| Shoes. Love. Life.

Hi There*

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Shop Girl| 2 Comments

So, I’ve been a little quiet lately.

And by quiet I obviously mean radio silent.

I last posted while on a prep period at MDS. I had just had a wonderful day of supply teaching, then after I wrote that post I picked up my sweet girl from our sitter and headed home.

Shortly after I got home my phone rang. Out of the blue I was offered an interview at a school I hadn’t taught at in two years. Two days later I drove to the school, quickly said hello to a friend that works there, and made my way to the office. For the first time, I was given the interview questions in advance, and they were (by far) the hardest interview questions I have ever encountered. I had fifteen minutes to prep, then off I went.

I felt like my interview went okay, but I wasn’t feeling terribly confident. Luckily I didn’t have much time to dwell on it as the Hubster’s mom flew in the next day… which also happened to be my darling Ruby’s first birthday. Time flew, and suddenly it was Friday and as we were waiting to be seated at the Mandarin my phone rang. I knew it would be the school calling, and I braced myself for the rejection call.

Except that it didn’t come. The usual “I’m sorry but you were not the successful candidate…” line that I expected was replaced with “I would love to offer you this position”. I was so shocked I didn’t even know what to say, but I somehow stumbled through the call and what was supposed to just be a meal out turned into a celebration.

I started teaching immediately, and for three weeks I taught grade 9 and 10 English in the afternoon as the teacher I was replacing went down to part time before her maternity leave. After March Break I switched to full-time and added Grade 12 University English to the list.

It took me about a month to really believe that this job was real, and even as I am surrounded by mountains of marking, I sometimes still can’t believe it’s really true.

It took me four long years to land my first LTO… but it feels so good to be back in a classroom.

My classroom. It’s incredibly busy, sometimes stressful, and I constantly wrestle with guilt over how little time I now get to spend with my wee-bean… but it’s amazing.

I love my school. I have wonderful students. My department is amazing. I can honestly say that (aside from the mountain of marking that comes with Grade 12 English) I have absolutely no complaints.

I love my job.

While it makes me a little sad that I no longer get to spend the day with my small girl, I treasure the moments we have together as a family. She is… perfect. Right now she is rocking an amazing curly mullet, her smile lights up her entire face and she runs everywhere (and is into everything!). She is such a happy baby (can I still call her that?) and sometimes I honestly can’t believe that I am lucky enough to be her mom.

So, that’s where I’ve been. Work & spending time with my loves. I have to wake up at 5:30 every day to make it to work on time, so I’m usually a little brain dead by 8pm.

Which doesn’t really leave me much time for writing.

But I do think about it and miss writing all the time, and I’m going to try and work it in. I finally feel like I’ve found my rhythm with my classes, so I’m hoping it will be a little easier to weave back into my schedule.

Despite a rough start, 2013 is shaping up to be a much better year than I expected. :)

Posted in Teaching*

Birthday Week, Wallpaper and Paint*

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Shop Girl| 1 Comment

There are certain elements of supply teaching that I absolutely love.

Right now I’m sitting in the staff room of one of my favourite schools on my prep period. As everything has already been prepared for me, and I wasn’t needed elsewhere in the school, I now have 76 glorious minutes of absolute quiet to sit and relax.

There are many things that frustrate me that I could complain about, but for now, these quiet moments momentarily overshadow everything else and it’s enough.

Especially after the craziness of last week.

You see, it’s birthday week! My beautiful girl turns one on Thursday, and we are celebrating all week long. We had my family over yesterday and ended up with 20 people in my little house. It was loud and crazy but so fun. It was worth the hectic preparations that went on for days ahead.

As we knew our home would be busy for a while, we decided it was time to fix up our entrance way. When we moved in, the front hallway walls were two-toned with a greeny-grey paint on top and a hodge-podged blue wall paper on the bottom, with a skinny white trim separating them in the middle. The wallpaper was ripped and glued on in pieces, and we think they were trying to make the wall look like stone.

(It didn’t look like stone.)

We’ve just left it as it wasn’t a priority, and my motto has really just been: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

It certainly wasn’t broken, it just wasn’t terribly attractive. But we finally bit the bullet and I spent every free moment last week stripping wallpaper and glue from the walls. It was a big job—especially with an extremely curious toddler who wanted to “help”—but I got it done and on Saturday we had someone come in to patch up our walls. Neither the Hubster or I are drywall experts, so we figured it was probably best to have someone come in and help us smooth them out.

