only one more to go





v festival has come and gone and i now seem to be fully recovered. sadly, i have no good partying as an explanation of my need for recovery. but i felt not-so-hot then and feel fine now so that is all that matters.

i am now very, very glad we drove all the way to blackpool to see radiohead, as they were really off their game saturday. so disappointing. but reading is this weekend. i am not so sure about the idea of seeing pearl jam in this decade, but there are probably worse things one could do.

this week i am going to work! in the summer holidays! it's crazy, but i suppose preparing for the new term is one of those things i really should do. today i get to take the new girl on a tour. {i know she reads this, so i should explain that i think 'the new girl' is a cute label and it is not meant to be negative in any way.}

and it'll get a proper launch later this evening, but you can sneak peek here. pink is the new brown, and all that.

until then...

xlovesx

    apple trees & honey bees

i have a real love for quality advertising. not all advertising by any means, as i am reminded whenever i visit a place with a television or i leaf through any martha stewart publication, trying to separate content from adverts for cling film. but advertisements you remember for ages, or that give you some sort of inner peace. the boy and i were talking about this last night...how proportionately, there are so few good adverts, and how that makes the good ones even better. i still can't look away from the honda cog. i think of the vw golf every time i see a chair put out with the rubbish. and some days, i really would like to buy the world a coke and keep it company.

{actually, during the last school year i got to sit in on a seminar led by the team that create the honda ads -- the cog, as well as 'what if?' and 'hate something, change something'. they shared their process, going from a grumpy engineer and a music video to their animated advert, and so on. these people are just fascinating. it's no wonder they make good stuff. i try to think of the mix up of their team whenever i am in one of those 'if you want something done, do it yourself' moods. which is too often, i must admit.}

anyway, i've been keeping an ad related thing a secret and today i found out i don't have to keep schtum anymore, so i'm not. fiskars make things that cut. lots of things that cut lots of other things in lots of shapes and sizes. obvious things like scissors and paper trimmers, but also the not obvious things like paper drills, garden gadgets and things that make primary school teachers smile all day long. {i'm thinking maybe we should bring back a bit of old fashioned cut and paste to secondary school though. especially in administrative meetings.} last year fiskars started this print&web campaign, wherein crafters of the paper and fabric varieties along with gardeners shared their views on creativity with others via a journal. some individual pages made it to the big time to become glossy print ads. but you can see a gallery of these journals here.

so if my excited and gushy praise of thought-provoking advertising hasn't made this completely obvious, i filled in this over the summer:





they pick some people (and i have no idea how) and if you say yes, they send you a blank book and some questions to prompt your responses. some i knew the answers to straight away. some took ages to think of anything that would work. the page i like the most looks like something out of a comic. well, a comic that's in pink and black and has no people. but i'll post more later in the year, when it appears on the fiskars site. yay.

in other news...there are new things afoot for the website. classes are just the start. i've been working SO HARD this week! fabulous. and very pink, i must say.

xlovesx

    hugsum daginn minn





blogging from the departure lounge @ keflavik airport, coping with my accidental dreadlocks. we went to the traditional tourist stop off on the way to the airport - the blue lagoon - and they warn you that the water is good for your skin but rough on your hair. mine is drenched with conditioner, and that water is also quite good at stripping hair of any dyes or chemicals. still, trust the icelanders to take the by-product of a power plant and turn it into a tourist oasis.

there is one other icelandic obsession of which i am now fully aware. they love licorice. like so much. there is licorice in everything. they also love marzipan - which is wonderful in my eyes - but they couple it with licorice and chocolate. at the airport shop to my left, there is an entire aisle dedicated just to types of black licorice. if you buy a chocolate bar that was sitting next to the licorice, the chocolate will taste of licorice. i wonder if they translate charlie and the chocolate factory into a story about a little boy from husavik who wins the world's biggest supply of licorice. (& that would be really exciting if you grew up in husavik.)

between us, we have taken about a thousand pictures, after we deleted the ones that were truly mistakes. my flickr account is going to finally take a bashing of more than 4% its monthly limit.

