Pinned/Did/Done 6/28

Balsamic Roasted Potatoes. The recipe also calls for asparagus but I didn't have any. These were good. Since there were leftovers, I heated them up the next day and they had lost the balsamic taste completely. You might need to add more if that's the case. But it's a good alternative to just olive oil or garlic, if you're looking for a new flavor for potatoes.

Vegan Banana Bread. I made this in muffin tins and froze them. It makes about 18 muffins and bakes at the same temperature for about 15 minutes. THEY WERE FANTASTIC. This will be a go-to recipe for me.

Lactation cookies. I made the dough, scooped it onto trays, froze it, and then put them into ziploc bags for later. I'll bake them when I need them. It seems promising. I also made a double batch of my favorite oatmeal cookies, froze the dough, and will bake them at some point. I plan to keep Scott away from the lactation cookies by telling him they have twice as many calories as regular cookies (which, they likely do).

Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Gnocchi. I like quick gnocchi dinners that I can just make on the stove in the summer, so roasting the vegetables kind of ruined that part. This was good, though. I prefer my eggplant breaded, in a parmesan-style, but it did the job and didn't take long to make.

Steel Cut Oats in the Instant Pot. Confession: we have a knock-off Instant Pot. Scott bought it to cook different meats and whatnot for himself while he was in charge of his own meal-planning this past winter in Wyoming. So the instructions on a lot of Instant Pot recipes don't always correspond to ours (It's a Farberware one). For this one, I followed the ingredient directions and just put it on for 30 minutes. It worked beautifully and I didn't seal in the steam to release it at the end. The oats just absorbed all the water, a lot like how a rice cooker would. My favorite part was that steel cut oats also take about 30 minutes on the stove, but they ALWAYS stick to the pan and make a mess. These came right out with no clean-up time.

Chicken Fried Rice in the Instant Pot. This came together really easily and I liked that you didn't have to use leftover rice. I will say that it needed more seasoning/soy sauce, so if you have go-to cocktail of seasoning for Asian food, use it. The method works really well if you like chicken fried rice. I left out the egg because I always pick it out anyway.

Blueberry Baked Oatmeal Muffin Cups.
These were really good as well.  I have a thing for oatmeal, I know. Reheating with some maple syrup makes a great snack or breakfast. I froze a few ziploc bags of these so we'll see how they hold up.

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Speaking of things you see on Pinterest, but would hopefully never try yourself...this is the most awful thing I've seen in awhile.

I was actually kind of horrified by it. 

What have you pinned and tried out lately? 

I'm trying to make good use of meal-planning again, so hopefully I'll have more to report on in the second half of 2018.

Pinned.Did.Done (S&T 5/11)

Garlic Parmesan Halibut.  This was the first way we ever had halibut in Alaska. It's not healthy but it's tasty. I made it a few weeks ago when Scott came home with halibut from Costco.

Baked Peanut Butter Cup Oatmeal.  This was good. Out of all the baked oatmeals I've made, I'd go with this.

One-Pan Sausage and Veggies. LOVED this. I'll probably make it often from here on out. Scott despises chicken sausage but I find it solves my problem of "need more protein" in a very practical way. Regular chicken gets old pretty quickly.

Vegetarian Chow Mein. I don't even remember if I tried this. I made it. Scott loved it. Something about it didn't appeal to me though once it was done.

Chili Lime Shrimp Tacos. I just did the shrimp part, and didn't make them into tacos. It was fine. I'm always looking for new ways to cook shrimp but, like any red-blooded American, I prefer my shrimp deep-fried and breaded.

Baked Pesto Chicken. Easy and quick. And i usually have these ingredients on hand.

Asparagus, Tomato, and Feta Salad. Tasty enough to repeat. I made it a month ago and I made it this week. VERY good.

Cilantro-Lime Black Bean and Shrimp and Rice. This was good. I ate around the shrimp because I really think I have an aversion to seafood sometimes but the rice was tasty.

One Bowl Vegan Chocolate Cake. THIS WAS SO GOOD. I don't know why anyone would ever make a "regular" chocolate cake after they try this one. It stayed moist in the fridge for days. I didn't make the icing vegan because seriously now...but I would do a peanut butter icing next time. This will be my go to whenever I need a chocolate cake from here on out.

