Tuesday Teaching {Wordle}

Word clouds by Wordle.

My curriculum for my technology classes always includes a graphic design unit. The students always get a kick out of finding their inner designer, and they love using Wordle! I'd even go so far as to say the students prefer spending their time on the internet on this site over an educational game website. Believe it! :)

I love this. I love this for games, for summaries, for brainstorming, for design - in science, technology, reading, English, a little girl's bedroom. I love this for everything!

The first word cloud comes from a 'Copy & Paste' transcript of one of my earlier Teaching posts. Hm... Displacement, water, boat, tinfoil.... Can you guess which post it is?

Click here!

Wouldn't Wordle come in handy when in a Reading class setting? Or even with your kids at home. After the child reads a story, they can type in the main points they remember and see their word cloud come to form. Or you could make the word clouds and have the child guess which story the word cloud represents. 

Sound familiar?

I also think this is a very creative and cute way to incorporate a personal touch in a framed print in a child's room.

Taken right from her Wikipedia page. Did I pick a famous enough woman? :) 

To use Wordle,
1. go to http://www.wordle.net/create
2. type in your set of words. Click go!
3. change settings in the upper left hand corner of your image (font, color, direction of words, etc.)
4. if there are words you do not want to have in your graphic, simply right click on the word and click 'Remove _______'

I can't wait to see what you come up with! Comment with a link to show off your designs!

Anything Else Fridays {Spice Container Labels}

Our Friday this week falls on Wednesday. Or atleast, a boating adventure tomorrow gets me feeling like it's the weekend already! This week, I wanted to spice up our .. spice rack. Zing!

We've been in the market for a spice rack since we moved into our everything-is-bigger-except-the-kitchen apartment to free up some much needed cupboard space. A nice wood one was our first choice, and we scored one off Craigslist for $10!

Included were the dull generic bottles, identical, making it ridiculously hard to tell the 32 spices apart and adding 10 minutes to dinner prep time.

 

I shopped around for some new spice container labels and only found blank labels that you write on yourself. AH. Not going to ruin my new beautiful spice rack with my squigglies! I decided to make them myself. Another excuse to break out the tiny graphic designer in me. 

I like to do test prints on lined paper so I know exactly where on the paper the graphics will print. Put it in the correct way a normal lined paper would lay and see which side/corner your design comes out on. It's foolproof!

The initial plan was to use Avery labels with their printing template. Sounds easy, right? Should've been. But, the Martha Stewart version I got sadly printed out really runny - not even a step up above my squigglies. So, for the (hopefully) temporary time, I've just cut these out from printer paper and glued them on the blank labels.

Not ideal, but I invite you to imagine what they look like from really far away :) Even with that hiccup though, I feel like they add lots more personality to the kitchen. I love them! 

Let me know in the comments if you'd like the sheets I designed and in what format (Photoshop/Word/PDF). I'm going to try these with the normal, non-Martha Stewart Avery 1.5" labels soon to see if they work. Enjoy!

Wednesday! {Mrs. V revamping}

Hello to all you fantastic readers who I left for a whole month!

 My apologies. When I took on the Mrs. V role at home, I wasn't sure how it would all go. There were kinks, most of the kinks being the amount of work I was going to be able to do for the blog and the many, many days I spent/am spending out of town and away from the computer.

From now on, I'll be {teaching} once a week on Tuesdays and {basically crafting/designing} on Fridays. And I'll try my best even when I'm out of town.

Hope your summer is coming to a wonderfully fun close.

:) Mrs. V

Anything Else Fridays {Finishing up}

I'm real excited (and relieved) to report the Projects Completed this week!

Other side of Pillow cover for baby girl's room. Design by cluckclucksew

Still no curtain rod, but I'd say this baby girl's room is done! Finished the race, but hasn't gotten the medal yet kind of done :)

Flip side of the pillow

This gallery wall was tricky! I had a few different arrangements that I really loved and so I put the different sizes of paper on the wall only to discover that the spotlight above gave really weird shadows! So I decided nothing could go underneath the middle one, which is going to house a cute typography of our family mission statement. So I had to go out horizontally. In the end, I made a single breakage line on both sides of the middle frame and matched up the little ones to keep the breakage line obvious through the whole thing. Yes, I made up the term breakage line. It's the new planking.

