Tay and Des and Kitties

Valentine's Art

2012-01-30T16:59:00.000-08:00

Here's some more Valentine's "art." I found some cool frames from various stores and the back of my closet and painted them silver a while ago. I decided to switch out the pictures in them with some holiday-appropriate artwork.

I started with some pages of an old textbook entitled "Physical Education in the Elementary School" from 1951 that I found at the thrift store. I used pages that had these great songs on them, like "Hot Cross Buns" and "Push the Business On" and "Gustaf's Skoal." Don't you remember singing these in your PE class? Classics.

I glued a stencil heart on the top of the music and popped it into a frame. I mixed up these frames with ones filled with black and white pictures and put them on the wall. Here's the finished look:

Homemade Cat Play Mat

2010-12-19T07:44:00.000-08:00

I got a new sewing machine a couple of weeks ago and I have loved it. I came up with the idea for this great new cat toy. My cats love pouncing on anything that moves underneath a blanket, so I thought they might enjoy this little mat. I know that you probably aren't a crazy, overindulgent cat mom like myself, but I will tell you how to make this thing anyway. It only took me like 5 minutes and I just used scrap material and old cat toys, so it was practically free.

To make this toy, I got two pretty large pieces of fabric that were about the same size. Then I cut a little slit about two inches long near one corner.

Next I tucked a catnip mouse under one of the slits and used a zig zag stitch to sew over its little tail a few times. The idea is that the cats can barely see the mouse and can have fun digging around for it through the slit, but it won't come out.

I flipped the fabric over and did the same thing on the other side with a little fish toy. This toy has an elastic string attached to it and I thought it might be fun for the cats to pull on.

Next, I sewed two wiggly parallel lines down the fabric to make a kind of track. I placed a jingle ball in there and then sewed up all the sides. The cats can pounce on the ball and move it around, but they can't actually get to it.

So that's it. Pretty simple. And ugly, unfortunately. Next time I'll probably purchase some more attractive fabric. Here's a picture of little Brother playing with his new toy.

Thanksgiving Table Setting

2010-12-10T20:29:00.000-08:00

This year I volunteered to design the tablescape for our Thanksgiving dinner at my parent's house. I had been watching that show "Wedded to Perfection" on Netflix and absolutely fell in LOVE with all the incredible designs they created on that show.

We had 12 people coming to dinner. My brother Matt invited his roommate and a friend from India and two friends from China who would be celebrating their first Thanksgiving. I focused on warm colors and natural materials. Here's some pictures of the table:

I started with a plain ivory tablecloth and used these awesome gold chargers and warm yellow napkins from Walmart, then added a rich, red ribbon for just a bit of color.

For place cards, I set out a pear at each plate and tied a little gold ribbon on the stem. I found some fabulous vintage ads at a scrapbook store and selected a different one for each person that I thought represented their personality a little. I mounted the ads on golden yellow cardstock and handwrote names on them.

For the table centerpieces, I tried to use a lot of harvest-themed pieces. I made flower vases out of pumpkins and gourds. Unique gourds were also placed on top of large candlesticks and pedastals. I collected a variety of candlesticks, but used the same ribbon to tie the design together. I also filled small mason jars with layers of colored beans and corn and lentils and placed a tea light in the top.

My mom prepared the meal and it was amazing. Overall, it was an excellent Thanksgiving dinner!

Autumn Applique Dish Towel

2010-12-10T20:02:00.000-08:00

So one of my friends gave me this awesome book full of applique projects and I have finally gotten around to completing one of them. This is a fall dish towel. Applique took a long time for me to learn, but I'm getting better at it and my machine is just so easy to use. All it takes to make this project is a few fat quarters in some different fall colors and some off-white cotton.

First, I cut the off-white cotton fabric a little larger than one of my dishtowels. Then I hemmed the sides.

Next, I went online and searched for line drawings of fall leaves. I cut and pasted them into a word document and resized them to fit my project. I printed out a bunch of different shapes and sizes.

Then I cut out the paper leaves, traced them on my printed fall fabrics, and cut them out of fabric.

Next I placed a leaf on a brown square and appliqued it on. There are lots of different methods for doing applique on a machine. My machine came with a foot that works well for applique. I just lower the feed dog and I can move the fabric freely beneath the needle. I don't have quite a steady enough hand for this yet, so I just used my standard foot and did a lot of stopping and turning the fabric so that my fabric didn't start getting all bunchy.

Next, I appliqued the brown square onto the dishtowel and added another leaf for good measure.

