I am totally looking forward to the upcoming four day weekend. I plan on:

• Spending time with my husband
• Eating some good food
• Visiting a spa for a little ‘me time’
• Reading some books on my Kindle
• Watching some movies/tv shows on my iPhone
• Taking pictures with my cameras (haven’t used my 5d since July and I feel like it’s time to play with it again)

I’ll be back on Monday night or Tuesday to share a weekend recap.

I’m currently sitting on the couch between my two sick cats (more about that in a moment) and my allergies (from the cats) are driving me nuts. I should get up and take my allergy meds, but both cats are sleeping happily next to me so I don’t want to disturb them.

Random thoughts from the past 5 days:

Monday – Work – Day one of the Learning Focused Training. I enjoyed the presenter – she was knowledgeable and entertaining to listen to. Loved Peter’s idea to have dinner at 5 Guys. That was a perfect way to end the day.

We gave the cats their first can of wet food in YEARS because Jasper was not eating much (probably because of the meds he was taking because of his cold) and they were very excited about this:

Tuesday – Work – Day Two of the Learning Focused Training. Started getting my classroom together. Lots of little things to do that day. Worked out with my trainer at the gym. I tried karate and kickboxing for the first time!

Wednesday – Work – Day Three – First day with students (I only had 10th grade): I finished setting up my Inspiration Wall:

This year I covered my desk with contact paper I found at Borders. I love it:

I also put together my GRE study schedule (another one):

Thursday – Day Four – first day with 11th and 12th grade students: This day was one big blur. Lots of lesson planning, Blackboard course creation. Made a new beef stew recipe! Peter picked up really tasty artisan bread rolls to have with dinner.

Today – Day Five – first day with all students. This…went…by…so…fast. It was insane. But a good kind of insane. I have such a great group of students this year. I’m really excited to try some new Learning Focused strategies with them. I worked out at the gym after work and was really happy to discover an iPod dock at the treadmill. Evidently I can plug in my iPhone and watch my movies and TV shows off of the larger screen. But the only two movies I have on on my iPhone right now are the first and second Twilight movies. Yes, I like Twilight – the books AND the movies, I’ll admit it. However, I’m not such a hardcore fan that I was willing to watch it at the gym. I thought somebody might laugh at me. So instead, I watched Oprah and Food Network.

Overall, I think this week went really well. I didn’t get as much studying done as I had hoped, but the first week of back to school is always a bit crazy so I’m planning to readjust a few things in my schedule next week to make sure everything gets done the way I’d like.

The 2010-2011 school year begins.

Students don’t arrive until Wednesday, but I am still excited.

I’m excited to participate in two days of Learning Focused training (LFS).

I’m excited to finish setting up my classroom.

I’m excited to hang this up.

I’m excited to simply begin.

Visiting 5 Staples + 2 Office Depots on Teacher Appreciation Day 2010 =

* 5 Binders
* 5 packs of college ruled filler paper (120 sheets each)
* 2 Lesson Plan books
* 5 Zipper Pouches
* 5 Red Pens
* 1 highlighter
* 5 Dry Erase Markers
* 1 Black Pen
* 4 Pencils
* 1 Free Sample of Lipstick (Mary Kay)
* 1 bag of Popcorn
* 1 piece of Hershey chocolate
* 8 Packs of NoteTabs
* 2 Packs of Super Sticky Post It notes
* 1 Multi Pack of Post Its
* 1 Book
* 2 bags

Total Cost: $0

I first read about the idea of creating a “Mosaic Wall” on Liz Tamanaha’s blog. This post explains how you can make your own.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how I want to set up my classroom this year and about the activities I want to do with my students. In the process of designing my own Mosaic Wall, which I am calling my Inspiration Wall, I came up with a neat way to decorate my room AND it gave me an idea for a first day of school activity with my students.

First, some views of my inspiration wall ( before I actually hang it up in my classroom):

I was really impressed with Jasmine. She didn’t bother the pictures once while I was laying them all out. She was more interested in sleeping.

I’ve come to realize that I am most inspired by my personal experiences while traveling so my Inspiration Wall contains photos of some of the places I’ve been in the past year: London, France, Portugal, Spain, Prague, Washington, D.C., Disney World, Bahamas, PAX East (Boston), Santa Fe, New Mexico, Alaska, and Hershey, PA.

Here’s a close-up on the individual squares.

One of my favorite blogs is written by Ali Edwards. She designed Photoshop brushes with some of her favorite creative mantras which happen to be mine as well. I used a black square with a phrase every so many images or so to break up the pictures.

Tomorrow the husband and I will be out early to Staples and Office Depot so I can get free swag (it’s the annual free for all otherwise known as Teacher Appreciation Day). and I plan to find something that will work to stick all 60 of these photos to my cinderblock walls so they won’t fall off or droop mid year.

In another post I’ll describe how I plan to use a similar activity with my students on the first day of school – I’m still working out the details.

I found this recipe for Ratatouille Soup in the September 2010 issue of Food Network magazine.

