Fuse Review

Hello Family and Friends, 

I LOVE to get my nails done with shallac. I was so excited when they came out a few years ago. For a couple years, I did acrylic nails, and even though I liked them, I hated that they ruined my nails and that my nails looked horrible if I ever took them off. I also didn't like plain manis though because they chipped after two days. Who wants to pay that kind of money for two days of pretty? Then I heard about shellac and fell in love as soon as I tried it! Well, I did it all the time for a while until our budget got more serious with a mortgage and school loans, so I had to give it up.

Imagine my surprise (and excitement) when I saw something at Target with a product that was cheap and claimed to be shellac?! For only 12.99, I had to try it! Below is my experience. 

 Like I said, the whole kit is only $12.99, you can't go wrong here. I bought the kit, which comes with the plug in light, a nail polish color, and the nail cleaning kit that you need. I got an additional color as well, for only $5.99, you seriously can't beat this price!

First you have to buffer and clean your nails with the cleaner it comes with. Then you do one thin coat of polish, then insert your nail (one at a time) into the lamp. You press the button and it turns the light on for 30 seconds, you use keep your finger under there the whole time. 

Once you the light goes off, you take your finger out and use the nail cleaner again to wipe off excess polish. It is normal for the nail to look a bit "foggy" at first, after washing hands the polish will shine back up. 

Here was my finished result (before washing my hands, so they look a bit "foggy")

Downsides: 

-You can only do one nail at a time. 

-It seems a bit time consuming with all the steps for each nail. 

-Fuse does not have many color options right now. 

-You could get away with just one coat, but I still prefer two. When you do two coats, it seems to peel off sooner. 

-It doesn't look "shiny" right away

-It doesn't last a full two weeks, but it does last long enough where I think it's worth the money and time. 

Upsides: 

-It's cheap

-It actually works!

-There is no dry time!

-It's not that time consuming when you think about the fact that you need a base coat, two color coats and a top protective coat plus dry time when doing normal polish. 

-You could do only one coat of polish and be done!

All in all, I'd say to use this product! 

Thanks for checkin' in! 

"God Things"

Hello Family and Friends!

Okay, so something I have been praying for recently, is that God would open my eyes to see "God Things". You know, things that happen, and you know they just have to be a "God Thing", or something that had to be God's hand with the way it all played out. 

I know, God's plan is always bigger and better than mine, and sometimes it is hard to see when it is happening. WELL, about 2 weeks ago, Zach went to work and found out that he would either have a job, or he may not after another 2 weeks. Someone had bought out the product they were working on, and the new owner was going to be taking some, but not all, of the employees from his current placement. For some reason, when he told me, I wasn't really worried at all. Which is weird, because money has been tight and we need to pay some things off. In the meantime, we are wanting to save money for our savings account, and save money for a couple home projects, and save money to eventually have a kid. You would think, with all these things, I would be worried. But I truly wasn't. I was honestly living out the verse about not worrying. I'm not sure off the top of my head where it is, but it talks about don't worry about anything, instead pray about everything. BAM two days later, after praying about it, Zach gets an offer. Then we find out his last paycheck would be about half what it usually is. BAM, I got some extra money in my paycheck that same day from a summer camp I randomly did this summer, that I did not plan on doing until the last minute. TWO "God Things" right there. I LOVE to see it! 

This whole episode has led me to have a new favorite bible verse, haha except, I don't know where it is, I just know what it says. That's why technology is for right? I can just google the words and it will bring up the verse. haha I was in Hobby Lobby the other day though, and I saw that favorite verse of mine on a journal. BAM, I swear that's a God Thing too. I bought it. 

I, of course, couldn't pass up the on sale Christmas decor too!

Not only am I seeing these "God Things" in my own life, but in others. I love that God is opening up my eyes to see the things he does for those around me as well. For instance, a co worker of my mine has an ill mother living with her. When we were at work the other night, she had some missed calls from her family saying her mom was being rushed to the hospital. Come to find out, her mom wouldn't be there if it hadn't been for her son, who went home and found his grandma having a heart attack rather than go to Whataburger with his friends. She had said that her son just "had a feeling" that he needed to come home. BAM, God Thing. 

My mom told me another story in her life too. A friend  of hers is needing someone to take on temporary guardianship of her son, and maybe twin girls if they can. My mom put it on the prayer chain thinking no one would really be able to do and BAM someone was willing. It's a God Thing!

I love "God Things" if you have any that you've experienced, share them with me! I am trying to either see or hear about one "God Thing" each day! 

Thanks for checkin' in!

