We go together like ramma lamma lamma ka dinga da dinga dong
Remembered forever as shoo-bop sha whada whadda yippidy boom da boom
Chang chang changity chang shoo bop, that’s the way it should be
Waooo! Yeah!
Today, begins the last week of the school year! I don’t know who is more excited? Myself or the students!
Bring on Thursday, because the sweetest bell I will hear this week, is the one ringing to end the school year!
YIPPEEEEE!
(Image found here)
I have never been someone who gets up and needs to have their morning cup of coffee. I enjoy coffee, but I am more of a tea drinker, just black and I don’t mind drinking it when it goes cold.
But, lately, I have become someone who really likes coffee in the morning. I love it more when I am at home at my parent’s or sister’s house, since you can get all kinds of delicious flavored creamers, but living here some sugar and milk will do, and occassionally I get a flavored syrup.
Mr. Michie is a coffee drinker. He takes his beans very seriously and likes his coffee just a certain way, almost down to a science. I love when he makes coffee, because there is something about the smell permeating the house and overwhelming your senses.
This has been a very long week at school, with a few late nights and our major Summer Art Show last night. Today was a day that I really needed coffee and unfortunately the lady working in our local coffee shop this morning was not the lady we needed to be there on her own.
She is extremely nice, helpful and always smiling, but she is also extremely slow and this morning when we walked in and saw the line 5 people deep, we knew there would be no way to get coffee and get the bus in time.
I walked out, slightly deflated, knowing that in order to survive this day, I would need a cup of coffee. I have survived the day, but only by sheer will-power.
I think tomorrow will have to be a coffee morning as I need to get it flowing back through my system. Nothing like a Saturday morning stroll with Mr. Michie to the coffee shop, if we get there in time they will just be pulling the baked goods out of the oven. Aah, heaven!
Have a wonderful weekend!
(Image Found)
I’m Back, I’m back! Thank you all for sticking with me while I had a few days off and thank you ever so much to Goose Girl & Foxy who posted in my stead, I had so much fun seeing what you were up to (that is one of their pictures above).
Well, today closes out our Easter Break. Somehow the time we have together is never enough and there is never enough time to get everything done that I want to do.
But, we are blessed with the time that we have had together and with what we have been able to do with it. We did a few things around the house today to get ready for the week. We went grocery shopping and picked up a fresh turkey breast to make for Sunday dinner.
We stopped off at the coffee shop and ate a bite of brunch. I had an iced Italian Lemonade and a chicken & pesto panini, it was wondrous!
We came home, Mr. Michie folded some laundry for me and I went to work on making Old-Fashioned Sour Cream Cookies from my Betty Crocker Cooky Book. I have a few tweaks I make to them and now the house smells so cozy.
I suppose this week is coming, whether or not we are ready for it. It will be a whirlwind as all first weeks back to school are. So, Bottoms Up! Here we come!
(All images by J. Michie, except “Bottoms Up!“, found at ElectroSpark)
I like Samantha French. I like her work, her use of color, her use of form. Today, the last day of term, has been a DAY and this picture was somehow fitting. It is called: Slow Rise, Five Feet.
It seems to fit my mood, I am on a slow rise to the top, I’m just floating. But, that is alright, that is where I am right now, today.
Tomorrow, I will surface, take a breath and dive back down.
(Image by Samantha French)
This has been a long week and a crazy one too! It always seems to be that way, the last week of the term always makes me feel like I am working in a 3 ring circus! Everyone is tired, their stress levels are raised, their tempers are shorter. You never think you are going to catch your breath, but somehow you make it to Friday, bleary eyed, happy you have survived the week and simply ready to just flop down and slowly exhale.
I have had one of those weeks. I love the daily challenges of my job. I never fully know what to expect when I come through the gates in the morning, as my day consistently changes from one to the next.
I have been asked to run a session tomorrow that has been offered to students who need a bit of extra help. So, we will be working together to first make photograms out of objects I will be giving them and secondly to make a photogram from a piece of work they will collage based on 3 artists and a piece of poetry (an old favorite of mine by Robert Frost).
A few students needed to be chased up today, to find out if they would be attending tomorrow. I stood next to my colleague as he spoke to one student in particular and I was taken back by this young student’s attitude. I could only think of myself for a moment. I have given so much to this project, given a great deal of my personal time to make and create all the necessary ingredients to this pie, but, this student knew none of that, this student simply scoffed. Attending this session was the last thing he wanted to do.
I shook it off, because I thought, if you come tomorrow, I will prove you wrong! I will show you this is worth your while and if you don’t come, well then you are going to miss out on something that could make a difference to you, personally. You might even learn something about yourself you weren’t aware of.
I keep an open mind with the students, for I never let myself forget that like myself they have a life outside of those gates and for some it is a far from easy life. I get along with the students, it is very rare that I ever have any issues, because I have made it known from the beginning the rules of my Cupboard. One in particular is, that I do not care what others think of you outside of my door, I form my own opinion and you have a clean slate with me when you cross my threshold, unless you do something to tarnish it. I treat you with respect and I expect that in return.
I spoke to Mr. Michie about this on the way home, he smiled at me, with a slightly bemused expression. He has eons of teaching experience over me and you know what I love about him? He isn’t jaded as others are, he heard what I was saying, he took it in his stride, he told me the likelihood of the situation, but he hoped for all the best tomorrow.
