Happy Back to School Teacher Gifts

The summer flew by so fast and now it is time to head back to school!  I found some great ideas for teacher gifts and started with an adorable idea for an insulated cup (they are all the rage) that can be found for $5 at Wal-Mart.  I then filled it with some lemonade drink packets and a small bag of cookies.  The tag says, “Thank you for quenching my thirst for knowledge”.  The kids had “Meet the Teacher” day on Friday morning, so they met their teacher and then handed them each a cup.  They were a huge hit!

I also like to do practical gifts.  Due to the budget crisis our teachers have NO money to spend on basic classroom supplies and have to reach into their own pockets for stuff like Kleenex, copy paper, and paper towels.  On the first day of school each one of my kids will go with boxes of Kleenex for their teachers.  My son is also giving his teacher note cards for speeches they will be working on.  It is always nice to send extra school supplies; some kids never bring them or can’t afford them.

My daughter’s teacher is teaching an apple unit for the first week of school!  She is very excited and couldn’t wait to pick out her apple at the grocery store.  I also went ahead and picked out five different apples; being sure to leave the stickers on them to let the teacher know which ones they were.  I then painted her initial on a canvas re-usable lunch bag, put the apples in, and tied it with a cute ribbon.  Now she has extras for the kids that don’t bring them to school!

Happy Back to School!

New Things and a Recipe

I have 2 new favorite things!  The first one is something I am sure most of you have, but for some reason I have been in the culinary dark ages and have never had one until recently.  My parents gave me a food processor for my birthday!  I had no idea how much I would use it.  I have used it to make salsa, fine crumble sausages for pizza, and make zucchini bread.  The shredding attachment is my favorite and I will never shred the old fashioned way again!

My other favorite thing is a new apron!  I don’t usually use aprons to cook, being an artist I wear them to protect my clothes while painting or teaching art.  I ruined way too many clothes in college and found out that a cheery apron with some style makes me happy while I work.  I found this new one in the clearance section at Marshall’s!  Perfect to use cooking and starting the new school year teaching art in my kid’s classes!

Zucchini Bread

3 eggs

1 ½ cup sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

1 Tablespoon vanilla

2 cup grated unpeeled zucchini

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon cinnamon

1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray two 9 “loaf pans with cooking oil. In a large bowl, beat eggs until frothy.  Beat in sugar, oil and vanilla until thick and lemon-colored. Stir in zucchini. Sift dry ingredients and stir into the batter. Fold in the nuts. Pour into prepared pans. Bake 40 minutes or until center springs back when touched. Cool 10 minutes before turning out on to racks. These freeze well.

Beautiful Moth

I was able to capture one last picture of the Hummingbird Moth with it's wings fully extended before it departed!  God has some truly amazing creatures!

Hatching

They hatched!  I am so overly excited that our caterpillars have turned into butterflies and moths!  It has been the most amazing thing to watch as the caterpillars eat, poop (the kids favorite part), and then cocoon.

I wasn’t really sure how this would all turn out.  I started with some bugs and dirt from my garden, found out the sand is not to their liking, and just kept feeding them and giving them a sprinkling of water…hoping for the best!  I think I really got into it more than the kids, although they have liked seeing the changes in the bugs.

Our first learning experience was that the horned tomato worms eat A LOT!  Then we learned that the little green caterpillars are not baby horned worms, they are something else that turns into a beautiful little yellow butterfly.  Their metamorphosis only took about 2 weeks from start to finish.  The horned worms took about a month to turn into a butterfly, from the time they buried themselves under the dirt to cocoon until their cocoon actually moved up above the dirt and they hatched.  Through that, we learned that there are bugs that cocoon underground!

The first horned worm just hatched today and it turns into a beautiful sphinx moth or a hummingbird moth.  They are named that because they are huge, roughly the size of a hummingbird! Their wings start out small and expand as they dry out, as you can see in the pics below.

This was a wonderful science lesson for the kids that took a month in the making, an old aquarium, and the rest was free!

Pests to Pets

My kids love to look for bugs in our yard.  I found that our broccoli and Boston ivy have a variety of tomato worms.  There are little baby ones that have just hatched and a big grand daddy one that has the girth of a penny and is 4 inches long.

About 4 years ago my son wanted to have an aquarium.  After going through a bunch of fish (pretty sure the money I spent on fish over a 2 year period would have paid for a papered Golden Retriever) we decided to put the aquarium up in the garage.  All the fish had died, except for a plecostomus, one of those algae eater fish that sucks the algae off of the side of the aquarium.  The fish store I had bought him at had gone out of business and I didn’t know what to do with him.  I stopped feeding him, thought he might just perish on his own…but no, after 2 months of no food he was still going strong, and was about 6 inches long.

After much deliberation (I couldn’t kill him) I put him in a zip loc baggie with water and placed the baggie in my purse.  I marched off to our local Wal-Mart Super Center and when I thought no one was looking, I emptied the baggie, fish and all, into their fish aquarium that was housing other plecostomus fish.  Of course the one I donated to them was about 6 times larger than the ones in their tank.

To this day, I am sure there was someone in the back watching security cameras and saying, “Hey, Joe, check out this crazy lady putting a fish IN the tank in the pet section.”

I digress, the reason for this post was to tell you that with an old aquarium some found caterpillars, a little sand and leaves to eat, you have FREE pets.  The best part is, they aren’t permanent.  Tomato worms will cocoon and turn into a beautiful Sphinx moth.  If they die before that, oh well, get some more, or put the aquarium away for later.

My kids are having a great time checking it throughout the day, collecting extra food, and showing their friends!  Great FREE summer fun!

Happy Anniversary to My Wonderful Husband

Happy 15 years to my wonderful husband!

Favorite Spots in Cayman

I now have two snorkeling kids!  Clearly the Sea Wasp sting I received didn't phase them a bit.

On our way down the path to Cemetary Reef; one of our favorite beach spots.  There is a cemetary on the left side of the fence that is right on the water.  We have come here every year to swim and snorkel.