Happy 2016!

Happy New Year, everyone! The end of the year went by so quickly! Lots of good things - traveling and time with family, mostly :)

Here's a "quick" recap!

November:

I went to Philadelphia for a conference. I was only there about a day and a half, but it was very nice. I tried to split my time between conference going and self care. Including time with my dear friend who lives there, lots of good food, some nice long walks, and a trip (or two) to Uniqlo ;)

For Thanksgiving, we did potlucks in all my classes. We also made class cookbooks for each class, which is an awesome project that I highly recommend!

The next weekend I went to New York for Thanksgiving! Love getting to see my extended family. We ran the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day, ate tons of good food, and then took advantage of the beautiful weather the next day and went to a park. :) Also enjoyed going shopping with my cousin and aunts! (Are you sensing a theme here??)

Riding a dinosaur at the park. As you do. 

Beautiful weather for November in New York!

It was also the start of the "busy season" for Thirty-One. I did a lot of vendor events and had a great time!

December:

I finished up the semester in the middle of December. We had more potlucks. It was good. I made my Cranberry Bliss Bars. They are still magic

I used some of my free time after the semester was over to catch up on my craft queue :) Especially holiday crafts! (But there's still so many more projects on the list!)

Hair ties

Festive leggings/pants

Boot cuffs

We had a great Christmas. I was very fortunate to get to spend a lot of time with my awesome in-laws and nephews. I enjoyed shopping with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, taking our nephews to the zoo, going to church on Christmas eve, and opening presents with my in-laws on Christmas Day.  I then drove to Virginia to spend time with my parents and brother, which was also great. (And also involved lots of good food and shopping with my mom ;) )   J came to visit for a few days (after a not-so-fun-and-exciting adventure getting there!). We decorated Christmas cookies together with my mom.

Cookies!

Conway and one of his new toys :)

For New Year's  Eve I had my usual party, which was small, but awesome. I love getting to see this group of friends and (now) getting to watch their kids grow up. On New Year's Day I ran my usual 5K and then J, Conway, and I headed back to Cleveland!

New Year's Day 5K

January:

We started off January with a fancy wedding with J's family. I loved getting all dressed up and we had a great time!

Since then, I've started my online teaching for the semester and have been doing new student registration sessions for my "real" job. Another week and a half before I go back to my regular teaching schedule. I'm trying to be productive and cross a few more things both off of my "should do" list and my "want to do" list. We'll see what actually happens...  Wish me luck!


Hope everyone is having a great year so far!

In the home stretch...

I apologize for taking so long off from writing. Here are some pictures of Conway to make it up to you :) 

The end of the semester is always a little crazier than I anticipate! I'm currently drowning in paperwork, but it will all be over in a few days. In the meantime,  I will have a fun, hectic, sad few days as I celebrate  with and say goodbye to my students for now! I hope to see many of them again this summer and next fall, but they are such a fantastic group and I will miss them. We'll be having our usual end-of-semester potlucks tomorrow and Thursday and I can't wait to see what my students bring. (Today two women who won't be here on Thursday brought in some fantastic homemade chicken and mole sauce, and another student brought me a tray of homemade bliny. Yum!) As for me, I was going to try something new, but I can't resist a chance to make the Smitten Kitchen Strawberry Rhubarb Bars, so that's part of what I'll be doing this evening!

I had a long list of things I've been meaning to blog about since my last post, but here is the Cliff's Notes version:

1. I had to teach my students the word "jogging" the other day. It was a sad moment for this slow runner who hates being called a jogger!  We have also learned some very useful things, such as all the different kinds of sugar substitutes (Splenda is the yellow packet, etc... ;) )

2. Conway had a week of several vet visits a few weeks ago. He is fine, but is continuing on his special diet and was also tentatively diagnosed with doggie IBS. Poor thing.  The first vet appointment was with our regular vet, but the second one was with a specialist. I discovered when I got there that it was a teaching hospital and the first vet who did his initial questions and preliminary diagnosis was about my age. Even though I also have the title of "Dr",  I still find it odd when my medical professionals are my age (and I even have several friends who are veterinarians!) 

3. An important takeaway from the Mother's Day service at our church: Just because something is hard, doesn't mean it's bad. It just means it's hard. I like that way of thinking. 

Another lovely thing seen at church :)

4.  I told my boss recently that this job makes me accept that I'm actually in control of nothing. As a self-described control freak, that's something that terrifies me, but it also something I need. It's good to learn to be flexible :)

5.  I went to my a fabulous happy hour with my run club last week! Super 4 mile run with one of my dear friends and I met a new friend there, followed by amazing drinks and food. Can't wait for the next one.

