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.

The Webpage

I believe that my webpage is finally done. I enjoyed creating it and exploring Google sites. Who knew that I would learn so much and it wasn't as complicated as I first thought that it would be. This class is helping me not be afraid of using the wonderful resources that technology can give us.

Check out the website at: Culinary Masterpieces

Meal Planning: Friend or Foe

In many of my classes we talk about the importance of meal planning because it saves money, produces more nutritious food, and makes meals throughout the week much easier. With all that said, sometimes meal planning is not my friend at all. It takes time to plan meals and go shopping for the groceries you need. It is not a simple process. I want to meal plan and I enjoy it, but where is the time to do it? That is where I am presently at. I need to go to the store, but don't have tons of time to plan. I think what I need to do is plan out meals on Sunday and shop the following Saturday for the items I need. Hopefully this solution will work and I won't be as stressed during the week when making meals for my husband.

Amazing Cooking!

This past week in my cooking class I learned how to make homemade ricotta cheese and it is amazing. We stuffed homemade manicotti noodles and stuffed them with the homemade ricotta and topped the whole thing with a wonderful homemade marinara sauce. I love cooking food from scratch because it is so good and usually a lot better for you. All of these recipes are really simple and take a pretty short amount of time, so if I have a 90 min. teaching block, my students could make these recipes, which would help them see that making good food is really not that difficult. Cooking just brings so much joy into my heart!

Internet Safety: An Increasing Issue in the World Today

This last week in class we were discussing internet safety and why it is important. As I watched a few videos, I found it amazing and creepy how easy it is to find out a lot of information about a specific person. In one of the internet safety videos it mentioned how a lot of teenagers keep their passwords and other private information on their cell phones. I never even thought about doing that because it is not safe. If your phone gets stolen all of your information is out in the open. Over this last week I have come to understand how important it is for us to be informed about internet safety.

Last night I talked to my husband about internet safety and some things we wanted to institute in our future family. We discussed the importance of having the computer in a public setting like the kitchen/family room area because it is not as tempting and easy to access things that are not appropriate. We also discussed the importance of having multiple passwords, so if someone accesses one of your accounts they are not able to access all of them. I think one of the biggest things that we can do for our future family is to inform them of the dangers and that they need to be careful with the information that they post on the internet. For example, when my husband was serving a mission, he found out the name of his new companion a few weeks before the companion would actually arrive. Well, my husband wrote home to a friend of his and gave the friend the name of his new companion. The friend sent my husband a letter a short time later with a pretty accurate description of his new companion whom he had never met and neither had his friend. How did the friend find the information, you may ask? It was simply found on Facebook and a family blog. Thus, we need to be careful about what we write about ourselves and others because we never know who might gain access to it.

Copyright

This past week in class we started talking about copyright and were asked to critique two YouTube videos. The video shown below is a bad example of keeping copyright laws. The maker of the video states that he does not own the pictures or song, but he doesn't state who they belong to. The pictures have the Nickelodeon logo in the corner, which shows in part where the pictures could be coming from, but still there are no clear citations.



This video shows an example of a company (Bojam Productions) using a song from the Wedding Singer to advertise their videography service, and they probably did not purchase the song. Thus, they are breaking copyright laws.



Side Note: Do I break copyright laws by posting these videos on my blog? I am using them for an educational purpose, but...

I love google reader. It keeps me updated on what I love. The cake featured above is from an amazing blog. I really love most of the cakes posted on Pink Cake Box Wedding Cakes & More. The website is wonderful because the amazing cake artist lists the kind of cakes she makes (chocolate, vanilla, red velvet, etc.) and she tells you what kind of filling she puts in the cake (lemon cream cheese, hazelnut and chocolate buttercream, etc.) I LOVE that she does that because I have such a passion for flavors and combinations in food, but most especially cakes. The wonderful blogs that I am following give me so much insight and help me expand my imagination. The sky is no longer the limit.

Cakes to Bake

Last summer I got engaged and decided to pursue my love of cake making. Yes, I decided to make my own wedding cake. My mom and I started to experiment with fondant and different kinds of icings. It was quite the experience and many times a failure. We continued to practice and I took cake decorating classes, and magically the cakes became so much better. As the wedding date neared my parents' house became full of cakes, and our waistlines expanded. It was a very exciting time and when I tell people that I made my own wedding cake they think that I am really crazy, but honestly it wasn't that bad. I enjoyed it and making cakes it truly a wonderful experience, and has added to my love of cooking.

The Beautiful Wedding Cake

The Handsome Groom's Cake

Family and Consumer Science Education

Family and consumer science education (FACS Ed) is the best major in the world for me because it involves everything that I love. FACS Ed is teaching cooking, sewing, child development, adult roles, etc. in a junior high or high school. I love all the mentioned subject areas, but my favorite is cooking. Cooking is such a creative experience that allows you to use all of your senses and make something delicious, hopefully. I went to Culinary School while I was in high school and learned new skills that benefit me now as I am starting a family of my own. The next best part of my major is teaching. I love teaching and working with adolescents because they have so much potential and I have the opportunity to help them realize that. Since FACS Ed focuses on the family it is extremely valuable for adolescents in the world today as the very basic skills of cooking, sewing, and understanding of child development are becoming lost. I am extremely excited to be able to use my talents and abilities to make a difference in the world and specifically in the lives of my students.