family weekend.

There is a lot going on, but I just wanted to stop in and say hello. :) I hope y'all had a good weekend and got to spend time with family and friends!

Nate's grandpa came down from Minnesota this past Thursday and stayed with us until Sunday. Then we took him down to stay with the rest of Nate's family in SC. He's celebrating 90 amazing years of life this month and it was really great to be able to spend this time with him.

(thanks for the picture jen!)

How did you spend your weekend?

the MOST wonderful time of the year.

I love Christmas and I love decorating, but I'm not one of those people who likes to go crazy and cover the house with kitsch or theme it up or go with a ton of gitz and glam. Not that those are bad things, I love seeing all different kinds of decorations and think they're all great! But I try and keep things simple. That's just how I like it at home. And I've been slowly adding things around to get us in the holiday spirit. Because this is absolutely my favorite time EVER.

So I'm sharing with y'all because it's Christmas...and why not?! :)

our front door. (i keep the wreath and change the decorations out with the seasons.)

our back door. (i made this for $6 total!)

our windows at night. i love candles. :)

we're ready for all the cards! (totally stole this idea from pinterest.)

love came down.
(this manger scene has been around for as long as i can remember. i had it in my room and used to turn it on when i went to sleep. and i hope our children can do the same.)

Now I just need to put up some lights and we'll be good to go. :)

How do y'all decorate?
I would love to hear about it! And if you have pictures on your blog of your decorations, PLEASE link back! It would be great to see how you make your homes special for the holidays and how each of you make the decorating experience unique to yourselves.

future architects.

So my kids can do some pretty amazing things. I love teaching four year olds because they're learning and discovering SO much about the world.

Four of my boys who couldn't work in a center with each other without fighting the whole time at the beginning of the year built this massive structure TOGETHER today. :)

And one of the youngest children in the class built this all by himself. He said it was a "spooky house." He sat in the block center for a good thirty minutes working on it without saying a word and then he came over saying, "Mrs. Bredeweg, Mrs. Bredeweg! Look at my spooky house!" I LOVE it.

And then I got to help one of my boys write a letter to his cousin today. At four years old, only three months into school, he's already wanting to write sentences. Together, we wrote "I LIC U BCOS U AR ALWAS MI FND. U HAV A LOT OF LEGOS." Most of these kids are writing their name and drawing pictures still, but for him to be wrapping his mind around the purposes of writing and running with them like this is just so great!

Days like today that remind me that even though I'm waiting on my license to come in and the classroom isn't "officially" mine, I'm still playing a HUGE role in these children's lives and I still am their teacher. And they're learning! They're working together and problem solving. They're hearing letter sounds and associating those sounds with letters and beginning to make words and understanding that those words have purpose. And I know I sound lame, but those things still make me so excited!

What is it about what you do that makes you excited?

thrifting thursday - wearing nothing new.

Hey guys! I just finished packing the last of our twenty-five shoe boxes and my hands are killing me from all the rubberbands I had to stretch. So I'm just going to share this pretty awesome TED talk the wonderful husband found the other night.

Watch. Enjoy. Take something from it.
And please let us know what you got out of the video! I'd love to talk about it.

get out there.

 

(source)

I am such a perfectionist. And my motto in life tends to be, "If I can't do it right I'm not going to do it at all." I hate letting myself down and I hate letting others down because I feel like if I make mistakes or screw something up I'll be a failure and there will be no coming back from it. But I've slowly been learning that an attitude like that does you more harm than good.

It's OKAY to make mistakes. In fact, it's a good thing. Mistakes are what allow us to grow as individuals. They help us learn and change. And if we don't embrace that - if we just sit there scared of making them - then we miss out on so many experiences in life.

I used to think this even stretched out to my relationship with God. I knew that my sins were forgiven, but I still thought that I had to do everything I could to strive and strive and strive to be perfect for Him. Every week I would come to church feeling guilty and broken for all the things I had done wrong, make all these promises to Him that I would get it right the next week and then end up screwing it up all over again. It took me YEARS to finally realize that's not how He works. 

He has covered those of us who will accept it with his amazing grace because He KNOWS we're going to make mistakes. And people expect each other to make mistakes too. Because we're growing and learning and changing. Because we're only human and we can't get it all right and we aren't expected to. And that's something we have to learn to embrace about ourselves. Because if we don't, we're not living. We're just spending all of our time scared of life and scared of our own capabilities.

That's all. Just sharing what was on my mind today. This is something I've been wrestling with lately and it definitely helps to get it written out. :)  

What do YOU think?

little things.

Do you ever get really excited about something and it just makes your day or week?

Well I put together this outfit today and made Nate take a picture of it so I could remember it and recreate it later. Am I lame or what?

