Teacher Appreciation Gift - Wordle

It is that time of year again when we begin to shout for joy that school is almost over!!  No more pencils, no more books.. now, what to give for that special teacher that has worked so diligently with your child all year.. a word cloud.  What is a word cloud you ask?  Well, I stumbled onto Wordle which is a great free online program that let's you make word clouds.  So I put together a word cloud with my teachers name, and all of the wonderful qualities that she possesses.  I used my daughters help to assist me with coming up with the words that describe her teacher, plunked them into the wordle create dashboard and.. voila!!

  A few tips when entering the words into Wordle. In order for there to be a space between two words, use the ~ symbol. So for "I like her hair" I had to enter "I~like~her~hair". If you enter a space, the words will appear separately.  Every time a word appears/is entered, the word get larger in the cloud. In other words, the larger the word, the more times it appears in your word file. So I entered the teacher's name the most, followed by the school name next. 

  I copy and pasted all the words  into the 'create' page on the Wordle site and selected 'go'. Wordle creates a custom word cloud with a random design. The best part is, you can customize almost every aspect of design, including the background, fonts, directions the words appear, etc. The possibilities are endless.

 Wordle Create Dashboard

 

Wordle Finished Product

   

                            I color printed the file on photo paper and framed it in an 8x10 frame.

                      I love that it is personal to the teacher and gives her an amazing perspective
                                                        of what my child thinks about her.

Hope you enjoyed today's Shenanigan!!

The Tale of the Purple Cup

A tale of a purple cup.. several years ago, my family was given a beautiful set of plastic patio tumblers.  They were 6 in total and came in the most vibrant of colors.  One that quickly became my favorite was the purple cup.  I used it all the time (particularly in the summer).  After many years of use, unfortunately it had seen it's time and cracked.  No more purple cup for me.

Then, one day, while sitting in the park enjoying a cool lemonade, my neighbor saunters up with.. low and behold.. my cup (well, her cup but it was identical to my old purple cup)  You can imagine how excited I was to begin negotiating with her for the rights to her cup.. Would she be interested in selling  it to me??  I asked.. well, unfortunately, she had the same attraction to her cup as I did mine and she would not part with it, but she would loan it to me from time to time.. and true to her word, she did loan it to me.. Whenever she went on vacation, she would gladly come by and drop off the purple cup for me to baby sit.  But, she would eventually return and seek out the cup.. The entire neighborhood got in on the game, that even involved a breaking and entering to retrieve the darn thing!!

It all became a very cute little game, I would "borrow it" and she would retrieve it, I would borrow it, and she would retrieve it.. quite funny and it soon became the war of the purple cup.. until one day.. one magical day, when I found a replacement cup.. a clear cup the exact same size and shape.. but it wasn't purple.. so I got an idea.. a wicked idea.. I would paint my cup purple!!  And that's exactly what I did.. but I didn't just paint a cup for me.. I painted one for all of my lady friend neighbors so that we could all have a purple cup of our own.. The war of the purple cup is officially over, until the original purple cup breaks.. then what will happen I wonder.. I guess the war will be on again.

Below is a snapshot of the process of the painting of the purple cup

First the primer

Then the purple paint is applied

Drying in the sunshine!!

The finished product!!

The original purple cup is in the center, but the painted ones look just as good!!  Now we all have cups to enjoy!!

Thanks for checking out this week's Shenanigan.

Girls Weekend

What have I been up to you ask?? Well definitely more Shenanigans!!  Recently we held our annual Girls Weekend Getaway, and as always, it was a fantastic weekend away!!  One of the things that made this weekend special for me, was the assembling of the goodie bags that we brought along. 

Below is just a little sample of some of the things that we had in our goodie bags..

Press on Tatoo's, face masks, sleep masks, candies, buttons, hats and of course candied necklaces 

Can't wait for next year ladies, although I don't know what would top this years event.. I will have to think of something very special because next year it is our 10 year anniversary for our 

Girls Weekend Getaway

Mardi Gras Party

This Shenanigan was a lot of fun to put together, and the food that we had for this event was spectacular!!  My husband and I have both been to New Orleans so this year when Mardi Gras came along, we thought, why not bring a bit of New Orleans to our home town by throwing a Mardi Gras Party!!
The food we prepared was fantastic!!  Everything from Jambalaya, to gumbo and of course king cake!!  We even had bread pudding and some southern fried bbq chicken!!

 And the decor.. it was so much fun to decorate with purple, green and yellow!!

We even made a king cake!!

but what made this party a huge success, were the guests!!  Everyone got into the party spirit and dressed up for Mardi Gras!!

This will definitely be the first of many Mardi Gras parties for us!!

Once a Month Cooking

Well, this week's Shenanigan is one that I have been dying to try for quite some time, so I finally did it.  With baseball season just around the corner, we will be at the field 4 - 5 nights a week.  The last thing I want to worry about this season is.. what's for dinner.. so I did a bit of research, picked some easy recipes and cooked 30 meals in one day!!  You read me right.. 30 meals in one day!!  I made a mixture of casseroles and crock pot recipes that are all sitting tucked away in zip lock bags in my freezer.  First thing I did was choose the recipes.  Some I found online, and some I got from friends, and some came from a cookbook.  I chose 10 recipes and then tripled each one, so that I would have 30 meals.  Then, I shopped and boy did I shop!!

 

There was definitely a lot of food to be purchased and I spend approximately $500.00 for all of the meals that I prepared which worked out to be about $17.00 per meal.  That isn't too bad to feed my family of four!!

Next, I chopped, and I chopped and I chopped!!  The worst part was the onions.  Every recipe called for chopped onions, so I peeled and chopped about 30 onions.  In order to avoid the watery eyes, I wore swimming goggles, and they worked like a charm!!

 Once all the chopping was done, I was ready to mix the sauces and assemble the bags and casseroles.  There was not much pre-cooking or prepping involved with the recipes I chose so I pretty much put all of the chopped raw vegetables and meats into the bags.

 I labeled the bags and casserole dishes with a black sharpie marker and prepared them for freezing.  I also made some casseroles and I purchased tin foil casserole dishes from a dollar store, these were the perfect size and stack nicely in my freezer.

I had to stop 1/2 way through my day to wash up the dishes to re-use them for other recipes.  I literally used every dish I had for the prep!!

All in all, I spent about 8 hours in my kitchen from start to finish, it was exhausting to say the least but, I now have 30 meals  all ready to go and now that the ball season has started, I haven't had to worry about what's for dinner in weeks!!  I would highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in getting organized for a busy family and I will definitely be doing it again.