Where have I been

Well where do i began..I stopped blogging in 2010 for many reasons...First my husband got sick that summer as i posted about. He is good now but it was rough. That school year I got moved to 3rd grade. If any of you are teachers you know how hard it is adjusting to a new grade level. 2011 we found out I was pregnant in May. We were so excited. Then in June we moved my mom and brother to GA. Being pregnant I was exhausted..blogging was the last thing i was thinking about.

On January 24, 2012 (This was my actual due date) we welcomed a beautiful 6lb 11 oz baby into our lives. William James Tobin was born at 4:23pm after 15 hours of labor. He is named after my husbands late grandfather (Bill) and my late father (james). Here are some pics of my little man.

1 day old

Easter Sunday

Angry Verbs

I found this great idea on Pinterest for a buliton board called Angry Verbs "Angry Birds"

The blog was for 2nd grade the students wrote stories and highlighted the verbs. I teach 3rd grade and my students work on using past, present and future tense verbs. The highlighed using 3 different colors to show each verb. They loved this idea. Espicially that they could color an Angry Bird when they were finished. Check out my bulition board!

Pinterest Party-Review

We had a lot of fun last night! I wish i did a better job taking pictures. We had so much fun that we are going to do it again next month. We each picked a different category for next month's party.

Here is what was made and some reviews:

I had the appetizer category. I made Pizza dip and spinach, feta and black olive cresents. Both were very good.

You can get the pizza dip recipe here

I changed it a little bit. I used turkey pepperoni, light cream cheese, fat free sour cream, light mayo and light cheeses. It was still very yummy!

You can get this recipe here

For Drinks my friend Kelly made this yummy strawberry drink and jolly rancher shots.

You can get the recipe here for the jolly rancher shots

This strawberry peach Sangria was AMAZING-Watch out cause you cannot taste the alcohol.

You can get the recipe here

Next up we made the DIY craft/project. Marianne had this category. She purchased small tiles and craft paper and we modge podged them. They came out great.

Here is how we made them:

1-pick your paper and cut to size

2-place a layer of modge podge on the tile

3-put paper on the tile and modge podge on top

4-when that dries add a second layer

4-after that dries we sprayed modge podge on to make them glossy

5-You can put felt on the bottom or we put little felt stick on circles to make them not slide or scratch surfaces.

Here are our pictures:

Next was Dinner. Kathy made Champane chicken. It was very yummy!

Click here for the recipe

Finally we had dessert. Candace couldn't make just one dessert, she made two. I loved the pink lemonade cake which i was surprised. It was so moist. Here is the recipe

These are mounds brownies. They were good just very rich.

Here is the recipe

Well thats my review. Can't wait for next month. I have crafts. Not sure what i am going to do yet but if you have suggestions let me know.

Pinterest Party

So i had this great idea to have a pinterest party. Since everyone under the sun Pins like crazy i thought it would be a neat idea to have a pinterest get together. I wanted to do a small gathering because it is so hard to work with everyones schedules. The smaller the group the easier it would be to find a day that works for everyone.

Here was my idea. One person would bring and entree, one a dessert, one a drink (alcoholic of course) one a DIY idea/project and one an appetizer. For our group there are 6 of us. Since my mom doesn't cook and she is in our group whatever our category is we will do 2 of.

Tonight I am are making Pizza dip

and

Spinach, feta and black olive cresant rolls.

I will post pics and details about my party tomorrow. I am sure it will be a lot of fun. I can't wait!

Recipe: Oreo Balls

If you have a sweet tooth and love oreos you must try these. I went to a cookout last weekend and a friend of mine made them. They were heavenly. Here are some pics and the recipe..try them you will love them.

Ingredients:

1 package of oreos-crushed

1 8oz brick of cream cheese softened

white chocolate and/or milk chocolate to dip them in

Step 1: With a hand blender mix cream cheese and crushed oreos. Roll or use a cookie scoop and set on tray. Chill for 1 hour in fridge.

Dip them in the cholocate. Let sit back in fridge for about an hour

Enjoy!

Pinterest fun!

I know I have been MIA for about 2 years...I will update that later...

Onto Pinterest....As we all have been pinning like crazy i thought i would share some projects that i recently pinned and did.

Here are my versions of the completed projects:

I would be happy to make these for anyone..Please email me if you are interested @ jtobin1204@gmail.com

Sunday Secrets!