What made your day today?

ps. I posted this on the blogger app and it sucks so that's why the formatting is nonexistent.

why i thrift.

So. I get pretty passionate about a few things, and one of them is personal style. I'm a big believer in putting time, effort and thought into how you look everyday because I believe that how you choose to present yourself to the world speaks VOLUMES about who you are as a person.

Because my personal style is so important to me, I have developed quite an, um, fondness for shopping. I love clothing, accessories, shoes, make-up and all you can do with them! I'm a pretty artistic person and because don't always have time to sit down with a paintbrush and canvas as my creative outlet, I have found that I can funnel some of that creative energy through the way I dress.

In order to keep my individuality and to be able to constantly satisfy that part of me that wants to be creative with my personal style and use it as a way to express myself, I have had to really stop and look at how I shop, and had to be very intentional about the way I do so. One of the biggest intentional choices I have made in the past year is to start doing as much shopping as possible at thrift stores. And as I have become a more avid thrift store shopper, it has become something in which I very strongly believe. I no longer do it just because I can find some good deals, or because there are really great unique pieces in thrift stores. There are SO many more reasons why it's important to me. And this post is going to be the first of many where I hope to start sharing this important part of my life with y'all.

But for today, I just wanted to show you why it TOTALLY pays to thrift. I don't know how many of you go to your local thrift stores or buy clothes from them. But I do know that I personally know a lot of people who have attached quite a stigma to shopping at a Goodwill or something similar. And I used to be the same way. Promise! There was a time when I only shopped at the mall and you would have had to have paid me money to get me to go in a thrift store. But after some time and after a good bit of heart change, I realized I was TOTALLY not above wearing someone else's clothes. And that I am no better than the people to whom I'm donating clothes. And I'm doing a lot of good for society and the environment by helping produce less waste when I buy re-used clothing. And I'm doing a lot of good for my family when I'm saving money on clothing. And when I spend less on clothes, I have that much more to put toward things that are more important.

But anway. Enough preaching. Here are some pictures of some stuff I wear that's either vintage or thrifted. Please excuse the quality - I took them with my iPod!

So here's an outfit I wear pretty regularly. This is a vintage 80's shirt from Goodwill for $3. And I've had at least three people ask me where I got it.

Can you guess what was thrifted here? If you guessed the dress, shoes and purse then you're right. I got them all from Goodwill together for $10 total. The dress is a Target brand, which I normally don't buy at thrift stores, but it was in perfect condition. This goes to show, though, that you can find a wide range of items.

Here is a vintage 80's sweater I got at Goodwill for $3.79. It's still in excellent condition and it is totally my style. Finds like these are why I thrift. Because I know I'm not going to find them anywhere else.

So if you've read this far, I am not at all trying to sound all braggy-braggy. I'm not trying to be, like, "Look at me! I buy used clothes and that makes me better than all y'all who don't!" I'm really just trying to share something with you guys that's important to me and help y'all understand WHY it's so important. And maybe, just maybe, if you've never tried it...you might get the guts to do it. Because, if nothing else, I think it's a ton of fun just to go try on some of the crazy clothes you might find and get some good pictures! And Nate and I like to go on the weekends together and see what kind of random things we can get into. Because you really never know what you'll see or find at a thrift store.

And if you're interested in more information, here some links you can check out:

The Tyranny of Trends (a great article on fashion, trends, and the impact on society)

Adored Austin (one of my favorite bloggers who is a serious thrifter)

my edit. (another of my favorite bloggers who is thrifting inspiration)

Thank y'all for reading! And please leave comments! I would love to hear what you have to say on the subject. And any questions you might have. I want to keep this topic going, maybe even start a "Thrifting Thursday" or something. Who knows? But only if I feel like it'll go somewhere! It's kind of a leap from the personal blogging that I've been doing, but it's something that's been on my mind for awhile now. So FEEDBACK PLEASE AND THANK YOU! :)

such a bookworm.

According to Amy over at Crazy, Random Happenstances, the BBC believes that the average person has only read six of the one hundred books on this list. I thought it would be interesting to see which ones I had read, so I went through the list as well. And I figured I'd share the ones I have read in their entirety with you. Some are parts of series that I'm still working on so I didn't list them. I did better than I thought I would have! And I saved the list on my computer, so now I have a goal to work toward in completing the list. It's definitely full of quite a few books that I want to have read at some point in my life.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Bible
 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Dracula - Bram Stoker

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

Ulysses - James Joyce 

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

Persuasion - Jane Austen

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis 

A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

   Charlotte’s Web - EB White

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl  

So, I have 25 down and only 75 more to go! 

How did you do?