we should be boarding in the next half hour. i wonder where it is raining the most: reykjavik or london?

xelskax

    and the dark grey area represents time spent just kickin' it...





we fly home tomorrow. while i will welcome the chance to wear fewer layers, i will miss this place. that wall of rock is just a small part of Ásbyrgi, which has come to symbolise the magic of a place like this. it was a destination already on my list when we planned this trip ages ago. then just by a bit of luck, some people decide to play a concert there. like really, we were that lucky. it was beautiful.

i have also survived camping. i am so proud. am now recovering in a gorgeous hotel in reykjavik. the floor is heated. this makes me so happy.

must go have some dinner. bigger report in two days when am home.

xlovesx

    another slow train to the coast

greetings from the garden state. internet access is easier and cheaper (not to mention working) in newark airport. not so much for my hotel room in atlanta, but hey...that's how it goes.

{this is the first flight in ages where i have had a layover that meant i could do something other than run from one gate to the next. i just ate lunch at the garden state diner, where the waitress said no one my age knows what an ice cream soda is - their loss - and they had a suitable in-diner soundtrack, except for this really random playing of ace of base in the middle. so yeah...exploring airports. and listen up youngsters: ice cream sodas = yum. just had to clear that up.}





that's proof that i actually did some scrapbooking on this trip. in ali's awesome album track. and you know something is good if i pull out words like...awesome. i must be jetlagged already. those are my tablemates, pj, kelly & meredith. we ate cupcakes and carrot sticks and drank twenty-seven minute wait coffee and talked and scrapped. there will be more proof later.





and that would be just one of the obligatory scrapceleb photos. but seriously. she's a gem. totally.

now i'm gonna get on a plane on monday, wake up in england on tuesday and fly to iceland on wednesday. there is no way to get me off this high, i tell you.

{there is the fact that i need to drive a manual car in iceland. this will be an adventure in itself.}

more later.

xlovesx

    as i turn my white skin red

check it: two more days. 2. one plus one. brilliant.

meanwhile, it's 100 degrees here and 61 degrees in iceland. in two more weeks - that's one plus one - i'll need to find at least a sweater and some long trousers or something. we are also going tent shopping for our camping in the daylight adventure. plus there's next week -- that's one without adding anything else -- in atlanta.

frequent flyer miles are a very, very cool thing. ♥





to cap the third-from-last day of the school year, we had a baby shower for tracy and tor. i made a quilt bigger than a pillow, for which i am quite proud. it is simple but soft and play mat sized. maybe i should quilt a sleeping bag for iceland...

and while we're on the subject of sewing, that two day countdown is also counting until i can sew things for sehrnett, which is also a thing to be super happy about.

it's orange wednesday. must dash.

xlovesx

    sugar magnolia, blossoms blooming





i swear i do things other than make cupcakes. i do. why, over the past week, i have gone to work, pulled through minor health drama and poorly assembled some poorly manufactured flat pack furniture. see? the cupcakes are just more fun.

so much fun that at the weekend, anita in the netherlands emailed me for cupcake info. by the time the weekend was out, she'd made some gorgeous cupcakes in white and dark chocolate, with little chocolate hearts on top. i hope she will post the picture on her blog, as they look super yummy and, after all, i am all about the sharing of good cupcake photos, right behind the sharing of cupcakes.

sorry to cut this short, but i have to go be stern with the annoying neighbours who have left their dogs barking in the flat all night, which explains why i'm posting now. when did i become such a grown up? anyway, i must be awake in five hours and since i have actually learned to sleep, i will go complain and then go. to. bed.

i'm sure you wanted to know.

xlovesx

ps: 9 days!

    just smiling at the sound

ten more school days. it's to so-close-you-can-taste-it level. next week is all workshops and trips and special guests, and then i have just one final week of regularly scheduled lessons to get year 9 to do something coursework worthy on wuthering heights. then it's summer. {which means i need to do the lesson planning for summer school, but let's not talk about that right now. it'll ruin the mood.}





this week we discovered there is a very sensible reason for the rejection of july as national frosting month. wednesday night was exceedingly hot and the butter kept splitting from just stirring it. now i understand why there is crisco in kansas. this was the third try, with much refrigeration and an ice pack under the mixing bowl. sheesh.

