High Five For Friday

This has been my first official week of summer and it has been nothing short of glorious.

We are off to Fredricksburg for the weekend so I am going to make this post short,
well as short as a babbler can really make a post. 

Because lets be honest I haven't packed anything. EEK!

So here are the highlights from this week!

  

ONE.

I redesigned my blog! 

I am still tinkering with the background and header 

BUT I feel like its a unique look that represents my personality.

TWO.

I reached almost my 30 miles in 30 days challenge! 
I AM SHORT .3 MILES...GRRR! 
But I mentioned I haven't packed yet so there will be no time for the gym today, perhaps Sunday when I return home.

Yes, there are two more days this month but I don't plan on doing any exercising this weekend...
there will be too much wine for that.

Definitely thinking I need to up the challenge next month.
Any suggestions?!?

June 24th - Elliptical - 20 minutes - 1.77 miles.

June 25th - Elliptical - 33 minutes - 3.04 miles.

Booty and Ab workout.

June 27th - Stair master - 25 minutes - 104 flights - 2.16 miles.

This brings my June total to 29.72 miles.

THREE.

Mr. B and I took a quick road trip to Houston for a Cardinals/Astros game. 

The Cardinals lost, so my curse on all things St. Louis sports continues on.

FOUR.

One of Mr. B's friends was able to get us field access during Cardinals batting practice.

It was pretty awesome to get on a major league field, legally.

Mr. B was able to get David Freese to sign his jersey.

We shook hands with Matheny the Cardinals coach.

All and all it was an amazing once in a lifetime experience.

Lost in the under workings of Minute Maid Park.

I must also add that Mr. B is a die hard Cardinals fan, during playoff season I am always second in the list of things he loves...so for him this was a very special event.

I just realized that all this sport talk means I can link up with Sarah for Fan Friday...I don't for see that happening again until I start cursing the Rams come September.

FIVE.

I love the neon green color in my Birchbox this month, I am pretty sure it could glow in the dark it is so bright.

Each month I think I should cancel the membership and save the money BUT then I get something like this and suddenly I HEART Birchbox all over again.

And because it is Friday I couldn't resist linking up with Whitney for a little #backthatazzup Friday.

Road trip Jams, and a very odd mixture of them at that.

I hope everyone has a FABULOUS WEEKEND!!!

- The Babbling Box!

Slumber Parties Are The Pits

I am about to let you in on something shocking, 
I am not, never have been, a normal girl.

I am sure you are blown away by this statement but its true. 

I am missing certain 'girl' genes that make you like things like weddings, bridal showers or 

SLUMBER PARTIES!

As a very awkward teenage my worst fear was getting invited to slumber parties or not getting invited to slumber parties.

Makes sense right?!?

You never wanted to be the girl who didn't get invited to the slumber party, it meant you were a social parana.

 So every time a friend had a birthday my happy butt was packed and ready to get the torture over with.

 And of course when my birthday came around the only solution was to throw a slumber party. 

T.V. shows make slumber parties look awesome and like the time of your life.

But the reality is: SLUMBER PARTIES ARE THE PITS and here's why.

ONE. 

Your sleeping on the floor of some girls bedroom with 5-10 of her closest friends. 

You have your own perfectly good bed that doesn't smell like 10+ teenage girls why exactly is this fun?!?

I have got the rocking butterfly t-shirt and umbro shorts.

TWO. 

There are always games of some sort.

Let's see who can shove the most marshmallows in their mouth at a time, 

cause that sounds like a blast.

THREE. 

Girls can be are mean.

Chances are when you start mixing groups of friends 
someone will get made fun of, 
have their feelings hurt or 
spend the entire night crying in the bathroom. 

Three comments about this photo:

one - I was like a head taller than everyone in junior high

two - holy cow overalls

three - the girl on the end looks so annoyed to even be with us

FOUR. 

You always wear the wrong thing.

I mentioned girls are mean right?!? 

So let's go ahead and let them see what you wear to sleep in at night. 

Or better yet give them full access to your under garments. 

Once a girls bra got put in the freezer...for the dad to find it the next morning talk about scaring a girl for life.

FIVE. 

You NEVER wanted to be the first person to fall asleep.

You would wake up with toothpaste covering your face or your bra in the freezer.

SIX. 

Horror flicks.

No one ever wanted to watch Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club, 

it was always Jason or Chucky. 

Great I am already not getting any sleep tonight on the floor of your bedroom with someone's feet in my face but now I get to have nightmares when I close my eyes. 

Fantastic party, I am having a blast.

Not the picture of happiness!

I really could go on and on but then you might think I never enjoyed any of my birthdays, which is completely not true. 