6. So excited for Thirty-One's 12 Weeks of Summer and all the amazing special offers :D Fun hostess exclusive bundles AND customer mystery offers. And two really awesome brand new products coming out for June and July... Stay tuned :)

7. And, finally, very excited about this dress I made! The top is from a pre-made tank top because I wanted to test this particular design/construction before spending the time to make my own top for the project. But expect another similar dress sometime later this summer ;) 

And now, back to work. Have a lovely week and a fabulous Memorial Day weekend! J and I are looking forward to celebrating our first wedding anniversary on Monday. Hard to believe it's been a year already! (and, of course, happy anniversary to my parents tomorrow :) )

I think I'll stay away from Pittsburgh for a while ;)

Don't get me wrong. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Pittsburgh. It's just that I / we have driven there twice in the past 10 days and I'm ready to be done with that drive for a little bit :)

It's been another busy couple of weeks, but things are winding down.  I hope! My graduation was great. It was really nice to see my family and my dissertation advisor and to get a little closure on the whole PhD process. The commencement speaker (Charles Bolden) gave a great speech that hit close to home. I finally found the text of the address and am looking forward to really sitting down to re-read it and process it, but this is a part that definitely spoke to me:

"Be bold, be fearless, dream big, and by all means, don't listen to anyone who tells you can’t do something or you don't belong. Don't waste your time trying to explain yourself or your identity to anyone. Don’t feel like you have to justify why you are where you are. This applies to the workplace or anywhere else."

A couple of pictures from the big event:

Starting the day off at Eat'n Park!

Getting my hood from my dissertation advisor

  

Obligatory Moscow Mule after the ceremony :)

This week has been busy in the classroom. My grades for my online class were due this week, so I spent a lot of my time early in the week grading essays. I'm very happy to, for the first time in 16 weeks, NOT have to wake up super early on Monday morning to do my grading for that class before I go to work! We're also wrapping things up at my ESOL job (three weeks left!) and were doing testing last week. I could write a whole blog post about the tests, but I will spare you my rants on standardized testing :)  All I will say is that it felt so wrong to do testing this week in my beginner class when I have 6 students from Nepal. My heart is breaking for their country after the earthquake.  Please keep everyone in your thoughts and prayers.

On a much, much lighter note - a student in one of my classes brought in an English textbook published in 1965 in Moscow. There are some of my favorite pages from it:

  

Page 1 of the Lenin poem

Page 2 of the Lenin poem

This weekend has been great and the weather has been beautiful! Friday I finished sewing my first maxi skirt of the season :) No pictures of it yet, but I'll try to remember to get one next time I wear it. But it's awesome, trust me ;)

Saturday I ran 8 miles - my longest run since the Columbus Marathon in October 2013. I really, really want to run a fall half and I'm just trying to figure out how to keep my stomach issues at bay while I ramp up my running (said stomach issues being the primary reason I have NOT been doing distance running these past two years). But I miss it so much and I'm ready to devote some more attention to solving this problem. After the run on Saturday, I made Smitten Kitchen's Not Derby Pie Bars (amazing!) and went to a potluck at our friends' house.

Today I drove to Pittsburgh (again!) to meet up with some of my favorite running ladies, who finished the Pittsburgh Half Marathon this morning. It was a long day, but seeing them was totally worth all the driving! :)  Can't wait until the next time (and I hope to be running with them when that happens!)

And now it's back to reality and lesson planning for me. Have a great week everyone!

Musings on community (and some things for ourselves!)

As you can tell from how long it's been since I last posted, the first few weeks back at work have been very, very busy! And a little stressful with all of the snow/ice/winter weather. (check out that picture of my classroom last week five minutes after class was scheduled to start!) But I'm getting back into the groove.

Before I get into what I've been up to, I wanted to let my readers know about a fundraiser I'm doing! (My apologies to those who have seen this before!) In honor of the anniversary of the Thirty-One Gives campaign, I'm currently doing a fundraiser that benefits both University Hospital's Hanna House and Girl Talk (Through Thirty-One's charity, Thirty-One Gives).  The goal of this fundraiser is to show how every little bit helps and that, by working together, we can make a big difference!

University Hospital’s Hanna House Skilled Nursing Center, a local subacute care facility, lists nail files and chapstick as two items they are always in need of. With the purchase of each URU nail file from Thirty-One, the company makes a donation of 31 cents to Girl Talk, an international non-profit peer-to-peer mentoring program for middle school girls. 