That is all we need isn’t it? A little encouragement! I have more students who have been added to my list, I don’t know what numbers I will actually walk in to tomorrow, but if I can make a difference to one student, then I have done what I have set out to do. In saying all of this, my situation earlier today has still preyed on my mind.
I flipped my shoes off when we got home, sat on the sofa and grabbed my laptop to catch up on a few things, while Mr. Michie got ready for a meeting. I clicked to my Google Reader account first and slowly began to go through the posts awaiting me. There was a post from SwissMiss that focused on Austin Kleon’s book Steal like an Artist, with a picture capturing a page from his book (see below):
This is what I needed to see today! That is it! That is what we are here to do! DO GOOD WORK AND SHARE IT WITH PEOPLE! It doesn’t matter what your work is, take pride in it, be the glow that lights the flames around you. This made me feel lighter.
After this, I moved on to catching up with my e-mail and was greeted with another piece of happiness in the form of a note. A letter awaited me from someone who had recently come across my blog, they had even been brave enough to go back to the beginning and read through all of my ramblings.
In reading her words, I thought back over my day. Her words of kindness erased the words I had heard of ugliness today. Her words about my blog lifted me like a pink balloon. Her honesty about herself, to me, a perfect stranger, again brought me back to reflecting on my day.
She shared with me that she has been treated unkindly and made fun of, for sharing with a few people that she likes to make crafts. Do some of us ever grow up? Are will still living in High School as if we have never left? Have we not moved on to being more accepting of others?
To this young woman, I want to say to you, THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your kind words today and for the sunshine you say I give you every day, know that your words have given that to me in return. Do not let others inhibit you, for often those that lash out the most, are the ones who are truly jealous of what you are. For you have found your place and they have not.
Continue to do what makes you happy, find that one thing every day that allows you some peace of mind and DO GOOD WORK AND SHARE IT WITH OTHERS! For the path you are on right now, is where you are meant to be. Maybe this journey isn’t completely about you, maybe you need to be on this journey so your path crosses another’s and gives them the advice, the encouragement, the kind words, that they so need to hear.
I came home with a bit of a rain cloud over my head today and you have shown me the silver lining. So, today, this post is FOR YOU! You know who you are.
Jennifer x
(Image found at SwissMiss)
It is only Tuesday and already this week has taken off like a kite dipping and diving in a strong wind.
I had a little post, I was working on for you, but that will have to wait as I am teaching another chemical photography class tomorrow afternoon and I have been busy with my final preparations for that.
I am so excited to see what they will come up with. We will be making photograms, first in the style of Man Ray and then I will have them create a digital collage from the work of 3 photographers I like and intertwined within that, will be slices from one of my favorite poems. The digital collage piece will be printed on to acetate and then we will make a photogram from it.
So, much is whirring in my head, I am finding it hard to find a little peace, but, I like staying busy. Off, I go, as my kite just caught another updraft…
(image by the lovely Katie Daisy)
“It’s possible for a plain yellow pumpkin to become a golden carriage!”
If you know the lines to that song, than you know one of the sweetest Rodgers & Hammerstein shows that ever was. We are on our Winter break this week and while I was busy in the house cleaning, I flipped on the TV and saw that “Cinderella” was on and I just had to sit down and watch it.
I can still remember the first time I saw this on TV when I was little sitting in front of the set with my footed pj’s on, I was mesmerized. Just as my parent’s were when they would tell me about the first time they saw it and what a really big deal it was, for something like that to come on TV. It still holds as much magic for me now as it did then. There is such an air of nostalgia around it; the colors of the costumes and the set design, it is beautiful.
I adore when they put something so sweet and wholesome on television during the school breaks, something you could sit down and watch with your children while you work on an art project, something that will make them think and not just “talk” to them, that uses intelligent language and no slang. In my own little corner in my own little room, this was the perfect thing on TV to take a break to today. Well, back to work…
This has been a long week! This has been a long Winter term at school! It feels as if we haven’t yet had a chance to just stop and catch our breaths. And I know it just isn’t me, everyone I speak to feels like this.
I had dinner with a friend last week and she said she felt as if Christmas was so long ago, but in reality it really wasn’t. But so much seems to have happened between now and then. So much seems to be going on constantly in our lives and the world around and that is LIFE, I am fully aware of that, but I am ready to just sit still for a little while and be.
Snow is coming and I am hoping for a few quiet days to just listen to the silence. I was catching up with my Google Reader tonight and I saw this post at Breakfast at Toast, it was called “A little something to get us through the day” and it made me smile.
Yes, somehow seeing this picture just made me smile! I really liked this Superbowl Ad, I made Mr. Michie watch it twice with me, he just smiled as I hit “play” for the second time, he told me he didn’t know why I enjoyed it so much, he looks just like that in his boxers and I just smiled back right back at him…
This week has started out with a bang and so I have dove right in! I am already ready for Friday again!
I went to a friend’s house for dinner this evening and Mr. Michie came to pick me up and walk me home on this very frosty night. On our way, we saw a few snow flurries, so I am crossing my fingers, I love snow!
I need just one cozy, drinking hot chocolate, looking at my twinkle lights, staying under my quilt, finally getting to knit or crochet kinda snow days!