Create Kate

Good stuff this week!  Rhonna has papers that are to die for- the colours man! LOVE them! Then Cherie has the cutest little mini kit- her stuff is always so adorable! Erica has a template for 8.5 X 11 that rocks. I love her smaller sized pages. She always makes me want to start doing letter sized layouts. She makes them look effortless and fantastic.

 

I have a few items this week as well. I've got a paper pack called Summer Breezes. It was fun to make. I have used a few papers in layouts for the next garden- fun! Then I have two 99 cent items.First is a funky new frame.  I'm on a frame kick lately. I find you can never have enough of them and they are perfect for my blog posts as well! And lastly is another template. Have fun browsing all the new goodies. ;)

It's always so much easier with someone else's kids. Teachers talk about this in the lunchroom a lot.  It's funny because we teach kids all day long and  it's not too hard. it's something that comes naturally to me. I enjoy kids and their enthusiasm.  I love it in fact. Teaching kids is fun and I think my class is pretty good. I teach them to be respectful, to work hard and not complain/tattle unless absolutely needed. I also tell my husband that he should come spend a few days with me at work. I really do have a lottttttttt of patience at work. I surprise myself sometimes. I am firm and the rules are clear. I have been thinking about bringing some chart paper home and putting up a set of rules at home to refer back to. It is so much easier to be at work and say, "What does rule number one say?" to which a child either nods and waits his/her turn knowing that rule number one is we raise our hands to speak. But at home, for some reason, it's all so much harder. Teachers will tell you this. At work, it's someone else's child, so we learn to separate the behaviour from the child. We don't take it personally when they act up or misbehave. But with your own child, as is true for so many parents, we take it personally when they get into trouble. I wish I could bring teacher Kate home with me, yet I also know that for my work sanity I need to leave her at the door when I leave. But how do I train the mommy version of me to separate my child's behaviours from the child and not see it as a reflection on me when they act up? It gets under my skin if Mackenzie talks back. it's like nails on a chalkboard to a Mommy brain. I, in turn,  get frazzled and more frequently than I care to admit, get upset. This goes back and gets her upset and before we know we are locked in a battle that is sure to spin out of control. The same situation could happen with a school child and I would firmly stand my ground, state the behaviour that was unacceptable and the calmness in my voice would ease the situation. I do have to cut myself some slack here too as I know full well that kids listen to other people better than their  parents. So, I am thinking I need to devise a pill to bring this calmness home. Wouldn't that be nice? if only life were that easy.  I don't really have a tip for this week but it's more of a section of musings. My mantra that I trying to keep going in my head is "separate the behaviour from the child". Children test the limits. They NEED to push the boundaries to figure life out. It is normal. I read in a book sometime recently to use going the bathroom as an excuse to get away and collect your thoughts and then return refreshed. I tried this the other day with Kenzie and it helped a lot. She was playing with her friends and got upset about something or other (it was toy related as is so often the case with kids) and she was starting to get worked up. That "I know I'm in trouble with Mom and I feel backed into a corner so I better come out guns blazing or I'm going down" kind of feeling. It makes me a bit crazy when she gets like this. I have tried so many tactics to help her calm down. Once she has started down that spiral staircase of kid destruction quite often there is no going back for quite some time.  So on this day in particular, she came running to me with the voice that only be described as whiny and I politely said, "Excuse me for a minute, I need to go to the bathroom. I can help you out in a few minutes." I went in, locked the door and sat down to collect my thoughts. I came out about 3 minutes later. Everyone was fine! I was doing a silent little cheer in my head! I also had a lightbulb moment in the bathroom- I have figured out why men are in there so long! It's a calm quiet place where no one dares bother you and often comes stocked with magazines and reading material. those men are smarter than we give them credit for! ;)

Last week I talked about great web design galleries, this week it's package design. I LOVE to look around me for inspiration from CD case design to magazine ads to logos. Package design is no exception. Sometimes I find some fantastic colour palettes or ideas for typography.

