Fall Clean Up

I am not going to go ahead and make crazy claims such as: Eric and I are clean freaks.

That would be a lie.

But I think both of us do have a mutual appreciation for a certain degree of cleanliness. Sure, we don't clean up every mess immediately and sometimes my dresser does look like it has thrown up (next time it happens I'll post a picture, it really looks like my dresser is throwing up). However, both of us do have pretty quick breaking points when we decide to clean up. I just feel a lot less stressed when my space around me is clean. I'm sure most of you can identify with this.

However, this week we reached our biggest mess since moving into our house last January.

And...

That pile in front of the door would be mail. I swear I do look at it everyday, I just choose not to spend time throwing away the junk...good I know.

I blame this disaster on two things #1- engagement party gifts, all of which I love, none of which I know what to do with at the current moment. #2- Eric's football/masters/work schedule that means I am the only one doing any housework but I still have a full time job + tutoring so I can only do so much also. But, alas- the mess was not making me feel any less stressed and I had a "day off" (this is what I call days when I don't have to tutor- Katie told me I should stop calling 9 hour days "days off" so I am going to work on this) so I decided to tackle it. Here are the results:

And...

Not too bad right?

As predicted, I feel 100 times better and am ready to sit down and write 1000 more thank you notes tonight, whoa hoo!

With my newly cleaned kitchen, I made a fall treat. I got the inspiration for pumpkin pizza from one of my favorite bloggers It's A Wrap Teacher. She often puts pumpkin on her pizza and I figured since it's fall I would give it a try.

To make pumpkin pizza I used:

• pizza crust from Whole Foods
• Libby's canned pumpkin
• cooked mushrooms
• Trader Joe's black beans
• 1/2 of an apple

I wish I could transport smell through the blog because it smelled like I was baking some delicious fall dessert instead of my dinner. It tasted pretty good too, although I really miss tomato sauce when I have pizza without it. Yum.

Okay I suppose I should resume thank you notes...

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

I have a tradition in my kindergarten classroom every year. 26 days from the last day of school, we count down using the alphabet. Each day is a new letter. Tomorrow is Letter C day and we celebrate- Career Day. All the kids have to dress up like what they want to be when they grow up. In the past I never dressed up, after all- I am already grown up (though I don't like to admit it). However, this year I'm motivated to pick something else to be- just for fun (or to fall back on when I really can't stand teaching anymore). At first I thought I'd be a retired person, maybe dress up like I was going to play golf :) Even though I really don't like golf, but no one has to know that. Then I started to think about what the ideal job would be. It's hard though because every job has it's ups and downs. For example I'd love to be a travel writer, get paid to travel around and tell people about it. But then again I'm kind of a homebody, would I really want to spend my whole life traveling? When I was younger I wanted to be a writer in general. I still think this would be an amazing job. But then again I like stability and a dependable paycheck, so maybe I should just stick to teaching. If only kids could be slightly less annoying...
I don't know what I will dress like tomorrow, perhaps just myself. If I come up with anything good I'll let you know.

I'm off to a good start with my Yoga Challenge. I did a 10 minute Yoga for Runners this morning after my 2 mile run on the treadmill. I will post my results from the challenge on Fridays and if you are doing it to, comment back and tell us how you are doing!

I was actually pretty happy with myself for getting through the 2 mile run. For some reason lately I've been having more trouble with my short runs. I think because I tell myself, "Kelly it's just two miles, no big deal" and then as I'm doing it, it's still hard! Where as, with the longer runs I get myself pumped up and tell myself this is going to be long. Weird I know but oh well, today I tried to get myself pumped for the two miles. I told myself it was going to be hard because it was going to be on the horribly boring treadmill (which is not much of a stretch) so I did it. My knee wasn't too bad after, and I'm going to the doctor tomorrow so I'll know more about the knee then. I had some extra time tonight so I tried to convince myself to go for a bike ride, but it didn't happen. I need a biking buddy, it's just too boring on my own. Hopefully I'll get some motivation to either bike or swim tomorrow. For some reason I just don't feel like I get as good of a work out when I do these two sports, even though they are both incredibly hard.

I am all over the place tonight (so much for being a writer) but I was craving pizza again after my creation last week. I used basically the same ingredients (tomato sauce, summer squash, zucchini, mushrooms and black beans), but this time I decided to use Panera Sour Dough bread instead of pizza crust, yum.
Delicious. Probably going to be lunch or dinner for the next few days :)