Coffee Cake Doughnuts. These were really good. After days on end of The Great British Baking Show* I wanted to make doughnuts. I dug out that doughnut pan I just had to have five years ago...I've used it three times now in five years...and went to work. We ate them all in one day.

Alright. That's what I've Pinned and Done in the last month or so.

What's your favorite Pinterest recipe lately???

*The Great British Bake-Off is the name of the show as it airs in the U.K. In America, it's called The Great British Baking Show because Pillsbury (makers of all things processed) has trademarked the term "bake-off", and therefore it cannot be used on a t.v. show (be it on PBS or Netflix) that Pillsbury does not own. Gag, right?

Pinned, Did, Done 3/29

Extreme Cookies and Cream Oreo Cake (pin) I made this for Scott's birthday in November. I liked it a lot but would probably take the frosting and the cookie part and use a boxed mix next time. It's just easier and you're guaranteed a moist cake.

5-Ingredient Tomato Butter Sauce (pin) I've made this several times in the last few months. I use a can of crushed tomatoes. Very tasty and leftovers keep well in the fridge. We put it over zoodles and use lots of breadcrumbs.

Addictive Spiced Nuts (pin) Unbelievably tasty. Good thing nuts are expensive or I would make these all the time.


Healthy No-Bake Chocolate Cookies (pin) These taste like health food. I mean, it's not a bad taste but it's like eating a bowl of oatmeal (and that's saying something because my sweet tooth is not nearly as intense as it used to be.)

Greek Quinoa Bowls (pin) An easy dinner. You could add chicken to make it more filling but I thought it was good on its own. I roasted the chickpeas first.

45 Minute Cinnamon Rolls (pin) Very good! Easy and do-able too! Especially for someone like me who doesn't mess with yeast that much.

Broccoli Cheddar Soup (pin) This was okay. I wasn't overly impressed, but it worked as a decent dinner.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Mug Cake (pin) I've made these twice in the last week because Scott often requests dessert. It's good. I like crispy and chewy cookies and this is not like that but it serves its purpose and is a good one as far as mug cakes go.

What have you pinned (and done) lately?

Linking up with Jenn!

Pinterest Tricks That (Really) Do Work in the Classroom

These are things I have used and will continue to use. I found them on Pinterest (clearly), so the links will take you to the pins.

This list of Beginning of the Year Procedures, so you don't forget to go over something. Checklists are great for that first week.

This Non-Fiction Notes strategy. I don't have it made into an anchor chart, but I have it on a piece of paper I project and the students copy it down. I should make it into a form for this coming year...
I use it for articles, partner-reading, and videos. You can give any video a purpose by making them accountable for completing this task at the end. Sometimes BrainPop can just explain it better than I can, you know?

What Does My Grade Mean?  I've made this into a handout for parents and students and also have one to project on the board as I hand back tests. Kids always want As (uh, so do the parents) but sometimes they (students and parents) don't get that a B or C is fine, because learning is the goal. Anyway, we still do letter grades in 4th and 5th grade in my district but it's a jump from the standards-based grades that they are used to in the primary grades. This is a handy explanation.

I love this colorful bulletin board display. It's perfect for hanging work and anchor charts and easy to change things out often. I would HIGHLY recommend making one if you have the wall space. The picture of mine is in the graphic at the top of the post.

For Open House/Meet the Teacher Night, I used cardboard boxes with labels to have the kids sort their own supplies. It was amazing. Here's a picture of mine.

I used this substitute form when I taught 2nd grade. Currently, my district provides one for the sub so I don't make them fill out two.

I did this highlighter trick next to the turn-in box. It worked two years ago, and didn't work well with this last group I had. I'll probably try it again this coming year.

I did this math trick with 4th graders. It works well with inquisitive kids.

And Flocabulary has some very engaging songs/videos for older kids. I did not find this on Pinterest, but I pinned it.

Why I wouldn't use these Pinterest "tricks" in my classroom

First, the clip chart. I don't like clip charts and I don't use them. I could write an entire chapter on the "why" of this, but to keep it short: they didn't work for me. 

1. Every time a student does something good or not good, you tell them to clip up or clip down. That is dozens of times a day you are breaking instruction or pausing in your train of thought to tell a student to clip up or clip down. 

2. These students are getting up out of their seats, breaking their path of learning, to clip up or clip down. It's distracting for everyone. 

