i built a garden this saturday past

The veggie garden is finished. It currently has yellow peppers and two types of tomatoes, but that will change soon.

While I wanted to build it in the backyard near the kitchen, there just wasn't enough sun. So I took a cue from many of our neighbors and built it in the front yard next to the driveway. tw wasn't too thrilled with this, but you can't argue with a neighborhood full of old-growth trees. It's also gotten us into new conversations with other front-yard gardeners on the street. There have been numerous discussions about planting techniques and plans to swap some plants soon to increase everyone's variety. I love gardeners -- such a friendly bunch. I built this bed closer to the house than the street so if the time comes to expand, there'll be room (foreshadowing, anyone?) I can probably fit another one and a half beds in, if I *had* to.

But that's not all that's going on in the yard. Spring is showing itself everywhere.

The mini roses are blooming and my grandmother's night-blooming orchid has tons of new growth. I added a trellis and pink mandevilla in the planter bed attached to the house. And the real sign that summer is coming soon: the banana plants have shown signs of life! We have grand plans to move these to the fence line this summer and build a deck by the kitchen.

Hopefully, our next front-yard task will involve ripping out the overgrown azalea bushes and planting something smaller and more manageable -- tea olive bushes, maybe? That, and trying to control the dollarweed that's taken over the front lawn. A true gardener's work is never really finished, is it?

organizing writers

Even though the African grant I was working on was submitted early last week, I've still been MIA. I apologize. I've moved from relief efforts to disaster planning.

I've been expanding my company lately, no longer just editing writers' works but now formatting them too. I have to say I am *loving* what is essentially the organization of the written word. There is something about the beauty of style and design, even in the most mundane of things.

My latest client is working on a comprehensive disaster plan for a regional government agency. All the plans were written by different people, so I was tasked with bringing a unity to the overall design. And since many people are not adept at using Word (although it's practically universal, it sure is a quirky program), it's taken a ton of time. Thankfully, unifying is satisfying work.

When in the formatting zone, I barely read what the words on the screen say. But every now and again, things pop up that make you go "oh!' One of the tables I was working on detailed the number of corpses able to be housed by different agencies in case of a disaster, which included surprisingly lower numbers than one would expect. A bizarre statistic I'll never forget.

Have I told you all lately how much I love my job?

business is beautiful

Look what I got in the mail today -- business cards!

I can't believe I waited so long just to get *something* made. I agonized over what my branding would be until I realized I just need something out there. So here they are. I am currently working on my branding label for business cards, letterhead, website, etc., but for now I am totally thrilled. I can finally hand people a card when they ask! :)

the chair that was a couch

This is the latest acquisition for the house. I have to say it's adorable (but unbelievably heavy!) I didn't really love it when it was first introduced, but it's growing on me. I love the avocado green color with gold glitter flecks and especially the lines, but am not so fond of the plastic nature of the chair (this is not one of the cozy, curl-up chairs I favor for working from home.)

For the last few months we have been endlessly discussing how to set up the Florida room, mainly focusing on a new couch since all of the seating in the room is either a) broken, b) uncomfortable, or c) disfunctional. There is no cohesiveness to the space. We entertain there constantly, so it's an area we really needed to focus on. The room is oddly configured with three doors on three separate walls and a non-working fireplace on the fourth wall. It's a design issue I mentioned when tw showed me the house before he bought it. Back then it was just an observation, now that I live here it's become a dilemma.

I'm discovering there is really no stronger dilemma than how to design for a house that you live in but that ultimately isn't yours. I constantly go back and forth on this. I have known tw for 15 years, and our design style is very similar. So far, he's let me rearrange any pieces I want to create a tableau that appeals to both of us. The breakfast nook is a great example of this:

When I moved in, there was a broken table with no chairs we bought 10 years ago sitting in the space. We carted that to the curb on trash day and I rummaged through the house for something usable to take its place. The table belonged to his grandmother and was just refinished by his uncle. I found it under a blanket in the office. The chairs were headed for Goodwill before I snatched them up, the tablecloths are relics from my grandmother's bridge-playing days, and the art is all Florida-focused (posters found at thrift/antique stores, photos taken by tw) which I found in a pile on the office floor. I framed them in frames also found in the office. This was easy since he already owned most of these things and so I knew he liked them.

The Florida room has been a bigger problem because I know exactly what I want to do in there, but I'm just waiting around for tw to jump on board. We were stuck in the "what next" phase for several months while he contemplated a couch. Then the chair showed up one day out of the blue. True, it's no couch, but it's a sign tw's ready to forge ahead with the rest of the space. We have an Ikea date planned and furniture in mind. Hopefully we'll leave there with a clearer picture -- or maybe even furniture!