It ended up being the perfect recipe for tonight’s dinner since it’s been cloudy and rainy most of the day.

I started out with an onion:

I chopped it up

And then decided my pieces were much to big, so I dumped it in my chopper

Much better.

Next up was garlic, which I’ll admit has been in the fridge for a while. But it looked ok, so I used it. (Now that I look at the picture closely, I think it looks a little weird, but it tasted ok to me!)

I tossed that in the chopper too.

I sautéed the onion and garlic for a bit in the pot, and then chopped up the Eggplant, Zucchini, and Yellow Pepper in my chopper:

I poured everything into the pot

and then I laughed when I realized it looked like corn. My husband hates corn.

Next, I added the tomatoes.

Then I had a mini panic attack when I realized I forgot to buy broth.

Oops.

This saved the day.

My mother-in-law sent me home with several boxes of soup cubes after our last trip to Prague. I can’t read the Czech on them, but it conveniently includes a picture of the animal or vegetable represented – so in this case, a Cow – i.e. Beef broth*.

I used these to make the broth I was missing

While the soup was simmering, I made the Cheesy Bread. I used a loaf of Sour Dough that I picked up this morning.

It was simple to make. Just brush with olive oil, and add Salt, Pepper, Herbes de Provence, and add a slice of Provolone cheese:

Stick it under the broiler for a few minutes until the Cheese is nice and gooey.

Here’s the finished result:

Recipe Rating: It’s a keeper!

Why:  It was really quite good and as the husband and I aren’t good about eating veggies, this was the perfect meal to pack lots of veggies in without us really noticing. I did make a point of using the immersion blender instead of just blending half of the soup in a blender. That was for two reasons: 1) I had a feeling I would make a HUGE mess pouring the soup back and forth and 2) We prefer smoother soups when it comes to vegetables, probably so we don’t think so much about what we are eating!

* I realized while typing this that I actually should have used Vegetable or Chicken broth. For some reason I looked at the box of soup cubes, which prominently featured a cow, and thought “CHICKEN!”. No idea why I thought this. Perhaps I was still having that mini panic attack about missing the broth in the first place. I didn’t notice anything strange when it ended up being a brown color either. Sigh. I will become a more observant cook! I don’t think it changed the taste too much in any event.

It’s much too soon to tell.

Meet my garden.

It has looked so sad for the longest time. After I worked out, I looked up to the sky and noticed that it was very overcast. Grey and cloudy, not as hot as it has been, but at the same time it wasn’t raining either. I decided that was a sign that it was time for me to fix up my garden.

I started by picking out two hanging plants. These are my favorite plants because you don’t have to weed or dig or anything. Just plop them on the rack and they are all set.

But it wouldn’t be a garden if I didn’t plant actual flowers. Here are a few I decided on:

And the finished product (with assorted lawn ornaments strategically placed (ok I just plopped them):

Every year the hubby and I try to pick a new travel destination to celebrate our anniversary.

We were married in 2006 in Sedona, Arizona. So while technically this wasn’t really an anniversary trip, it was the first place we visited new together while married!

In 2007, it was my turn to pick a destination (we decided we’d alternate years), and I chose Savannah, Georgia – a new to both of us location.

In 2008, we headed to Boston, Peter’s pick. I had never been, but Peter visited once for a work-related trip. We stayed at a beautiful hotel that featured a Chocolate Buffet and saw a ball game:

In 2009 I decided it was time for us to head somewhere tropical, and we spent a week in Bermuda. I visited once the year before while cruising with Mom and read about amazing cottages on stilts over water. I knew we had to visit!

This year, 2010, we headed to Paradise Island in the Bahamas to stay at Atlantis! This was new for both of us. Well technically, as I had been to Nassau on a cruise once with Mom but only for a few hours. I had never been to Paradise Island though.

In Part 2 I’ll share pictures from our Atlantis adventure!

That’s right, we are taking the plunge.

The hubby and I are getting iPhone4s.

I am totally excited about this.

We have looked at these since they first came out. But we are on T-Mobile and the iPhone is only offered by AT&T (you can run an unlocked version on T-Mo but then you can’t take advantage of the 3g speeds and that’s kind of the whole point).  And then there was the monthly plans – more than what we were paying. I learned early this year from a friend of mine that as an educator I am eligible for a discount on the monthly plan. That brings the plan much closer to what we are currently paying. Yesterday I discovered that the discount on the family plan brings us down below what we are paying so that sold it for me.

I decided to get the hubby an Apple gift card for our wedding anniversary yesterday as I wasn’t able to get an actual phone. That’s ok as we both prefer to usually wait a bit after a new launch so the kinks get worked out (hopefully the dropped calls because of how you hold it will get resolved?).

In the meantime, I’m browsing the App Store and keep having the ‘OMG, what have I been missing?!’ feeling.

Here are a few apps that I know I will get to start:

There seems to be an app for pretty much anything. While a few are free, I’m noticing that most of the good looking ones are not. I’m sure I will have to set myself a monthly app budget!