're free for a few more days. Just so you know.

And I may have also posted some pretty awesome PBIS expectation posters. Which are also free right now.

In other news, I lost my desk today. I swear it was there a couple weeks ago. Sigh.


It'll show up eventually.

I've gotten most of my bulletin boards covered/bordered, but I GROSSLY overbought my border.

You see, I recall using 5 packs of border when I covered my back board two years ago. And I planned on covering it and the board at the front of the room that is identical in size. And I still wanted to have some for the hallway board. So you can imagine how excited I was to find a listing on Amazon for 16 packs of zebra border for $42!

Then I started covering my boards.

After I finished the first one, the one that I SWEAR used 5 packs two years ago, I had only used 2 packs and about 3 strips from a third pack.

Oops.

So now I have this INSANE surplus of zebra print border. ...Anyone want to buy it off of me? Sigh.

I must say, even though they have nothing on them yet, the boards look AWESOME.

But my room is still a mess, so I'll show you those later.

Ummm...what else was I going to tell you?

Oh!

I finally gave in and decided to create a Facebook page since I haven't really had the time to commit to big posts lately. So Will Grade for Coffee is now on Facebook. You should probably like it.

I also got approval from my principal today to start doing the Daily 5 this year. Super excited!

Now I just have to find time to finish reading the book. Oops.

Did I mention that Matt and I had our engagement shoot this weekend? The fabulous Alida Duff Sullivan is our official engagement/wedding photographer and was awesome enough to give us a sneak peek at some of the shots! We were SO lucky that it was only in the upper 80s on Saturday (isn't is sad that the upper 80s seem cool now?), so we weren't all sweaty and gross. Definitely awesome.

So on that note, I will leave you will our awesome sneak peek!

It's. So. HOT!

Alright guys, I'm off to work in my classroom. Without air conditioning. And it's 9:30 and already 90...with a heat index of 108. This should be fun, right?

In the meantime, I (finally) finished up a new resource which I'll share with you later today. Technically, it's listed in TpT already, but of course I chose to upload files during their down time last night, so the details are all there, but the files aren't. Whoops. I'll be taking care of that little snafu this afternoon.

Also, I've been thinking about starting a Will Grade for Coffee Facebook page to help fill in all of the gaps between blog posts. Thoughts?

With that, I'm pretty sure the paint touch ups that I had to do to finish up my zebra chair are probably dry by now (the only advantage of this heat), so I should probably go reattach the seat and get to work before working in my classroom becomes an incident similar to my one and only hot yoga class. Wish me luck (and if I haven't resurfaced by this afternoon, I may be passed out in a corner of my classroom, sprawled out in a puddle of sweat. You people with air conditioning have it so good. Sigh.

Wedding planning and a magical Volkswagon

Hey guys! I know I've been MIA for awhile now and I must say, I miss you guys! I have so much to share with you, but with all this wedding planning, I have been BEYOND busy!

We've gotten a TON accomplished, and I got approval from HR to take the week off after our wedding so we can take our honeymoon, which is AWESOME! I've got my wedding dress, and I'd love to tell you all about it, but Matthew has been SUPER nosy, and I can't risk it. (I've even had to change the pass code on my phone so he can't sneak a peek at the pictures!)

We have gotten SO much done in just over two weeks! I have a dress, we've ordered bridesmaid dresses, we have a ceremony and reception site, have a deposit down for ceremony chairs, decided on a caterer and a photographer, lined up a DJ, ordered Matt's wedding band, reordered Matt's wedding band (since it was 105 when he was sized and his fingers were swollen-didn't think that one through), decided on decor and favors, decided fresh flowers are WAY too expensive, decided dried flowers are brilliant, adopted an awesome maid of honor who already had my bachelorette party an a wedding shower planned, finished the guest list ordered invitations and RSVP cards, tasted a sample cake, decided on processional, recessional, and first dance songs...yup, we've been busy.

Oh-I did get in a little fender bender following some bridesmaid shopping Saturday-another lady and I backed into each other in a parking lot. Didn't do ANY damage to her car...my poor Jetta didn't fare quite as well as the SUV. My poor baby...

I was pretty bummed out about this-especially since we had had such a great day shopping.

And, Matt and I decided that we weren't going to get her (yes, my car is a her) fixed until after the wedding since we're trying to save money.

This kind of killed me inside. I hated the idea of my pretty little car having to drive around with a dent in her bumper.

Well, God must have been simply testing my resolve, because when I went to show my dad the damage the next morning, well, I'll let the picture speak for itself.

Do you see the dent?

You don't?!

That's because it magically vanished overnight! No joke. When I got home Saturday night-giant dent. When I went outside Sunday morning-no dent. Needless to say, I was ecstatic! There are still a few scratches, but heck, I can handle a few scratches as opposed to a giant dent! HUGE RELIEF!

Oh! And the bridesmaid dresses that we decided on?

Super cute, right?!

With these flowers?

And maybe a turquoise necklace?

My girls are going to look good!

By the way-fastest bridesmaid dress trip ever! We had everyone in their size, approved the dress, and orders placed within 20 minutes.

It. Was. Awesome.

I'm being beckoned by Matthew, so I should go for now.

But tomorrow-tomorrow I'm getting back in my classroom! I'm SUPER excited!!!

Holy moly-we're really doing this!

Well, it's official-the wedding is set for October 7th! Eeek!

I tried on my first wedding dresses today! Crazy!

And I may have found it. Maybe. Were going to another place tomorrow, but I did put a deposit to hold a dress that I tried on today-it wasn't what I thought I wanted, but Matt's cousin picked it out and I loved it!

We're going to check out another store tomorrow to see if they have anything similar (because the place we went to today didn't have anything else like it), because my sister liked it, but just wasn't sure that it was THE dress.

Wish us luck!

In other news, we're trying to find a honeymoon destination. We're thinking something tropical, possibly all inclusive, and fairly reasonable flights.

Ideas?

We've been looking on Groupon and LivingSocial, but the airfare is killing us!

Oh, and did you catch my guest blog post over at Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher? (I'd link up, but my phone wont let me!) Amber was cool enough to let me guest blog today-head over there to hear about all of the wedding planning that we've done in the last week and you can pick up a freebie that you might have missed the first time I offered it!