This isn't my house, so designing for the long-term is hard. But it is my home & workspace for my growing company. And as one of my best friends said to me when I was feeling blue about packing my life into an attic, "It doesn't matter where you live, your home will always be very you." When helping design the spaces in this house, I am often reminded of those words. I have to say that most days I am blessed that it is just that, not mine but very me.

say it ain't sew

For the first time in a long time, I didn't watch the Gator game. I couldn't bear to sit there and feel frustrated for a fourth week in a row. So I took to my sewing machine to work on a few projects Saturday afternoon instead. This is what I created:


It's my newest bag in a long time. And I LOVE it! I usually make my own patterns based on old bags and the things I want a bag to hold. But this time I followed a pattern called buttercup by Made By Rae. It was very easy to make, thanks especially to the pictures provided in the pattern. I am obsessed with this fabric by the talented Amy Butler. My favorite detail is the oh-so-adorable pleats:


Of course I had to personalize it somehow. I added more pockets to the inside to hold my must-get-to items. I'm not really sure I love the interior fabric, but it's hard when the outside fabric is so BOLD:


Note the magnetic closures on the sides above. I'd never used those before and can't believe how easy it was! Another thing I'd never tried was sewing the bag handle on after completing the bag. I usually hide it within the lining when I sew the inner and outer linings together. But I really love the look of this square:

Unfortunately, the bag is a tad small. The pocket I made for my phone was certainly big enough, but when I added my phone and snapped the bag shut it fell out. :( And my wallet * just* squeezes in. I'll have to make another one after I tweak the pattern a bit to make it larger.

Of course I didn't actually give up on the Gators. I listened to Mick Huber on the radio and tuned in and out as the game got exciting. It was much better for my blood pressure to just listen. I did run into the Florida room to watch the game winning kick by punter-turned-placekicker Chas Henry. How exciting!

Happily, my new bag wasn't the only thing I finished yesterday. I also hemmed a few dress which I'll try to get up in the next day or two.

pillowcase transformed

It's been raining for days, and I was starting to go stir crazy. So I dug through my sewing stash and got an idea. It started like this:

And ended up like this:

Yup, a pillowcase dress. I thought it would be pretty simple to do, but it turns out a pillowcase is pretty sack-like unless you add some curves. So I pinned and I sewed, pinned again and sewed again. It took four pins and sews to get it just right -- way longer than I thought. I searched the internets but only found tutorials for how to make pillowcase dresses for little girls, so it was trial and error all the way.

I could have been more ruthless in my pinning/sewing, but my only rule was it had to fit without a zipper (because I was sewing after midnight and there was no way I was running out for a zipper at that hour). It ended up looking pretty good. It's not the best dress in the world, but it fits and works quite nicely as a light summer shift:

I probably ought to go back and line it, but I'm 95% certain that will never happen. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the first dress I've ever sewn. It's still raining, so I may go back into the stash and try something else this afternoon.

how do your test scores grow?

Wow. The Sunday LA Times article on teacher effectiveness using a value-added analysis (consisting of LAUSD 3rd-5th grade teachers' math and language arts standardized test scores over the last seven years) has caused a gigantic ruckus among education policy folks. My ed policy twitter feed has been in flames over this since Sunday morning. Anything about teacher evaluation is guaranteed to provoke these reactions.

But the most interesting part of the article had nothing to do with test scores, it had to do with the reporters' following observations: Teachers who hold their students' attention and push their students to think critically claim higher results than those who don't.

According to the article, teacher Karen Caruso is loved by her principal, students, and parents. They consider her an outstanding teacher who goes above and beyond. However:

During recent classes observed by a reporter, Caruso set clear expectations for her students but seemed reluctant to challenge them. In reviewing new vocabulary, for instance, Caruso asked her third-graders to find the sentence where the word "route" appeared in a story.

"Copy it just like it's written," she instructed the class, most of whom started the year advanced for their grade.

"Some teachers have kids use new words in their own sentences," Caruso explained. "I think that's too difficult."

She dismissed the weekly vocabulary quizzes that other teachers give as "old school."

Of course everyone loved her: She's an easy teacher!! Not surprisingly, her value-added scores were quite low (she ranked in the bottom 10% in boosting student scores). I cannot imagine a more fruitless exercise than copying a sentence out of a text just because it includes a new vocabulary word. When teaching, I had only four hours of instruction time per day. Certainly not enough time to waste on copying. And of course third graders can use a new word in a sentence. If you really think it's too difficult, you follow the basic pattern of teaching: I do, we do, you do. Scaffolding really does work. As do bonus points on essays for using new vocabulary words when writing, team points for noticing said words in other texts and pointing them out to the teacher, or behavior tickets for getting caught using them in everyday conversation. None of those examples are "old school" methods, yet each one tests understanding without using a quiz.

So why don't we start the teacher evaluation conversation with two simple questions: Can you hold students' attention? Can you push them to think critically? As a classroom teacher, those are fair questions to ask. But I can tell you neither of them was on my yearly evaluation (however being on-time and working well with colleagues was!)