It seemed like a good idea at the time....

You know those times when you have an idea, and at the time it seems like a good idea, but then the next thing you know it's 1am and your "good idea" has you wide awake. This evening at 6:30 when I stopped at Starbucks to get a coffee it seemed like a good idea.  Well, here I am several hours later and that good idea has me wide awake. So I decided that it seemed like a good time to craft (cause that puts you right to sleep, yet another example of "it seemed like a good idea").  And I know it's been a while since I updated this but after my last post I, ummm "gracefully" tripped, fell, and decided that it would make Christmas super fun to have a bruised bone that mimicked a fractured elbow.  In case you are wondering, yes it is possible to fracture your bone.  The only reason I know this is because I did it. 

 

I know, the sling really completes the look. :)

 

 

Anyway, last year when I moved into my apartment I made a wreath for my door.  Well because I tend to be a smidge on the procrastination side of things I didn't get around to making a new one and the next thing I new that poor thing had been up all year.  After a year of being on my door it is starting to look pitiful.  This meant, in Jessica land, that I needed to do one of my favorite things....PINTEREST!  I looked around and found some cute wreath ideas and tonight, after my brilliant idea of coffee at 6:30 I went to the craft store and got all my supplies.

When I finally got home at 8:30 and had finished my coffee I decided, "Hey, what a perfect time to have a craft fest!" Instead of continuing to ramble in my caffeine powered sleep deprivation I'll just show the pictures of the process.

So here is the wreath I had before:

 

 

And here is the new one that I made in my caffeine frenzy:

 

Now, you may be thinking, "Wow that yellow sure is a random color" but I put a lot of thought into that color.  I live in the South and here we have 4 seasons: Pool (summer), Football (Fall), Rain (Winter), and Pollen (Spring).  Since we are in Pollen I tried to pick a yellow closest to the stuff that will soon take over and cover EVERYTHING!

 

Well that's all I have, hopefully I'll be able to fall asleep in the next little bit! :)

I love Rice Krispies!

So recently I have seen some very exciting rice Krispy treat recipes on Pinterest, so I decided to make some other than the plain old regular kind (although its hard to improve on the original). I started by following the traditional recipe from www.ricekrispies.com. I should note that I used the peanut butter variation. Then once I had those in the pan cooling I saw some white chocolate chips and thought, "oh yeah those will make these MAGICAL!" So I had Kat melt them in a microwave safe bowl for 1 minute then in 30 second intervals until it was all melty, creamy, and amazing. That's when you pour the chocolate on top and let it set. By this time you are left with what can only be called awesomeness in Krispy treat form.

What I Learned This Week:

How much is a person worth?  We all want to know we are worth something to someone, right?  What if you found out you are only worth $3?  I recently learned that in Thailand there are "karaoke bars" where you can buy a girl for an hour.  When you pay your receipt will say the following: beer $4, food $5, girl $3.  Does anyone else find it disturbing that a person is considered to be worth less than a beer?  These girls are seen as property, not people.
This past Monday I went to a viewing of Nefarious: Merchant of Souls.  This documentary was all about modern day slavery in the form of human trafficking.  Going into the viewing I had no idea what to expect but I left so much more aware than I every thought I would be.  I learned about various types of slavery (prostitution) and was shocked to learn that sometimes it is done from a place of wanting to honor parents by prostituting to make money and done with parental compliance. 
Another shocking new knowledge was what I learned about some Eastern European countries with high numbers of orphans.  Traffickers often wait for girls to age out of the orphanages and then either sweet talk them into leaving under the pretense of a job in a shop or they will just abduct the girl.  What these girls then go through is heart breaking.  They are literally beaten and "broken in" until they are both physically and mentally broken.  The treatment of these women is something unimaginable and happens all around the world, including here. 
Here are some facts that I learned Monday: 27 million people are enslaved around the world (Free the Slaves by Kevin Bales), trafficking is a $32 billion a year industry (United Nations), and the average entry into commercial trafficking in America is 13 years old (US Department of Justice).

There are several organizations that are working diligently to fight trafficking so I thought I'd share a few links (these are some of the more well known organizations but there are a lot of others out there):

www.a21campaign.org

http://exoduscry.com/about/modern-day-slavery/

www.ijm.org

www.humantrafficking.org

www.endhumantrafficking.org

Road Trippin'

This past weekend some friends and I road tripped up to Kentucky to visit our friend Gloria.  Gloria is awesome!  She has been working with some people from her church for the past 2 years or so to start a coffee shop and teen center for their town.  The coffee shop is up and running, and making some bawlin' drinks, and the teen center will be open around Christmas.  One of the best parts of the trip was getting to surprise her by bringing an extra member of the crew.  Gotta love a good surprise! :)



One of my personal favorite parts of the trip was going to Keeneland Race Tracks. I had not been to a horse race before and I'll just sum it all up by saying it was a memorable experience.  Although next time I go I will be sure to drink a lot more water because I learned that there is a lot of standing at these events.

Basically, below there are going to be a lot of pictures of horses.  I got a slight trigger happy with my camera and, well, it was kind of like I was afraid I would never be able to see a horse again because I took more pictures of horses than anything else this weekend.  Can you tell I was raised in the city?