The years between 10-14 were just an awkward pile filled with forced fun at slumber parties...

its rough being a teenager.

Do you have any additional reasons why SLUMBER PARTIES ARE THE PITS to share, I would love to hear them?

  

-The Babbling Box!

Just get me a really BIG closet!

I have openly admitted that I am addicted to shopping pretty regularly around here.

I have also posted that I organized my closet again this weekend and in the past year blogged about my closet both here and here. 
So obviously my closet is pretty important to me.

When Mr. B and I moved in together we had a pretty short wish list: he needed a 'man cave' and all I said:

My closet is most definitely my sanctuary and for someone as OCD as me an organized closet makes me feel at peace with the world. 
Kind of like some people feel when they do charity, don't judge!

So I thought I would put together a little checklist for if when you become as obsessed with organizing your closet as I am. 
Saving one closet at a time, you can thank me later!

ONE - SET ASIDE TIME

No proper organization will take place if you are worried about dinner or meeting up with friends, 
instead you will be playing dress up.

TWO - PICK THE RIGHT TUNES

For me having some tunes to jam to helps me stay focused on the process at hand, 
and not go insane in that tiny confined area.

My favorite right now is:

THREE - GET RELAXED

Pick your favorite way to relax and indulge, 
whether its a glass of wine, cold beer...or something a little stronger. 
You should be enjoying this so why not indulge.

FOUR - PICK A STARTING POINT

I know this seems like, duh! 
But for an ADD person this one is super important for me to remember, just because I see these shoes, belt, dress that just have to go I need to just wait till I finish the section I am on.

FIVE - MAKE PILES

Designate at least three bags: one for trash, one for donate and one for whatever fits your needs (making my sister happy is generally my third bag). When I know where things are supposed to go I stay more focused and don't trap myself in my closet. 
Mr. B never answers those distress calls.

SIX - DESIGN TO YOUR OWN TASTE

For me I need my clothes color coded, helps my OCD and makes outfit planning easier. But I also need certain things more available like my tank tops, so I have a special section just for tanks because they go under everything I wear.

I think finding an organization system that fits your needs is super important as no one gets dressed the same way...
actually its one foot in at a time so perhaps that's wrong.

SEVEN - USE YOUR SPACE WISELY

Personally I have had large closets and even my own shoe closet all the way down to the smallest closets and I have handled each one with ease.
I lie:
when I moved in to my dorm room I had a full on panic attack;
when I moved in with Mr. B the first time I cried for 30 solid minutes.
So first it is important to have a meltdown then begin organizing.

Going up is always the easiest option, my shoes are always stacked on wire baskets high above my closet and I just keep a small stool in my closet. Plus I always think they look so pretty being displayed and not shoved under clothes. Like artwork in a closet.

Baskets are also key. 
I like baskets that are not clear and are tons of different sizes.
This hides the clutter but also makes stacking easy.
I keep things like bathing suits, belts, tights, gym shorts tucked away in the baskets and change out the order depending upon the season.
Ignore Mr. B's jersey, I do give him a 1/8th of the closet we share.

Command hooks and push pins are also incredible helpful in hanging up scarves, hats and necklaces. For me my closet is my sanctuary so I like to see pretty things when I look at the walls and not stupid cornfield walls, so hanging these items up is a win win situation.

EIGHT - MAKE A SCHEDULE

A task always looks bigger the longer you put it off. I used to just reorganize my closet every time I moved, but now that I am not moving every year I needed a schedule. For me I reorganize in June and December, which for a teacher schedule works out perfectly. Also doing this every six months means it takes a whole lot less time, the first time I did this last summer I had way too much time to indulge...a story for another post.

NINE - HAVE A SYSTEM

Once my closet is all pretty and organized I try to make it easy to remember what clothes I wear and what clothes I didn't touch in six months. Enter pinterest, duh!

Now I always know what clothes are being worn and what clothes are being ignored, this is probably the best tip in the whole damn post, perhaps I hid it at the end to keep you around longer.

TEN - LET GO OF EMOTIONS

Practicality is not my strong suit, ask Mr. B. 
But when I realized that I had 40+ pair of high heels last June and I was just not wearing them to teach anymore I had to reevaluate my need for these heels. I have a hard time letting go of clothes because they hold sentimental value, but the truth is they are just taking up space were new more fabulous clothes could go. Saying goodbye to half of those shoes was heartbreaking at the time but now I have even cuter flats that make more sense for my job. 
Don't worry I still have 12 or so pair of heels hiding in my closet.

I tend to let a sentimental item break rule nine for one closet organization but by the second session if I still haven't worn the item I say goodbye. I also will keep my goodwill bags for a month or so in my spare closet and see if I have any remorse, 
and that is never happened before.