A Little Update

Hello Friends and Family!

Wow! These first few weeks of school have been SO busy. I have been going non-stop for the whole time, and now, in week three, I am EXHAUSTED. Not only have I been busy doing school stuff and other things every night of the week, our weekends have been jam packed too, which Zach loves. I hate it though. I am looking forward to this weekend when Zach goes to the deer lease so I can do NOTHING. I can sit at home and watch Criminal Minds and read. And nap. And any other thing I can think of that would be labeled as "lazy". 

 Margarita Cupcake

 Margarita Cupcake

 Pumpkin Cupcake

Pumpkin Cheesecake Cupcake 

I know what you're thinking: Is that the same two cupcakes? Well, yes, it is. Before you judge me, you have to know that this place only makes certain kinds of cupcakes on certain days of the week. Not only that, but once the week is over, they may not be back for another 3 weeks. Which, by the way, is horrible. My FAVORITE cupcake is not the margarita cupcake, second runner up by these new FALL cupcakes. So, I had to eat them both the two nights of the week they had them. So yea, I ate 4 cupcakes in a matter of 5 days, and they were the same two cupcakes. Try them, they you'll agree with me, you have to eat them as often as you can when they have em! 

Speaking of FALL cupcakes. The temperature dropped for a full 12 hours for it to feel a tad bit like fall. So I went all out and got to wear FALL clothes two days this week, even though the second day, it was pretty uncomfortable since the temperature had gone back up. 

 Fall outfit one (ignore the dirty closet)

Fall outfit number two (ignore the dirty closet)

Besides getting to wear fall clothes and eat cupcakes, Zach and I went to a wedding and I got to go see Chris Franjola at Hyena's! The wedding was beautiful, but it made me wish I was at home in my sweats reading a book cause the weather was so chilly. Hyena's was awesome, I was TOTALLY geeking out, and I got to take a picture with him! He was so funny, it was a great time! The only annoying thing were all the rude hecklers. I wanted to punch them all in the face, they were ruining all of his jokes!Afterwards, Bekah and Mario got a tatto. I was going to get one with them, but they refused to do my white ink, so I'm off to get what I actually want with someone who will actually do it this Saturday, my early Christmas present from Bekah!

 Bekah and Mario with Chris Franjola

 Me and Sar Bear with Chris Franjola

That's about it for now! Thanks for checkin' in! 

A Weekly Update

Hello Friends!

Wow! What a busy past couple of weeks we have had! I have been so busy getting ready for school two weeks ago, and just finished my first week of school this past week! Our inservice week before school started was awesome! We got a new super intendant and he is awesome! Check out the hilarious video he created below, he showed this to us at our convocation at the beginning of the year. 

Not only is he really funny, but he is so kind! My team and I went to eat lunch at BJ's on Tuesday, the day after he showed us the "Happy" video, and we ran into him! After making a couple of jokes of sending over a drink to his table (a Dr. Pepper), we decided we would buy him dessert and send it over to his table! We planned on sending over a dessert with a note we wrote on a napkin saying "Thank you for a "happy" convocation, we know we're going to have a happy year!" and signed it from our team. Well, unfortunately, our waitress didn't understand. She went over to his table and asked if he wanted a dessert, when he declined, she just gave him our note. It was so stupid and we were embarrassed! After that we asked for our check, and she said that it had been taken care of. Well, we knew that part of our meal had been taken care of by the manager, because they had messed up some of our food and they had told us they were taking care of that part. We checked to see if the manager was  taking care of all our meal and she said "yes" and pointed to our new super intendant and said "He took care of it for you". How sweet is that?! So we went to say thank you, and he had written us a note back on another napkin!! We just couldn't get over how down to earth and sweet our new super is! 

Meet the Teacher Night went great, I LOVED getting to see all my old kids! They are so adorable! I am SO in the right profession for me! I seriously left school with such a full heart that night! My first week back at school was good and busy as well! I can tell I am already needing to work on getting used to this whole swapping class thing. I am already behind in both classes and had to play major catch up on Friday! I need to get that on lock down, quick! 

The weekend before school started, we went to the Rangers game with Kelsey and Ryan. The boys had fun!

That Sunday, I made some corny apple cookies for my team, because I LOVE corny things like that!

 Sara helped a little!! :) 

These are the adorable flowers that Nick and Susan sent me for the first day of school! They are so sweet!! They even had a couple of crayons in there! How adorable!!

