Just Babbling About Life Around Home

Happy weekend everyone. Hope everyone is healthy and not going too stir crazy.

We finally have the sun after 2 wet days. I just got back from a nice long morning walk down the road with the hubby and the dogs. Lots of signs of spring are showing now.

 The very last patch of snow in my yard (or anyplace I can see) melted Thursday.

And even though we had frost the other night, there was this cool view on my skylight.

 I've got crocuses blooming in today's sun. Hurrah!

And these little yellow flowers were blooming on the side of the road. Not sure what they are.

I have my sliding door open right now and think I might be able to sit outside and read today for a bit.  I need to rake my gardens some more, but will give it a day to dry up from all the rain.

This past week I baked some peanut butter cookies and made a loaf of sourdough bread.

Good thing I should be able to walk this weekend.

More news on the teaching front too. We got a survey this week from our superintendent about whether to have our late April break or cancel it and get out a week earlier in June. 94% of people voted to cancel it (myself included) so now June 10 is the last day with kids. I can officially say 9 school weeks until retirement. (But who expected this to end my teaching career?)

Contingency plans are being put into place in case we don't return to school for the rest of the year- I really think that is going to end up happening but no one is calling it yet. I feel really bad for our high school seniors who have been looking forward to prom, senior week and graduation. I don't know what they plan to do about any of this, if the administration even know right now. 

And some of you asked about students and computers. Our district (starting last year) gives kids a chromebook to use when they are freshmen/grade 9. We also had some general school chromebooks to supply to any other kid who didn't have a computer to access. We can't control their home internet, but we can control that they have the equipment. And the district I work in has set up some internet hotspots around town for those who don't have internet. One reason our district can do that is that unlike parts of the US that have huge school districts, we have more locally controlled schools. Districts are usually 1 city or town or maybe a few that have banded together. I work in a small city district, and we have 4 connecting towns that tuition their kids into the high school and in some cases the middle school.  Two of those tuitioning towns are very small with under 50 kids in their elementary schools. One of those towns  is what you would call a typical New Hampshire town, and the last town that tuitions in is a fairly wealthy community. So the high school I work at has everything from  the poverty level to very well off and has around 1100 kids total. ( I can't image what those school with no computers are doing for out of school learning and how the teachers are doing packets. Our school has been sanitized and we aren't even allowed in right now without a custodial escort because they must sanitize parts of our rooms if we go in.)

OK, enough babbling. I have a few more pages from my New Mexico travel journal to share.

I liked this travel magazine quote and the clouds.  And below, I wanted to paint a page (or try to at least) to represent my climb up to the sacred kiva at Bandelier National Monument. 

One place I love to go while visiting our friends is to this resort as you can see on the right page. You can pay just to go soak in the waters and that isn't very expensive. It is very relaxing and a nice way to be outside on a cooler day, as all the waters are from a natural hot spring. The day we went it reached 36 degrees Fahrenheit. (About 2 degrees C). It was a little cold walking from pool to pool, but nice to soak. And because it was cold, hardly anyone was there.

On the right is a free postcard I picked up and I cut out the burrow photo from a free magazine. Santa Fe is the city of burrows. Not that they are wandering around the city, but it was back when the city  began in the early 1600's.
And finally for today, here is a page with some cool circles from an organic chemistry overlay I had in my stash. (right side). On the left are some rectangular magazine and other item cutouts.

I am going to link this page to Valerie's geometric challenge at Art Journal Journey

OK, enough from me.  Hope everyone has a great weekend.

The Weekend Wrap Up

Hi everyone. I can't say there's too much to wrap up this weekend. But the school situation has changed once again. Today the governor of  New Hampshire closed all schools starting tomorrow. So it looks like for 3 weeks (or whatever else happens) we are closed. I am going in tomorrow to pick up my room (I know my room was one of the ones that got the big clean Friday evening), get my work computer and try to brainstorm and figure out a few questions I have. I'll be there just for a few hours and then I am coming home, and probably not going back in Tuesday or the rest of the week.

And this of course may all change again.

