April Showers Bring...

...My Birthday!

One more week until the big 2-6!

My Eyes Keep Turning Green

I have gotten to that point in grad school where out cohort is changing their tone from "we're all in this together!" to "we are eachother's competition!"

The kick off to the competition was the Oregon Educator's Job Fair this past Tuesday and Wednesday in Portland.  Tuesday was the job fair, which was open to everyone who registered to walk around and have brief meetings and interviews with many school districts from Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, California, and Arizona.  Wednesday was reserved for people who made a great impression and were invited to have a formal interview with a school district.

For the most part, Oregon school districts were not doing interviews because they do not have many openings right now.  Mainly the interviews on Wednesday were for different states and for different fields of education than elementary. 

Due to the lack of interviews being scheduled by Oregon districts, the few peole that had successful meetings or interviews could not stop talking about it!  It is one thing to modestly say that things went well and you were asked to interview, but it is another thing to say, "Oh, I have five interviews and a job offer, but no big deal"--and it is a whole other thing to say this multiple times!

I am in a weird position where my friends and classmates, who I really like and genuinely want success for, are my competition for a career.  I thought I could handle this, especially because I anticipated that I would be competitive and I had to give myself a pep talk about being supportive because we are all on our own paths and everything will work out fine and I will be a great teacher that people will want in their school and blah blah blah, but I was still very competitive and envious of others.

I had a great interview when one school district came to the University of Oregon.  They took my picture and gave me a 'fast pass', which was basically a ticket for a second interview at this past week's job fair.  At the interview, I felt confident and spoe from the heart and what I said seemed well-recieved.  They said they would contact me about setting up the next step which is for them to watch me teach, so I left feeling very, very confident and excited.  Then I found out that some people didn't just get the "we will contact you to schedule the observation," but they actually had an observation time scheduled at their interview at the job fair.

This made me insanely jealous! I thought I had done great, and I am sure I am still on the top of their list, but my confidence was shattered when I heard other people had already moved ahead of me.  I was so jealous! I cried and felt sorry for myself and made Adam and Brittany console me.  The worst part is that when we were in out night class on Wednesday (the night after the job fair), one of my friends, who is so kind to everyone and deserves success, was talking about how she was nervous because they were going to observe her teaching on Friday.  I was shocked when I heard that she had moved on and could not control my jealousy! I told her I was very happy for her and she would do great and then I immediately got up.  My jealousy was so out of control that I couldn't be there to congratulate and celebrate my friend's success.

I have had to pray for humility over and over lately because I will be out of control in these next few months if I keep getting caught up in the interviews and offers of the other 80 people in my cohort.  I know that things will work out the way they are supposed to for Adam and Griffey and I and I truly do know that someone will see my talent and passion for teaching and I will be a teacher.

I need to calm down and reel it back in.  It is just hard when no one else has humility or modesty and feel they need to share every particlar of their job search on facebook.  I don't want to hear about it anymore, which is why I am not going down the same path as everyone else in my cohort.  I will not boast or rub my successes in other people's faces. ( I am not exaggerating though.  I think everyone is so boastful because it is our first experiences with getting started on our career and so everyone feels the need to share every step of that journey regardless of how their vanity and self-absorbtion may affect those around them.)



P.F. Changs Lettuce Wraps

We had the missionaries over for dinner last week for lettuce wraps, which were sooo good! They tasted just like P.F. Chang's Lettuce Wraps.

Here is the link for the recipe:

http://www.food.com/recipe/p-f-changs-chicken-lettuce-wraps-15865

Changes I made:

After reading the comments, I decided to double the recipe, and there was only a little bit left over.

Also, I fried up the rice noodles just like at the restaurant.  It was really easy.  You just throw them in the hot oil for a second and take them out.

For the chicken, I just used ground chicken, which was so much easier!

I didn't put the hot mustard or garlic and red chili paste in, but instead just had Sriracha on the side.

Button Canvas

I found these two monogram button ideas on Pinterest a while ago, but forgot about them until I found a ton of blue and green buttons at Ross last week. How random is it that Ross had buttons?

These are from the Etsy shop, Letterperfectdesign (http://www.etsy.com/shop/letterperfectdesigns?ref=seller_info)

I painted a canvas from Ben Franklin's gray and sewed the buttons right onto it.

1.I printed out the font I wanted (I used lower case times new roman) on regular paper that was the right size for the canvas.

2. Next, I put graphite paper, or transfer paper, onto the canvas and layed the printed out font on top of it.  To transfer it, I just traced over the letters, which imprinted the graphite onto the canvas, making an outline of each letter.

3.  I sewed larger buttons randomly throughout each letter and then added smaller buttons to fill it in.  I tried to layer the buttons in different way- some are overlapping on one side, some are on top of others, and some are side by side.

I really like the way it turned out and it only took about two hours to sew it altogether.  I painted and let the canvas dry a few days before I sewed the buttons on.

I have a bunch of extra buttons, so I may make one in the shape of a heart or something.  With the colors of buttons I have, I could make a picture of the Earth, but that may be a little hard.

There are so many different ideas for using buttons to make a collage.  The picture ideas are endless!



The following picture is another craft project with buttons that caught my eye.