For example, here is a set of tea canisters. I LOVE  the pattern that is on the background. the short blocks of vertical colour. The palette is funky. And The labels are clean. So many ways to allow this design to inspire you.

Here are my top three places to go for inspiration and package design ideas:

1. The Dieline blog- this blog scours the web for cool packages and keeps them all in one place. I ADORE it. I can spend hours going through all of the ideas.

2. Global Package Gallery- yes,a full gallery dedicated to package design. FUN stuff! The downside is that you can only view the thumbnails for free. There is a fee to view the large resolution images. 

3. Dzine Blog's post on package dsign- while this is only one post (there is also a part 2 here) there are a LOT of great designs to marvel at. 

4. Smashing Magazine's post on design- like the above. A great collection of fun and funky ideas.

Here is an example of how I was inspired to make this element for one of my pages. I saw this package and loved the simply label part. I then used that as a starting point to create the following tag to add to my pages.
 

There are 300 of these here, here and here. Enjoy and have a GREAT father's day!! 

Any ideas for what to do for a great Father's day? What have you got planned? We saw Kung Fu Panda last weekend so that's out. (It was pretty funny btw- I recommend it!) Kenzie has Sport's Day at school today so her Daddy has taken the day off to be with her. She's ecstatic to say the least and all decked out in yellow clothes for her yellow team. Yellow? I was struggling to find yellow clothes so we made a rush out to Zellers on Thursday to get some. Luckily, and oddly enough, they had a fair bit and on sale too! Score. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not dishing on yellow. I LOVE yellow. In fact, it is one of my favourite colours. It can be such a warm happy go lucky colour, but one thing it is not is a clothes colour. It is hard to do yellow in clothes. The t-shirt and skorts (had to be skorts as well pants are pretty much disallowed in Kenzie's world.) were a nice soft yellow. So, back to Father's Day. I'm still trying to think of what to do. He wants a new stainless steel BBQ but those are out of our budget as of late with the basement reno. We do need a new one as we got ours for our wedding 10 years ago this summer and it's seen better days. Then again, I don't want to buy a cheaper one just for now due to budget. I'd rather wait one more year and get something decent. He also wants Wii Fit but that is pretty much scarce unless you pay someone double on ebay and well, I'm against that idea. Hmmmmm.. Maybe a day at the park and a BBQ at home with potato salad and beer? That's his kind of day. Through in some Mario Kart and My Sims Wii and he'd be happy. :) 

Here's how Day one went on my journey to a healthier me:
 

With summer vacation quickly approaching here, I have been thinking of ways to be healthier. Last week, I talked about my PMS symptoms and I think food may help alleviate some of them. Yoga and relaxation as well. Like many moms, I am sure, I am always trying to work on being the best Mom that I can be. So often though, that means leaving myself to the very end and in reality that is not the best Mom that I can be. Taking care of myself is going to be a priority. I have found that I am reflective about my own goals and life dreams twice a year. At New Year's I try to take stock in the year that has passed and how I can set goals for the upcoming year. I then find that as the summer approaches I feel another surge to re-assess and challenge myself. I recently bought Bob Greene's Best Life book and have devoured it. I am good that way. I can read every book on lifestyle change yet implementing takes a bit more. It's hard. I know that for me, I need to work on taking less on and slowing things down. Making room for me to work on my goals. I love how Bob has a three phase approach and he eases you into it. In the past, I have tended to be an all or nothing kind of girl and it has worked with varying degrees of success. The main problem is that most of the time I have taken on too much and one can only do a 180 degree turn for so long before that just drop and give up altogether. So, my first goal is to take baby steps. Here are my goals for the next 3 weeks:

1. Increase my activity level- having a new puppy has helped this a lot but I am aiming to pick up the pace more on our walks.
2. Drink more water- I tend to slack off here. Why can't my morning coffee count?
3. Take my vitamins with breakfast
4. Decrease my caffeine level (I drink 1-2 cups at breakfast and would ideally like to get down to 1 and then perhaps 1/2 before eliminating it somewhere down the road)