I took a class a few months ago and someone suggested a clip chart as a great method of student accountability and everyone ooed and awed and I thought Is this 2006? 

I feel like this paper plate version would fall apart by mid-September, especially if the students are the ones moving the clips. 

I really do have many thoughts on management systems because I've used some really bad ones and some really good ones. It's trial and error every year with each new group of kids. But I will be elaborating on this in the future. 

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I can't even with this. Maybe in a center-based learning primary school. Maybe in preschool. I can't even imagine what would happen if I set something like this up (if I were allowed to...I wouldn't be allowed to).

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I have a homework folder system too. It does not look like this. 

I would like to know who has the wall space for this kind of system. It looks like they probably have 30 folders up there. I could think of 30 other things to use that space for. Also, how are they attached? I feel like they would fall down. 

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Speaking of homework turn-in, I'm all about listing reminders next to the turn-in tray. However, if you put your reminder on the bottom of the tray, the only student who sees it will be the first one to turn in their work. The first one to turn in their work either doesn't need the reminders because they are incredibly on top of things, or they rushed through it and won't read the reminders anyway. It's like a law of physics. 

As for the clip part (what is it with teachers and clips?), I've never tried it. I initially think it may only work if you're doing one assignment turned in at a time, but maybe you could tweak it to work for you. You'd have to train the kids well, though, on how to use it. 

And we need to consider that the source of the above picture is Buzzfeed (worthless.com when it comes to teaching ideas) and the source of the idea is photobucket. I give that the side-eye. 

But I have seen this in classrooms before, so maybe it does work?

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Obviously, what I've been doing with my spare time is perusing Pinterest and picking out all of the stuff I would never do or use. Stay tuned for a list of Pinterest tricks I would definitely use! I've been writing Pinned It/Did It posts for years now anyway.

Wednesday Things.

This is the truest thing I've ever read.

I return carts simply because I don't want people judging me. Though they probably wouldn't return a cart themselves.

This cat looks SO happy and peaceful. It's what we all aspire to, right?

#forever

The dog will judge you for that too. 

Perfect for a duck hunter like my husband. 

Many of these are just screenshots, but some can be found on my Pinterest board. 

Cleaning out my bookmarks

I have way too many things bookmarked.

Cleaning out those links, here's some things worth sharing.

Let's start with pictures.

I love this shirt and I would wear it often.  I think that's my favorite movie.

This is something that I think about almost every time I leave the house. Not that I would worry about becoming a zombie, but if I'm stuck in the apocalypse, I better be wearing something practical. Is that weird? Like, I have 3 pairs of older sneakers in a tub in the basement because, even though I don't use them anymore, I think that it'd be nice to have extra serviceable shoes around when everything goes south.

Jana posted this the other day. 27 Sweary Office Products and I immediately sent the link to my coworker. I don't know what that says about me.

This article about a woman who writes a response to why she won't upgrade her wedding ring.
I have to say that upgrading wedding rings is a pet peeve of mine. Unless you don't have a ring and get one later or there's some kind of extenuating circumstances, why would you not WANT to keep the ring that symbolized so much from that time in your life? I wouldn't be able to give mine up simply because it's been with me through some very rough times in the last 7 years. It's seen that history with me, and it's a reminder of how far we've come. I kind of think of it as an evolving, living thing that represents everything we've gone through in the last, again, 7 years.
When people upgrade just to upgrade, I want to gag. Hashtag priorities, amIright?

This is a TED Talk from a few years ago, but I saw it a few weeks ago. It's about why dieting doesn't work. If you're struggling, it's worth a listen.

As someone who has a home-sales business and has a regular job (I'll steer away from the word "real" here), I still don't know how I feel about this. I think I bookmarked it because I wanted to agree or disagree but the whole thing is kind of an annoying piece of self-justification (is that a word?) and I don't feel like thinking about it. Thoughts? It's about whether or not MLM businesses and the like are real businesses.

I might have to make this a regular blog feature. I have so many things bookmarked because I, obviously, had plans to share them but never did.

Pinteresty Things

I found myself staying up late last week, watching Netflix, and browsing Pinterest. I almost never do this anymore, oddly, but these are some things I found and some I'm re-sharing because they're too great to only have looked at once.

A Friday Night Lights shirt. This would be in the mail, on its way to me, if I weren't too lazy to dig out my wallet at 11pm and order it.