Anything Else Fridays {DC Tourists}

I finished the curtains this week! And tried to get the rest of the house in order. I'll wait until it's all done (and we get a curtain rod :) to show pictures. In the meantime, I thought I'd share the following list from our friends, the Wallaces. They have lived in DC for a couple years and have taken advantage of every opportunity imaginable here. Here's their complete list of sites they have visited in DC:

C & O Canal State Park
Great Falls
MLK Memorial
WW I D.C. Memorial
The Phillips Collection (Art Museum)
Lady Bird Johnson Park
Navy Merchant-Marine Memorial
DEA Museum
D.C. United (MLS)
Albert Einstein Memorial
George Mason Memorial
African American Civil War Museum
African American Civil War Memorial
National Arboretum
Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum
Wizards Game (NBA)
Nat'l Geographic Museum
Ben's Chili Bowl
National Harbor
Spy Museum
Capitals NHL Game
Six Flags DC
Pentagon 9/11 Memorial
Udvar-Hazy Smithsonian
NFL RedSkins Game
US Marine Corps Museum
Air Force Memorial
US Marine Memorial (Iwo Jima)
National Gallery of Art (East and West Building)
Newseum
US Postal Museum (Smithsonian)
American Indian Museum (Smithsonian)
Hirshhorn Museum (Smithsonian)
National Portrait Gallery
Crime & Punishment Museum
Monticello
Smithsonian Natural History Museum
Vietnam War Memorial
Korean War Memorial
Potomac River
Rock Creek Park
Jefferson Memorial
Library of Congress
U.S. Botanical Gardens
U.S. Capitol - House Floor
Smithsonian Ripley International Gallery
Smithsonian African Art Museum
Smithsonian Freer Gallery
Smithsonian Sackler Gallery
Smithsonian Castle
Mount Vernon
Fredericksburg: Civil War Sites
Georgetown
Thomas Sweet Ice Cream Co.
White House
Washington D.C. Temple
George Washington Masonic Temple
Arlington National Cemetery
Washington Nationals Game
National Zoo
Freedom Plaza (WTU Protest)
National Cathedral
Holocaust Museum
Smithsonian American History Museum
Lincoln Memorial
World War II Memorial
Washington Monument
Harman Center for the Arts
National Archives
Navy Memorial
Smithsonian Air & Space Museum
Bureau of Engraving and Printing
Ford's Theatre
Hard Rock Cafe
National Mall
Union Station

Along with being incredibly impressive, this was incredibly motivating! I think it's easy to get in the mindset of 'we can tour whenever we want because we live here' and then spend Saturdays shopping or .. in our case most of the time... napping and watching Netflix. The colored ones above were places Matt and I have gone to - me only in pink, and both of us in purple. Our goal is to keep turning those places purple :) Thanks Wallaces for sharing!

Monday Musings {Resourcefulness}

I love the Container Store. When my husband once suggested we go spend some time there last year, I doubted. Spend some time in the Container Store? As you would spend some time at IKEA looking at all their showrooms or at the park watching little league baseball teams and pet-owners? I doubted, until we had spent an hour scouring every aisle and then were ECSTATIC to find out that there was another entire second floor! I was sold. There are things in that store you never knew you wanted, let alone existed. Some things are confusing, some clever, some completely unnecessary, some genius! We have had lots of fun spending some time at the Container Store.

We went there last Saturday and found these containers, which we have turned into our recycling units for our apartment.

I think the reason I appreciate recycling is because you have the chance to turn otherwise useless material into something useful! I like to think of it as 'resourcefulness', although I am well aware of other platforms that try to encourage recycling for differing reasons. No pushing here. I just personally find satisfaction in recycling. I'm excited to be even better now that we have a system going on in the apartment!

A couple of summers ago, my husband and I went to the Dominican Republic to teach science and technology to a group of excelling high school students. We were prepped on their academic levels and planned accordingly, but I was so impressed with how these students shined! They exceeded my expectations, were incredibly creative, and worked hard in their studies. There is a whole lot to say about the language barrier, the unsanitary conditions, the sicknesses, the adjustments, but none of that is very related to the topic - 'resourcefulness'. I came to appreciate this value while there with the children. We talked about utilizing their proximity to the coast to harness wind energy to provide a power source to the village or using the energy of the sun to cheaply and effectively help them in their everyday routine or how they could work to keep their water clean using resources they had there. We talked about attacking their problems from a different angle - turning otherwise unused material into something that was in a real way important in their lives. Resourcefulness! We talked about it, brainstormed, experimented, found some failure and found some success. I loved that experience - the teaching, atleast. The living was difficult, but the perspective I gained there has greatly impacted my life.

So I'll leave you with that. Resourcefulness - what does it mean to you?