purple because we were finishing this year long leadership course that is *so* corporately branded in purple, it's just amusing. the course has been worth it just for the entertainment value -- it was a lot of familiar american total quality management theory and analysis of emerging styles of leadership. the reading list included 7 habits and that book i can't remember the name of that is all about a family owned coffee cart chain in seattle. at the start of every course workshop, we had to go through our ground rules. these started with everything is confidential and nothing leaves this room. it's probably a good thing i was never called on to review the ground rules, because i don't think i would have had the will power to say anything aside from the first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club, and the second rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club. this was immensely funny between two of us on the course and no one else even pretended to get the connection. as part of the finish, we had to present our work, and my work included cupcakes, so i brought evidence. evidence is important when giving a presentation, right? and it's better when the audience can eat the evidence quite happily. oh yes, and the other part of the entertainment value? it's not a presentation, it's a learning conversation. yes, a conversation in which one person must speak for ten minutes from their own outline. i can see so much conversation in that.

actually, it wasn't as rubbish as i make it sound...but i did find it comical from start to finish. and now i have a certificate to prove i made it through. it's purple, of course.

***plus, i need your help***
i'll be in atlanta from the 25-30 of july.
tell me where i need to shop, please.
***thank you.***


and this is especially for cheryl:





and here i was, still believing that elvis lived in salina. turns out he emigrated. and he had a girlfriend! i'm sure the presley girls would not be impressed.


xlovesx

    this june bug sings low and lovely





i'm still not too sure where last week went. but that is okay once in a while. saturday was a bit more civil, as we trucked off to leeds castle for the open air concert they do in the summer. it was surreal to see it from this side of things...the last time i went i was singing with the brighton festival chorus who i dearly miss but then again i don't live in brighton anymore! we had a divine picnic including these cupcakes {click through for recipe info} and butternut quiche and pimms. there were hot air balloons, fireworks and spitfires in the sky to join up with the 1812 overture and a very pretty sunset.

all these things are silly but lovely and pretty much i just wanted to say hi.





and there are now just four more weeks of school.

xlovesx

    he ain't got no alibi





this is ugly steve.

steve is very, very ugly, but he has a heart of gold. and he is something both red and blue to end colour week. he also makes sure i have nothing in my wardrobe should i be asked to become a spice girl at any time in the future. these are all good things.

this has been a lovely weekend. and that means a lot.

and just because i didn't say hello on thursday, i'll show you this, which isn't ugly like poor steve.





cherry brandy cupcakes. {& for ariel, the frosting is like this: let butter go soft. mix in a bunch of powdered sugar. add a little bit of cherry juice - the brandy is in the cake, not the icing - and some food colouring. then go shop for insulin!}

xlovesx

    days when the rains came





the break in the weather did help. this morning's rain was that perfect kind you can walk through in sandals and not get cold. it also helped break the tension of some needless stress this week {all i need to say is bank fraud and we will be on the same page. the page that sucks.}

so today's colour is brown in my readjusted week, and although i have beige carpeting {really need to stop renting} there isn't so much brown around. eggs are brown here, which always makes me think they are more real...when i was small i remember eggs that you bought from a farmer's market were brown and eggs from a store were white...a clock that i made years ago when i was playing about with different glues just as a test piece though it still serves its function...lovely little moleskines that sit like that on the shelf because i don't have the heart to write in them yet...and coffee beans. those are guatemalan decaf from monmouth.

cupcakes are cooling. ♥

xlovesx

    don't push away





last time there was a colour week, i was away with the kiddies. this time, i am cheating. one of these days i'll play properly.

i'm only cheating because monday was supposed to be dedicated to white, wednesday to black. yet when i went to look for white, i nearly always found it alongside black. so today i'm going with black&white (because today is halfway between monday and wednesday) and tomorrow i will do today's colour. in my head, this makes perfect sense, and that's all that matters.