 

(Had to throw in one of the John Deere that pulled the gate since the day before I got to Kentucky my entire school went to Farm Day at the high school).





Someday I Might Be Like Martha Stewart....

Hi my name is Jessica and I am addicted to Pinterest.  Is there a support group for that?  It seems like there should be, we can meet at my house and do crafts while we discuss our addiction.  A side effect of this addiction is that I have started to look around my house and see it as an endless parade of possible projects.  If you know me that probably has you ready to come over here with popcorn to watch because you know there will be some craziness involved in figuring out how to accomplish any kind of craft. 

Since up until now I have only been brave enough to try Pinterest ideas that can be applied to my classroom I decided to try my hand at restyling a piece of furniture.  Enter unsuspecting side table.

After I moved into my new place a few months ago a very sweet friend of mine helped me out by giving me this side table (a side table that I'm hoping she does not mind that I have now used as my learning experience so hopefully it isn't too bad for my first shot).  Yes, I did paint it inside and yes I do know that was probably not the best option but when you live in an apartment sometimes you gotta do whatcha gotta do. :)

Well, here is the adventurous part.  This side table is laminate with a shiny finish so I should have used a primer.  Guess what.  . I used something different! My Grandma'am was in town and she told me a trick she uses that she learned somewhere on the Internet.  I bought some paint and she mixed in baking soda.  Yes, that's all, baking soda!!! At this point I wish I could say I was a believer but I was less than cooperative thinking that this is the craziest thing I had ever heard.  I mean baking soda? I even went as far as to buy the primer because I thought I had to have misunderstood her. Well, she apparently knows how to research because it worked.    
 

 

This is only part way through the process but the paint was sticking! I was in complete shock.  It took about 2 coats but the baking soda not only makes it stick to the wood it also makes the paint super thick!  After it dried and I examined it to make sure all the wood parts were covered I just went over it with a decent amount of clear coat (that's a really important step otherwise the paint can peel off down the road).  I know it may not be as amazing as a lot of the stuff on Pinterest but I have to say I am rather pleased with how it turned out. 

 

 



Ready or Not...Here They Come

Alright I guess I should start by sharing that this is not an education blog.  It will probably have a ton of education stuff but only because I teach and it kind of consumes my life because I think about it all day long and I stalk ideas on pinterest.

Today was my last day working in my classroom before official start back for teachers which is, oh ya know, tomorrow.  Today I brought in another of my friends as a recruit to help me finish up all my last minute chaos.  Have I mentioned how much I appreciate all the help I got!  Typically I start working in my classroom several weeks before school starts back but since our school was having some renovations I wasn't able to get in my room until last Thursday.

Anyway, today was mostly finishing touches which meant there was a little down time to play around (which you can probably tell from the picture). 

We got all my desks arranged, grade level materials sorted (for 8 teachers), worked on the kids back to school gifts, and played a rousing round of which student desk will be the same size as all the other desks.  That may not sound like an actual activity but I made about 4 trips to the storage room because I kept having Goldilocks and the Three Bear moments: this desk is too short, this desk is too tall, this desk is wobbly, this desk is just right.

Let's back track and revisit my back to school gift for my students:















You are probably wondering what these are.  Well, these little balls of awesomeness are light up bouncy balls.  My mom found these somewhere last year (I have absolutely no idea where but good money is on WalMart).  Anyway, I decided to hang on to them for this year so that my class can "Bounce Into a Bright Year".

 

After working hard the past few days I felt I deserved one of my favorite rewards for dinner: Barbeque Chicken Personal Pizza....oh, and I decided to be nice share with my helper :)

Extreme Makeover: Classroom Edition

Yep, it's true, I have a lot of stuff.  I mean tons.  So when my friends offered to help me set up my classroom I decided not to share that minor fun fact with them.  This means that when they walked into my classroom they were met with a mountain of first grade fabulousness.

Why yes that is all my stuff and sadly this is after we started working.  Believe it or not it did look WAAAAY worse when we started (for my own personal dignity I did not document that and if I had I more than likely would not share it with the world via the Internet.  It was a mountain of stuff that would have the producers of Hoarders sign me up for the next episode).

Because my friends are pretty much the most amazing people every they attacked my chaos with as much excitement as they could muster.

I mean, really, look at that face.  Don't you just love how excited she is that she got to vacuum my room about 20 times!  That's not even the greatest thing she did.  She cleaned ALL of my computers and helped me with some items that have been on my to-do list for about, oh I'd say 4 years.

Because I'm really good at bossing people around I sent another of my amazing helpers to assemble my outside hallway display.  I documented her progress because well she just looked so official with the ladder and the glue gun is now her best friend :) If you're ever on Craft Wars this is a girl you want on your team, she's awesome!

Didn't she do just a fantastic job! I was so excited with how it turned out because we ventured far from my original plan and it turned out better than I anticipated!

I'm thankful she's such a trooper cause I think she got some of the more irritating jobs.  I don't think she even knows how much it helped me that she was willing to do them though!

So the next few pictures are basically just a couple pictures of what was accomplished in my classroom over the past few days. What you are about to see is (quick math calculation: 9 hours Thursday + 9.5 hours Friday + 9 hours today = 27.5 hours) 27.5 hours worth of work.  I sure hope my recruit for Monday is ready for the final push cause teachers start back Tuesday :)