Love. This. Quote.

My friend and owner of Ambika, Erica, recently emailed me.  She shared this gem for podcasts, which I wasn't familiar with before, but now love AND the quote above by Thich Nhat Hanh.

How did she know my mud is so deep right now?  I'm talking quicksand deep.

Thank you, Erica, for knowing I needed a change of perspective.

Here's to blooming lotus flowers,

Jen

Lessons from Woodberry

This past weekend, we celebrated Mr. UpCyclist's birthday.  We made his special day a Yes Day, which means he had carte blanche to choose all the activities for the day and Miss O and I had to say YES.   Our family digs Yes Days.  You can read about our other Yes Days here, here, here, and here.

As part of his Yes Day, he picked "going out for dinner."  I knew this might be an interest of his, so I was holding an early reservation at Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore.  We had heard of Woodberry Kitchen before, but had never been.  Boy, was it lovely.  In the photo above, you can see their Woodberry Hall.  They were setting up for a private party as we arrived, so I imagine it is a room you can reserve for special occasions.  I was ready to move into the whole place - the hall, the restaurant, the string-light laced outside seating area, the old steel mill buildings, you name it.  The look and vibe of Woodberry completely spoke to me.

It was more than the ambience, though, that inspired this blog post.  It was the whole experience. I left Woodberry thinking there were some important lessons an educator could adapt from Woodberry's thoughtfulness.  Lessons you could take back to a classroom (including an online classroom, too).

Lessons from Woodberry

1.  Environment plays a huge role.  No matter the situation, environment plays a tremendous role in how students feel and behave.  My family and I felt welcomed at Woodberry like we were guests in their home.  The staff and the vibe of the environment contributed to this.  Dr. Maria Montessori said 100 years ago the third participant in education after the child and teacher was the environment.  The same holds true today. An intentional environment has a major impact on how people feel and behave.  What are you intentionally doing to create a welcoming environment for your students?  What could you tweak or improve?  

2.  Make the people in your environment feel special.  Miss O, as you know, is on a special diet indefinitely.  Being gluten-free can be tricky when eating out.  At Woodberry, however, Miss O was treated like a rockstar.  She had her own special, gorgeous menu.  Her g-free bread arrived first and was delicious (instead of it being the waitstaff's after thought).  Since we were celebrating Mr. U's birthday, the waitstaff surprised him (and us) with a special dessert and candle.  I don't even remember telling anyone at Woodberry it was his birthday.  Maybe they asked when I made the reservation?  I can't recall.  But, I do know how special we all felt as we dined and now days later, how special each of us still feels.   How do you let your students know they are special to you? 

3. When your staff feels appreciated it shows.  I can't tell you how many times I've been to a school and have noticed the employees looking so sad and downtrodden.  It is heartbreaking to me.  At Woodberry, the staff was vibrant.  They each floated around the restaurant supporting each other while they kept up with the needs of the patrons.   I used to work in restaurants and bars all through my 20s and thought several times during the night at Woodberry, "If I were to work in a restaurant again, I would definitely want to work here."  The employees of Woodberry looked appreciated and you could feel it.  How do you show your appreciation to the people in your environment - your colleagues, support staff, class volunteers, and parents?

I left Woodberry wishing more people - teachers, parents, business owners, coaches - could be more Woodberry-like.  If we all would create more thoughtful, welcoming environments where others felt special, valued, and appreciated how might the people around us feel and behave differently?  What would the impact be?

Celebrating Woodberry and tipping my hat to them,
Jen

Gluten-free Pizza (A Winning Crust)

I almost titled this blog post, The Day This Blog Became a Cooking Blog.  But, then I remembered an article I had read about blogging and Google searches.  It is better not to be cute, but instead be practical when titling blog posts.  Practical therefore wins today.

You know I am not a cook as I explained here.  I don't claim to be.  However, I am on a roll and being much braver in the kitchen.  I have tried so many recipes lately that I am ready to write a cookbook myself.  The cookbook title will be Recipes That Really, Truly Work!  I'm pretty tired of recipes that do not work as written.  Recipes that I have to adjust the temperature, cooking time, ingredient list, or quantity.  Me!  I am not a cook.  Cooking doesn't come intuitive to me.  Yet, here I am tweaking away at recipes.

Sigh.

So, since I have zero time to write my Recipes That Really, Truly Work! cookbook, I thought I'd share the best recipes here when I discover them.  If anything it will be a great list of my family's favorites and perhaps inspire others to share their recipes that really work, too.  We can all grow our cooking skills together.

As I mentioned in my Brave Cooking blog post, Miss O is on a gluten-free, egg-free, etc.-free diet since November.  I've been looking for a pizza crust that would work for her - no gluten, no eggs, and no icky stuff.  This quinoa crust is the answer AND it really works!   I've now tried it twice and my only modification is I make two smaller crusts (instead of one larger one).  When I make the crusts smaller, the crust get crisper and the center pieces hold up super well.  In the photo below, look at that hold!  Amazing, right?  No floppy, soggy pizza crust here.