We were hoping to have it all done and painted by yesterday, but the massive snowstorm that blew through set us back a day and the walls needed two coats of “mud” which was more than we figured.

So we we still rocked a two-tone entrance way at the party, it was just paint and drywall this time. (Which I still view as an improvement. ha) I decorated around it and honestly, I don’t think many people noticed or cared. We were up until after midnight the night before trying to get the house cleaned and decorated, and I learned that preparing food for 20+ people is no small task. But everything got done–my home was full, my heart is happy and Ruby had a blast.

And, she didn’t like the cake OR the icing. Part of me was so proud that she preferred her avocados to the cake, and the rest of me wondered how my kid didn’t like cake. haha

Painting starts this afternoon—ceilings first , then walls and trim. So excited!!

Posted in House Projects*

Kitchen Drawers: Make ‘em Pop*

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Shop Girl| 2 Comments

My lovelies, I’ve been busy.

We have a full couple of weeks coming up. The wee-bean has her first birthday a week from today, and we are having a get together with my family this weekend to celebrate. The Hubster’s mom flies in on her actual birthday (Feb 14th) and most of his extended family is coming the following weekend to party again! We also have tickets to see The Wizard of Oz in the city, and I’m hosting another get together with some couples we know at the end of the month.

Like I said, busy busy busy.

I enjoy it though. I love when my home is full! So, we’ve been busy trying to get things in order to make our home look the best it can.

For the past two years we’ve been primarily focused on the functionality of our home. I decorated a little here and there, but we were so busy just trying to get things completed–lawn, deck, garage, shed, basement, etc–that we haven’t done much cosmetically. To date, we have only painted one room: our main floor powder room.

So, we decided to tackle a myriad of projects that we’re hurrying to complete before our month of parties and company. I’ve been busy stripping wallpaper for the past few days, and we have someone coming to repair the walls and paint on the weekend.

In the meantime, I’ve also been trying to tackle a few smaller projects to add a little fun in my kitchen.

In my family, the kitchen as always been the hub of all activity. We have always loved sitting around the table or working together to make food and clean-up. As I know my family will be in and out of my cupboards and drawers as we prep for the party this weekend, I’m trying to get things cleaned up and organized.

My kitchen drawers have driven me nuts since we moved in. They are all white and I can’t ever seem to keep them looking clean. The interior of the drawers show every scuff and mark and it makes them look dirty even when they aren’t. So I had a little idea and decided to give it a whirl.

I found some fun contact paper at Dollarama before Christmas and used a tiny bit for a gift I made someone. I ended up with a ton left over, and I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

So, I got creative.

Earlier this week I emptied out each of my drawers and cleaned them from top to bottom. As I looked at the scuffs and marks on the white surface, I decided to try lining my drawers with the contact paper and I am so happy with how it turned out!!

As it’s just Dollarama contact paper, I found the adhesive wasn’t great. So, after I cut the paper to size, I added strips of double sided tape to the drawer to help the paper stay down.

See? Boring old white.

After I removed the backing of the tape, I carefully laid down the contact paper.

And… voila! I love how it turned out. It’s a very subtle, light pattern, but it just adds a little something to my once boring, scuffed drawers!

I still have loads left over, so I have another idea that I want to try in a much more visible spot.

I’ll keep you posted!

Posted in House Projects*

Silly, Silly Me*

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Shop Girl| 8 Comments

Sometimes I do things without thinking them all the way through.

This year, we decided to try and actually do something for New Year’s Eve. I’m pretty sure that we didn’t even make it to midnight the two previous years, so in an effort to be a little more exciting, we invited some friends over.

We thought we’d order in some Chinese food, play some board games, watch a movie and try and stay up to watch the ball drop at midnight. We jokingly called it our “Old Married People Party”.

Now then. I am a planner. We spent NYE with my parents two years ago, and Big Dad ordered in Chinese for us that night. He said his restaurant was so busy that he had to call in and place the order a day ahead of time just to make sure it would be available when we wanted it. So, I thought I’d follow his lead and order our dinner several hours ahead of when we’d need it.