I *think* I can do these. Oh c'mon Kate let's be positive. I *know* can do these. 3 weeks goes fast and they say that in 21 days something can become a habit.  And these totally feel doable. I love how on the back of his book Bob states "Claim the life you deserve!" Totally. I love that. I deserve it. You deserve it. Your kids deserve it. We all deserve it. So I am raising my sparkling lemon water glass to you in a toast- onto the next three weeks with gusto! Wanna join me?

I'm going to leave you with a vegetable happy recipe. I ADORE these brussel sprouts. I just picked up enough for two meals ath e store yesterday and am planning on having them for Thursday dinner. They are best in the fall, but I like to make them whenever I see brussel sprouts at the market. I used to HATE them. I mean really hate them. My mom tells me that we had they highback vinyl chairs as kids in the 70s and that they had this crevice at the back where I would stuff food that I didn't like. My two main culpritts? Beans and Brussel Sprouts. But c'mon, who can eat boiled Brussels? or steamed plain for that matter? Now these- bring 'em on.  I can eat a plate full! I cannot take credit for this recipe.I found it here about a year and a half ago. It's a keeper. I have printed it out and given it to everyone in my immediate family. I have almost even converted my brother-in-law over to them and he hated them more than I ever did! The are capital T-T- Terrific!

Golden-Crusted Brussels Sprouts Recipe

This is the only way to eat brussels sprouts: cut in half and cooked until deliciously tender inside and perfectly brown and crusted on the outside.

Use brussels sprouts that are on the small size and tightly closed. You can finish these with many different types of cheese but I tend to go for Parmesan when the weather is good. I trade that in for heavier cheeses like gruyere or Gouda in colder weather. I finished them off with some toasted hazelnuts the other night - delicious!

24 small brussels sprouts
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for rubbing
fine-grain sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup grated cheese of your choice

Wash the brussels sprouts well. Trim the stem ends and remove any raggy outer leaves. Cut in half from stem to top and gently rub each half with olive oil, keeping it intact (or if you are lazy just toss them in a bowl with a glug of olive oil).

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in your largest skillet over medium heat. Don’t overheat the skillet, or the outsides of the brussels sprouts will cook too quickly. Place the brussels sprouts in the pan flat side down (single-layer), sprinkle with a couple pinches of salt, cover, and cook for roughly 5 minutes; the bottoms of the sprouts should only show a hint of browning. Cut into or taste one of the sprouts to gauge whether they’re tender throughout. If not, cover and cook for a few more minutes.

Once just tender, uncover, turn up the heat, and cook until the flat sides are deep brown and caramelized. Use a metal spatula to toss them once or twice to get some browning on the rounded side. Season with more salt, a few grinds of pepper, and a dusting of grated cheese. While you might be able to get away with keeping a platter of these warm in the oven for a few minutes, they are exponentially tastier if popped in your mouth immediately.

Serves 4.

Hanging tags are found here  Flashcard is found here  and the papers are found here
 

First off, this week's book. Well, not just a single book but a series. My students LOVE these! All of the title begin with You wouldn't want to...    Some examples would be You wouldn't want to be a Roman Soldier  and You wouldn't want to be a Pyramid Builder. This week, we read You wouldn't want to be a Pirate's Prisoner . It was another morning of toss out the daybook and just go with it. I tend to be the kind of teacher that rolls with it when the kids are excited. If something peaks their interest we learn as much about it as we can. I find they really get into things this way and they remember so much more. These are long stories written in a comic book style rich with historically accurate information. They take a long time to read. We read after we have our morning snack each day and before Math. On this morning, we pushed Math to the afternoon and just read and talked and read and talked and read some more. They couldn't get enough of it. Yes, some parts are gruesome, it is a Pirate story afterall, but the cool part was that it is all historically accurate. We've got You wouldn't want to be a Greek Athlete (Races you'd rather not run) on the go for tomorrow. And truth be told, I'm excited to read it too! If you've got kids, grab some of these if you seen them. You won't be disappointed. Our librarian told me that her son had a greek civilization test in Grade Seven that he aced as he  had read the Greek books! Cool!