This gluten-free pizza crust also tastes great.  Since it is made from only quinoa, baking powder, salt and water (and a spray of oil on the parchment paper) it has more nutritional punch than a regular wheat-based crust.   Plus, now that I've made the batter a couple of times, I'm dreaming of others ways to use it.  Savory quinoa waffles?  Quinoa breakfast toasts?  Add some agave or honey and make it a sweet treat? More Brave cooking ahead!  You can find the quinoa crust recipe here (there's even a video to watch if you want to be taken through the crust recipe step-by-step).

OK, it's your turn.  What are your recipes that really, truly work?  Leave 'em below or email me, yes?

All the best - bon appetit,
Jen

Things to Do Printable

The beginning of the semester is historically crazy for me.

This semester is no exception.  I don't know about you, but I love a good list.  This things to do list is making me smile and I think will assist me in managing all my fleeting tasks.  You can't see the bottom of my list above, but it is packed full of things to do over the next few days.

Find the free printable here from A Pair of Pears.

Happy Hump Day,
Jen

New Year, New Blog Design

It feels so good to have a new blog design.  I don't know about you, but the old one just wasn't doing it for me anymore.  It was too colorful, too doodlely, and too what I felt like 2.5 years ago.  The new one is completely me at this point in time.  That's the beauty of having a personal and professional blog. It evolves as you evolve.

In case you are growing your blog design skills, here are the tools I used for the new design.

PicMonkey
You know I am an avid PM user.  For the first time ever, I used PM for 95% of the graphics.  Yep, 95%!  The only reason I cracked open my Photoshop Elements was to meticulously space the social media icons you see in the right sidebar.  PM doesn't have a gridline view feature, so when you want to be precise, you have to open up Photoshop or something similar, like Gimp which is free.

Paletton
I sent the beta-version of the new blog design to two friends, Laura and Susan. They both have a good eye for design and experience blogging.  They knew I wanted a crisper design that was also playful yet professional.  My original design had zero color in it besides black and white.  Both women wanted to see more color.  Color?  Ugh.  I was sick of color from my last blog design.  Lil O voiced the same concern. Choosing colors and how much color to add became a design nightmare during my 36 hour redesign. Until....Lil O and I stumbled across the coolest color wheel tool on the planet, Paletton.  After 15 minutes of playing on Paletton, I knew the color scheme I wanted for the blog. Whew.  Lil O, by the way, is one of the most decisive humans I know.  She picked out the blog colors in the first two minutes of using Paletton.  13 minutes later, I came around.

HTML and CSS Coding
The one course I took in graduate school at Johns Hopkins University that including a two-week HTML crash course continues to be one of the most useful courses I've taken this century. Seriously, if you blog or dabble in any elementary web design, you've got to know an itty bitty amount of how to code. You should see the tweaks I'm making to the HMTL and CSS codes behind-the-scenes.  You would never know it, but my blog is actually a Blogger blog.  And if you've ever seen a true Blogger blog, it comes pre-packed with all these bells and whistles, which I coded out to make Upcycled Education more unique and interesting.  Using code is also how I was able to tweak the sidebar on the right - adjusting spacing between items and adding cute little banners - plus, I overrode the features that limited my ability to add my own custom blog header at the top.  In summary, two weeks of code class is a life-changer.  No wonder One Hour of Code gets so much hype (though, that particular coding class isn't enough, in my opinion, to deepen your coding skill set for tweaking HTML).

Image Mapping with Gimp
Once I made all the new blog graphics in PM (and yes, I made every last one of them), I needed to image map the blog banner and the social media icons, so that when you clicked on a specific portion of the image, your click actually brought you to a new online destination.  There are several tools on the Internet to help you image map.  In my opinion, though, nothing is easier than using Gimp and Crafterhours's tutorial on how to create an image map. What used to be a dreadful process for me, now I can do in under five minutes per image, which includes image mapping and loading the new map into the blog. I was high-fiving myself and texting Susan a big thank you at 1am when I finished the new design.

New Favorite Font
Seriously, y'all (I am originally from the South, so I think I can use y'all authentically.  Though, by South, I mean the Ft. Lauderdale area). Ha!  I've been wanting to embrace this font for two years: Amatic Small Caps.  I originally noticed it on PicMonkey.  Then, dreamt about it for the next two years.  I finally embraced it for the good, I believe, this week with the new blog design.  It is totally playful, hand-drawn, and barely professional.  It is ME at this point in time.  Me, ME, MEEE.

I'd love to hear your feedback about the new design.  What do you like?  What do you want to see more of?  What did I forget?

Have a great weekend - see you on the other side.

Jen