The Kitchen Sink Table

Today I sanded and applied one coat of spar urethane to the table that the kitchen sink will sit on. It was not without incident. I got a gigantic splinter, which helpfully reminded me that it's probably time for a tetanus shot, and I learned that it's advisable to wear a respirator while applying spar urethane so that Sean doesn't come home to find my unconscious body lying in the garage. Evidently that stuff is strong! I was working in the garage with the door halfway up, (working right next to the opening), using the urethane for approximately 45 minutes, and by the end of that time I could barely walk straight and nearly puked. Woops.

The upshot is that the table is now looking charmingly vintage as opposed to the filthy-nasty spider world it formerly was.

Gearing up for the School Year

Last year was my first year teaching. It was probably the hardest thing I have done yet, and I was unbelievably grateful to have a summer vacation to relax, reflect, and regroup. I've started getting excited about next year: I have moved schools and moved grade levels (from fourth to third), and started thinking about next year and getting great resources and ideas on pinterest and teacher blogs. There is a lot out there! I wish I had been better able during the school year to pull myself out of the day to day rush and be smarter about investing some time looking for resources that could help me do things better or more easily. (But that's kind of a silly thing to wish, because when you're in survival mode it's hard to carefully consider what you're doing. I'm going to try and do better at that by building in some scheduled reflection time, probably through blogging.)

Here are a couple fantastic blogs by third grade teachers that I'm excited about:

Third Grade Thoughts: I love this blog. I think I've pinned half of Stephanie's posts for future reference. I am not super familiar with The Daily 5 and have been wanting to learn more, and it's been helpful to see how she implements it in her classroom.

Look Who's Teaching: Jessie is a really thoughtful and reflective teacher, and I really appreciate her insights into trying out new curricula and frameworks: what she did well and not as well, what her students got from it, where she needs to tweak things, and how she's thinking about it now.

And here are a few more that I've added to my google reader as well:

My Life As a Fifth Grade Teacher (who is moving to third this year: yay!)

Clutter-Free Classroom

Coffee, Kids, and Compulsive Lists

The Go To Teacher

From My Mixed Up Files

Jasztalville

Teaching With a Smile

...And maybe Mrs. Fioritto will have some time to blog this year as well.  :-)

Concrete Countertops!

They're FINALLY underway! After months of plywood countertops, and before that, months of no kitchen whatsoever, we will have our very own, beautiful concrete countertops. I've purchased all the materials, I've made the templates, and now I just have to, uh, make them. I've decided to put in stone for the biggest working surface in the kitchen next to the stove, because some concrete sealers can't handle heat, and the ones that can are less stain-resistant (and apparently acids like lemon juice can actually eat through the sealant and into the concrete itself). I am also customizing an old table to hold the vessel sink. My plan is to blog along the way and show you all the fun/chaos. Here's the plan of where each material will go:

By the way: our kitchen layout was designed by the ingenious Tracey Edson. Our kitchen has some silly things like the back door and the angled hallway coming into the corner of the kitchen that really make it an awkward space. In spite of that (and the current plywood countertop situation) our kitchen is very user-friendly and pleasant to work in: thank you Tracey!

Stay tuned for updates. I really do intend to blog more frequently. Promise. :-)

New Classroom Website

I have been looking for a way to give students more ownership of the blog, and also for a tool that will let students create more than just blog posts, and so I've finally created a classroom website on weebly. It was really easy to do, and not only that, I get up to 40 student accounts (it's a special educator's version) so that students can upload assignments, write blog posts, and create their own websites! I am really looking forward to seeing how we can use that next year. That, combined with the YouTube for schools (assuming CPS doesn't block this), should really facilitate inquiry work. So exciting! Be sure and check back in the fall to see more student-generated content and see some of the work we're doing.

