Bathroom Inspiration

Although my current job has me talking about poop 90% of the time, this blog post is NOT about poop. Yeah!

We are probably adding on to our house pretty soon here. We will be adding a master suite (with a connected bathroom- don't have that yet- and a walk in closet- dream come true!) And we will be adding a new guest bathroom (because we will be removing the gross ugly, pink and blue current bathroom.

This summer we spent a couple of nights at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs (amazing!) and we were able to tour one of their cottages and I fell in LOVE with the bathroom!

First of all- I love cottage style! Secondly, our home was built in 1938 and we would like for the addition to look like it was original. So here are some pictures I took of the bathroom in the cottage while I was on tour. Embarrasing, I know.

LOVE the vanity! I find that I am drawn to the open shelf vanity style. I realize this may not be super practical (I use my current bathroom drawers daily), so maybe I'll find something that is a nice mixture of both.
I love the mix of stripes, subway tiles, and the cute floor!!

The little toliet room is precious. We probably will not add the phone feature :)

I liked that the tile comes up to the chair rail all the way around the room- very 1938. I will probably do bead board instead of tile. But same idea.

Ahhh... Love.

I love the openess- the soothing colors. The blues, grays, creams, and whites. I love the way it is simple, yet luxurious.

So that is my bathroom inspiration.

Ka-Boom!

Our church is located in the middle of downtown Dallas. And our buildings were over 60 years old. We literally have 1 new building. It's 5 years old. The rest... ancient.

Our sanctuary is old, historic, and beautiful. but also limited in space. and since it's a historic landmark, there is nothing we can do to make it larger.

And there are buildings surrounding our church. We are literally land-locked.

And it was time to make some improvements. Time to make a larger sanctuary so more people can come. Time to get rid of the asbestos filled buildings. Time to make a more inviting, open campus.

So, what options did we have? But to implode 6 buildings... and here is the aftermath...
I taught in 3 of the buildings. I spent 3 years of my life, day in, day out, in these buildings.
Ty went to 6th grade in these buildings. Ty played basketball in the gym for hours upon hours.

And this is what is left... This picture has Ty in it so you can grasp the scale of the wreckage.

That building on the other side of the debris- the one with 4 floors of 4 windows on top... that's where I live, I mean teach now. BUt I'm on the bottom floor on the back side.

The trees were covered in so much dust it looked like it had snowed!

The 6 buildings were separated from the historic sanctuary by a plaza about 40 feet wide. They built this temporary ply wood wall to protect the sanctuary- you can see in this picture that the debris came all the way up to the wall- good thing they put it up!

Classic.

They have 1 more building to take down. But it will be done by hand because it shares a wall with the sanctuary. So the only buildings that will be left are the new 5 year old building, my school building, and the sanctuary. After they finish tearing down the last building, they will remove all of the debris- and apparently begin building in January! They have been working CONSTANTLY all week! We took these pictures last Saturday and it is a noticeably smaller pile now. Impressive!

The implosion was shown live on television - all over the world! You can probably watch it on You Tube- just search for First Baptist Dallas implosion. If I didn't have 17 four year olds wiggling around behind me waking up from nap, I'd add a link. But i can't.

Reminiscing

Yesterday it rained ALL day long!
Last night it rained ALL night long!
24 hours of rain.

made me think of last January when it snowed in Dallas for 24 straight hours.
It had never done that before.
it was a TON of snow.
It broke LOTS of tree limbs around our house.
It weighed down smaller trees so that they were literally bending over and touching the ground.

So when I woke up the next morning and saw my bended over trees, I decided I needed to do something about it. I decided to go and shake off all of the snow.

I knew I would get covered in snow and I did not have proper snow clothes or boots. SO... I made it up.

And last night, Ty was reminiscing about this and laughing at me. It was pretty funny.

My "snow" outfit:
2 pairs of socks
tennis shoes
leggings
swishy sweat pants (don't know the real word)
sweat shirt
scarf
all tucked into my rain jacket.
hood pulled up
gloves
Oh yeah... best part- to make my shoes "water proof"- I put each foot in a plastic grocery bag and used packing tape to tape it around my leg.

It worked.
I stayed dry.
Ty came home to find a laundry room literally full of my wet clothes laid out to dry.

I was reminded of my recent preparations for a possible tornado and realized I'm either:
A- very good at making do with what I have OR
B- very weird

You can decide.

