There's 104 Days of Summer Vacation and School Comes Along Just to End It

It's official. I only have 20 days of summer vacation left, and while I can't say that I have spent my vacation exactly like Phineas and Ferb, I would like to think I have been productive.

I taught two summer classes, made two fall syllabi, threw a bachelorette party, rearranged my living room, was a Maid of Honor, spent a week at my Aunt's helping her prepare for a MASSIVE garage sale, held two awesome Disney parties and planned about 10 more, cleaned my junk room, linen closet, pantry, and office, hosted one of my lovely little sisters for a week, and watched all three seasons of The Walking Dead for the first time.

 I was pretty excited about finding that rubber band ball!

I guess I can't get away with saying I don't have anything to eat.

Small Fry (littlest sister) and Emma (puppy) became BFFs when she came to stay.

Not bad, right? Well, not until I start thinking about all of the things I hope to accomplish in the next 20 days.

As far as cleaning goes, I still need to clean out the man cave, the closets in the junk room, the laundry room, and the backyard.

I also have plans this weekend to go over to my Aunt's and help her redecorate her kitchen/continue working on the garage sale.  I don't know that I plan to actually do the garage sale before I go back to school, but I do hope to get it done before garage sale season is over!

There are hopefully a few more Disney parties in my summer, but I would love to be able to plan out the rest before they come so I don't spend valuable grading time on them. 

As far as work goes, I still have about four syllabi to make! And I just found out today that I will be teaching an Introduction to Philosophy class for the first time this fall. I'm very excited, but I'm also VERY nervous! It's been a long time since I've had a philosophy class, so I have a lot of reading to do between now and then. I signed up for a Coursera Introduction to Philosophy course, but it doesn't start until October.

I will also be doing a presentation at the Arkansas Association of Two Year Colleges (AATYC) conference in mid-October with a colleague. We're going to discuss our decision to teach three different documentation styles in our research class rather than just teaching MLA. The decision to present began with a discussion about the need to get published if I ever hope to get into a reputable PhD program, so that is the eventual goal with this topic. 

There's also the whole process of finding the right PhD program for me. Unfortunately, I don't really even know where to begin!

You would think that I don't have to grade papers when I'm not teaching, but you would be wrong! I have 10 papers I need to grade for an assessment meeting when I go back to work in a few weeks. I also have to finish up a self-assessment. 

Also, because I am the advisor for two student organizations on campus, I have work to do for both of those. The Student Government Association (SGA) is having a meeting a week from today. There are also a number of things I need to do for Phi Theta Kappa before returning to school including making a website for the advisor's association. 

To end on a more positive note, I also have a lot of Doctor Who to watch!  I've been watching the reboot, but I really want to go back and start from the beginning.  The more I think about this, the more I realize this a crazy endeavor (there are SO MANY episodes), but I really enjoy tv as an escape from reality, and this is one of my new favorites (and I just might be that crazy)!  Another escape from reality that I thoroughly enjoy is reading (duh, I'm an English teacher)! Recently my friend Ed sent me a copy of a book he wrote, and I really want to finish it before school starts again.  No rest for the wicked!

Godspeed!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Shortly after the Bean drew Toy Story as our first movie night selection, we realized that my mom's birthday was that same week and we needed to do something in honor of her birthday!

So, I called my mom and asked her if she wanted a regular birthday dinner, or a Disney birthday dinner.  I guess this whole, getting my family excited, thing is working, because she chose to have a Disney birthday!  I told her that since it was her birthday, she didn't have to draw a movie from the hat, she could just pick which one she wanted.  So, she picked The Little Mermaid.  My mom has always liked The Little Mermaid and she loves to swim, so we were going to make it a pool party.  However, as we were discussing the food, my mom suddenly realized that having a Little Mermaid themed birthday probably meant she was going to have to eat seafood.  My mom is NOT a seafood lover.  So, I mentioned some of the ideas I had for a Tangled themed evening, and viola!  We had a Tangled party!

The only person we really invited was my aunt, so I sent the following invite (the original came from here) to her and the Bean.

We had three(ish) main dishes for dinner.  The first was Fettuccine Alfredo.  I chose this because I thought it would kind of look like Rapunzel's hair.  The second dish was hazelnut soup.  Ultimately, I am working around both dietary issues and a picky six year old here, so I went with two because Dad can't have pasta (gluten), and even though we probably could have made the Bean eat hazelnut soup, she absolutely loves noodles and I thought it was a cute/relatively inexpensive idea.  Finally, my mom's favorite food is steak, and she wanted a steak for her birthday, so dad fired up the grill and made her a steak (and made some barbeque chicken and grilled squash since the grill was already going.)

For our sides, we had a standard salad and I took a roll of crescent rolls and braided them to make a braid (get it, a braid) of bread.  The braided crescents were incredibly adorable!

While cooking we listened to a little bit of music from Tangled.  Can I just say that I love the music from this movie?  Good stuff.

For dessert we had apples in honor of Maximus.  I used the Krispy Apple Treats recipe found here.  

My aunt is also a fabulous cake decorator, so she made a Tangled cake for Mom. 