Last week I shared some of my philosophy of teaching. I have been pondering what to discuss this week. I have decided to give you a little snippet of our week in Grade Two. The students have been busily writing for the past two-three weeks. They are filling up their writing folders at record speed. A lot of them are choosing to work with a partner. I think this is part of the interest factor for them. Working collaboratively is always more fun. (Plus they can talk to someone and well, who doesn't like that?) One of my creative thinking students has been working diligently on a Super Turtle story. He has teamed up with two other students. He has a million ideas in his head, yet he struggles with spelling and phonics. He has been getting extra help this year and is slowly but surely making progress, yet he has remained reluctant to write. When we let loose with the folders he came up to me with the idea of Super Turtle story. (kind of a cross between Ninja Turtles and Superman) He was eager and he was excited. He got right to work. He would come to continuously for help spelling some words and I know he was choosing other words purely because he could spell them when I knew he wanted to use more expressive After a few days I asked him if he wanted a partner to help him look up words and spell-check. One of my students volunteered excitedly as the word was spreading throughout the room what a great story was evolving. The two finished off the first installment The Adventures of Super Turtle 1- Volcano Island. They then moved onto Super Turtle 2. Just as they were about to begin the 3rd edition, another student, a keen artist, asked to join their group. They knew that an artist would be the touch they needed and they eagerly accepted the last member. By now, I had re-vised each section with them and questioned them for more details when necessary. I decided to send them down to see our principal. She is always excited to here from young writers and share in their work. They came back from her room even more thrilled. She had told them if they did a good copy printed out from the computer that we could laminate their story and add it to the library's collection of books. "With a real scanner number and everything Mrs.Teague!!!" they shouted. They have been working non-stop the past two days. I let them work out in the hallway each afternoon while the rest of us worked in the classroom. Of course, you can guess what the rest of the class thought. They couldn't believe. "You are going to be areal author!!  an illustrator!!"  "People can sign out your book! WOW!" Pretty soon everyone wanted to make a book so we set some ground rules:

1. Collaborations are GREAT. Three people works best- choose people who are great at editing, ideas, writing and drawing.
2. You need a plan.
3. Your plan must have: the characters in your story, the setting, and a general idea for your beginning middle an end. A problem/solution are also great but not always necesary.
4. Write up a proposal as a group.
5. Submit it for consideration-revise it if needed
6. Write your story together- all members must contribute and take turns at various points.
7. After your first draft, read your story to the class. they will ask you to clarify any points or ask questions if they are confused at any part.
8. Add-in details generated by class questions
9. Print good copy off in lab
10. Illustrate and color- take your time

Sit back with a smile and read your story to an enthusiastic class and a proud and happy teacher!

We now have a version of the version Fantastic Four (with a whole new set of 4 heroes) going as well as an underwater flying magic carpet/ mermaid story. And, best of all a class FULL of students who are engaged and excited to show up at the door every morning! With only 3 weeks of school left, I told them we would all need to pretty much be writing every morning for at least an hour or more to get it done. And you know what they said? "Cool! Let's get going!"

Web design galleries. I love love a website with great design. Web design galleries are perfect because they have done a lot of the hard work already. They search around for sites with great design and keep them altogether. I love to browse through these galleries as a starting point for inspiration.  Often, I find that I'll be inspired by an element, a colour scheme, the layout, or just the overall design. Here are the top three web galleries I keep on my short list of bookmarks:

1.  Best Web gallery
2. The Best Designs
3. Web Creme

Check them out the next time you are stuck and in need of ideas to get your creative juices flowing!

