Outer Order Inner Calm

I ordered a great book by Gretchen Rubin the other day that I'm really excited about. It's called Outer Order Inner Calm. I can't wait to get it!

I read her other book, Better Than Before, and I found it changed my life. It helped me realize what works best for me and to embrace that. I've always been a follower of Fly Lady but I found some of her ideas just didn't work for me.

This year  I decided I will commit to her idea of zone cleaning. I have one area of my house that I work on all week long for 15 minutes each day. It has already made me so happy! Today it was my bedroom. I tidied up, dejunked, dusted and cleaned up my shelving unit in my room. It's amazing what you can do in 15 minutes a day.

It makes me happy every time I go in there!

Change

The last couple of weeks at school have been a little stressful for me. The province has decided to do away with the provincial achievement tests of the past for grade three students. They will continue on and next remove them for grade six students. I'm not sure if it is going on to grade 9 or not. In their place they are doing  SLAs (Student Learning Assessments).

It hasn't gone too smoothly at all. From getting registered in the website, to setting up class lists (and being able to edit errors!) to actually administering the tests, it has been painful - from registering ourselves as teachers so we could even administer the tests to evaluating the results. Every step of the way we have had to take a step back and update technology, try different browsers, re- read the 30 page instruction documents, and wonder what exactly the questions are really asking and if all this time is worth the information we are gathering. Thank goodness we have had supportive admin to help us through this. I am pretty sure without them we would have totally abandoned the assessment.

The government website says: 

Alberta wants teachers and parents to have the best tools available for them to help improve student learning. One new tool is the Student Learning Assessment (SLA).

These assessments are digitally based and focused on literacy, numeracy, and the cross-discipline competencies of Inspiring Education. They take place at the start of the school year to enable both parents and teachers to identify student strengths and areas needing improvement.

As I was complaining about this whole process one day my principal wondered aloud what it is about teachers that we don't like change.
I had to chuckle. In some ways, he is right.
In other ways though, sometimes it seems like change for the sake of change.
We have had a change in our school this year. That hasn't been an easy change either. I mourn what we have lost more than looking forward to new changes, it seems.
I have been reading a great book: The Fourteenth Goldfish. That book talks about how important cycles are. Endings are really a beginning of something and should be considered exciting.
It makes me wonder what I need to be doing to make changes in my life more accepting and how to anticipate them with greater positivity.
How do I turn it into something great when it just feels disappointing and like it is all going in the wrong direction?
I don't know.
Must work on this.

Mr and Mrs Fix It

We have been going through quite a spell lately...stuff keeps breaking.

Allen is working on the toilet and the cupboard door.

Me: With the help of YouTube, I just fixed my garbage disposal. Myself. 

Was a little irritated as DH ran out the door to go HTing just after I asked him to look at it because it wasn't working.

Did.it.myself.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Eureka!!

Ever since we moved into our house almost 16 years ago, I have wanted to make a "library" out of our dining room space. I wanted just the right shelves. Something quite functional that went right upto the ceiling. I thought a rolling ladder would be pretty cool too - but then again,would I really want a ladder in the room all the time?? I have looked at used furniture stores, watched freecycle, and dreamt in over priced regular furniture stores. Nada. Not even something I wanted to scrape and save for.

I think I have found something though! I found it here. 

Check these out:

I wonder if I could build something like this?? I feel a summer project coming on!!

Back In the Saddle

Must be February. Oh wait....February is over. Thank goodness!!

For the past few years February has been crazy in our house. Allen is very busy with RSP season, and for me it is report card season. We do our best to keep up with the rest of life, but the truth is, it becomes really tricky (and stressful!) in February.

I am back in the saddle though. Time to get back to cooking, keeping up on the house, doing more reading and definitely more blogging!!

Today I was a guest blogger on Kirby Larson's website. I fell in love with her book, Hattie Big Sky and also The Friendship Doll, and have followed her blog ever since. She asked, once, on her blog, for people to let her know if they would be interested in blogging, and on a whim I replied. This week my time came!! You can read the post here.

Baby It's Hot Outside!

Today was the hottest day so far this summer.

I decided it was a good time to hang out in the basement and get some sewing done.

A few months ago Allen and Jill went shopping and bought some dresses. A few were way too long. Today i hemmed the last one. I didn't want to just shorten it from the bottom so I took the skirt off and cut inches off there. Now all three panels are about the same length. When I had it hemmed Jill asked if I could sew some straps on it....we got fooling around with it and ended up making not only straps, but little capped sleeves. It turned out quite cute! A great summer dress.

I also got a bunch of really nice blouses from someone on Freecycle recently. They all had long sleeves. I am not a fan of long sleeves, and most of these were a little too short so
I cut them off and made short sleeves. Love them now!