Funny in a sad way.

I've been meaning to try butter extract. Maybe it's the secret ingredient here..

I've shared this before...see if you get it the first time.

And this never fails to make me laugh.

Linking up with Jenn!

More Teacher (Non) Hacks

I found a two more Buzzfeed articles that insist they have hacks for teachers. 

Here's the first teacher non-hack post I did awhile back.

The first one is called "Cheap and Ingenious Ways to Have the Best Classroom Ever".

Let's get started.

#3 and #4.  I'm not buying chevron material and crafting benches out of crates. Kids are gross and they'll get them dirty. Also, if you teach 2nd grade or above, kids can't sit on the edge of a crate. It's cheap plastic with no support underneath.

#6. You can separate your community art supplies by color, type, and size all you want. They're going to get mixed up and messy because children. My students all have their own pencil boxes with their own stuff. I run a classroom based on capitalism. It's much easier to sort out the supplies they bring, make up for deficits myself (i.e. give them what they need), and keep everything separate. 

#7. Use tin cans for supply caddies. I bought caddies for $7 each at Wal-Mart. They're much nicer than a pile of tin cans. I did try this once and ended up not liking how they turned out. Buying cheap little pails or containers is the better route to go.

#9. Any school worth its salt will provide you with an easel if you teach the primary grades. I wouldn't even know how to go about building one, let alone make it look like I didn't try to build it.

#10. This will only work if they're your books on your personal shelf. Of course no one will remember to put them back in the correct location.

#12.  Have I ranted about these No Name signs yet? They are impractical because there's always more papers than clips and no one will look at it anyway. Side note: This sign hurts my eyes. Too many patterns.

#15. These crates will be knocked over by noon.

#16. Using a hook isn't that hard.  I solved the "stuff on the floor problem" by holding the students accountable for picking up their own things. They learn to do it if you ask them to enough times.

#21. I knew my friend had tried this so I sent her a text about it as soon as I read the article.

#23. I'm not going to build my own furniture. I'm just not. 

#26. I want to like this idea, but I want people to stop telling me to do things with fabric. 

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The next "article". Or rather, just a collection of photos, was written by this guy who believes children are our future. But he hasn't written anything else about education and he doesn't know how to construct an actual sentence.

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Have you seen anything out there lately that you know would just never work in a classroom? Pinterest is full of as many bad ideas as it is good ideas.

Wednesday Inspiration

I have a 3-day week and Wednesday is STILL difficult. How can that be???

If you didn't see yesterday's video about the power of "yet", that can be inspiring too.

Pinteresty Things

My last Pinterest post was in June. It's time.

+Easy Sheet Pan Breakfast Pizza.  Delicious. We ate it on Christmas.

+Molasses Snickerdoodles. I also made these for Christmas.  Amazing.

+Tomato, Cucumber, and Avocado Salad. I think I made this last summer.  It was okay. I don't really remember it.  I like the grape/avocado/cucumber one better.

+Truly Crispy Oven-Baked Wings.  They really are crispy.  This works very well.

+One-Pot Lasagna Soup. I made this during our little snowstorm last week and didn't have ricotta or tomato paste, so I subbed in a bit of cream cheese and some extra marinara.  I almost used turkey stock but that seemed too adventurous so I made broth with chicken bouillon instead. It was tasty, but would definitely be better with (lots of) ricotta.

+Panda Express-Style Orange Chicken.  Eh. I didn't like it. I've made crockpot orange chicken before too and didn't like that, so maybe it's me.  Scott loved it.

And a few funny things:

+How an introvert makes a phone call. Basically they (I) dread it all day and start to sweat and procrastinate and are secretly relieved when they get a voicemail.  Since Scott's a commander now, I'm a key caller.  Worst nightmare realized. I get to randomly call people I've never met and chat with them and/or pass along information.

The "your" hurts my heart a little bit. You get the idea.

These are Schmidt quotes turned into motivational posters.  I'm planning on printing these and hanging them behind my desk at school.

Linking up with Jenn!

A new blog name and some funny stuff

I always knew a new blog name would be coming.  I just didn’t know when necessarily and I’m notoriously bad at naming things. More importantly, I wanted the name to actually mean something. If you've been around for more than a few weeks, you'll know that this name is certainly meaningful to me.

