Kitchen Bling

So it probably won't come as a surprise to you that I am attracted to shiny things. :)  We'll one of my obsessions this summer was kitchen Cabinet Bling! 

 I had been obsessing over replacing my door knobs in my house from gold to silver when I stumbled across crystal door knobs.  Now at $100+ I wasn't about to take that project on but, I made a comment on Facebook about how many cool door knobs are out there and how I should start a collection.  The very next day I was watching Kitchen Cousins on HGTV with Buffy when they redid a kitchen, painted the cabinets blue and put a different knob on every cabinet!  Of course this was amazing and Buffy and I both decided we needed to do it!

I picked knobs that were black, white, crystal, or bling. Lucky for me Hobby Lobby had a great selection at 50% off!  Pictures can't do this justice.  I have 30 different knobs in my kitchen and then repeated some of my favorites in the bathrooms and laundry room!  I love them!

Get ready for super nerdy because today's obsession is Observation Drawing With Children: A Frame work For Teaching.  I seriously woke up at 3:30 this morning, started reading this book and decided I had to get out of bed and go to my computer so I could create a table of notes!

This book is so the best book I have ever read on teaching children to draw!  I ordered it from Amazon almost a year ago and started reading it at the beginning of the summer finally.  It was amazing from get go but when I got to the lesson plan portion of it I became busy being social.  The reality of summer being half over came knocking this week and I decided I needed to get to the research part of my summer plans and I picked this up again.

This is a textbook kind of book but a super easy read.  I am loving it because...
 A. it breaks down the purposes for drawing.  I guess I never really thought about people having a purpose for drawing before but it totally makes sense.  Art is just visual communication so if people have purposes for writing they would have purposes for drawing. If kids need to realize why they are writing to improve the same would be true for drawing.
B. the book is so organized and has sections for K, 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6 that follow the same pattern with a developmental framework that help you understand how kids use representation and aesthetics in drawing.  It suggests what materials to use and objects to draw and even has a section on how to anticipate and respond to problems that appear all by grade level!  It also has sample lesson plans including objective and evaluation.  Even though I will not use the exact plan I like having the samples because it makes the process of the lesson so clear.
C. I love how the lessons totally encourage student discourse and I can see how beneficial a sharing and reflecting time will be in improving my students drawings!

Is it bad that I already want to schedule my evaluation for the first six weeks of school?  I love this book!  I feel so smart just for reading it. LOL.

P.S. I warned you this post was going to be super nerdy. <3

I have somehow become obsessed with the need to grow my own avocado plant this summer.  I'm not sure how it started (probably something I saw on Pintrest) but I found an amazing tutorial and it looked ridiculously easy so...  here goes nothing.

Buffy was making her amazing Guacamole the other day and I rescued her pits from the garbage pile and searched my candle glass stash for the perfect container to get started.