To make the ruffle, I folded a strip of printed fabric about 3 inches wide in half the "hot dog" way with the right side out. I ironed it so it would stay flat. Then I sewed a long running stitch across the open end (not the folded end). I pulled the bobbin thread to gather it.

I pinned the ruffle onto the bottom of the dishtowel and just sewed it on. I liked the fraying of the fabric here--it seemed to give it that folksy-homemade-rustic-autumn look that I was looking for.

I'm not a babysitter

2010-01-15T09:04:00.000-08:00

So, I'm listening to the New Moon soundtrack, which I have to say I'm pretty obsessed with because it is pretty fabulous.

On a completely unrelated note, whenever Taylor tells anyone that he is going to be a doctor, everyone immediately makes some comment about how he must be so smart and such a hard worker, which is totally true; Taylor is all those things. But when I tell people I am a special ed teacher, I get a completely different reaction. Mostly it's people telling me that they could never, ever do my job. Not because it's so difficult, but because it would be super boring to push kids in wheelchairs around all day (Seriously, someone actually thought that was what I did. Needless to say, she was shocked to find out that people could actually get a masters degree in that.)

But I realize that when we were kids "special ed" was a VERY different thing for most of us than it is today. And it is very different even today between schools and states. So let me clear up some possible misconceptions:

I work with kids who need extra help in school. These kids are in their classrooms most of the day, and they come to my room for a hour or so a day and I teach them in small groups.

But my job is awesome because it's not like just teaching the same lesson every day to every student. These are kids who really need extra help. So I do a lot of testing to find out exactly what skills are missing and then I decide what to teach. Everything that I do is based on data that I collect. Of course, I can't just go to the teacher store and grab one of those cutesy books and give them a worksheet. Everything that I do has to be research based and created for individual students. And so I'm reading a lot of books and research articles and talking to specialists all the time. I lead our teachers in meetings where we talk about students who are not making progress and we dig through research and we debate about which intervention we should try next. And then we collect data every day that tells us if our students are improving or not and keep making changes and trying new things until we find something that works.

And these are the kids who have a hard time with learning, so we have to be pretty creative with finding solutions that will actually work. There's a lot of disappointment, but that makes it even more exciting when we finally see some sixth grader who is reading on a first grade level move from reading 6 words per minute to 30. The kids that I work with are really amazing. I can't imagine going to school day after day and not being able to do most of the work that my friends can all do without any problems. But they keep working (sometimes it takes some interesting motivation strategies to get them to work) and they are really great kids.

I really love my job. I never know what to expect when I come to work and my kids are always surprising me. Some days I am running from class to class rescuing teachers from my students who decided to bite, kick, or scream the f word over and over instead of doing their assignments. And some days I'm making phone calls at 6pm to help kids with their math homework. And some days I'm hitting my head against the wall because seriously, the word is "take" not "tacky" and I know I've only told you this a hundred times, but you should know it by now. But most days I'm just looking at data and researching new ideas and trying to come up with solutions and teaching and teaching and teaching and remembering to celebrate the times when a student looks up at me with a big smile and says, "Hey, look, Mrs. Turner! I did it!" Because that's what my job is all about.

It's About Time

2009-12-31T17:00:00.000-08:00

That's right, I'm finally updating our blog. I have finished my first year of grad school in special education and I have one more semester to go. My classes are really helpful and practical, but this last semester I had 18 credits, which meant that I was going to class 4 nights a week from 4:30-8 or 9 at night. Also, I changed jobs in August and now I'm teaching resource for grades 4-6 at Fox Hills Elementary in Granite School District. I work with some awesome people and I have the most amazing kids. I was a little scared to work with the upper grades at first, but they are so much fun and not nearly as sassy as I had imagined. This next semester I am taking way fewer classes and finishing up my graduate project and TAing for a class, so it should be a little more relaxed than last semester. Taylor is in his third year of med school and so he is no longer taking classes, but he is doing rotations in the hospital and he really likes it and doesn't complain even when he has to be at the hospital at 4am.

Our kitties are still as sweet and playful and snuggly as ever. Brother loves walking around in the snow (it's almost 1 kitty deep in our backyard right now) and Sis is currently sitting in her favorite place, my lap. We had a lot of fun at my parents this Christmas and took a cruise to Mexico together. This week we are finishing up some projects around the house, but mostly just enjoying having absolutely nothing to do for the first time in a long time. I have been crocheting and rewatching some of my favorite movies. Taylor is reading Eclipse and I think it's pretty safe to say that he has a bit of a mancrush on Jacob.

We hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas and have a happy new year!

the weez boys in concert

2008-10-11T20:53:00.000-07:00

This week was awesome. We saw the weez on Tuesday and they were sweet. They played tons of their old songs, which was awesome because I love them. They came out in these white jumpsuits and Rivers had this goofy looking sock-thing on his head. Then they took off their jumpsuits and were wearing bright red track suits with lightning bolts on them. It was just such a fun show and they did a hootenanny and that was way fun, too. Angels and Airwaves opened for them and they were cool, too. I have been waiting to see Weezer since I missed my chance back in high school and it was definitely all I could have ever hoped for. Also funny, I told my kids about the concert and taught them to make the weezer sign and one boy said, "Yeah, I've heard of weezer, they have Ozzy Osbourne, right?"

The next day I took the gre, since I'm trying to get into grad school and I did alright so hopefully the rest of my application checks out and I will be starting school again in January. It was really cute because my kids were all excited for me to help me study and take my test and they all started cheering when they found out that I passed. Then Thursday night I did this literacy training at my school for parents. We had a great turnout--about 80 people and everything went really well. Tay and I both ended up getting really sick this week and so this weekend we have pretty much just tried to catch up on some sleep.

California trip

2008-08-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

This was the super vacation week. We went with Taylor's fam to Tahoe for a few days, drove back on Wednesday, and then flew out on Thursday to SoCal this weekend to meet up with my family. It was my brother Marty's birthday and we celebrated by going to Disneyland and the beach. It was a sweet trip. There were hardly any lines at all. The longest we ever waited was probably 15 minutes and we only waited that long a couple of times. If you ever go to Disneyland, you should check out Ridemax.com. It's this software that you can download that creates an itinerary for your Disneyland trip. It allows you to put in the rides you want to go on and then it figures out when you should go on each ride and what fast passes you should get in order to have the least wait time possible. It has some good tips on there, too.

Here's a pic of Tay and me. Who knows what he is doing. This was like our third attempt at taking a normal picture, which Taylor obviously could not handle.

Tay went on Splash Mountain probably over 15 times with my crazy brothers. Here they are after their first ride. They made the mistake of putting tay up front and everyone got absolutely soaked. We were pretty exhausted when we got home today.

Our anniversary

2008-07-06T19:48:00.000-07:00

we just had our 3 year anniversary on July 1st! I can't believe it's been 3 years already. Kit surprised me with a super nice evening. We picked up some Cafe Rio and then drove up to Brighton nearby the place where he proposed. We go there just as the sun was setting and it was beautiful. Then we went back home and I walked into the house and Tay had made a path of rose petals and candles leading to my anniversary prize which was...Guitar hero! So we stayed up all night playing and then we left for Tay's house on Wednesday. I'll have to get some pictures of our weekend from his brother and post those later. I hope everyone had an awesome fourth of July weekend!

Kitties' new adventure

2008-06-08T17:11:00.000-07:00

So, we really wish that we could take our kitties on our trips and take them hiking and camping with us and stuff like that. So we bought them a harness last night and a leash. They do not like it at all. It's super funny to watch them bc they just freeze and sit down as soon as you put it on. But hopefully they'll get used to it and then we can start taking them more places. They are super good natured, adventurous kitties, so I know that they would just love to go camping with us.

playing in our backyard

2008-06-08T17:03:00.000-07:00

School is finally out! I had this huge graduation for both third grade classes because at our school it's this big deal when they graduate from the primary grades and move on to upper elementary. I was so worried about it bc the day before we practiced and the kids were forgetting all the words to their songs and wiggling an awful lot. But that morning, they all showed up in like mini prom dresses and full three piece suits and gave this amazing performance. It was so cool because I contacted all the parents beforehand so that I could type on their diplomas what their parents were most proud of that they had done that year, what their teacher was most proud of, and what they were most proud of. They read what they were most proud of out loud at the ceremony. It was super cute.

We've been catching up on some work in the backyard and meeting some interesting new neighbors. Here's some more pics of our sweet flowers and our kitties. They love to go outside now. They mew and mew until we let them out everyday. Also, we got them this sweet new mouse toy that they love to play with.

Kit gets a bike

2008-06-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

Kit found this sweet bike on craigslist. it's the bomb. now he can ride it to work when he starts tomorrow. He's going to be a medical assistant at this nearby clinic. awesome.

