Magazine Idea Binder... or, Paper Pinterest

I got this idea from Sew Many Ways the other day. I found it while browsing her amazing website. I pinned it to Pinterest so I could share her brilliance with others. Here's the pin:

Source: sewmanyways.blogspot.com via Melissa on Pinterest

Basically, you rip out magazine ideas, put them in protector sheets, and put them in a binder. It's really a no-brainer idea, but I'm a bit dense sometimes and need others to guide me along the way. A friend has been giving me her old magazines after she's ripped out what she wants. Most of them are food-related like Food Network, Everyday with Rachael Ray, Better Homes and Gardens, Saveur, etc. They were taking up quite a bit of space in my closet, so I decided I needed to take action.

For the past couple days, I've been watching episodes of Miss Marple on Netflix while ripping out recipes from these old magazines. I found an old binder in my closet and a bunch of extra sheet protectors in my recipe cupboard. I made a cut label for the side and a simple title sheet out of scrapbook paper I had for another project. I haven't finished the project yet, but it's well underway. Here's what I have so far:

Sorry for the poor lighting, I'm too lazy to open the curtains for better lighting. Originally I was going to re-type all of these recipes to look nice in my real recipe binder. Pretty sure that's not going to happen anytime soon. Karen on Sew Many Things mentioned this was her Flinstone version of Pinterest. I call it "Paper Pinterest."

While I was thumbing through magazines, I came across an interesting article about gluten-free diets in a BHG magazine. It mentioned some symptoms of a gluten intolerance, and I do have a few symptoms. The article mentioned going on a strict gluten-free diet for a month and then slowly adding in gluten again to see what it does to your body.

Since it's summertime, and I'm already getting bored. I may have to try this. A month isn't very long. I won't be doing much traveling in July, so it might be perfect for me. The idea of living gluten-free is a little frightening. I think it would really cause panic in my husband. The unhealthier, the better in his mind. (He does work at McD's after all.) So now I need to start doing some serious research to see if this is even possible for me. I should probably go to the doctor and talk this over with her too, since that's what all the disclaimers for every diet say. We'll see...

If you have any suggestions for me, I'd love to hear them. (This is a rare opportunity, I rarely ask for advice. Fire away!)

Longwood Gardens

My husband was working all day on my birthday this year. To make up for my lonely day he took me to a local arboretum called Longwood Gardens the day after my birthday. The gardens were developed by Pierre du Pont in 1907. Pierre du Pont is part of the du Pont family that started the Du Pont corporation that specializes in scientific innovations and whatnot. You've probably seen the logo on something related to cars or trucks before. Anyways, he bought the property of Longwood Gardens because the family that owned it had to sell it, and all the trees were going to be torn down. He was loaded, so he was able to make the property beautiful. He believed that no greenhouse should be private, so he opened his gardens to the public.

It cost $36 for the two of us to get in. It was worth every penny. The high cost keeps out the ruffians and bratty children, which makes it even better. We spent the entire afternoon and early evening there. We simply moseyed along the paths looking at whatever we felt like looking at. There weren't many crowds since we went on a weekday. This was one of the most relaxing and enjoyable days of my summer.

Ben bought me a new camera for my birthday, so I got a little carried away with snapping photos.

Here are some beauties I stumbled upon in the exhibition halls/greenhouses:

We also had fun watching the rather tame "wildlife" in the gardens. We had never seen bullfrogs up close like this before. They were everywhere. Ben always has to check out the fishlife in whatever body of water we come across. He found lots of well-fed bluegill and some very friendly catfish!

There were quite a few fountains scattered throughout the gardens. Pierre du Pont had a fascination with water stemming from his childhood. Some of the fountains made me feel like I was touring one of the estates mentioned in some of Jane Austen's novels. Well, except for the one my husband decided to drink out of.

By far, my favorite part of the gardens was the water lily garden. I've had a fascination with lily pads ever since my canoeing trip to the Boundary Waters back in college. There were lilies and lily pads everywhere on the lakes we canoed. I had so much fun taking pictures of these lilies. They actually dye the water black to make for better pictures and to discourage algae from growing.

At the end of the day, our feet were pretty sore from all the walking we did. My toes were actually swollen for a couple days. We probably shouldn't have worn flip flops! The last gardens we traveled through were the rose garden and the topiary garden. We were the only ones in there, so we took off our shoes and walked through the lush grass. Man, that felt good!

What a wonderful day! Can't wait to go back to see some of the light displays at night sometime!

All the pictures in this post were taken by either my husband or me. I used picmonkey.com to put the photos in collage form. No other editing software was used.

Summertime

It's finally here! Summer! Today I finished tidying up my classroom and had my administrator sign off of my end of the year checklist. What a great feeling! For the first time since I started teaching three years ago, I actually didn't have to pack up my classroom to move to a new classroom. I was in three different classrooms in the three years that I've been teaching. It will be so nice to be in the same room two years in a row. Makes for a whole lot less work.

Now I have to figure out what to do with all of this free time. I started a spreadsheet for my to-do list. It gets longer by the day. I love the feeling of endless possibilities that comes at the beginning of every summer. There will be much relaxing, much reading, much cooking, much crafting, much organizing, and much exploring taking place in this little apartment!

I'm hoping to share my summertime adventures on here in hopes that I get myself writing. I've been slacking in that department. I think with an almost non-existent stress level for the next three months I should be able to get a little more of that done.

Source: thesweetestoccasion.com via Melissa on Pinterest