Project Life: Week 33

Hi everyone :)

It’s been a ‘bitsa’ week this week… bits of this and bits of that!  All in all I’m feeling quite good about it and somewhere further along my checklist of things that I want and need to get done.

Here’s an overview of my week:

It was officially Toby’s adoption anniversary on Monday (13th) and a lovely card arrived from his Grandma.  It was addressed to ‘Master Toby Honig’ and he was super keen to get it into his mouth!!  Thankfully I managed to keep it safe as Mum had put a lot of work into it!

I’m also loving TV on Demand at the moment.  Quite often I miss things I’ve been wanting to see due to work and picking up Mikayla so it’s great to have the ability to be able to watch the shows I’ve missed on demand.  Krystal told me about a new show called Hart of Dixie which she thought I might like but unfortunately it’s on at a really inconvenient time for me so I’ve been watching it on demand.

Here’s a better look at the start of the week: The Project Life pendant arrived on Monday and it’s really nice.  I’ve been wearing it most days at school and it’s had quite a few comments… including one from Dan who thought it had something to do with the Olympics!

I also included some photos from my Log your Memory project as I realised I’d never really shown them before.  I’m so pleased that my doll and dressing table have found a place in my Project Life album.

Sue made the really nice card using Tim Holtz embossing diffusers.  They are really cool to work with!!!

We’ve been working hard in Room 4 with lots of on-task behaviour thanks to the class dojo system we’re using!  We also finished reading The BFG this week so on Friday we turned our classroom into a movie theatre with tarpaulins over the windows and watched the DVD.

Here’s the second half of the week:

On Friday a few of my kids told me that I was really COOL… so I responded that YES I am indeed a very cool person.  They all started laughing uproariously and I suddenly realised that there was more to it than I thought!  After school I was on duty and I overheard some kids talking about the word cool and the fact that apparently it now means: Constipated, Overweight, Old Lady… and here was me thinking it was a compliment!

Last night I got busy cleaning, de-cluttering, vacuuming and dusting my lounge… and by midnight it was looking stunning!  Toby spent quite a lot of time chasing, barking and trying to attack the vacuum and then today he’s spent most of the day pulling his toys out of the basket!  He’s now worn himself out and is snuggled up on the sofa beside me enjoying the warmth of the fire.

Here’s my creative piece for the week:

It hasn’t photographed very well today as it’s so overcast here it’s ridiculous!  The background is actually rusty colours with a bit of green… but in the photo it looks really brown.  I felt like using some bling and brads this week and then just added the Week 33 in white so that it really stands out.

I’ve been viewing some cool foodie blogs over the weekend and I’ve discovered a recipe for Molten Lava Chocolate Cakes (little individual ones):

I’ve decided to give them a go because what could be nicer for dessert on a cold winter evening than warm chocolate cake with an oozy gooey filling???  If you’d like to check out the recipe you can find it here.

I hope you’ve all had a wonderful weekend and that your Sunday night is relaxing xx

Log your Memory: Weeks 31 and 32

Hi everyone :)

Week 31

I had a bit of a struggle with the last prompt in the food section.  It was all about your dining table… and the reality is that we hardly ever eat at our table.  Usually it’s got Mikayla’s tech drawings or school stuff on it… but hardly ever food!

When the girls were smaller we always ate at the dining table.  I’d cook and the girls would take turns setting the table, we’d eat and then I’d clear everything away.  I started thinking about when it actually was that we stopped eating at the table and realised it was when the girls were both at high school and we’d usually eat sitting around the coffee table (mine is really big… but more on that soon!)

Here’s my layout for the prompt:

Mum, Dad and both of my sister’s families still eat at the table but the girls and I really don’t.  Now that it’s just Mikayla at home I quite often have dinner by myself because she’s at work… and I actually feel a bit uncomfortable sitting at the table by myself.  

I do love sitting at a table when I’m having a meal with friends… or going out for dinner… but I really LOVE eating outdoors!  In summer we’ll often eat at the BBQ table and we do actually do quite a lot of picnics for both lunch and dinner.

