Ok, I'm going to see if this will work:
Click here to create your own painting.
I just found how to make a painting of my personality. I found the link to this little boredom buster in this post at Play More, Live More, Laugh More. It was a fun thing to do when I should be going to bed. I'm just as bad as a kid...I don't wanna go to bed. I wanna play in Blogland all night. Sigh.
I am a severe special education elementary school teacher. I work with very involved students. I am also a big dork (so sayeth my husband) and I LOVE working in an elementary school. One of the best parts of my job is being able to do so much fun elementary school stuff - book fairs, school concerts, school plays...I love all of this stuff!
On Valentine's Day, I took two of my students to their general education class (they spend most of the day with me, but do some time with the general education students) for what is normally read aloud. Turns out the teacher was letting the kids have some Valentine's Day fun, and they were playing a game called Four Corners. Basically, one person is "it" and while that person closes her eyes and counts to a designated number, the rest of the class runs and "hides" in one of the four corners of the room. Each corner has a designated number. When "it" is done counting, she calls out a number. Everyone in that numbered corner is out and has to sit down. This goes on until there is one person left, who becomes the next caller. At Halloween the teacher had used a paper pumpkin to write the number to label each of the corners, and we called it Four Pumpkins. Now for Valentine's Day, it was Four Hearts.
Now here's where I get really dorky. I love to play games like this with the kids. So now picture me, running around to different corners of the room with a bunch of third graders, and having just as much fun as them - maybe more. Then, the most fun thing happens - I won a round! I was so excited! Then I got to be the caller! I've been having a stressful couple of weeks at school, and this really made my day. I proudly came home and told Roland (my husband), "I won at Four Corners today!" He's used to me saying such random things, and sometimes doesn't even bat an eye at these weird declarations. Usually he listens to me ramble and then says, "No offense, but you're a dork." Ah yes, but I am a happy dork, so there. And I think what makes me extra dorky is that I actually googled "Four Corners" and looked at more than one definition so that I could post a link to a "good one." (Ok, maybe that's dorkiness and perfectionism? Am I a perfectionist dork? or a dorky perfectionist?) I also find it amusing that I was able to provide this professional looking link to Wikipedia of all things. So as it turns out, you can find just about anything online, and I usually do.
Hope you all had fun on Valentine's Day. :)
I got an award! For what, I'm not sure. Why, I have no idea. What it means? Not a clue. And yet, I am proudly displaying it over yonder in that right hand column. Thanks to Jenn for giving this clueless new blogger this award. Now you need to come back and explain it all to me. LOL
Hello all.
I have been playing around with the look of my blog, as you can probably tell. I don't know much about writing any kind of code, but I do know how to cut and paste, and that, as it turns out, is enough to use a template. :)
The problem is, although I like the new look (I didn't like having a boring generic template) I've already received one comment that the white on black is too hard to read, and therefore that reader may not come around as often. Now I have spent the last fifteen minutes or so trying to figure out how to change fonts and text colors and all of that sort of stuff so that the page isn't annoying, and I am beginning to wonder if I was succumbing to my own perfectionism problem, trying to get the look "perfect," or if I was actually trying to make the blog easier to read.
Anyway, I figured at this point I better quit while I'm ahead, or I could be up all night obsessing about this. I'll probably be thinking about it all night anyway!
I am a very visual person. I love blogs like Jenn's - that show you pictures of the crafts she makes, and often even step by step pictures. I have not yet mastered this, and so I hesitate to share the activities I do because I don't have pictures to go with them. I am trying to learn that these posts might still be interesting without all the bells and whistles. But I like bells and whistles, so this is hard for me. But here goes nothing.
Thursday was the first day of Chinese New Year. I read "My First Chinese New Year" by Karen Katz to my students and we looked up a little bit of info online. I have run across how to make Chinese lanterns out of construction paper several times online, but have never tried it. So I gave the pattern to one of the nurses, and before I knew it, we had a ton. We preceeded to hang them from the ceiling, and my classroom looks quite festive. I then decided that I really should try and make one myself, instead of just having her do them. So I made one too - I was so proud of myself. I thought Paige might like to make one, since she is always looking for something she can cut with her safety scissors. So last night Paige and I made a couple of them. It was hard for her to only cut where I told her to, but we managed. She seemed to enjoy them. Here's the directions if you want to try too.
