These are a few of my favorite things...

-weekends

-Bravo

-vino

-text messaging

-cheesy garlic bread

-cuddling with my puppies

-Pinterest

-reading a good book

-roasted asparagus*

-fuzzy blankets

-to do lists

-technology

-snail mail

-sunsets

-photography

-our back porch

-pedicures

-the font bombshell

-anything green

-the smell of rain

-dark chocolate

-The Sound of Music

-laughter

-ketchup

-fluffy pillows

-remembering dreams

-air conditioning

-redbox codes

-contact lenses

*best asparagus recipe ever:

for one lb. washed, trimmed asparagus, spread on cookie sheet with drizzle of Extra virgin olive oil, teaspoon of diced garlic, juice of half of a lemon, and sprinkling of kosher salt (to taste). Bake at 400*F for 15 minutes or until cooked. Yummy!!

Resolved.

I've dedicated a good chunk of the summer to professional development and generic pondering for next year. This is mostly due to the fact that I am determined to help make this year run smoother for my team (last year was a bit of a train wreck...but only sometimes). Anyways, I've been rounding up some new ideas to try, and in an effort to hold myself accountable I am making my intentions known to my blog. Once upon a time someone asked me to blog more teacher-y things, so here I go...

1. Conversation Calendars. The presenter of a training casually mentioned Cris Tovani's idea of conversation calendars to interact with students, and I'm pretty sure my eyes lit up. I found more info on it here and decided I must try this out. I love how you can steer a conversation if you want and differentiate for individual students as needed. My plan is to have half of my students on a Monday/Wednesday schedule and the other half on Tuesday/Thursday. We shall see how it goes!

2. Absent binder. For two years I have tried to keep up with an absent wall, but the wall real estate next to the door became too valuable. Students never checked it, so I am going to try out a binder this year instead (as seen here).

3. Ticket out poster (idea from pinterest via here). I am a fan of the "ticket out" and use it fairly regularly. Usually I have my kids put sticky notes on the back of the door or my front cabinet door, but it gets a little crazy sometimes. This way, each student has a number and I can quickly scan for content and "if they got it." This is going next to the door where my old absent board was.

4. To be determined...I will fill you in on the rest!

Project Life 2013, Week 29

Oh, week 29. Not a lot of pictures, but pretty fun nonetheless. I'm going to blame Schlitterbahn water parks for the lack of pictures. Rather that the party pictures they want you to buy are $15 each!! What is that?!? Highway robbery right there. Or maybe seaway. Channel? It's some kind of insanity.

I blurred my relatives in the pool photo...because, you know, not everyone may want to be on the internet in a swimsuit.

And here is the two weeks together, all cozy in my book. Or how it should be. One day.

That's about it! This week has been pretty relaxing (read: humdrum), so I'm going to have to find some pictures for PL somehow...

Project Life 2013, Week 28

I've got another week of Project Life saved! I've been using a collage app (creatively called Collage) on my phone for instagrams and only recently realized I could easily change the aspect ratio to 3:2 for project life action (bottom left picture). Hopefully I can catch up and do last week's adventures tomorrow!

Project Life 2013, Week 27

Week 27 was pretty quiet, aside from my friend, Ashley's, wedding!

Left side...a little cold front action (I had to laugh), a little ducks in the park, and wedding!

I love that top left photo, so it needed to be slightly larger! These pictures don't really do the day justice...I'm pretty excited to see the photographer's pictures. Hooray!

Random Photo Wednesday

So cute!!

Project Life 2013, Week 26

I've got another two-pager. The following week (aka last week) included many a picture due to wedding festivities...so I needed to make sure I was on track page-wise to accommodate! I'm digging the yellow and teal. It sprung from the date card (Valentine freebie from AC Digitals...I just deleted the text on the banner and made my own), and it feels very summer-y.

Left side. I had training for three straight days, but I was happy to be home with my puppies and Tyson...so I really didn't mind! Even though I absolutely love dog sitting, I also love coming home. Especially when my husband misses me and does nice things to show me! :) I nabbed the bottom right picture from an instagram picture I did not take via web.stagram.com. I love how you can log in and save pictures to your computer from your feed, likes, etc.! (ETA: yes, I know it says "linner." It was originally supposed to be a lunch and got changed to a dinner so the name morphed. Thanks for pointing that out, Mom.)

Little bit of filler on this one...but it's kind of fun! During the school year it's just faster to do one page and get it done, but I'm enjoying the extra time I'm putting in to these summer pages. I realized in working on this yesterday that this week seems a long time ago. Maybe because the holiday in the middle of the week threw me off. In any case, it's cool that this project can help me remember the details. Go team!

Menu Planning Monday!

Short week of cooking this week, as we are heading to the ranch on Friday after Tyson gets off work. This summer has been so busy...it hasn't really felt very summer-y thus far. I am thinking the slower pace this week will remedy that though!

Menu Planning Monday

Monday :: tortellini with turkey meat sauce and roasted asparagus

Tuesday :: baked general tso's chicken with steamed broccoli

Wednesday :: red beans & rice

Thursday :: leftovers

In other news, one of my best friends got married this weekend! I have seriously not seen a better planned shindig than this. The weekend was so beautiful...just an awesome reminder of what love is! Hizzah!!

Project Life 2013, Week 25

Week 25. I sat in GT trainings for my 30 hour certificate for 3 days that week. One of the presenters joked that a lot of the trainings tend to be "sit and get"s or "spray and pray"s. (I guess pray that the people are listening?). And he was correct! Anyways, I got plenty of reading and list making done. The other big thing that week was Ashley's bachelorette party!

Food ponderings.

One of my absolute favorite parts of summer is that I can spend as much time as I would like making my lunch. Or eating my lunch. Or driving elsewhere to dine. If I were to make a list of things I dislike about teaching, the short lunches fall somewhere between one and three. I could rhapsodize about this further, but I have a feeling that it doesn't make for good reading.

That being said, I tend to take advantage of the oven to make lunch in the summer. I really feel like my quality of life would improve during the school year if there was a toaster oven in the teachers' lounge. But then everyone would want to toast things, the line would be insane, and I still probably would be stuck reheating leftovers or a Lean Cuisine.

Anyways, I have been making pizzas for my noonday meal. My first round consisted of Trader Joe's naan bread as the vessel, and now I have moved on to tortillas (because I ate all the naan bread. boo.). I made a big batch of this pizza sauce back in February (in small portions) that I've been using and loving with fresh mozzarella and Italian seasoning.

I also used the pizza idea to use up pulled pork leftovers with BBQ sauce. What else can you do with pork (we have a LOT)? I am contemplating enchiladas...I think I read about using up Thanksgiving turkey that way last year. Maybe a stew? I will continue to ponder...