When it comes to family events we’d be lucky to find a table big enough for us all to sit around so it’s just as well we all enjoy a more relaxed style of entertaining!

Week 32

The Log your Memory prompts for August all focus on ‘personal space’.  To get things started there were a few questions about collections and furniture and I realised that I’ve actually been collecting specific things for quite a long time.

I really love old wooden furniture… no glass and modular steel for this girl! LOL

Here’s my layout:

My dressing table could tell you a few stories!!!  When I was little I used to go and stay with Nana and Granny.  They both lost their husbands within a year of each other and since Granny’s kids (my Mum and her brothers) were all leaving home Nana went to live at Granny’s house.  The dressing table belonged to Nana and we used to spend lots of time sitting in her room chatting without Granny around. 

One day we were in her room and she produced a box of chocolates that someone had given her.  Nana and I sat their chatting and gorging on chocolates all afternoon and then when dinner time came we weren’t hungry at all and Granny hit the roof!  She confiscated most of Nana’s chocolates off her. 

I say ‘most’ because we actually had another secret little stash (my Nana was pretty cool!)  We decided to be pro-active just in case Granny tried another raid so we taped chocolates (the wrapped up kind) to the bottom of Nana’s drawers.  Granny never found them!!!

Granny gave me Nana’s set of drawers when she moved into a rest home and the first thing I did was check under the drawers.  There were no chocolates but there WAS evidence of tape marks from where they had been!

Since then my dressing table has been restored and it’s really lovely.  I’ve also been lucky enough to find a tall boy that matches in fairly well, as well as a bed frame with headboard and footboard too!

Sometimes I see lovely wooden bedroom furniture for sale but I’ve never been tempted to buy it because that dressing table holds far too many memories and stories for me to ever replace it… I’m a bit sentimental like that!

So that’s it for this post.  I hope you’re all having a wonderful week xx

Project Life: Week 32 + 2 inserts

Hi everyone :)

As you may have guessed by the two inserts it’s been a VERY BIG week here.  Mostly it’s all school stuff but it sure did make the week go fast!

Here’s an overview of this week:

My week started off with the school Olympics day… and boy did we have fun!  There were 23 events… 46 countries and everyone from students, teachers, parents and support staff were involved.  Carey (the ICT teacher) took nearly 1000 photos so I decided to do an insert of the games.  Apart from the first couple of photos I only chose ones that featured my kids.  Here’s the first side:

And here’s the second:

The kids had a real blast and there were lots of nice comments about the medals I made for the prize giving.  I’ve included a photo of them in my pages but here’s a close-up view:

Getting back to the start of the week… I got an email from Brenda asking if I’d read the Craft House newsletter… and it’s just as well she asked because I’d missed the bit she wanted me to see… I WON the Project Life giveaway from SENZ!  Super happy about that and a big thank you to Mary, Beverley and David for making my day!

Here’s the first half of my week:

My Olympic Games display wall is coming along really well and we’ve had lots of positive comments about it from other teachers!  The kids have been producing top-notch work to put on the wall… awesome!

We spent a lesson looking at the official London mascots and then we started making our own mascots to represent New Zealand.  The kids were really into the whole idea and produced some great work for our wall… and then we made our final mascot using Photoshop which the kids really loved.  Here’s what we came up with:

It was also Wendy’s birthday this week and she normally makes us all a special afternoon tea when it’s our birthdays so I decided to do something nice for her.   We had carrot cake cupcakes with pretty sprinkles on them for afternoon tea at our team meeting… YUM!

The second half of the week has been just as busy:

We had an interschool winter sports afternoon with another school and the powhiri was pretty awesome!  Our school band also performed for the first time and I have to say that these kids are REALLY talented!

This weekend marks the official ‘adoption anniversary’ of Mr Toby!  Auntie Esther and Uncle James sent him a gorgeous book called “All dogs have ADHD” and after reading the book (which also has wonderful photos) I have to agree that Toby probably does have ADHD!