What We Do Here Yo

...Is what my students are now sharing with you, over at our classroom blog. Every day there's a new guest blogger to reflect on the day. I'm still learning about what I need to explicitly teach them about blogging (not to mention spelling, punctuation, and other conventions) but we're off to a great start! The homework posts are now also a student job which has been working out really nicely. I'm excited to have these routines rolling at the beginning of the year next year and have them more integrated into my classroom.

happy valenbirthtinesday!

last night, we celebrated sean's birthday, so i made him a yummy birthday dinner. we had filet mignon with a marsala cream sauce with mushrooms, mashed potatoes (sean's favie), and brussels sprouts with bacon and garlic. i paired that with robert mondavi meritage (recommended by dr. debs over at good wine under $20) and the always-fantastic taddy porter for sean. for dessert i made the chocolate souffle cupcakes (from deb over at smitten kitchen) except i swapped out the mint in the white chocolate cream for a little blackberry juice that i reduced by about half, and then put a fresh blackberry on top. if i had to do it over though, i'd just leave the white chocolate cream plain and then drizzle some blackberry juice/syrup/whatever over top instead of mixing it into the cream: the tartness from the blackberry juice was lost in the sweetness of the white chocolate. but it did make the cream a pretty pale mauve color, so that's something i guess. sort of valentinesy. and we ate all of it on our wedding china: gotta take advantage of excuses to use that stuff! sometimes i wonder if i should just use it every day. i think it gets lonely packed away in the cabinets.

i have grand plans for some more posts here soon: i want to share my wino-esque expertise of cheap wines with all eight of you, and i know you can't wait! and then there's the long-awaited diy newspaper sculpture how-to! stay tuned...

baking with babicka

over christmas break i got the chance to bake with my babicka. as you may recall, i made mazanec last easter, which went fairly well, but as you can imagine, there's so much you can learn by baking along side someone, particularly if they've been doing it a good half century or so. after getting over a couple rough starts (i started the session by adding salt instead of sugar to our first batch of dough, and then babicka left out the butter the second time around) we made a few batches of dough out of which we made kolacky (the little ones), kolach (like kolacky, but a big sheet, sort of like a pizza), and poppy strudel.

some highlights and observations from my crash course:

-this lady is old-school: she uses actual spoons for measuring. like, the one you stir tea with is the teaspoon.

-babicka kneads one-handed, with her left (non-dominant) hand! this is because she has pretty bad arthritis in her right hand from squeezing a pastry bag for 30 years (she was a cake decorator). however, not only can she knead bread much more quickly and efficiently than i can, she also does it without her hands getting sticky. clearly i am a novice bread kneader, but i'm just saying: the dough is always all over my hands til i develop enough gluten for it to reincorporate into the the dough ball. she just kind of pushes the dough a few times and it's done.

-i learned how hot the water should be to wake up the yeast (the other tricky part of yeast doughs). every time she heated it up and determined it was the right temperature i made sure to stick my finger in. so now i have a better idea of what temperature it should be, though i think babicka has a perfect pitch type of sense of what temperature it should be (and i'm definitely not there yet).

-babicka makes all the bread-related products in her house. once a month she makes rolls and freezes them. she also makes rye bread as often as they need it (it is such delicious bread! it's half wheat, half rye, i believe, and it's got an almost crumbly texture. i love that stuff).


it was fun to get a behind-the-scenes look at babi's baking. she's always critiquing what exactly went wrong with whatever delicious pastry we happen to be eating at the moment (which i say with great affection. i am the exact same way: must be a genetic defect!). but the analysis is happening during the baking as well (of course!). she mentioned while we were rolling out the kolacky dough that they would probably puff up too much in the over because we didn't allow the dough to rise long enough before punching it back down (correct), and she was as fanatical about the thickness and application of the toppings/fillings as i am about properly taping or burning a screen. i guess we share the idea that if it's important enough to do it yourself, it's important enough to do right.


i also got a couple czech cookbooks from her (one czech, one slovak, to be precise). i'm going to attempt a few recipes, though that will probably require a little translation help. i'll be sure to share here when i try one.

thanks for letting me bake with you babicka!