Fall Tables

This table setting has been out at my home for about a month. I've liked it... but I was ready for a change.
Sorry this picture is crooked. I found these brown plates in my brother-in-laws home. He bought his home from a hoarder "as-is." We took out 8 gigantic dumpsters of junk, but among the junk was some cool stuff. Like these plates, only 4 of them. I took them. He didn't even notice.

Time for a change...

I found this awesome idea to make a runner out of vintage doilies. I would connect you to the blog where i found it, but I forgot what blog it was. Just so happens that my great-grandma made tons of doilies and my mom had them. So she sent them to me! and now I have them! In the blog DYI, she sewed them together. I just laid mine on the table so I can rearrange or reuse later.

The other blog also had them on a hard wood table which looked awesome! Our table does not look awesome and must be covered at all times. But they still look really nice on this yellow cloth.

A whole mixture of size and patterns, some ivory, some white.

The whole table!

Love the pumpkins!

I think the table is missing something (besides tall white candles in the candlesticks)

I think it will look better with my china plates or some white dishes. so I may change that tonight. But I am pleased with the overall look.

Oh and I traded out the big wooden candlesticks for glass ones... I think they look more dainty with the doilies

Maybe if i had some crystal stemware out that would help too.

Suggestions??

I'm in Trouble

I got an email from an angry mom the other day...

Dear Mrs. Sawyer,
I appreciate all that you are teaching my son. But I believe he is taking it too far.
Tonight as the Rangers lost to the Yankees, he informed me that we needed to be happy for the Yankees and cheer for them too because that is nice.

Sincerely,
Angry Mom

Okay- so she wasn't seriously angry, but that is funny.
So I did spend ALL week teaching the kids that we ONLY like the Rangers and ONLY cheer for the Rangers. We practiced all of their new team hand signs (the "deer" and the "claw").
We talked about some of the players and how Josh Hamilton is a Christian and will be speaking at our church.
We did many cheers and chants for the Rangers and even pretended to throw and bat.

hopefully tonight he will show his mom all that he learned this week.
even if the Rangers lose.
Which they won't.

Cherry Pie and Blueberry Pie Cupcakes

One of the most talented ladies I know made these adorable cupcakes!! and they were YUMMY!
They are just normal chocolate cupcakes. But she mixed the icing with yellow food coloring and a little bit of cocoa powder. Then she covered the cupcake with the icing, layered on some M&Ms and piped on the criss cross pattern. So cute!!

Go make these right now and smile as you do it!!

Pizza Sauce

So the other day at lunch... the kids were being so NEEDY- and I stupidly brought a frozen lean cuisine pizza for lunch. I say stupidly because when you have 30 minutes to help 17 four-year olds open their lunches, clean their spills, tell them to take "3 more big bites," and clean up, you barely have enough time for your own lunch. Much less time to heat up a FROZEN lunch.

So, I stuck my pizza in the microwave and started helping the kids.
I came back to check it, and somehow the microwave cart had rolled into the power strip and turned the power off. So my microwave quit working half way thru.

So I turned it back on and started eating some carrots, while cleaning up spills and seeing who needed to eat more.

I come back and it looks like the cheese is not all melted, but by this point I have less than 10 minutes to eat so I decide to eat it. (Mom- this is why I am a fast eater.)

As I'm carrying my paper plate with my pizza in my left hand, a little boy bumps into me from behind and knocks me. I stumble and start to drop my precious pizza. So, with cat-like instincts I reach out with my right hand to grab the pizza.

Saved it!!!

but it was BURNING!! Even with the cheese not all melted, the sauce was HOT!!

I wiped off some, but decided I needed to go to the sink for cool water.

I wash off my hand, and return to the lunch room to find a little girl throwing up in the trash can. I call the nurse while eating pizza CAREFULLY.

I wolf down the stupid pizza in less than 4 minutes.

My hand is STILL BURNING! In class, I put some neosporin and a bandaid on it. I email the school nurse.

She informs me neosporin will trap in the heat because it's petroleum based and make it burn more. I quickly scrap it off and she comes to my class with loose bandages and an ice pack and ibuprofen.
It blistered up by the end of the day.

Two days later and after the blister popped... here's what it still looks like...

It's a little hard to tell in the pictures. but let me just say, I hope it doesn't scar because it is UGLY!

and also i will never eat a frozen pizza at school again.

then end.