Then this morning, inspired by this post by Chrissy at ToddleBits, I decided to try having Paige paint in the tub. I was excited because I believe I have the exact paints mentioned in her post. You know how people always say, "you can make this with things you have around the house?" Well, I never have those things around the house. But this time I actually did! So, I asked Paige if she wanted to paint, and she was very excited...until I took her into the bathroom. First of all, I discovered that I should have dried out the tub before I decided to do this. For whatever reason it was a little damp in there, so the paper got wet, and Paige couldn't seem to figure out why she was sitting in a Pull-Up in a puddle. Ok, then, she wanted to know where her brushes were to paint with, and I told her to use her fingers. Hmm...she did seem to think I was a bit crazy. I don't think we've done much fingerpainting around here, now that I think of it. So I tried to show her how to do it, and she poked one finger around in the paint for a few minutes. Then she decided to stand up and step in the paint for a minute. She was slightly amused by making "footsteps" with red paint on the tub, but that only lasted a minute. She then wanted to get out of the tub and go paint someplace else. How to explain to the 3 year old that the point of the fun (and the way to contain the mess) was to have her paint in the tub?? So, since she really likes taking a bath, she decided she was done painting and just wanted to take her bath. So I turned on the water, forgetting to change the little thing on the faucet that changes it from being a shower to a bath, and cold water rained down on her, freezing her and scaring the crap out of her. Now she's screaming and grabbing my shirt for dear life, covering me in red paint. I pulled her out of the tub, settled her down, and then got her back in the tub for the actual bath. When she was all settled, I showed her the painting she'd made, and she decided she wanted it in the tub. So I figured what the heck, and I gave it to her, even though I told her it'd get all wet. She was amused for a minute when she saw that she could put her hand in the wet, red paint, and then when she put her hand in the bubbles, they kind of looked red too. But once she saw that the bath water was red, she wanted out! She kept telling me how her bath was ruined. So much for that. Guess I can't win them all - and maybe I should invest in a few paint brushes.
Told you I was a crazy mom.
Being a new blogger, I've been lurking for a little bit every Wednesday at Rocks In My Dryer for Shannon's weekly Works For Me Wednesday. I've been thinking it'd be fun to join in, but I can't seem to think of anything that, well, works for me.
This past Friday night I was not feeling well - I spent the whole weekend dealing with some sort of flu thing, with a fever that haunted me every six hours when my Motrin would wear off. So I was humoring myself going through the Works For Me Wednesday Archives. I happened across one week where the theme was birthdays. I was excited, not only because I love birthdays, but also because Paige was turning 3 on Sunday, and maybe I'd find some fun tid-bit to make her birthday, well, perfect. Ha ha.
Anyway, I was in luck! One of the first posts was this one from Once Upon A Trip. In this post, they talk about Disney's Enchanted Phone Calls. At this web site, you can arrange to have a Disney character call your kids! They can call for birthdays, to congratulate your child, to say good-night, you name it, and they only cost $2.49 per call! There are a few different characters to choose from, and I was excited to find that Ariel was one of them. So, wonderful Mom that I am, I scheduled a call from Ariel for the night of Paige's birthday. Right at 5:30, the phone rang, and I gathered Paige up in my lap and told her that the call was for her. I pressed 1 to connect to Ariel, and put the phone next to her ear. We then sat and watched her priceless expression. When the call was done, I asked her, who called? and she just whispered, "Ariel."
It was so much fun and...well, it was just perfect. Is it always wrong to enjoy a bit of perfectionism? I hope not. :)
If you have ever wondered if perfectionism can affect your blogging, I'm here to tell you that yes it can!
The problem begins when you decide you'd like to blog, but you want a great blog that a lot of people read, and you immediately want a lot of comments and to create a huge following of die-hard readers. Then of course, you've built the whole idea up in your head so much, that you can't figure out what to write about. You can't figure out what is "right" or what all of these die-hard readers want to read. So you take something that was supposed to be therapeutic, and it almost becomes a little stressful. Leave it to me to try and create the perfect blog, when a couple of months ago I barely knew what a blog was!
I wanted to check in and let everyone know I'm still out here, although sometimes I am better at lurking in other blogs than posting in my own. I'm becoming a bit concerned about the fact that I often "write" blog posts in my head...but then they never seem to make it here. I am always thinking about my blog, but not posting. Now that I think about it, I have this problem in a lot of areas in my life. I spend more time thinking about something then actually doing it. I collect ideas for scrapbooking projects, or recipes I might want to try, or even simple kid's craft projects, and I'll look at them over, and over, and over, but I won't actually try any of them. I can never seem to find the time or to be able to pick out what I want to do. I spend a lot more time looking at life than participating, it seems. And I know I think too much about things. I need to figure out how to stop thinking about it, and dare I say this...just do it.
In any event, I'm finally pushing myself to come back and let you all know that I'm alive. Maybe I need to just put my butt in the seat in front of the computer every day or two and just make myself write about something, and try not to worry about what it is or how good the post is, or if anyone will care about any of it at all. Now that might be therapeutic!
And hopefully, my head won't explode.