For your donation of $2.50, you can sponsor a kit of 1 nail file and 1 tube of chapstick for Hanna House AND contribute 31 cents to Girl Talk. My goal is to raise enough for 100 kits by February 14th.You are welcome to sponsor as many kits as you’d like and donations can be made in honor of a loved one! (Makes a great Valentine’s Day gift!) Are you in? Even if all you can give is $2.50, it would still be a big help! Just let me know (you can comment here!) and I'll send you payment details. You can either send a check or send money though PayPal. 

I've bee thinking a lot about community lately. Not only this fundraiser, but on a larger scale. Last week, J and I (and my mother-in-law) went to the meeting of Greater Cleveland Congregations, which is an interfaith group that works together to take action on social justice issues. At this particular meeting, there were over 1000 people of all faiths gathered to present a list of recommendations for the Cleveland Police's Consent Decree to the Mayor and US Attorney Steve Dettelbach, and Department of Justice Civil Rights Section Chief Jonathan Smith.  It was such an amazing and moving experience and I'm so glad we were a part of it.  You can read more about it at Cleveland.com. 

I am also always amazed by the community I find in my classrooms. Today in my lowest level class, we all made valentines for each other. A little silly perhaps, but for some in this group of students, even just writing the names of their classmates is a big struggle. And it was really sweet to see them all giving each other cards, especially those who are from very different cultures.  I also made some pretty darn good red velvet cookies for them as part of our Valentine's Day celebration :)

I've been feeling very thankful for my friends recently, too. Things have been so busy lately and I tend to get tunnel vision and forget about everything other than work. Huge thanks to our friends who invited us to a basketball game this past weekend. It was so nice to catch up with them (and the seats were pretty amazing, too!) I've also had several friends really step up to help me with some things in my Thirty-One business and I am so, so grateful for their support. 

And, finally, on a more selfish note - J and I had our first meeting with a home organizer this past weekend! It's a bit of a leap of faith (especially as she does things like rearrange our furniture - neither one of us is that good with change ;)  ), but we're hoping for good results. We've got some homework from our first meeting and when we finish that, she'll come back to help us organize our storage room. That will be a difficult task for sure, but I'm really excited about the possibilities.  Now I just need to work on my own issues with letting go of stuff! Anyone have any good advice?

and I'll leave you with this image in honor of Valentine's Day (and because we used conversation hearts as bingo chips in my classes today!)

Christmas in pictures

I love the holidays and all of the traditions associated with it. I had lovely Christmases with J's family and with my own parents. It would take far too long to describe them all, so I'll share some photo highlights instead. :)

White Chocolate Cranberry Bars

I will never be a food photographer!

Today I'm sharing the recipe for my White Chocolate Cranberry Bars. This recipe has been adapted from a couple of different places and is basically a knockoff or copycat of Starbucks Cranberry Bliss Bars. And it's good. :)

But first - just have to share that I had my LAST class of the year for my ESOL teaching job this week (and my last party ;) )  I also surviving finishing up my end-of-semester paperwork. This is one of the things I like least about my job. But the paperwork is what helps us get the grant that funds my program, which means my students get to take free English classes and I still get paid. So at the end of the day, it's worth it (even though I will continue to complain!)

After taking this picture, I spread all the paperwork out even more across the table! 

Keeping everything organized! Party supplies in the bag on the left, paperwork in the middle, and the day's lesson plans in the bag on the right  :)  Check them all out here.

I managed to make it to run club this weekend, which was great. I did a total of 5 miles on Saturday, including 3 with a friend at run club. He is a professor and also on the board of the department where J works, so we spent a lot of time discussing very academic and intellectual matters ;) And yet it was still strangely relaxing because we were running while having that conversation. Later that day J and I got our Christmas tree (finally) and hung our wreath on the front door. Hopefully soon we'll get around to actually decorating said tree!  We also went to two holiday parties. At the second party, we met a man who said he worked with musicians in Nashville (he is a musician himself). He mentioned that he didn't really like to work with the larger groups, but preferred small-time artists. Like Joni Mitchell. (that sound you just heard was my jaw hitting the floor!) J is particularly fond of Joni, and this man promised that next week when he talks to Joni he will tell her J says hi. I think that's pretty darn cool.

