Fourteen in '14 Linky

I'm linking up with  A Teeny Tiny Teacher, Miss Kindergarten, and Dragonflies in First for a bit of reflection and reminiscing of the past year.

This will always be my favorite quote. It's a constant reminder that I'm in charge of my own destiny and making my dreams come true. Deep, I know! 

My favorite dress, the Coach tour dress from ModCloth, which I now own in three colors, thanks to my hubby grabbing the houndstooth one for me for Christmas, which will probably end up being my favorite 2015 dress! It's comfy and it has pockets and it transitions quite well from season to season! 

Let me say that this is not normally my kind of movie, but my hubby loves the Marvel movies and it was his turn to pick. Well, give me some awesome music I grew up with and a bunch of likable characters and I was totally sold. Two thumbs up from this girl! 

I ALMOST picked Newsroom because I really, really loved it, but it was a bit lackluster in it's finale, and Revenge has been a win for me since the very first episode. I don't know about you, but I just can't get enough of the drama in this one! 

This is our favorite chophouse. Though I love all food pretty much equally (except sushi…yuck), I'm a steak and potatoes girl at heart and this place is amazing! 

Though this may look like a coffee commercial, or my tree side story time, this has nothing to do with beverages or stories. It's actually all about my hair! Up until this summer, I had not colored it in 7 years! As I'm in my mid-30's, it was getting dull, though I swear there wasn't any gray that I could see. I colored it with a red and brown at first and it wasn't my cup of tea <-----see what I did there? So on my most recent appointment, I decided to go darker than my normal boring brown and I LOVE it. It's a keeper!  

I had my hubby at home! As an Air Force wife, I know what it's like to be alone on Christmas. My husband did three deployments in our first 4 years of marriage, so anytime that he is home for the holidays, that is truly the best gift of all! 

If you want to meet the chicken fried rice of your dreams, click on the picture above and get cookin'! I love Rachel Schultz (and not just because she is a Rachel without an a at the end) and all of her amazing recipes, but this one "takes the cake" (though it's rice, not cake, just in case you were confused by that) :-)

This is my favorite blog post because it is my favorite part of this year's classroom. When I went down a bulletin board after moving classrooms, I had to find a creative way to display student work. This was the end result of a lot of command strips and adorable Dollar Store clipboards. Click on the picture if you want to know more! 

This summer, I went to a blogger meet up and it was such fun! I learned a lot in that one afternoon and ended up coming home, committed to getting a blog redo. I also realized that I needed to hop on the Instagram train and so I joined Instagram. I noticed that Amanda from Teaching Maddeness was having a Halloween scavenger hunt. I had heard about one that was done during the summer, and now that I was an official IG user, I wanted to participate. Oh my goodness, my hubby and I had so much fun hunting around. It ended up being a blast for both of us and guess what? I won the top prize! A new, wonderful carpet from Kid Carpet. I never win anything, and so I did a lot of celebrating and so did the hubby, since he certainly helped out! And look at how fabulous the carpet looks in my room! Love, love, love, love it! 

The hubby and I went on a day trip to the northern neck of Virginia, checking out the wine trail along the way. This was an adorable winery called Dog and Oyster. I love how relaxed we both look in this picture! We both are so busy all the time, or stressing about one thing or another, and we needed this little trip so badly. It was perfect and that's why we both look so happy…we are! 

My favorite memory of this year is actually the day above for all of the reasons I just listed. I treasure those moments where we can just enjoy life without any worries lurking! 

This will include eating better, getting back to working out at least a few times a week, taking more time for me, and sitting back and relaxing without feeling guilty about it because I have 1,001 things on my to-do list. Life is too short to not sit back and enjoy, and so I hope to do much more of that in 2015. 

It's the one thing that I will always have and one of the things that I like the most about myself!