Inground trampolines, decks, and patios: I've looked at hundreds if not thousands of photos of decks, patios, and hot tub installations (which has nothing to do with trampolines) over the last week. You see, I've wanted a nice, finished backyard for almost 19 years now...since we first moved in to our brand new, built from the ground up home. This has been my dream while my husband's dream was a finished basement. He got his wish completed two years ago when my son and his wife needed a place to live for a short time. I'm still waiting on my dream to be fulfilled, but I think I see a light at the end of my very l-o-n-g tunnel! Take a look at this

patio idea 

( just the hot tub and semicircle seating area where a fire pit will be) and imagine it with the screened deck here:

minus the lower deck... that's where the patio will be. The only other thing I'd like is to put a roof over the hot tub so I can hang outdoor curtains around the sides for privacy when we would like it. Something like...

idea for covering the hot tub. 

It is very definitely possible that these ideas way outweigh my budget, especially since the plan is also to level part of the yard and make a fenced area for the dogs. We've already given up on the idea for an extended drive/parking area to handle extra cars when the children visit. But if you don't dream, you don't get! (BTW, the inground trampoline mentioned at the very beginning is my daughter's request.)

And how does all of this fit in with this blog?? Well, I accomplished adding links and photos to it, which means I learned something new!

Now, my daughter and I leave on Sunday for a mission trip in Honduras, so when I return I hope to upload "before" pics of the back yard. And I hope to chronicle the process here from time to time while also interjecting my learning about apps for school, social media, and who knows what else!

Summer finally started for me...

officially as of last Tuesday, but since I went to AETC on Wednesday and Thursday and my brain needed Friday to process all the great info I received (and weekends are a given) I consider today my first day of summer. So how did I spend it? I cleaned my bathroom! I wanted to use this homemade recipe to clean my shower...

but it just didn't happen. I should have taken the time to try because the commercial brand cleaner I used didn't give me satisfaction. And now I have to do it all over again tomorrow.

The more important item in this blog is the learning that has taken place. Today I learned how to add the Pinterest button and a link to one of my boards at the bottom of my blog. I ran out of patience when learning how to add one of my pins (of the pic above) as a widget, but I don't think that's what I wanted anyway. I just wanted to add the photo in this post. And voila! I did!

And the learning is the more important item because I told my two girls we would spend this week doing/learning something new each day. My young one decided to learn how to use sketchup.com to create original works of art that we plan to turn into jewelry later this week--maybe Thursday's new thing. My older one used an electric sander for the very first time ever to prepare her desk chair for a new paint design. And even before I delved into html code tutorials I designed 3 t-shirts at cafepress.com! These websites are two I learned about from Kevin Honeycutt, who is an AWESOME speaker and teacher!

SO...I not only accomplished one new thing today, I accomplished five!! The t-shirts, the Pinterest button and board, the javascript code I had to figure out how to add so the Pinterest things would show up, adding links and photos to my post, AND I made something new for supper tonight from recipematcher.com! My son said the chicken turned out very tender, so check it out if you'd like:

(Well, I guess my good luck has run out for today. I'll have to update this post with a pic of the dish I made when the website is available. I can't get it to open tonight. Maybe they're closed....)

Day 2 at AETC

I'm sitting in session 2 of day 2 at the Alabama Education Technology Conference...and I am on overload!!! After 2 full days of excellent ideas at the JSU CORE Academy last week and 2 days of more wonderful ideas this week I am just a little (!) overwhelmed. The lingering question,"How in God's great world will I be able to manage all the social media apps that these presenters recommend I use??" I understand that each of them are, or can be, beneficial to my professional life and most of all for my students. I just can't fathom how to organize it.

Yeah, that's me. I am an organizer. I think it is my true hobby. I like to think I'm a crafter, a scrapbooker, a Bejeweled Blitz champion...but really I am a craft organizer, a scrapbook materials organizer, a Blitz geek.

Now there's social media apps-Twitter, LinkdIn, Facebook (which I have been on for sometime), Tumblr (which I learned yesterday is the app kids are moving to from Facebook so I have to be on it if I want to know what my children and my students are doing), and I can't remember which others I was told to get on. But here's the best part for me... the organizer!!! Hoot Suite manages several of these apps' streams in one place! So, I think you can imagine what exactly is going to happen with me next: I will get stuck managing/organizing my Hoot Suite account instead of actually tweeting and ??? (I don't know what it's called when you tweet on other social media sites!!) Boy, I have a long road to travel.

Side note: auto-correct is so frustrating! Yesterday I tried to type, "...herding cats," and it came out "HDTV cats!" Wouldn't have been so bad but it was shared with the whole audience through Todaysmeet.com. Don't you know people were thinking, "Who is that idiot?!?"

Hi to all--or even just one!--person who comes across this blog and reads this much! I am relatively new to blogging. I set up one last year just for the teachers that participated in a summer book study I led in my school but I abandoned it as soon as the study was over.

After attending the JSU CORE Academy just this week I have gained the courage to try again. With the help of Farrah Kilgo, http://thinkshareteach.blogspot.com and Cara Whitehead, http://teachingmycalling.blogspot.com, my eyes were opened to all the great ways social media can be used in the classroom--both with the students and for my own professional development. I owe it to myself and my students to tackle this tool. And I can't wait to learn all about it!