june so far

Snapshots from June

Hey, remember that one time when I used to blog? Yea me too. Well I have officially entered my last week of this crazy crazy class and I don't have any presentations left so I am feeling a huge weight off my shoulders. The reason I've been so absent has a lot to do with last Thursday. When I had three presentations due at once. One was the most important part of my grade and was accompanied by what ended up being a 34 page lesson plan (don't ask). Then there was a project I had to do with a partner, and a silly current event thrown in for good measure. Oh and I was the only one who had three presentations due. Just the luck of the draw really. Another girl had two due. The rest only had one. So as much as that sucked, I'm basically done! And I can hardly believe it.

Some interesting things have been happening lately that I'd like to share, cause things, they are a-changin'. Well the first thing has a lot to due with the second thing. The first thing is that I finally (after waiting 5 months) found out where I'll be student teaching in the fall. I'm excited to report that I got into my second choice district (first choice wasn't taking anyone on in the fall) and it's an amazing district! I can't wait to see what the school is like. I'll be in a second grade classroom full time starting in September.

This has got me looking at a TON of teaching resources, and well, blogs. I get all my best info from blogs anyway, so why not? There are actually some really amazing teachers out there with blogs full of great ideas and resources. This brings me to the second thing.. I think once I actually start teaching, I want to make a teacher blog. It's a great place to share ideas and offer downloads of things you've created for your classroom. I'd also love to start talking to other teachers and see what they are doing! I'll hopefully run the two together and keep life-life stuff here, and work-life stuff there. Well, I'm excited about the idea and even though I may not use it soon, I'm dying to start designing it. :)

The third thing I've been looking into recently is Passion Fruit ads. I've considered suspending my ad swappage indefinitely, but I love being able to feature talented bloggers and friends each month. I've just gotten entirely too busy to keep up with it lately, as many bloggers who have joined Passion Fruit have. And with camp and student teaching coming up, I know the load isn't going to lighten anytime soon. So I'm hoping that by July, I will have my ads set up through Passion Fruit so that I can still keep offering free/affordable ad spaces without adding anything extra to my plate!

How has your life been this month? I really need to go catch up on my favorite reads. I'm sooo behind!

yarn juice

This is not spaghetti.

Even though that's what everyone who walked into the kitchen thought. I have some free time before I have to start my next project for class so I thought I'd tick some things off my crafty to-do list. One being kool-aid yarn dying! You may remember this post.

I can't wait to try other colors. I just have to unravel a few more skeins first. For my first project, I'm creating a color palette of the general kitchen decor to make a woven yarn rug. This flavor color is mango. As you can see the water is pretty much clear and all the color is absorbed into the yarn. Fun!

In the shot above you get a good idea of the original color vs. the kool-aid color. I need to pick up a few more packs now that I have a project in mind. I just grabbed these at random at the market one day so I'd have something to start with.

What projects are you tackling these days?

Have a great weekend!!

raspberry dark chocolate scones

I bought two containers of raspberries the other day for the raspberry syrup I made for iced coffee. I ate a bunch by themselves but wanted to use the rest up before they had a chance to go bad. And what better way to use them than to bake them into something! Scones, to be exact. I saw a recipe for these scones as I was browsing through foodgawker and knew I had to try them, especially since I had all the ingredients on hand.

They were pretty amazing. I've never baked with raspberries before and the flavor came through brilliantly. The bitter dark chocolate was the perfect addition to all the sweet. The only thing I noticed since I've made two different scone recipes before this one, was that the dough was extremely sticky compared to other ones. I'm not sure if it was just different ratios of wet to dry ingredients or because the berries add extra moisture, but it was a little harder to work with.

I still wanted to post the recipe though because they were absolutely delicious. So if patting the dough into a disc, cutting it into pieces, and moving those pieces onto a baking sheet isn't going smoothly, you may have to shape the pieces individually once they get there. That's what I did anyway, to make them look pretty.

I definitely recommend whipping these up for breakfast one day if you have extra raspberries and chocolate laying around. I might experiment with adding these two mix-ins into the other scone doughs I've tried to see if it's easier to work with but still tastes just as good. If not, sticky dough it is! :) I'll let you know what I come up with.


Have a great week! Is anyone else secretly enjoying this sudden cool weather? I know it's going to get crazy hot soon so I'm basking in the cool breeze while I can. :)

See link below for recipe!

summer flavor shots

 

Last summer I finally mastered a method of making delicious iced coffee at home. Which really helps the ol' change purse. The next thing to do was figure out a sweetener that would work best with a cold drink. I've been using raw sugar in my coffee lately because artificial sweeteners are always questionable. And the ones that are supposedly healthy taste awful in my opinion. (I'm lookin at you Stevia and Truvia.) And raw is always better than processed so raw sugar it is! Of course I use it in moderation and really only in my coffee so I'm not worried about it effecting my weight. And it hasn't, for the record. :)

So! The next logical step was to create simple syrup for my iced coffee. That way there's no grainy business at the bottom of the glass from undissolved sugar. Simple syrup is really, very simple. It goes like this..

Combine equal parts sugar and water in a small pot.

Boil until dissolved.

Simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Bam. Liquid sugar.

And as I'm sure you've seen around the webs, people have found ways of making other syrups in different flavors, often to imitate popular delicious drinks from certain coffee shops. ;) Well I went and bought myself four of these olive oil bottles from target and decided I'd try four new flavors for each season. I made a list and decided to get to making the summer ones since it's absolutely iced coffee season. First up on the list - coconut, raspberry, vanilla, and a plain simple syrup for unflavored coffee.

This seriously took me about an hour one morning. I just kept cooking the sugar, adding the flavors, bottling, rinsing the pot, and repeat. Such a quick little project for so much tasty coffee. I can't wait until I get to the fall and winter flavors this year! This is gonna be good.

I'm sipping on some coconut iced coffee as I type this. I just need a little sand and some waves and I'll be all set. :)

What's your favorite summertime flavor? Hope you have a great weekend!

Check the recipes below!