A Windy Reminder

In addition to the cold weather, the winds picked up this week.  Windy, might be an understatement with the 65 mph gusts that arrived on Sunday night.  Personally, I like the wind.  The air quality is so much better.  I also kind of like being cozied up inside the house when it sounds like the rest of the world is blowing away.  However, dealing with 7 year olds in the wind is an entirely different story.

The work week was off to quite a start when I walked out to the playground to pick up my class first thing Monday morning.  After saying good morning a cold gust tore through the yard behind us and, as if right on cue, the entire class toppled forward with gasps and screams.  The wind took hold of jackets, skirts, and scarves yanking the kids around with more screams.  Hats were knocked off as we walked to class through what looked like leaf tornadoes.  Within the first 5 minutes of my week, the kids spent about 3 of them screeching about the wind.  For three consecutive days every time we opened the door, walked outside, heard the wind against the building, I cringed, waiting for someone to fall apart. 

By Tuesday afternoon, most of the staff had had it up to HERE with the wind!  My assistant principal, who visits a few 2nd graders on a daily basis and who noticed how the wind was creating monsters out of said kids, walked past me mumbling to herself about the wind.  “I think it’s a scientific fact that the wind makes them CRAZY.”  I think so too.

When I got home that night, trying to unwind from the insanity, the thought of the kids falling apart in the wind reminded me of this time of year when I was still riding horses.  As much as I like windy weather, when riding, just like when teaching, I don’t care for it.  Thinking back on those days, we dreaded taking the horses out in that weather.  The wind made them so high and extremely skittish.  When a gust of wind would come up behind them they’d tuck in their butt and bolt forward.  To this day, I still have the muscle memory for their (and my) reaction to the wind.  Even worse, these strong winds we get ripping in between the mountains are very noisy – in addition to the gusts themselves the wind knocks things over that aren’t secured and shakes and clatters those things that are.  When the crossbars or standards of a jump would blow down, or a gate would slam loudly, or the wind would rattle through the barn the horses spooked.  It made both them and us nervous wrecks. 

Horses and second graders have a lot in common when it’s windy.

Brrrrrrrr

We have cooled significantly this past week.  While it was almost 80 degrees on Monday, the temperature has droppeed and dropped and dropped some more since then. 

 
I turned off the heat when I left the house this
afternoon because I planned on being gone for the day.  When I returned about 2 hours ago, my house was sooooo cold. 

I also came home to a puppy who found a warm spot to curl up in.

Finally, a Green Bean Casserole Explanation

The family Thanksgiving dinner took place at my cousin’s house this year.  Thankfully, it was a low key affair.  The non-crazies out numbered the crazies this go round which made for a short nice, uneventful Thanksgiving.  The calm nature of the day allowed me to solve a mystery of sorts.

My cousin’s wife Cheryl has made a Thanksgiving green bean casserole for as long as I can remember.  I’ve never been a fan of green bean casserole.  I think it’s the cream of mushroom soup which has a very distinct flavor and kind of takes over anything that it’s in.  Anyhow, I’ve always quietly passed it over when making my plate without making mention of it (and without anyone else making mention of it either). 

Starting about 3 years ago though, each time we met for Thanksgiving, Cheryl started pointing out to me, personally, that she didn’t forget to make the green bean casserole.  I didn’t understand her need to notify me of her meal contribution, but I often don’t understand my family so I always just nodded with a fake smile, said something like, “Oh, ok,” and left it at that.  But then felt guilty passing over the casserole so spooned a small amount onto my plate to choke down.  Last week’s holiday was no exception to this new green bean casserole reminder/guilt eating.

As dinner wound down we reminisced about Thanksgivings past, telling funny stories.  Stories were shared about dropping platters of various parts of the Thanksgiving meal (surprisingly there have been many) and Cheryl shared one…About three years ago, while taking the green bean casserole out of the oven, she dropped it.  After getting it all cleaned up, the meal was served – sans green beans of course.  While we all ate, everyone oooh-ed and ahh-ed about the meal as we usually do.  Then I shockingly chimed in with something sarcastic like, “It’s just too bad there isn’t any green bean casserole.”  Since then, Cheryl has made it her mission to make sure this dish was served because I LIKED IT SO MUCH.

Mystery solved!  And for my penitence I have to eat a spoonful of that darn casserole for the rest of my life. 

How is it Freaking December Already!?!?!

The months keep clicking off the calendar.  It’s hard to believe we are 29 days away from 2014…ugh!

Here’s this month’s calendar for November’s Calendar Challenge at The Kathryn Wheel.  I went outside my usual calendar style, and I’m pleasantly surprised.   Once it was done, filling in the dates was a cinch. 

There wasn’t a lot of time to work in the journal or the sketchbook this month, even with the week off, but I did manage to play around a bit…    

I spent a lot of time making some baby shower invitations for a friend...52 in all!  They turned out cute, and she really likes them, which makes me happy.

 
Happy December!  The countdown to 2014 has begun…

Hanging Around the House and an Old Spice

I’ve spent the last few months taking care of some small projects around the house.  Even though I really want new floors and a new kitchen, these small decorating and organization updates settled down my need to update the house while costing just pennies in comparison.  Well, it didn’t really satisfy my need to redo the house, but I’m telling myself that it does.  After finishing these little projects I realized they all had something to do with hanging stuff on the wall. 

