Hester Happenings

Since I'm tracked out, I actually have time for some fun crafting! So I've been looking on Pintrest  for some crafting ideas for our house. Little tangent: Pintrest is a site where people 'pin' pictures of things they like. You can organize your pins into categories. As of right now I have many: house, crafts, parties, school, baby showers, etc. If you're planning something, this is a great place to start. You can search, find really neat ideas, then pin them to a categorey of yours. If you haven't checked this out yet, you need to! Warning: It can be quite addicting! Back to the craft of the day! We moved in a while ago, but several of the walls have nothing on them. I came across this neat pin where you use toilet paper rolls to make metal looking wall art. I decided this would look very good in the bathroom downstairs. First I gathered my supplies: toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, a glue gun, and scissors: As you can see, I started cutting th...

Jeff and I have decided to join our church in supporting the Pregnancy Support Services of Wake Forest (PSSWF). I've posted some information about this program below: PSSWF offers the following free and confidential services: Medical Clinic:   Pregnancy Testing and Ultrasound confirms the pregnancy and “age” of the baby and is followed by a consultation with a nurse and a patient advocate for education on fetal development and the options for the pregnancy decision: abortion, adoption, and parenting.  The woman participates in 1 or more sessions to identify her obstacles and to obtain resources and solutions for her pregnancy decision. “Next Steps”:   an ongoing program that provides support to the woman and her family throughout her pregnancy and until the baby turns 1-year old.  o   Mentors and classes teach them about healthy pregnancy, labor & delivery, infant care, parenting past the first year, financial management, & healthy rel...

Last weekend was a pretty busy one for Jeff and me. It started off with Jeff's soccer game. They were playing a team that they really wanted to beat. Thankfully they won by one point! Then we decided to do some yard work. Our back yard is 1/2 grass and 1/2 natural area. Well, there were so many weeds that our natural area looked like our grass area. Not a good thing! So Jeff and I decided to weed the crazy amount of weeds in the nautral area before it got to the grass. I forgot to take a before picture, but here is a half-way picture: As you can see-wayyyyyy too many weeds. This whole project took about 3 1/2 hours, and we still weren't finished. After we weeded Jeff sprayed some weed killer to get anything we missed and to stop anything from coming back. We were getting tired and the sun was going down. So one of my track-out projects is to finish the small patch of weeds that are left. While we were weeding, we found some interesting things in our yard: S...

My dad's birthday was last weekend. I love getting to celebrate birthdays when the whole family is together. My mom planned for us to all meet at his favorite restaurant, Enrigo (which is located in Waverly Place). If you haven't been....GO NOW! Seriously. Most of you know that I'm a spoiled Italian daughter. My dad constantly cooks delicious Italian meals from scratch. That's right ladies and gentlemen-he hand makes pasta, sausage, meatballs, ravioli, tortellini, and much more! To say the least I'm an Italian food snob. How can you not be with my dad cooking all the time? So, back to the point. We went out for lunch to celebrate my wonderful father. Here are some pictures of the appetizers to make your mouth water:   Prosciutto, cheese, and fried dough                           Stuffed Mushrooms  Fried Shrimp and Zucchini ...

So....yes, it's been quite a while since I last posted. If you are a teacher, you'd totally understand. It is the end of 3rd quarter, and things get somewhat hectic around this time of year. My class has also been working on writing a book in groups of 3 from beginning to end. This takes the WHOLE quarter because it is so involved. When they are finished we make colored copies for them and ship the original off to Scholastic. Scholastic holds a contest every year called the Scholastic Kids Are Authors Contest. Kids in groups of 3 or more make a book and all the artwork and submit it to Scholastic. They then pick one winner in each category and actually publish the book! The book gets sold in Scholastic Book Fairs around the US! So exciting and fun, but also very exhausting. The stories my kids wrote this year are SO good. I know I'm a little biased, but I've got some very good authors in my class this year! We had an 8th grade English class come to help us final edit...