And here's a few more photos from my New Mexico travel journal to share today.

Here's what I did with the inner cover.  I created a pocket with this vintage style bag that I could slip a tag into.

I cut a tag and covered one side of it with my boarding pass for the plane, and then I cut the boarding pass down to size. I drew in the heart and added the little wooden plane I had in my stash.

And this is the back of the tag. I actually visited a local stamp store in Santa Fe while there and got myself this fun new stamp of the chile ristras.    You see these all over the place in New Mexico so I thought this stamp was a great souvenir for the trip.

And this is about all the snow around. In my backyard. I don't know why that is always last the place to melt. 

Even the woods is snow free.

But that's all for me today. Thanks so much for visiting.

Stay healthy and take care of yourself so we all can get through this.

Spy House

Hi everyone. Another crazy day in regards to this Covid-19 virus.  So many public places and big  events, like sporting ones, have been closed. It was really stressing out the kids at school. Me too actually. I stopped at the grocery store yesterday after school, and some shelves were totally empty. No pasta, no soup, no toilet paper. But other things were barely touched, like meat and fruits and veggies. Luckily I didn't need anything on those empty shelves, but my first thought was panic is setting in. I wonder how many more days school will be open. Several school have closed down here in New Hampshire but so far my school is going to open next week.  It must be tough to balance the need to continue on as we yet have no known disease at school and the fact of when is the disease going to show up and could make lots of people sick.

I am thankful that at least this reaction didn't start while we were away in New Mexico, and we were able to have our trip.

So I have a couple of journal pages that I managed to make in my New Mexico travel journal for this latest trip.

Spy House isn't a movie or book title. When we landed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Saturday evening, we decided to spend the night at a local bed and breakfast. It allowed us to start fresh on Sunday morning instead of doing any driving  after spending most of Saturday flying.

Spy House has a really interesting story. Even though it just looks like a nice vintage home.

It is called Spy House because it is one of the places where atomic secrets were passed to the Russians back in the 1940's. This photo below is the actual room where these secrets were passed. If you are familiar with the story of the Rosenberg case, this was part of it. I will be honest I had to look it up. I remember the name but didn't know the story.

I didn't know about this when I booked the room, but  it is the kind of geeky thing I love.

And in our room we had some interesting photo ops.

Another journal page below.

And here's the inner cover I made. I found that cool thunderbird  for like 30 cents on markdown at Hobby Lobby a couple of years back. I never planned on making jewelry out of it but finally got a good use for it.

 That's all for me today. 

Have a great start to your weekend.

A New Journal Project

Hi everyone. 

It is almost the weekend here which is exciting as my work week has been very busy. The quarter at school is wrapping up with final exams next week so I've been trying to finish up the curriculum (to kids who are feeling the stress and are very cranky because everyone is trying to finish their curriculums.) But the good news is I was successful without causing too much pain (I think), and there is a 3 day weekend ahead. You would think with the holiday break just a few weeks ago this 3 day weekend would seem unneeded, but I am looking forward to some down time.

And yesterday we had more snow, and my morning drive  was horrible until I reached the coast and hit rain. But at home we had this.

And more snow is due this Saturday night. I am keeping my fingers crossed it isn't as much as the last forecast predicted.

Today I have a new journal cover to share with you and also over at Art Journal Journey. This month's hostess is Jo and her theme is Something New.

 I started with a blank kraft covered binder  and some blue paint. I spread it thick with lots of brush strokes so I would end up with some cool texture. 

Then I rubbed a brown ink pad over the blue to fill in the brush grooves. I doodled and painted the clouds, and added a bit of napkin to the bottom with matte medium. I die cut this cool southwestern sun from some copper colored paper, and used a bronze Sharpie marker to color in the sun.

 And then I added the letter stickers and a bit of paper tape at the bottom.

I wanted to make this journal cover as the hubby and I are heading out to visit our friends in New Mexico at the end of February when I have a week's break at school. I haven't been out there since 2017 so I must say I am pretty excited. It will be nice to see our friends and to get away from the snow (hopefully) for a few days.

Hope you have a great start to your weekend.