There are 300 of

these here! and here and here. enjoy!

Thursday feels like a good day to chat. A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through the channels and came across Daniel Amen on PBS talking about the brain. Immediately, I was riveted. Tim came in and he plunked down on the couch and started watching as well. It was a great program. So interesting to hear about the brain. The small organ at the top of our body that has so much power over the rest of the entire body. Fast forward to this week and I bought this book on Tuesday and have barely been able to put it down since. I have almost convinced my  book club at work to read it for our next selection. Dealing with kids emotions and their  capacity to learn, we thought a book about the brain would be ideal. I can't wait to read it and discuss it with them. I have read most of it now and just want to dive into the talk. :)

I have my own reasons for being so intriqued. I suffered from severe post-partum after Mackenzie was born and it still makes me uncomfortable to think of this months. It was a dark, dark anxious time in my life. But, with darkness always comes insight and I will never look at a person with mental illness the same again. never. It robs you of your soul. Ithas to be the scariest thing I have ever gone through. Worse than the MRI that determined I have MS. It is now almost 6 years later. I still suffer from severe PMS for about 8 or 9 days each month. I have terrible mood swings and crying spells. I don't feel the full darkness and despair of the depression but I definitely feel the weight of something other than myself pushing down on me. I think the worst part of any mood disorder is the misunderstanding that you aren't trying hard enough to just get over it. Throughout my PPD and each month when I have PMS, all I want to do is shake it off and get rid of that beast that is following me around. But, als, I can't. I have to wait for it to leave. 

In comes this book. Dr. Amen is amazing. His book is fascinating. Truly. He shows brain activity scans (SPECT scans) from female brains short into their cycle and the activity is completely normal but then starting about 10 before the next cycle everything goes wonky. The deep limbic system messes up. It is crazily overactive. This system in the brain has control over :

1. your emotional state

2. memories

3. motivation

4. appetitie and cravings

5. sleep cycles

6. the sense of smell

7. libido

8. bonding

WOW! Who would want any area that controls these functions to be messed up for a week each month? Even a day or two. I have known for a long time that my cycles were directly related to my mood. I have been having my "Crying" day once a month for about 25 years now. And the cravings. Oh, the cravings. I eat terrible for about 4 or 5 of my moody off days. I mean terrible. It's hard to explain but it's like I have this insatiable craving for "something" yet I never seem to find out what it is. I eat too much chocoalte and olives call my name in a wierd way. Odd I know, but it's true. I also know that for a week each month I sleep restlessly. I toss and turn and I take a long time to fall asleep. I'll often take an OTC sleeping pill for a few nights to help. And now I know that my brain is having trouble at this time. I can cut myself some slack. I have never doubtted that PMS was a condition, but to see how affected the brain is and to read about the link to depression etc. really hit home for me. I am determined more than ever to conquer this hurdle. I want to be for 30 days a months, not 20. That's like missing out on 30% of your life. unacceptable.

What to do?

1. Work on thought restructuring- killing the ANTs as he calls them- the Automatic Negative Thoughts.  I have to say most of the month I am OKish here but that darn nasty week is the "you never..."  and "You always..." week. Makes me cringe to think about it.
2. Surround myself with positive people (I'm pretty good at this one for the most part)
3. Take responsibilty to keep my relationships strong and bonded
4. Surround myself with great smells- citrus,cinnamon, lavender
5. Build library of great memories-grab out my scrapbooks once a month and rejoice in them
and lastly,
6. Consider limbic meds- my pscyhiatrist offered to keep my on Paxil at a lower dose after my PPD as she knew I had PMS but I declined due to the lovely side effect of weight gain, but it may be time to look at other meds.

Pschew!It's been a lot to take in the past few days, but interesting and exciting.  I have seen some characteristics in my husband in another chapter as well. And I have a student in my class, that I am positive has cingulate problems with his brain getting stuck on thoughts. I'm off to go finish off the rest of the book!