The Greatness of Technology

I have loved learning about new technologies in my technology class for teachers. I have learned about so many amazing sources that I can use in the classroom that will greatly benefit my students. This class also made me excited to learn new things and not be afraid of learning new things. It is fun to play around with new technologies and figure out how they work. We have really been given so many amazing instruments to use for good and I am very grateful for them.

My Final Project

I think that I have finished my final project which involves my students using Symbaloo to organize many online cooking resources. I created a Symbaloo with some of the sites I like to use and will be adding to it as I find more wonderful resources. My students assignment will require them to create a Symbaloo and also to use their Symbaloo resources to create a video, blog, website, or recipe book. I have posted some of the items I have made on my Symbaloo, so they can have examples to follow. I loved finding fun sites about food and the most exciting part was finding a website that allows me to make my own recipe book. How cool is that? I hope that my students will love doing this assignment as much as I did.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving dinner was wonderful and I was completely stuffed by the time I was done eating. My husband and I went to his parents' house for dinner this year and it was a lot of fun. It was great for me to see the traditions/rituals that other families have for the holidays. For dinner we had turkey, obviously, but I didn't eat any. I don't really care for meat that much. We also had two different kinds of sweet potatoes. One was a smashed up sweet potato with a nut crust and the other was marshmallow sweet potatoes. I really liked the sweet potatoes with a nut crust. My family only makes the marshmallow kind, so it was fun to try something different. We also had very poofy rolls, which were very good. There was a good salad and vegetable casserole as well as onion and regular mashed potatoes. The whole spread was very delicious! I am grateful for the time we get to spend together as family and enjoy good and new kinds of food. Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Proper Etiquette

This week in my foods class we talked about proper etiquette, which I lack greatly. We learned about proper ways to set the table and act during a meal, and our teacher also mentioned how you are supposed to butter each piece of bread you eat individually. I think that is a bit crazy. Besides, I don't have enough plates to give everyone butter so they can all butter each piece individually. Anyways, my point with this post comes in teaching students. Many students today don't even know the basics of proper etiquette, which makes my job as a FACS major very important. My foods teacher this past week had us set the table all nice and cute, which is something I think would be important and fun to do in junior high or high school. Teenagers need to be taught proper manners for eating and they need to learn to eat at the dinner table. I am grateful for the insight I gained this week about this very important idea that I usually make fun of myself.

Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies

I finally got my video done. It was a new experience for me. I have never used windows movie maker, so it took me a little bit of time to figure out how everything worked. After I figured out what was going on, I had a pretty fun time. I couldn't believe all the wonderful things that movie maker would let me do to my less than perfect initial movie. I hope you enjoy the "movie" and don't laugh do much at my amateur abilities.

FACS Conference

This weekend I had the fun opportunity to go to a FACS conference in Park City. It was a wonderful learning experience. We had amazing speakers from Studio 5 including Darrin Adams, Matt Townsend, and Melanie Douglass. Their topics included: living life with passions, building strong relationships, and the joy of exercising. I came away from each of their talks inspired and pumped to do better. I also had the opportunity to go to the Entrepreneurship class where 3 ladies shared their experiences of starting their own businesses. One of the ladies has her own cake business, which made me so excited because it is a dream of mine to open a bakery with wonderful cakes. So, it was wonderful to listen to tips and important things to remember in starting your own business. One of the best parts of the two days was all the amazing food we were fed. I love to eat, so the food was like the cherry on top of everything else.

Halloween Dinner!

My husband and I are having a few friends/family over for dinner tomorrow and I will be making baby back ribs for the first time. I am not a huge meat eater, but my husband loves meat, so he ends up eating my experiments a lot. He says that they are good. As for the ribs, I got advice from my mom on the best way to cook them. She puts a dry BBQ rub on them (store bought or homemade), puts the ribs on a cookie sheet, and puts them in the oven for 4-6 hours on 250 degrees. You can eat them at that point or stick them on the grill with BBQ sauce. Either way they are great and my husband loves my moms BBQ ribs. Hopefully all goes well and everyone likes the ones I am going to make as well.