For our activity, I made a piñata out of a cereal box.  I used strips from an old phone book; dipped them in a paste of 1 cup flour, 1 cup water, and 1 tablespoon salt; did a couple of layers; painted it; and glued on a picture I found of Flynn Rider.  The plus side of using a cereal box is that you can fill it before you begin and don't have to worry about leaving a hole and covering it later.  The negative part of using a cereal box is that it is incredibly sturdy and difficult to bust.  I filled ours with Tootsie Rolls because that's Mom's favorite candy, and then we hit it with a frying pan!

For our craft, I was going to use an idea found at Disney's Family.com (I get the feeling I will be using this site a lot) for making a golden sun medallion, but it was getting late and we ended up not doing a craft.

While we were eating, we watched Tangled and had fun celebrating my mom.

Happy Birthday Mom!

(Rough) Shopping List

• 1 pound dried fettucine
• 14 Tablespoons butter
• 5 shallots, peeled and minced
• 3 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
• 1 1/2 cups whole hazelnuts
• 2 medium leeks (whites only), chopped
• 2 parsnips, peeled and chopped
• 1 T cornstarch
• 6 cups chicken broth
• 2 cups water
• salad ingredients
• 2 packages crescent rolls
• 6 cups Rice Krispies
• 1 package large marshmallows
• 1 small package Jell-O, cherry or strawberry flavor
• 25 small Tootsie Roll Candies (we needed more since that's what we used for the piñata)
• green fruit roll-ups or spearmint gum
• cereal box or balloon
• newspaper or old phone book
• candy to fill the piñata
• flour, water, and salt
• paint
• frying pan (if you're not comfortable using a cast iron--they are really heavy--there is a non-toxic spray that I read about to make your regular frying pan look like cast iron)
• scissors
• scrapbook paper (2 or more shades or prints of gold)
• yellow or gold faux gems and/or glitter glue
• glue sealer (such as Mod Podge)
• beading monofilament
• sewing needle
• gold seed beads

We have been having a lot of fun with this, and I hope that you all have had fun reading about it!  Maybe someday someone with a similar idea will stumble across this and find this all very helpful; though, frankly, the shopping lists are really for my own convenience.  :)

Godspeed!

To Infinity . . . and Beyond!

Howdy y'all!

Our first movie night showing was Toy Story!

Just as a reminder, my niece has a hat full of movie titles, and when I know I will be visiting on the weekend, I will call her and tell her to draw a movie.  That weekend, we will have a family night where we have a themed meal, participate in an activity and/or make a craft, and watch the movie.  

Since I had the Bean draw the movie on Monday (I needed to make sure I had time to prepare everything), I decided that I needed to send her a card of some sort to get her super excited for the weekend festivities.  So, I googled a few things online and came up with this:

I sent it to her in the mail from "Buzz Lightyear; Space Ranger; Gamma Quadrant; Sector 12" and put a Top Secret stamp on the folded up piece of paper.  I went with Buzz instead of Woody because when the Bean called me to tell me which movie she drew, she said she drew Buzz Lightyear.  Therefore, I decided that she was probably more of a Buzz fan than a Woody fan.

For dinner we, obviously, decided to go with a Pizza Planet theme.  One of my main goals with this whole bit of craziness is not to spend too much more on these movie nights than I (or my parents) would on any old dinner.  So, pizza lends itself to that very nicely.  Some of my family members aren't really into homemade pizza, so for them we just ordered a pizza, and then I printed out a Pizza Planet logo and put it on the box.  However, my dad has a gluten intolerance, so his pizza had to be homemade.  For his, we used a pre-packaged gluten free pizza crust mix, and then just put on the toppings that he wanted.

I made a simple side salad for the adults.  Nothing special here, I just figure that Pizza Planet would probably have a little bit healthier fare for the grown-ups.

For our beverage, we had green Hawiian Punch and my little sister made an "alien slime" label to put on the bottle. I found the printables for the alien toys at Disney's Family.com so there would be no question of the alien slime's authenticity.

For dessert, we had green alien cupcakes.  I had a hard time deciding what type of dessert they might have at Pizza Planet, so I went with these since the little green aliens are first seen at Pizza Planet.  I used the design from Disney's Family.com, but instead of making a white cake, I used a fabulous gluten free carrot cake recipe that my family absolutely adores.  We also had difficulty finding any of their suggestions for the alien ears, so we ended up cutting up pieces of spearmint gum. 

We watched Toy Story while we ate dinner, and once the movie was over, we moved on to our activities for the evening. 

We had two activities for this movie night.  The first was pin the body parts onto Mr. Potato Head.  I drew up a blank Mr. Potato Head and then made his body parts.  

Then, each person picked the parts he or she wanted for Mr. Potato Head, was blindfolded, spun around, and handed the body parts one at a time to pin on Mr. Potato Head.  There was occasionally some extra spinning between body parts if we felt the participant was doing too well or wasn't dizzy enough.  I've also seen suggestions of providing a few real Mr. Potato Heads and letting everyone go nuts with the decorations, then having a Mr. Potato Head fashion show, but that was a little too pricey for our budget.

