Merry Christmas!

I hope you get as much booty as you can carry today!

P.S. Fun Pirate Christmas Card is from Zazzle.

quote of the week

From a little boy:

I want to be a watermelon when I grow up!!!

P.S. This illustration came from An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton.

There are place in the world

where people do not dream...

of rocket powered unicorns

and candy cane machines

of magic watermelon boats

and musical baboons

or teeny tiny trumpet players training pet raccoons.

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Ahoy me hearties! May yer day be filled with piles o' booty!

P.S. Arr, I don't recall where I pillaged me picture from.

Happy Banned Books Week!

Like a true pirate I've been celebrating Banned Books Week since 2009 by going out of my way to read books others have deemed unfit for society. It started with Fahrenheit 451 by the late Ray Bradbury, which was not banned but imagines what a society where book banners are king would be like.

Then in 2010 I reread To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This book is so beautiful I can't imagine why people would want to keep it out of others hands and minds. It's really hard to choose a favorite book, but whenever asked this title always comes out of my mouth.

Last year I read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov which turns you into a person who roots for a pedophile. Twisted.

This year I'm reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. It was banned in the USA for moral reasons. I bought it last year at Ken's old hangout, City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. I wish I had more time to wander around in there, exploring all the nooks and soaking up the energy. Hopefully someday I will return!

Open Door, Open Books, Open Mind, Open Heart: excellent theme for Banned Books Week!

Lots of cool memorabilia inside!

What will you read for Banned Books Week?

P.S. I found my treasure chest of banned books here.

happy belated talk like a pirate day

Ahoy, rum, walk the plank, etc.

P.S. In Search of the Beast is by the dread pirates Josh Kenyon & Colby Nichols.

Project Life: Week 15+

Since my page protectors hold 6 photos and there are 7 days in a week I have become a little congested with the week numbers. Time to play catch up.

Not too much exciting going on this week: 2 pack walks, a bridal shower, watching The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (awesome), reading Stones from the River (not so awesome), and the first day of Spirit Week: Pajama Day! The first pack walk is designed by one of my students who made a paper doll of me and of my dog. Cool! Also I read Stones from the River for more than one day so I put the date I wrote about it, but instead of using the year on my library stamp I rolled it around to the abbreviation for Entered.

Here Spirit Week continues with Twin Day, a day one of my students made a giraffe when we were doing geometry, Reader's Theatre, some flowers my students picked for me, dinner with Corey, and date night to see Sucre. I had 3 vertical photos so I arranged my pictures a little different this time, from bottom left to top left, then bottom right to top right. I tried using a strip of star patterned paper to guide the eye in the right direction. The day we did Reader's Theatre we acted out The Puddle by David McPhail. My tip to other teachers is to use those Zoo Pals paper plates, hole punch them, add yarn and you have a costume. We used a pig oven mitt as a puppet and we pretended the watering can was a sailboat. Reading is fun again!

Here's my favorite from the week (2 tiny pictures with the corners rounded of course). Don't tell but I got the Sucre picture off the internet because my pictures were crap. She was wearing the same dress the night we saw them and we were sitting from the same angle. I guess my scrapbooking tip of the week is piracy, but I'm not profiting from the photo...I'm being creative!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

P.S. Shiver Me Shamrocks came from Zazzle.

Happy Halloween!

I went to school today dressed in my Captain Jack costume, as seen in my profile picture. As one of my students came in the door she said, "You look familiar to me." So cute the way some of these little English Language Learners phrase things!

P.S. Witch is by Masha Dyans.

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Yo ho ho, etc. etc.

P.S. Hunters Princess is by the dread pirate Anne-Julie Aubry.

Disneyland part 2

(The line for) Soarin' Over California:

The California I made was so cute I hated to cover it up:

Did you know that Disneyland is still open after the fireworks?

A chance to use my pirate stuff!

I love that guy:

Good times:

upgrade

This month at ARTastic the challenge is to use "Argenteuil" by Edouard Manet as inspiration. As an additional challenge we are to use two people in the photo, striped patterned paper (pp), and include a boat somewhere on the layout.

The painting:

My page:

When I thought about including a boat somewhere I thought of doing a pirate page with the dogs (and I may do that still), but then I remembered when we donated our Rodeo to the Sea Shepherds in 2008. The season of Whale Wars following our donation featured a new boat for the Sea Shepherds: The Ady Gil. Corey and I joked that they used the money from our car to buy it. We felt like it was a pretty good upgrade.

I printed the photo of the Ady Gil off the internet for my ship (and I added a pirate ship sticker for eco-terrorism). At first I thought there were 2 volunteers on top of the ship, but there are 3 so I lose a point there.
I positioned my striped paper horizontally just like the stripes in the man's shirt in the painting. I love using striped paper; it makes it so easy to line up pictures and stickers, and provides a good guideline for journaling.
I feel like my eyes move clockwise through the painting so I tried to duplicate that movement in my layout.

Save the whales!

P.S. Did you see the new episode of Whale Wars Friday? Gojira is pretty rad.

