It took me from July 18 to October 26th to finish the first class, and then from October 26th to October 29th to finish the second one.... Hmm... It helped that the second one was more interesting!
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One hard and fast rule in our household is that if we are in the car listening to Ralph Stanley, I am not allowed to sing along. It just doesn't sound right.
Every year since we've been married my wonderful hubby has wanted to grow pumpkins. This is the first year we were able to! So here's our harvest, and some scraggly flowers. Oh, and that bunch of sticks in the pot? The fig tree!
For my class on the adolescent brain, reading about using music in the classroom... I love and have always been involved in music making, but I have never ever been able to study or concentrate when music is playing. I just don't understand how my students can do it! They can't concentrate unless they have their ipod going, and most of them really do work better with music.
So just now I read in my textbook, about being sensitive to students when implementing music: "Students who are musically trained may also be bothered. They tend to hear musical sounds as a language, and it interferes with their normal language processing." AHA! This is why I can't listen to music and concentrate on anything else! I start to think about the music-- especially classical-- I start listening for the different parts and analyzing it... It's so distracting. Good to know that it doesn't bother everyone like that. :) Maybe I should stop yelling at my students to turn off their music. What a shrew of a teacher am I! We moved in here in late January, and we are deciding a little at a time how to decorate. I've been dragging my feet about this partly because decorating scares me. I have been known to decorate with various kinds of rubbish, and the thought of buying things to hang on the wall makes me quiver in terror because I'm so sure I'll make a mistake and hate it later.
But here we are, with a freshly-painted living room and lots of space... I spent a long time looking for ideas, and now I've got one! It'll take a couple of weeks, but here is the blank canvas.... Stay tuned.... Not too long ago I had a bag of potatoes in the pantry and looked around for recipes to use them. We hardly ever eat potatoes, so I had to make sure I used them up before I didn't want to go near the pantry because of them! I found this recipe on EatingWell.com and made one batch. They were so yummy, fairly healthy, and froze so well that I decided to make a bunch the next time. So yesterday at Aldi's when I saw a 10-lb bag of russet potatoes for $2.99, I snatched them. There were 32 potatoes in my bag-- big and small. I baked them all up last night, and I mixed up the filling and stuffed them today. Here's my bulk recipe... Loaded Twice-Baked Potatoes 5 TBSP canola oil 6 tsp kosher salt 10 lbs russet potatoes, washed 36 oz frozen broccoli florets 1.75 lbs ham steak 16 oz plain yogurt 8 oz light sour cream 8 oz light cheddar cheese 1 tsp black pepper
TO MAKE IMMEDIATELY: Cook the potatoes at 350° about 30 minutes or until cheese is melted and filling is hot. Enjoy! TO FREEZE & REHEAT LATER: Wrap potato halves in plastic wrap, then put in ziploc bags. Freeze. To reheat, put desired number of frozen potatoes in a baking dish, cover with foil, and bake at 350° for 45 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 15 minutes. This keeps the skin nice and crispy. Enjoy!! I got 5 and a half freezer bags out of today's potatoes... That should last us for a long time. Don't be offended if you come over and that's dinner! According to the SparkPeople recipe calculator, each serving is about 200 calories-- that's one half of a big potato or 2 halves of a small one. Not too bad!
I'm a maker. Fabricator, putter-together, sewer, crafter, gatherer-up... I get excited about trips to the art store and it's hard to hold myself back. I choose an artistic outlet and then go whole hog until I'm tired of that one, and then another one takes the place. One Christmas I decided I had to make linoleum cuts and stamp out my own cards for everyone-- my roommates had to endure little bits of rubber and hundreds of drying cards laying around (sorry, Bec & Kel!). Since then I've gone through phases of origami, knitting, tie-dye, cardmaking, sewing, beading, cooking, you name it. Teaching is my profession, but I always secretly wanted to be an artist. Or not so secretly. Every baby book and record my mom kept says what I wanted to be when I grew up: Artist. I only changed my mind in ninth grade, after reading My Name is Asher Lev. I decided there were ways to make things without making it my job.
And now we are miraculously expecting a baby, and my creative impulses have gone into overdrive along with the hormones. It's good to be very busy with work, because otherwise I think I would be sitting at home in a pile of fabric and yarn and internet tutorials happily filling rooms with little creations. I have a projects-to-complete list a mile long, and an even longer list of new things to start. I hope this blog can be a record of this season of life-- exciting new beginnings and the nesting and preparing that goes with them. |