The second activity was a watergun shooting range!  We lined up empty cans on our cars and worked together to shoot them down. Because we waited to do this until after we watched the first movie, it was a little dark, but we still had a lot of fun. 

We ended the night by putting in Toy Story 2 and doing our craft project during the movie!  For our craft, I used another idea I found at Disney's Family.com.  We attempted to make rocket snowglobes! As it turns out, distilled water and glycerin are two very important components for snowglobe making. I ended up leaving mine as a jar full of glitter, oil, and water. Even though the snowglobe rockets didn't turn out quite like we anticipated, the Bean said it was her favorite part of the night. 

I also downloaded all of the songs from the three Toy Story movies, but we really only ended up listening to them while we were baking cupcakes and putting together Dad's pizza. However, if you want to download a few, I would recommend "You've Got a Friend in Me," "Strange Things," "I Will Go Sailing No More," "Woody's Roundup" (Riders in the Sky), "When She Loved Me" (Sarah McLachlan), and "We Belong Together" (all by Randy Newman unless otherwise noted).

(Rough) Shopping List

• pizza (homemade, frozen, delivery, the possibilities are endless)
• side salad (lettuce, tomato, cheese, and homemade dressing for us)
• green Kool-Aid or Hawaiian Punch
• cupcakes (I will probably post our gluten free carrot cake recipe someday, but today is not that day)
• blue cupcake liners (because the little aliens' outfits are blue)
• green frosting
• white chocolate chips
• Sour Punch Straws, green
• sour belts, green fruit roll-ups, or green fondant (we used spearmint gum)
• melted chocolate (the darker the better since you're going for black and black icing is gross)
• waterguns
• poster boards (to make a Mr. Potato Head and his body parts)
• mason jars (the site says baby food jars, but I decided it would be much easier to make them stand if the paper was wrapped around the bottom half of a mason jar rather than holding up a baby food jar)
• cardstock in assorted colors
• scissors
• glue
• distilled water
• glycerin (can be purchased from a pharmacy)
• confetti and glitter
• markers, stickers, and/or stamps

Well, I think that's everything for our Toy Story movie night!

Godspeed!

Disney Baby

In just a few short months, my family and I will be going to Disney World!

To say that I am excited would be an understatement.  I haven't been to Disney since I was in the first grade, and I'm sad to say that I don't remember all that much.  The most exciting part is that my niece, the Bean, will be going for the first time!  She is six and going into the first grade in the fall, so she will be the same age I was.  However, unlike me at the tender age of six(ish), Bean <3 LOVES <3 roller coasters.  When we went to Magic Springs, we had to take turns riding the coaster with her because our heads were pounding and she just wanted to ride again and again and again.  My husband and my youngest sister, Small Fry, will also be first timers!

So, even though we're not going until after Christmas (I know, I know, that's absolutely the busiest time ever to go to Disney World), I felt I needed to do something to get these first timers (and my other little sister who would have been four or five the first time we went) excited!

At this point, I should probably let you in on a little secret, if I weren't a teacher, I would probably be a co-owner of a party planning business.  I say co-owner because I'm not good with getting things turned in on time (contracts and whatnot), so I would need someone else to focus on decorations and details.  When I plan a party, my main focus is on the food.  My secondary focus is on activities that people will enjoy.  Decorations come in third, and sometimes I don't get around to them.  I try and make the activities things that will add some "decor."

So, upon combining my desire to get everyone as excited about this trip as I am and my love for overdoing things, I have come up with a plan!  I am in the process of planning a movie night for thirty-two Disney movies that I feel are important to watch before going to Disney World!

Snow White

Fantasia

Dumbo

Cinderella

Alice in Wonderland

Peter Pan

Lady and the Tramp

Sleeping Beauty

Swiss Family Robinson

101 Dalmatians

Sword in the Stone

Winnie the Pooh

Little Mermaid

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

Beauty and the Beast

Aladdin

Lion King

Toy Story

Pocahontas

Hercules

A Bug’s Life

Mulan

Tarzan

Monsters, Inc.

Atlantis

Lilo and Stitch

Finding Nemo

Pirates of the Caribbean

Cars
Tangled

Princess and the Frog

Brave

Some of these choices are due to rides or other attractions, and I've thought about adding Indiana Jones and Tom and Huck for those reasons, but there's no way we'll get all of these done in the limited amount of time between now and Christmas.  Others are there simply because they contain princesses, and we all know that it's important to be familiar with the Disney princesses!  (Especially if I can talk my parents into splurging on a character breakfast!)

So, every time I know I will be visiting my family, I will call my sister/my niece, and they will draw one of these names out of a hat.  Then, we will have a movie night for the chosen movie that weekend.

The Bean drew her first movie today, so our first movie will be . . . (drum roll please) . . . Toy Story!  Not to give too much away, but we will be going with a Pizza Planet theme, there will be a pin the body part on Mr. Potato Head game, a water gun competition, and a craft that is as yet to be determined.  And fun will be had by all!

I hope to keep you guys updated on all of the movie nights both to make myself blog more regularly, and to share all of this hard work with the world!

Godspeed!