I made some new things this weekend and thought I would share my secret recipes.

The first one is a bean salad. I love black beans and so i googled healthy black bean salad. I found a few that looked good so i got the ingredients and made it. At first it didn't taste super yummy so I thought let me try adding something to it. Which i did, so i call this

Yummy Black bean salad!

Ingredients:

1 can black beans drained and rinsed

1 cup corn (i used frozen, you can use can or fresh)

1 tbls olive oil

1 ts ground cumin

1 small tomatoe or a handful of grape/cherry tomatoes

1 avocado

1/2 lime

minced garlic

salt & pepper

Directions:

1. Mix black beans, corn and tomatoes in a bowl.

2. Add in olive oil, cumin and mix

3. salt and pepper and garlic to taste

4. Cut the avocado in half. Chop half and mix in

5. Take the other half and make a guacamole mixture-smash avocado, add garlic and lime juice

6. add guacamole to salad and a the rest of the lime juice.

Enjoy!

The second recipe I made a fruit salad. I had this at a cookout i went to this week and the host told me what was in it so i tried to re-create it and it came out awesome!

Ingredients:

12oz vanilla yogurt(I use greek low sugar high protein yogurt)

about 1/2 cup OJ

1 banana

1 large or two small peaches

about 5 Strawberries

The trick is you want your fruit to be balanced, So if your stawberries are small you will need more than 5.

In a bowl, mix yogurt and oj-you want it to look almost like pudding, or cool whip a little runny but a little fluffy.

Chop up your fruit and mix it.

Enjoy!

Vacation recap Day 3!

Sunday June 6th we checked in at the hotel Saratoga Springs early, they were able to give us a room right away :)

Then we headed to EPCOT!

When we were done with EPCOT we took a break, got some lunch went to the grocery store to buy some waters and snacks! The great thing about Disney is you can bring that stuff in!!

We swam in the pool for a little while.

Then headed to Magic Kingdom! It was extra magic hours they were open till 2am. We didn't stay that late though!

Here we are on Splash MT.

The castle at night time changed to many different colors, here are just a few!

Sorry I have been MIA. I started getting my classroom ready, i report back to school in less than 1 week :( I cannot believe summer is almost over. Also I will have a update on Zach if not today tomorrow. Things are getting better slowly!

Vacation recap Day 1 & 2!

Here is a long overdue recap of our Disney Vacation!

Friday June 4th we drove to Florida and stayed in a hotel.

We stayed here!

Saturday June 5th we got up early to head to Disney for our tee time at Lake Buena Vista golf course.

They had this made for us!!

And our cart was decked out for our Anniversary! We also got Happy Anniversary pins!

After golf we headed to Zach's uncle's house and here i am with one of there dogs Darby!! She is so playful!

I will recap the rest of the vacation in upcoming posts! Thanks again for all your sweet and thoughtful comments about Zach. We moved his procedure up to tomorrow, he came home early from work because he wasn't feeling well. I will post tomorrow when we get back from the procedure!

Prayers & Top 2 Tuesday

Prayers for Zach: Update day 2

Today we went to the GI doctor to follow up with him. He did Zach's endoscopy on June 30th. He said that his esophagus looks normal but something is still not right. So he ordered another procedure to be done. This is like a ultra sound of your digestive track, because obviously Zach is having problems eating and such. Today he says he feels worse so he is laying low and hopefully going back to work tomorrow.

We scheduled the procedure for 2 weeks from today, that is the soonest we could get it done.

Thanks again for all your kind words and support, I will continue to keep you posted.

Top 2 things you want to purchase!

Right know nothing because we are on a budget with all these medical bills. But I guess that is the fun of this post.

If money wasn't the problem the top 2 things I want right now are....

1. A new phone. I really want an Iphone but we are with verizon, we were going to make the switch to At&t and get them until all the mess with Zach and things breaking happened.

If we stay with verizon I am going to have to eventually get a new phone and we will probably get the new Droid Incredible.

My phone loves to shut off when it wants to and hubs phone doesn't work unless it is on speaker.

2. A new car. I would love this

Black Range Rover Sport!!

but will settle for this

lol. Either a Toyota Highlander or 4 runner. I also have my eye on this beauty:

A Lexus GX or LX10

Seriously, I am in need for a new car but am holding out until we add to the family if you know what i mean :)

Head over to Taylor's blog to participate