We decided to order from a great little restaurant that we’ve used in the past, and I had a menu on hand so it was easy to pick out what we wanted. After making my choices, I sent a message to our friends asking if there was anything extra that they wanted me to order. They had never been to this particular restaurant, so they asked me if there was a website they could look at to see what was available. I looked at the menu and saw one listed there, so I thought I’d check it out before passing the info along.

The restaurant was called “Asian Delight”. I quickly glanced at the website listed on the menu, and it looked like it was just the restaurant name with .com at the end. So, I punched it in so I could see if the menu was online.

…the website that came up was not for Chinese food.

I’m a pretty conservative person… so when this website same up, I gasped out loud and fumbled to try and close the browser, all while wanting to wash my eyes out with soap. The Hubster heard me gasp and asked me what was wrong, and when I explained what I had done, he just about fell over laughing.

We took a closer look at the menu and realized that the restaurant had removed two of the vowels from their name for the website, as Asian Delight was clearly already taken.

But let me assure you–the website is not my definition of delightful. Ha.

Now that I think about it, “Asian Delight” does sound a little more like… something else.

Note to self: read web addresses carefully before trying to open them. Or just stick to paper menus.

The end.

Posted in Random Junk*

Hi, February*

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Shop Girl| 1 Comment

So, it’s a new month.

I’m quite happy to have January behind me, and I already feel like things are looking up a little. Simply put: I had a really great day.

For starters, it was very chilly today… but the sun came out and it ended up being a beautiful, frosty day. I’ll take that as a win.

I also was able to go back into a school I used to spend quite a bit of time at–the school I originally started volunteering in before I got on the supply list. It was my first time back in over a year, and it was so nice to see some of the staff I love and visit.

While I was in the office catching up with some of the secretaries, a VP I know somewhat came through the office and stopped when he saw me. He looked at me for a minute, then said:

“You’re Shop Girl, aren’t you.”

When I replied that I was, I wasn’t prepared for what he said next. He looked at me and told me that I had just been highly recommended to the school by another VP. My face must have registered my shock, and he asked me if I had recently had an interview at MDS. When I nodded, he went on to tell me that the VP (who I was sure thought I was a total flop) had been in touch and told him that I had interviewed very well and was a strong candidate… and recommended me for any opening at their school.

I cannot even begin to tell you how surprised I was to hear that this VP had passed along a positive review completely unbeknownst to me, or how much I absolutely needed to hear it today.

For me, the very worst part of the interview process isn’t the moment when you hear you aren’t getting the job.

It’s the time waiting in between.

In this case, my interview at MDS was on Friday morning. I was told at the interview that I would hear one way or another by Monday. I didn’t actually get the call until Tuesday morning. That left me with four days to analyze, over analyze and over-over analyze everything that I said and the way I felt the panel reacted to it.

When I left the interview, I felt pretty good about everything. Within an hour I was retracing my answers and reflecting on ways I could have improved. By the end of the weekend I had ripped apart everything I said and was unhappy with the way I answered everything. By Tuesday morning I wasn’t even sure what I had said. haha!

I know I’m my own worst enemy. But after already feeling insecure about my performance, getting the call of rejection was a massive blow to my confidence. I was sure that the problem had to have been with me. How else could I explain losing out on a job that everyone was so sure I would get? I felt like I let everyone down, which added to my misery.

So, my confidence as a teacher was really shaken… but hearing that this VP was spreading the word–good words–about me, was exactly what I needed. It was validation that maybe I can still do this.

(Thank you!)

After getting a huge confidence boost, I made my way to my classes and had the best afternoon. My second period class was challenging, but my first group was a dream. Seriously. Best class EVER. We laughed, we learned–good times were had by all.

And then I got to come home to my wonderful little family. My beautiful girl just got her 6th tooth, and after today I think I can officially say that she is walking. Her confidence is growing, and more and more she is choosing to toddle on her feet rather than crawl. She is regularly taking multiple steps on her own and I don’t think it will be long before she abandons crawling for good.

So, it was a rough month and our home may be falling down around us, but I’m choosing to look for the good.

I may not be working as much as I would like, but I have a career that I love. Things in my house may be breaking, but I love my home. I am married to my best friend, and we have a beautiful daughter who lights up our lives.

And the VP at MDS didn’t think I was a complete failure. Ha.

So, here’s hoping February is a little smoother than January… but even if it’s not, I think I’ll make it through.