I’m not sure what to make of my blog most days.  It’s not a married life blog. It’s not a food blog. It’s (certainly) not a fashion blog. It’s just my blog.  So I started looking for words that encompass “me”.  Well, it took awhile. I couldn’t settle on anything.  I tossed some ideas around one day while I was sitting in traffic. I wanted something that was familiar to me, yet didn't label me as a certain type of blogger.

So this will be familiar to you, familiar to me, and I think will allow me to do all the stuff and things I want to with this space. Also, I bought my domain after FIVE years of blogging. So, yay me.

And let's thank Angi because her help is invaluable and I always seem to come up with these crazy ideas on Fridays and she always has everything done for me by Sundays. She's ridiculously good at design and you should ask her to reopen both her Etsy shop and her blog as soon as possible. 

So, onward and upward, yes?

Because it's Monday.

Because I have a class to take this week on "document-based questions, grades 3-6".

Because we are nearing the end of this deployment. I feel weird calling it a deployment.  5 months rotating around Europe does not a deployment make, you know?

Because there have been some funny ones on Pinterest lately.

 Like, I hate him. But still.  I kinda like him.  This is a motto everyone should live by.

If you're falling into the comparison trap, think of this.

Amazon Prime has been my drug of choice lately. 

I'm almost done with Grimm and I don't like the feeling.

With back-to-school season comes the judging of font choices.  

Someone commented on this with "I want to know who pulled off that lie with a straight face".  

I can't stop laughing. 

 All pins can be found on my Pinterest board. 

Pinned. Did. Done. 6/23

I'm reserving the right to adopt a summer posting schedule because why not? There will still be a recipe every week, but it'll be posted...whenever.  I was actually too busy reading this weekend to write any blog posts, and I suppose that isn't a terrible problem to have.  

Well, I suppose these posts will be happening every 6 months now.

If you want to see past Pinterest posts, click on "Pinned It/Did It" on the sidebar cloud.

I go to that cloud when I'm looking for things on my own blog.  It's different from THE cloud, but it's a cloud nonetheless.

+Curried Chickpeas.  I wanted to like this but I didn't.  It was kind of sour.

+Perfect vegan pancakes.  I'm don't eat vegan and don't proclaim to want to try.  In fact, I un-veganed these.  I saw the recipe on a blog and thought it seemed simple enough, and I made them in my cast iron skillet, as pancakes do not cook well in our stainless steel pans.  They were AMAZING.  In fact, I can see myself easily making a batch every weekend so I can eat them for breakfast all week.  I used coconut milk for the non-dairy milk (you could use regular milk) and then one egg in place of the flax/water combination.

+Pumpkin PB Dog Treats.  One day I was on the way back from the store when I realized I'd forgotten to buy t-r-e-a-t-s.  I wasn't driving back and we were almost out, so I pulled up this recipe and put all that leftover pumpkin in the freezer to use.  This makes a ton, depending how small you cut them.  I used a pizza cutter to slice the dough into Cheeze-it-style squares.  The dogs love these treats and go nuts for them.  I'll keep making them.  A batch makes a giant Ziploc bagful and lasts about 3 weeks around here. Just store them in the fridge.

+Microwave Hummus.  I don't have much luck with homemade hummus.  I just don't like it I guess.  This wasn't overly impressive to me.  It's a shame.  I'd like to be able to enjoy homemade hummus the way I enjoy the preservative-laden store-bought kind.  Do you have any hummus secrets?  I'm working on a recipe for next week.

+Quinoa Enchilada Casserole.  Very tasty.  I think you should try this for a quick, healthy dinner. As long as you have quinoa on hand, it's a cheap meal.  You could add meat to bulk it up too.

+Quinoa Pizza Bites.  I made a recipe a few years ago and it was surprisingly good.  I thought, for some reason, that this was that recipe.  It was not.  This recipe wasn't very good.  Scott liked it, more or less, but he hadn't had the first one.  This was dry and flavorless.  Make this quinoa pizza-bite recipe instead.

I haven't been plowing through my Pinterest boards the way I used to, but I do intend on getting back on track soon.  I'm "freezer-cooking" these days, because I intend to fill up the deep-freeze with soups, crockpot meals, and sauces this summer.  It'd be really nice to go into August (and school) with food that's ready-to-eat.