Before I share the recipe, I just want to say how much more I enjoy baking since the wedding because I have such nice tools now and using them reminds me of the lovely people who gave them to me! So thankful with this recipe for my stand-mixer (not required, but certainly makes things easier), my actually-non-stick bakeware, and my microplane zester :)

 And, without further ado, the recipe:

Cranberry White Chocolate Bars

Ingredients:

Blondie:

1 1/2 sticks butter (melted)

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (I used half all purpose, and half King Arthur Flour White Wheat flour)

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 cup dried cranberries

6 oz white chocolate chips

Topping:

1 8-oz package of cream cheese (room temperature)

1 cup powdered sugar, sifted

1/2 Tablespoon orange zest (feel free to do this to taste. With this amount the orange flavor is very subtle, but you may want more.)

3oz melted white chocolate (chips worked fine, but melts or baking chocolate would probably be better)

1/2 cup dried cranberries

optional: melted white chocolate for drizzling on top

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a 9x13 pan with nonstick spray. (note: the blondie layer will be pretty thin in this size pan, you can use a slightly smaller pan for a thicker blondie. I think 10x10 would also work nicely.)

2. Mix together flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and ginger in a medium bowl.

3. In a large bowl OR the bowl for your stand mixer (if using - it's certainly not required!), combine brown sugar and melted butter. Let cool.

4. Beat eggs and vanilla in with brown sugar/butter mixture.  Gradually add the dry mixture to this.

5. Stir in the chocolate chips and cranberries.  This will make a very thick batter.

6. Spread mixture into pan. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.

What it looks like before frosting!

While it cools, prepare the frosting:

1. Use electric mixer to beat the cream cheese and powdered sugar together. Gradually stir in the melted white chocolate. Add orange zest (and feel free to taste it at this point to decide if you'd like more than I used in my recipe!)

When the blondie layer has cooled, frost it and sprinkle the cranberries on top. If desired, drizzle additional white chocolate on top. Store in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

All done! (I made a double batch and put some into smaller pans, hence the not-9x13-pan in the picture)

And try not to eat the whole pan yourself :) 

Tomorrow I've got a date with 38 final exam essays for the class I'm teaching online. I probably should start tonight, but the sewing machine is calling my name... 

Recovering from Texas

Oh it's been a busy, busy few days.  I was in San Antonio for a conference over the weekend. It was lovely to catch up with some friends and colleagues I haven't seen in a long time. And a little surreal to attend my first post-PhD conference. The film series I helped organize went very well, as did my presentation on my roundtable.  And I even got in a run along the Riverwalk in 65* weather! Won't be seeing those temperatures around here for a long time.... 

A few pictures from the trip... 

Helping with pre-trip laundry :)

Riverwalk Christmas Tree

Obligatory Alamo picture

Gotta have a good steak in Texas!

It was a little strange telling my colleagues what I've been up to. Many had heard I got a job, but no matter how much I love my job, it still felt awkward saying "yes, but it's not technically in our field."  But times are changing and people finally seem to be starting to realize that the tenure-track is not the only option. I got some lovely advice on being an independent scholar, which left me feeling happy and energized about research again. And I was super happy to hear a (male!) colleague in a tenure-track job (or perhaps already tenured, I've lost track!) respond to the question "What have you been up to?" with the answer "Raising my children. Oh, and teaching." Love it. 

Watched the Browns game at a bar in the airport while I enjoyed some Texas BBQ

While I was gone, I asked my lovely husband to go to the store and pick up some Thanksgiving cookies for my Monday evening class, since we were having a Thanksgiving party and I wouldn't have time to get them myself (got back late on Sunday night from Texas).  When I arrived home, I found him making cookies because he didn't find any cookies he thought were Thanksgiving-appropriate.  Have I mentioned lately that he's the best?

Doesn't that cookie look amazing? They tasted great, too!

On a related note, it's impossible to find anything Thanksgiving-themed. It's all Christmas. I wanted some little trinket (stickers, pencils, anything) to give away as bingo prizes in my classes. Nothing! 

I spent Monday night after class baking 4 pies for my Tuesday classes. My morning class had a potluck Thanksgiving party and it was great to get to try goodies from all over the world. In both classes we went over the Libby's Traditional Pumpkin Pie recipe before we ate :) It was a great way to practice a really useful English skill (reading a recipe). And the students all said they loved the pie!

"Lesson Planning"

Explaining the phrase "they learned to hunt turkeys" to my level 0 students.

Today we are celebrating our 6-month wedding anniversary! With flowers, champagne.... and discussing all of our health insurance options because it's open enrollment period. Hooray for being grown ups. ;)

 And I'll leave you with this outtake from some pictures I took for an upcoming Thirty-One Gifts event :)