We were originally going to have an adoption party for Toby on Saturday but there was a few hiccups along with all the good stuff this week so we’ve decided to wait until it gets a bit warmer and all the winter sports are done.  It’s hard to believe that my little boy is so grown up! LOL

Since we weren’t ‘partying’ Toby and I went to Hamilton to visit Krystal instead.  He had a wonderful play with all the other ‘kids’ at the dog park and then he had a big sleep in the car while Krystal and I did some retail therapy… it turned out to be a fabulous day.

As I mentioned earlier there are two inserts this week.  The second one is all about our Matariki celebrations at school which happened on Friday afternoon/evening.  We were allowed to take our classes through for a look after lunch and I’m glad we did because I’d have never gotten photos later as the hall was so packed with parents, grandparents and other visitors.

Here’s a look at the front of the insert:

And here’s the second side:

LOTS of fabulous artwork on display and by the time I came in from doing duty on Friday afternoon a LOT of those cakes had already been sold!

To finish off I’ve got my little piece of creativity for the week.  I decided to do a ‘Toby’ piece of art to mark his adoption:

So that’s been my week!  Packed full of lots of different things.

I hope you’re all enjoying what’s left of the weekend and I’ll be back on Wednesday with a long-overdue update of Log your Memory. 

Have a great week everyone xxx

Project Life: Week 31

Hi everyone :)

This week has been really good… and I’ve had an extremely productive weekend!  I’ve spent a lot of time in the newly cleaned (and still clean!) craft room using the Cameo to cut out things for school… and I’m currently working on completing 39 medals for tomorrow’s Olympic Games at school!

At the beginning of this week Mikayla took me out for dinner for the first time.  She bought tickets from her friend Jack as he was raising money for the Lakes High ball.  We had pretty good meals at Nando’s and the food came out really quickly!

We had the sofa bed pulled out on Tuesday and Mikayla and Toby snuggled up… had play fights and just generally acted like kids while I got out my camera.

I got a really wonderful email from one of my night class ladies that I included in this weeks pages too as it made me feel really appreciated as a teacher.  Thanks Chris for the email xx

At school we’ve been busy finishing off our Matariki cloak to go in the exhibition for next Friday.  It’s almost done now and the kids ‘zentangle’ feathers look really amazing now they’ve been died and cut out.

I also started using a new behaviour management idea in class that another teacher told me about.  It’s called Class DoJo and it’s having a really positive effect on the kids!

On Thursday night we had another night class and the ladies were all super impressed with the craft room… they really couldn’t believe how much space there was!

More school stuff… I’ve been reading my class The BFG and they’re really loving it.  When we finish the book we’ll watch the movie and then compare them.  I highly recommend it as a great story for kids and adults alike!

We’ve gone Olympics crazy at school this term and after seeing all the bunting around London we’ve decided to make our own for the classroom.  The kids have all designed a piece of bunting using their initials and we’re now working on our ‘good copies’.

On Saturday I was up super early (5.30am) so I got straight into making the title for my classroom display.  It’s looking really great now and I’m looking forward to getting it all up on the wall tomorrow afternoon.

I’ve also been working on creating 39 medals for our school Olympics tomorrow.  I hit a snag yesterday afternoon and since it was really cold I decided to have a mid-afternoon bath.  The best part was that by the time I’d finished in the bath I was lovely and warm AND I’d worked out how to finish off the project!

Keeping with the Olympic theme this week I cut out an Olympic torch with flames using my Cameo and then added a bit of bling. 

This afternoon has been really productive too… down at the launderette!  I managed to get all my towels and work clothes washed and dried along with my sheets… and as a BIG bonus I was able to get the mink blankets of the sofa and my bed washed and dried too!  The smell simply divine now and look like they’re brand new again!  PLUS while I was doing all the laundry I had a roast cooking in the oven so I’m feeling a little like a domestic goddess again LOL

So that’s been my week… I hope you’ve all had a great week and weekend and that you’re all safe and happy :) 

Thanks for visiting my little corner of the net xx