Hopefully you found a few of my tips helpful and I will have saved another closet!

Each month I look at my debt and shudder 
but then I look at my neatly organized closet and all debt is forgotten. 
Please don't let Mr. B know this is how my brain works.

- The Babbling Box!

Let's Be Friends

I am sure that everyone and their: dog, mother, child, random bum on the side of the street, knows that Google Reader is disappearing on July 1st. 

But don't you worry your pretty little head!

Bloggers are nothing but not resourceful. 

When bloggers are faced with a crisis of this magnitude there is only one answer: LINK UP!

All the cool kids are moving to BlogLovin so you should to, obviouslly!

Don't know where to start? Tori over at Tori's Teacher Tips has a great little tutorial and a fun blog link up so that everyone can start switching over before the end of the world July 1st. 

I have been participating in Peacoats and Plaid weekly Blog Hop every Thursday. 

I am sure there are tons more link ups out there but for now here's the plan:

ONE. Set up bloglovin account, because Michelle Tanner never lies.

TWO. Link up with some linkys, because its the only way to handle the crisis.

THREE. Grab a glass of wine, oops wrong list.

FOUR. Don't forget to follow me on bloglovin!

Oh, and also go check out my Let's Be Friends page for a bazillion other ways you can stalk me we can be friends!

- The Babbling Box!

The New 'old' Me

Well, Hello There!

Notice anything different? 

My blog got a face lift over the weekend! 

It still needs major healing time but its starting to look more like my personal blog and less like a blogger template. 

But let's rewind for a minute and start at the beginning.

This weekend was...not what I expected.

  

On Friday I did house cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping. BORING!

If only I could look that cool!

On Saturday my Dad showed up around 10:30 in the morning...yes you read that right...he is a very early riser.

We visited for most of the day then tried out the Oasis for lunch. Over the last 10 years I have never heard great things about the Oasis but with a view like this it was hard to believe it would be horrible.

I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived. We were able to snag a table right on the patio edge over looking the lake. There were plenty of umbrellas and fans so the 100 degree temperatures were not even noticeable. The margaritas and queso were yummy. And for me that is truly the sign of whether a restaurant is good or not. The fajitas were ok, but really after the view and margaritas and queso I didn't mind one bit.

After my Dad left I realized I had absolutely nothing to do and Mr. B was going to be stuck at work until 2 am. What was a girl to do?!?

Organize my closet of course! I am nothing if not a party.

I put on some Kid Cudi and went through the entire closet top to bottom.

I now have five bags to go to the goodwill, so either I am really good at purging or really bad at shopping. Either way I am really happy with how neat the closet is now.

NOW, back to the blog remodel for my Made it Monday!

And yes I am counting this as a made it, it took me at least fifteen hours much longer than most projects I have done for the classroom!

A few weeks ago Maggie at Mess in the Making debuted her new blog that she did herself, which I thought looked awesome! And it got me thinking that I should redo my blog, myself. I know I could pay to have someone do this BUT:

One. I am poor and have no money.

Two. I am a teacher so I have unlimited amount of free time right now.

Three. I actually know HTML/teach it as my job.

Sounds easy enough, right?!?

I spent like three hours and too many glasses of Taaka just making my blog button. I used a website called pizap which I actually really liked and will definitely be using it in my classroom this year. 

And I sent my sister a copy of each one I made asking for a second opinion. Getting jealous of my Saturday night yet?

This is what I ended Saturday night with:

And a huge desire to just pay someone to do this for me + a huge headache possible from the amount of taaka.

On Sunday Mr. B and I went to brunch, then I napped because brunching is hard work.

And I woke up with a revived purpose of creating my damn blog myself. 

I changed my blog button because I was worried that the whole thing was starting to look like Barbie threw up on my page and that probably would attract the wrong kind of readers. 

Then I downloaded a software called Artisteer. I of course did the trial version because it was free and I am poor money conscious.

The software looks very much like any other Microsoft or Windows software you have ever used before. 

The really nice thing is the built in buttons that let you export right to your blogger account. They really made that part simple. 

I admit it was completely frustrating to do, but if you have a weekend or week and enjoy tinkering with website stuff/drank less than I did perhaps you could knock out your blog a lot quicker than I did mine. Perhaps in the future I would pay someone to redo my blog for me, but for now I think it looks like a pretty decent representation of me.

I also know there are still a lot of little things that need to be changed, but I must leave the computer behind before I go completely crazy!

Any opinions from other bloggers would be GREATLY appreciated considering my eyes have gone crossed eye from looking at this for way way too long!

I hope everyone else had an enjoyable more exciting weekend, can't wait to read about it!

- The Babbling Box!