Springtime at our house

2008-06-01T20:43:00.001-07:00

So, when we moved in the people who sold us the house told us that someone knew someone or something and that it so happened that there were thousands of dollars worth of really beautiful flowers planted in our yard. But we were still not expecting the incredible flora that has graced our yard this spring. Check it out.

Finally, we did something cool

2008-06-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

We went with some friends to Goblin Valley and the Swell last weekend. It was super fun. We checked out Goblin Valley, which was cool. We had never been there before. The goblins looked sweet. Plus, we did some canyons in the Swell and they were intense. Here are some pics of Ding and Dang, two canyons that we did. It was awesome because we were told that there would be like an 8 foot drop we'd have to negotiate. Turns out there were several 8 foot drops, as well as a 50 foot drop. We didn't have any rope so we had to cross on this little ledge on the side of the canyon, which was way freakier than it sounds. And way awesomer. Props to our buddies for putting this together. You rule, guys.

Kitties in a Sink

2008-04-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

It's been forever since I last posted and I guess I'm making up for all that lost blogging time tonight. I only wish that I could figure out how to take the time off my posts so that people don't know that I'm this total loser who has nothing better to do on a Saturday night than post pictures of her cats. Speaking of those cute little guys, here are some pics. They have gotten way bigger and we can totally tell them apart now because the boy is so much bigger than the girl. One is sitting in my lap purring right now.

After Pictures of our Dining Room

2008-04-26T20:55:00.000-07:00

Here's what our dining room looks like now. We scored this sweet table from Target. Getting the table was a huge, 6-month long fiasco involving countless hours on the phone with Target.com and several trips to half a dozen different Target stores, but we are happy it's here now. I know this room still has a LONG way to go, but we're on our way.

Remodeling

2008-04-26T20:31:00.000-07:00

So, we've been working on remodeling our house. The red room and beige room used to be our living room and dining room and we sanded down the walls, textured, and painted. Our kitchen is the orange room with the huge wall missing. We started chopping out that wall in September and plan to complete it by next week. Yes, we do realize how WT we are. But it's all going to look awesome when we are done. I hope.

whoo-hoo! new kitties!

2007-10-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

We got new kitties on Friday! They are the cutest little guys ever. We went to the Humane Society and there was this little cage full of 4 little gray tabbies. They were pouncing on each other and mewing and chasing each other's tails and we knew right away that these were the kitties for us. So we took all four of them in the Get Acquainted Room and they were romping around like mini tigers. The best was when one of them would start playing with Tay's shoelace and then another would sneak behind him and then pounce on him from behind. These kitties would constantly jump around, sometimes straight up into the air, and bat their paws at each other and it was so cute. So we learned our lesson from last time--we grabbed those kitties asap and took them home.

We had a hard time choosing two out of the four, but in the end we took a boy and girl. Their names are Little Mew and Little Purr and for short we call them Mewey and Purry. We actually can't tell them apart at all. We thought it would help us tell them apart if we got a boy and a girl. But that didn't help since, even though my husband is going to be a doctor, neither of us can tell which is the boy and which is the girl.

One of the kitties is trying to type and bat at my fingers on the keyboard. She/he is super cute. The best part about these kitties is how they love to cuddle up with us at night and then they wake up in the morning and start purring as soon as we touch them. Here are some pics and videos of Mewey and Purry.

kitties

2007-09-23T14:20:00.000-07:00

It looks like we are finally going to get some cats. For many years I've harbored some pretty evil thoughts about cats in my heart, all stemming from several unfortunate incidents involving a large white cat's urine and my high school car aka the T-mob aka a 1971 Toyota celica. Cat urine, not a pleasant smelling substance. However, Des' imploring and several visits to the humane society have changed me. Mostly it's due to the size of kittens and no contact with urine. It may be that I'm now channeling some kitten myself, since I've grown a beard. Yesterday at the animal shelter I was holding a tiny kitty so these little kids could pet him. When I got close to this one little kid he tired to pet my face instead of the kitten. So maybe I''m communing with the kittens. Either way, as soon as tomorrow we could have two kittens living in our home. Their names will be 'don't pee' and 'stop peeing'. Cat urine will not be tolerated. Except in the special sandbox. How did that get started? What do cats do that live in the woods? There's no sand there at all!

In other news I tried to make chocolate chip cookies last night. I carefully followed the recipe titled 'Amber's award winning chocolate chip cookies'. Well my cookies turned out like poo on a stick. I have to throw away the rest of the dough because it's so sick. I remain undaunted though, and today I'll turn to allrecipes.com for guidance. Further results pending.