I’ve lived in this house for almost 9 years – 9 years next month actually.  Other than a couple of pictures I brought with me, my walls have been mostly bare.  After a couple of years of contemplating it, I finally pulled it together and utilized the pictures from my travels for the art on the walls.  Shortly after my first trip to Italy, I blew up a photo of Venice onto giclee and hung it in the dining area.  To add to that, I had three giclees printed for the staircase.  They are also of Italy – Venice, Burano, and Manarola. 

 
In January of this year, I got this wild idea.  I found 12 of these great unpainted frames that I sprayed white.  I wanted to put some of my travel pictures in them and hang them in my guest room.  However, after going through the pictures I wanted to put up I had way more picture than frames.  So the project was put on hold until I figured out what to do.  I found the frames again and bought 12 more.  It took me until the summer to get the new ones painted and just as much time figuring out what pictures to put in them.  I had really wanted at least one of each place I’d been, but then some places, like South Africa and Italy, I couldn’t pick just one.  Anyhow, after enlarging some more in giclee, I finally narrowed it down.  BUT, the next obstacle was hanging these frames.  Being decorative there weren’t any straight lines to center and the thought of putting 24 nails into my wall didn’t sound good at all.  Then a miracle happened.  I found this picture hanging tape.  Holy cow! This stuff is brilliant!  So we laid out the frames on the landing, and I placed the pictures in where I wanted them.   

We blocked out a space on the wall and filled it in rather than lining up and centering these frames. 

  I think they turned out great.  There is enough room on either side for another column of pictures so I can add more as I travel.  

The guest bedroom which I had been working on since back in January is finally finished.  I added another giclee above the bed and a collage of Africa alone on one of the side walls. 

Excuse the wonky picture – the panoramic feature on my phone kind of warped the middle of it.

After putting up shelving in the office, my next goal with that room is to get rid of those ugly plastic rolling carts.  One of those carts has 6 drawers and 4 of them were filled with punches that I use for card making.
 The drawers were full so finding what I was looking for when I needed it wasn’t easy.  Ikea makes these metal bars to be used for hanging things up in the kitchen.  Come to find out, they hold paper punches rather well also.  Now they are all in a single file line with easy access.  

For the exact same reason, I headed downstairs to the kitchen. The ingredient side of my pantry had become unruly, and the spices were partly to blame. 

I had put up some little shelves and lazy-Lucy spinning wheels to have more room for the little spice bottles but I found myself frustrated when looking for something.  Half the time I couldn’t find what I needed even though I knew I had it.

I found this on Pinterest, and it said to use a mop holder to hang spices on cabinet doors.  I scoured the stores and the internet to find mop holders that looked like this with no luck.  I took some time off from looking and then about a month ago searched Amazon for door-hanging spice holders and found them!  They’re so cool!  I love that I can see all the spices in one fell swoop, plus it freed up some shelf space.
I found a few spices that I had doubles of – most likely because I couldn’t find the one I had in the cupboard and bought a new one.  However, I also must have inherited some because I found this bottle of ginger. 
Based on the description of use, this spice seems to be old.  Using the term “Oriental” to describe Asian food is quite outdated.  I can’t remember the last time I heard that term.  I guess it’s time to throw out your spices when they’re old enough to contain racial slurs. 

It’s been nice getting things off the floor and shelves and out of drawers.  Making things easily accessible on the wall has been so convenient.  Plus it took my mind of new floors and kitchens while I was working on the projects.  Now that I’m done though, I’m back to obsessing about my floors I’m afraid.

A First Thanksgiving Memory

Once November begins each year, most primary grade classrooms in the country spend some time teaching about Thanksgiving and integrating Thanksgiving related activities into the core curriculum.  Although the amount of time we spend on it has been greatly reduced since the focus has shifted to teaching to the standardized test – Thanksgiving isn’t on the test – it is important that, if anything, our kids understand the reason Thanksgiving is celebrated (well kind of now that Black Friday has seeped into Thursday’s holiday).  Anyhow, while reading a book to my kids about Thanksgiving last week, it reminded me of the time I visited the site of the first Thanksgiving.

When I lived in New England, I spent most Thanksgivings with friends as it was too far to fly home for such a short period of time.  However, my junior year of college, my parents flew east so we could spend Thanksgiving together.  After my last class before the long weekend, we drove south to the Cape. 

Plimoth Plantation was our destination for Thanksgiving that year.  It is a reenactment visitors’ center. 

In addition to the museum, you can’t go to Plymouth without visiting Plymouth Rock.  In fact, that is what I most looked forward to seeing. The rock itself has been moved from its supposed original site numerous times.  It is now housed in a memorial type structure with a viewing area. 

When we leaned over the railing to look at the rock – the rock that is such a famous US symbol – our eyes narrowed and our smiles dropped a little. 
“That’s it?” I asked.  The great rock was not great at all, in fact it was quite small in terms of a rock landing.    Later, we found out that this was just a piece of the rock.  Between moves and tourists chipping away at it, this is what is left for visitors to see. I was glad to learn that, according to past writings, the rock had been rather large – maybe 15 feet in length.  Rarely have I been disappointed after visiting a famous landmark, in this case though the symbol is much more impressive than the real thing.

Happy Thanksgiving! 

A Favorite Day

Today was “Pajama Day” at school.  It is one of my favorite days of the school year because I have an excuse to wear my pajamas outside of the house.  The kids are also pretty cute when they come dressed in their jammies. 

Even my naughtiest boy seemed less naughty today while wearing footy pajamas!

To add to the greatness, it was a minimum school day, on a Friday, before a whole week off for Thanksgiving.  I LOVE pajama day (and minimum days and Fridays and school breaks)!