Saturday, November 2, 2013

Currently and Help Wanted

Hello to those of you visiting from Farley's Currently Linky Party! I am a first year teacher with a fourth and fifth grade combined class at an international Christian school in Venezuela.

     I've been a little absent from my blog recently. One reason can be summed up in three word: first year teacher. The other reason is why I would like some help: I have grown tired of the template I had on my blog for the past two years and am working on trying to just use the simple template and add my own picture as a heading. The problem is I can't figure out what to do. I'd like to make something with some different clipart that is more related to what I'm doing. I would like a globe or something that would represent the that I am at an international school. I would also like the colors to be blues and greens. Any ideas? I also like animals, math, and books. Does anyone have any ideas? As a missionary teacher, I don't really have money to pay for a blog update, but I desperately want one. Right now, I've taken my template down and am just playing with the bland, boring one. Help!

Anyways, here's my currently:

 
Listening: Christmas music and men making a garden - Okay, so first I put Christmas music. Then I decided that some people would think that's weird because it's only November, so I added men making a garden (it's right outside my door and mildly noisy), but now I realize that this also sounds weird to most northern people because you are probably done with gardening until spring. Well, let me explain. I live in Venezuela where it is between 60 and upper 80s every day (yet I'm still actually very cold right now). Therefore, it never feels like Christmas with snow, so we start looking forward to it early. Plus, I love Christmas music any time of the year, but we're also setting up our Christmas tree this weekend.  Since it's so warm, it's also always perfect gardening weather. My neighbors (I'm in a sort of townhouse) are rebuilding an old garden that is right outside my house.
 

Loving: Being done with parent-teacher conferences - Yesterday was parent-teacher conferences. While I only have fourteen students, it took all day. By the time I finished, all the other teachers had left. None were too bad, but I was frustrated that many of the other teachers basically had the whole day to work since they only had 4 conferences, but I was busy all day and now am behind on work.


Thinking: What do I need to do today? There are so many things that I need/want to do, and I'm trying to figure out how to prioritize it. Story of my life :) I'm excited to go to my first Venezuelan baseball game this afternoon, but I need to get some work done before then. I've been wanting to blog for a while, so I'm counting this as work ;)

Wanting: A new blog template - I already talked about this above. I'm tired of my old template and having troubles just trying to make a heading that I like. I'd appreciate any sort of help or ideas you have.

Needing: To grade and write lesson plans for next week - This is what I really need to do this weekend to be ready for next week.

A Yummy Pin: Chocolate Chip Cookie for One - This was very hard to decide. Lately, I've been looking at Pinterest for food ideas often. The problem is Venezuela doesn't have a lot of the ingredients most pins I want to eat require. After lots of searching, I finally found this pin, which makes a sweet dessert for one person and has ingredients I actually have in my pantry. Granted, it would be a special treat because the brown sugar and chocolate chips are from another country and flour, sugar, butter, and eggs go through shortages here, but it still sounds delicious.


Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any ideas about a blog template.

6 comments:

  1. You should check out The Cutest Blog on the Block. It has some free and cute blog designs.

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  2. Oooh, that chocolate chip cookie does sound good! I'm glad our parent-teacher conferences are over as well! I like meeting with the parents, but you're right it can be a draining day to do it all it once.

    NotJustChild'sPlay

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  3. Sorry I'm no help when it comes to techie blog questions. I hope you find something you like. Enjoy your weekend!
    ❀ Tammy
    Forever in First

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  4. We finished conferences a week ago. Fourteen in one day...Yikes! I'm glad they went well.

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  5. You should check out shabbyblogs- all free!!

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  6. I just did one for my brother's blog Friday night (NOT a professional one by a long shot but it turned out pretty well!) and it wasn't hard. Start in ppt. Choose the background color you want … I'd suggest something that matches the blog so that it kind of disappears. White or blue, in your case. Bring in the extra images you want (if you haven't ever tried that in ppt it is a MILLION BAZILLION TIMES EASIER than in Word!). Add text. I made sure to only use the bottom half of the slide (landscape orientation) just to help with proportions later on … dunno if that is actually important but since the header turned out nicely I would say yes, do that. Save as a jpg or png. Then go to www.picmonkey.com and upload your image. Crop it to just the bottom half of the slide image. Then choose resize and save again. My brother's was 850 pixels long but looking at your layout yours is going to be more like 1000 or higher. He had a three column layout. I had to play around a little bit to get his right but it's easy enough to do the crop and resize multiple times with the original image. All told took me about an hour … while I was watching TV. Feel free to email me if that was as clear as mud and you get stuck.

    MsOReadsBooks

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