{yes, i have a heidi swapp supply shrine. it just looks pretty all together. though it has now outgrown its space and has mixed with the rest of the supplies, despite the snickers from other products that were stubborn and not so attractively packaged. it appears that art & craft supplies have the mentality of preteen girls.}

school is counting down, but not in a brilliant way. counting this week, we have six more weeks to go. behaviour is mad, due in part to the heat, and patience from staff is low, due in part to the heat. generally i am not a teacher who shouts, but not so much these past two days. maybe the rain this afternoon will give some needed calm to the place. one can hope. on the plus side, my year 9 class who seem to think they are lost in the hardest book they have ever read are really making some brilliant points with wuthering heights. we just got to cathy and heathcliff's last exchange today and their opinions are evenly split between those who think there is nothing redeeming about heathcliff and those who think he is actually lovely for just a matter of moments. and year 8 started animal farm today which was actually pretty lovely too. so i guess i have come to realise that the last half-term is the hardest and i try to redeem it by forcing the kids to read something a bit more rewarding than the teenage lit shelf at borders.

and i'm not sure if i should blame cathy or the collective of justabouteveryoneelse, but i am halfway through series one of lost on dvd. jury's out. will get back to you on that.

xlovesx

    all the sunshine banishes the dark





you know, i did warn you about the epic proportions of the log cabin issue. so don't be all surprised that they keep cropping up. this one is going overseas to live with a very tough critic in topcity, kansas.





her name just might start with the letter b.

{also, since the rest of, well, england was watching the england match, we went to the gorge. it is beautiful tonight. locals: go for a walk!}

xlovesx

    sleep a while; you must be tired

so i may not have a blue room, but i do have a room that is sometimes pink and sometimes black and white. and it has room for pillows.





all the glory of having last week off from school, away from stress and free to make stuff and read books, came crashing down on monday in the most royal fashion. i am down staff for september and they are unlikely to be replaced. i had the option of hiring a temporary teacher who has never been to england and is actually a history teacher who has never taught below age 16 (we are 11-16) and i chose not to ask her for an interview. some people thought this was very stupid of me and i should have just hired her, but i have no interest in returning to the rotating door this place once was. so i had many a demanding meeting, left the room on a few occasions when patronised and generally had to remind people that i don't settle for rubbish. i still have many a task left unfinished for the week (namely proofreading the team's year 7 reports and reporting the year 10 exam grades) but by today i seem to have people back in my corner, or at least admitting that i am making sense. this is all good.

exam season is also over for me now! the last year 11 paper was thursday afternoon. for some reason, my year 11 boys came to class today anyway. when i was out of the room they left me a goodbye note on the board and i kept it there all day. they have been an amusing class and taken a lot of sarcasm from me -- including one boy in the front row who now answers to 'weasley' because he could be any of ginny's elder brothers -- and i do regret that i only had them for one year of the two year course. they had the revolving door the first year and when i took them over it was pretty much starting from scratch. one loaned me a copy of big fish on dvd last week because it is his defining film. i tried and tried to think of what would be a reciprocal defining film of my life at sixteen -- beks still has my copy of reality bites and rocky horror didn't seem quite right -- so i told him to watch benny and joon and make a toasted cheese sandwich. apparently he didn't like the idea that the waitress was clarice. i had never thought about that.





so now the weather is shockingly summery (though last week i wore a million layers every day) and at least the weekend is stress free so now i can start my first commissioned pillow. it's pink and purple and should be up tomorrow -- so jen, don't let bailey look, ok?

xlovesx

    roll them up in coffee cake and dine

...because i promised joy that i would get back in the tilt of things...





normally it would be cupcake thursday, but there is something very dangerous about making an entire batch of cupcakes when you're not at work. something that i don't think could be rectified even with a personal trainer. but when the buttercup bakeshop book of magnolia's bakery recipes arrives, one must bake. so some cooking-with-maths later, there was a very small (yet still too big) batch of blueberry coffee cakes. which true, are not really cupcakes. but they are very sweet.

more thursday love happens here.

...and next time i'll try for something less obvious.

xlovesx