P.P.S. The Ady Gil picture I used in my layout came from Lifescape.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Last night we went with friends to see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides in 3D. We liked it, and it made me want to share this hilarious song I saw on Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago:



My only critique of Pirates of the Caribbean is that I wish there was more about the mermaids. They were pretty cool.



P.S. The Siren's Song is by Anne-Julie Aubry.

Who's Patrick?

Yesterday...

Me: Even though it's St. Patrick's Day tomorrow you guys still have to wear your uniforms.

Student 1: Who's Patrick?

Student 2: A starfish.

Student 3: You know, from SpongeBob.

Happy St. Patrick the Starfish from SpongeBob Day!

Good Luck Sea Shepherds!

The Sea Shepherds left for the Antarctic on Thursday, and for the first time they will get there before the illegal Japanese whalers! According to the Sea Shepherds website, the Japanese are having trouble hiring a supply ship since they have done such a good job convincing people the Sea Shepherds are terrorists. Ha!

Good luck with Operation No Compromise! Save the whales!

P.S. Humpback Whale is by Lisa Congdon.
The second photo is of the Sea Shepherds' new interceptor vessel, Gojira!

The pen is mightier than the sword.

"You’re picking a fight with Fox News? They gave Juan Williams a $2 million contract just for you firing him. NPR, you just brought a tote bag full of David Sedaris books to a knife fight!!!"

Today I found 38 matches for a Google search of "NPR, you just brought a tote bag full of David Sedaris books to a knife fight!!!" Last night Jon Stewart made me laugh when he said that on The Daily Show, even though I've never even read a David Sedaris book. But I always pick them up and read the descriptions because the covers and titles are so unique. Anyway, this morning as I drove to work, what do I hear on NPR? Jon Stewart saying, "NPR, you just brought a tote bag full of David Sedaris books to a knife fight!!!" NPR, thank you for laughing with us.

Any David Sedaris fans? Do you have a favorite to recommend to me?

P.S. You too can own a Pirate Skeleton letter opener or my version of a book/knife fight.

quote of the day

Right now I'm reading The Gates by John Connolly. It's so good. The gates of hell have opened, but the story is told in a funny way. Here is my favorite footnote so far (as of chapter 23 there are 24 footnotes):

Actually, astronomers who were recently sifting through thousands of signals from Sagittarius B2, a big dust cloud at the center of our galaxy, found a substance there called ethyl formate, which is the chemical responsible for the flavor of raspberries, and the smell of rum, the drink popular with pirates. Therefore, our galaxy tastes a bit of raspberries and smells of rum, which is nice.

I looked it up and it's really true.

P.S. Shelf Life is by James Hopkins.

Michael Kors Similes

Episode 11 (A Look in the Line)
Michael Kors said a designer's work this week was, "Like a bowl of sawdust." Imagine wearing those clothes on a windy day!

He also used a simile on the designer I hoped would go home, Gretchen!
"These particular bike shorts look like her thighs were eating them! I mean they were crazy!"

And finally, a metaphor this week which inspired the selection of the sad-faced pirate girl picture above...

"This is not a smiley face dress. This is a sad face."

Who's your favorite designer? I'm rooting for Mondo and April.

P.S. Broken Dawn is by Art&Ghosts.

Michael Kors Similes

Episode 7 (What's Mine is Yours)
Oh Michael Kors! You are adorable.

"It just looks like a weird assemblage of clothes from Forever 21 that were on the sale rack."

P.S. The assemblage of identities is called "Because She Believed" and is by Kathy Jeffords of thedreamygiraffe.

at least it's not a mustache

I'm not sure if I'm digging Jon Stewart avec goatee. As long as he keeps throwing punches I guess it doesn't matter.

P.S. I have since heard Jon Stewart say that with a goatee he looks "...like a communist pirate." 8.9.10

A Beautiful Distraction

I found a new scrapbooking challenge blog called These Are a Few of My Favorite Things and this week's challenge is to scrap your favorite store.

Obviously I love reading so I have to go with Bookmans! (I bet you thought I was going to pick Target!) Luckily I took the photo I used of the store about a year and a half ago so I could post it on LibraryThing. At the time there wasn't a photo of Bookmans to go with the listing. Since then a girl on there keeps taking mine down and putting hers up, but I think mine is way better, don't you?

That photo to me says it's 115 degrees outside.

Anyway, I heard that since the roof collapsed on the Bookmans in Flagstaff and it won't be fixed until fall, they are still paying their employees until it gets fixed. How awesome is Bookmans?!

Also they are the only bookstore in town that gives teachers a discount even if the books are not for your class. Every time I get my discount I feel like they are saying, We understand and we love you. It's like a little hug in the form of money.

Back to my scrapbook page, my favorite part of my favorite store page is where I changed the banners the sparrows are holding to say Favorite Store instead of Forever & Always. I busted out the light box and traced over it onto another piece of paper and then tried to copy the cursive style. Good times.

What's your favorite store?