We also had a surprise this week, an unpleasant one. We found out on Monday that Zach will not have a job as of September 15th, his product got sold to another company and they would not be able to take everyone on. SO, we prayed about it, a lot and God provided for us! Zach found out two days later that he was getting picked up by the new company that bought his product! God is so good! For some reason, I wasn't really worried about it, I was really at peace about and had faith that it would work out, and it paid off, praise the Lord! The only negative is, we don't have benefits with this job. We had GREAT benefits before, so this is a downside, but we get a paycheck every month, so that is good. I have faith that God will take care of this little problem for us too! I can easily go to my insurance at school, its just not very good, and we will have to pay out of pocket for Zach for now, and maybe his new company can provide better insurance later on. 

Well, after not getting home until 10:00 every single night my first week of school, we then went to Abilene with our friends, Ryan and Kelsey to see Kelsey's grandparents. It was a fun trip. They are so sweet and enjoy seeing us and we got some really great food when we go! We get to eat at Perinis, which has the best burger I have ever had in my life. We also get Nanny's chocolate pie, which is DE-licious! 

 The beautiful view at Perinis!

 The jalapeno cheesecake that Ryan and I ventured out to try at Perinis! It was pretty good, as long as I didn't smell it haha

 This is THE most delicious burger I have EVER had in my life. It is the third time in my life I have been able to eat it! 

Here is the delicious  chocolate pie that Nanny made! It is seriously so good. 

Anyways, that's all! Thanks for checkin' in! 

Our First Home

Hi Family and Friends!

So, as I was posting my summer blog posts about all my DIY projects I've done. I realized that my friends and family from far away still have not seen our first home! As a result, I am dedicating this post to a vitural tour of our first home!

This picture was taken on moving day after we closed on the house. Soooo, it was December 13th 2012 I believe? This December (2014) will mark year number two complete in our first home. So I think I did the math right there. 

 Here is our dining room. The dining room, kitchen and living room are all open to one another, which I love. Especially when we have company over for dinner, games or parties. I want a new rug in here though, I hate it. It is the cheap one we got just to have something when we first moved in.

The two pictures above are of the kitchen. The first one is looking in from the dining room. The second one is from the windowsill in the kitchen looking into the kitchen and into the dining room. 

The pictures above are of our downstairs living room. The first picture is looking in from the kitchen (right by the little side table you see in the second picture). The second picture is taken from behind the long couch and in front of the three white mirrors you see on the wall.

 Here is a picture of our bedroom. I couldn't really get a good picture of another angle cause it's actually kind of a small room. My furniture is also huge, so it can't all fit into the frame very well. I like the wall in this picture though because I did a little Pinterest project on the wall! We used a stencil to paint with a high gloss of the paint on the wall, so it's a settle pattern that you can only see when the light hits parts of it right.

 The pictures above are of our master bathroom. I like the way it turned out, I just redecorated it. It took me forever to get the tub to look a way that I liked enough that as balanced. I love love love the colors though. I also love the little table against the wall, a Hobby Lobby find, my favorite place! :)

 Here is a picture of our guest bathroom.

 These are two shots of our "office" it's actually a 4th bedroom, but it's so small, so its our office. I kind of hate this room the most cause it's just an eclectic place of random furniture. I hate that it doesn't flow and doesn't have any character to it.

Here's what I like to call my "boy room". When I have a boy one day, I imagine this to be the color scheme. I want it to have a woodsy, nature kind of feel. I am obviously lacking wall decor in this room. I just haven't found anything that goes with the theme I am looking for. 

The pictures above is what I imagine to be my "girl room" once I have a girl. My inspiration for this room was the purple, gold, and cream kind of tribal looking pillow. I love these colors! I also love antique "shabby" furniture, so I combined the two in here! I really like the way it turned out so far. 

SIDE NOTE: I know, I'm crazy for thinking my life will end up perfect and that I'll have one boy and one girl. I really want it that way. Zach only wants two kids ( I want three), but were compromising by having one and adopting the other, so I WILL have one of each, HA! I've had it on my heart for a long time to want to adopt, so hopefully we can get together the funds to make this happen!

Here's a pic of our wonderful laundry room where almost no laundry occurs. 

The pictures above are of our upstairs living room. This is all our old college furniture, plus two bookshelves up agains the banister I bought to house the old books from my old 2nd grade classroom. This is a teacher problem if I've ever seen one. At least Leah has a plethora of books to choose from when she comes over, so will my kids whenever I have them, because I REFUSE to get rid of them! I love books too much, clearly. I am also lacking wall decor in this room too. One room at a time, right?

Anyways, hope you enjoyed the tour of our first home! We sure do love it so far!! :) 

Thanks for checkin' in!