Anything Else Fridays {Curtains and Cookies}

Projects in Progress: 3

Pillow for Baby Girl's Rocker

Front will have this design using all the fun patterns in the quilt: Inspired from cluckclucksew.com

Curtains for Baby Girl's Room

 

Get this stubborn sticker off of the rug. Ideas, please! Help!

Projects Completed: 1

Unpacked the suitcases ;)

Projects to Start: 2

Pillows for our 'new' couch and rocker

Figure out how to arrange our gallery wall

Oh yes - and breathe.

One plus from just getting off vacation is that I have serious energy to cook! I guess not cooking for two weeks makes me feel like spending extra time in the kitchen is a must. *Take note if we invite you to dinner - come over after a long break!* I wanted to use up the last of our frozen tilapia, but I have been pretty disappointed in tilapia recipes. They are either overly fishy or overly butter-ized. But this! This was delicious. The recipe was in a family cookbook, but I had an inkling she got it from allrecipes.com. Walaa! :

Jalapeno Garlic Tilapia Pasta

We halved the cayenne pepper and it was a good amount of heat (granted, we are big fans of spicy!) I flaked the fish in the pasta instead of plating the whole fillet. I think this helped lessen the fishiness. Also I used half and half instead of heavy cream, and I bet the real cream would have made it even more delicious! Both the husband and I could not get enough of it!

And I topped the meal off with some gooey goodness - chocolate chip cookies. A homemade dinner and homemade dessert!? This may push my husband to want to go on even more vacations. I'll oblige I guess :)

Super gooey - without a crunch - Chocolate Chip cookies

Matt wasn't thrilled about these because he likes a good crispiness to his chocolate chip cookie. You know when you almost throw a batch out because you obviously didn't put enough flour in the cookies and they turn out like flat disks? Matt's choice of cookie. If you do like a perfectly gooey cookie, this recipe is for you!

Enjoy the weekend!

Anything Else Fridays {Baby room}

My first Friday post! Fridays are going to show anything going on in my life that is not necessarily related to the geeky part of me (although you're the judge of my geekiness, I guess! :) Mostly this will include DIY projects around the house, but the Julia Child in me has been getting very brave lately so I'm sure there will be some of that too!  Once in a while, an Ellen clip might get thrown in for hilarity's sake or a shout out to other bloggers. Who knows what you'll find on a Friday.

We recently moved into a 2 bedroom apt. Round of applause! :) This is a big deal with a 5 month old! The little one has now moved on from the spacious wall of her parent's bedroom.

I've been so excited to decorate a full room for my baby. So this week has been DIY decorating, centered around the baby quilt my momma and I (well... momma quilted, and I picked the colors :) love that woman) made for the little one before she was born.

Why pick 3-4 fabrics when you can pick 13! Actually, I'm just indecisive. BUT I do love how this turned out. The bright colors and mix of patterns - oo it just makes me smile!

 The DIY art in the frames above were featured on a blog earlier this month,

{iheartpears.blgspot.com}

but now that the memorable pink wall is gone, I wanted to put a splash more color into the frames. Luckily, I had extra fabric from the quilt so I used some scraps to cover the mat of the frame.

I love this pop of color!

I'm making a pillow to go on the rocking chair as well. Sneak preview here:

Inspired by daciray.com, but I did use different measurements. Let me know if anyone wants the dimensions. The goal is to bring you the finished pillow next week!

My last project for the room will be to make curtains and I can't stop myself from getting really excited about something like this:

Amy Meier Design

Enjoy your weekend! Mine just might include baby's first time on a boat. How about yours?

Mrs. V {at home}

A few months ago, I traded in my few 'teacher improvement' books for (what could possibly be) hundreds of  'mommy training' encyclopedias. While that decision has truly been the joy of my life, I do miss the life of Mrs. V. Well.. not so much the unprecedented anxiety of managing 25 11-yr olds with power tools in woodshop.  (shudder) I miss the surprising, innovative, creative results from those efforts! I miss making lessons. And the knowledge that I was really providing something for those kids - that there is more to life than TV and Angry Birds - work hard - it's worth the time to search for your hidden talents - YOU can create.

With that, I bring you Mrs. V {at home}! I am excited to share with other mommies, daddies, caregivers, babysitters, (anybody!) fun and unique projects to do with your kids. As my degree is in Technology and Engineering Education, I feel I should warn you though -

There will be a little science... (keep reading!) ... a little craftiness ... (whew) .... engineering ... maybe woodworking ... computers ... design .... technology ... anything else that would fit into an elective teacher's handbook.

Stay tuned for 

*Monday 'Make you go woah!'*

*Teaching Tuesdays*

*Teaching Thursdays*

*Anything else Fridays*

Thank you for stopping by!