School Fun

Teaching has some pretty awesome perks, a few of which you'll never find a match for in other fields. My favorite of these is most certainly student doodles. I recall spending an entire class period doodling at times, simply because it actually helped me focus. I even told some of my teachers that because I was afraid they would think I was rude. I have started taking pictures of my students' doodles, and at this point I have accumulated quite a collection...

The Mutant looking octopus :[

The elaborate...anime warrior-ess?

A collection of lyrics:

An elaborate athlete:

A reference to the mustache I sometimes wear while I greet students in the hallway between classes:

And my personal favorite that I would love to have made into a T-shirt, the I ♥ Spanish Octopus:

Awesome.

Saturday Project - New Deluxe Doggie Bed

My dog has a terrible habit of chewing his bedding, which Jeff and I have found impossible to break--mainly because he never does it at night, but rather only when we are gone during the day. We typically leave him a treat-and-peanut-butter-filled Kong and several toys in his crate when we leave, but his go-to is his bedding, for some reason.

We started by buying him reasonably-priced ($30-$40) doggie beds, and it became a trend that we would come home (sometime after a short trip to the grocery store) to find Tanner nestled in a pile of fluff, a deflated fabric shell shoved to the side. After he chewed through 4 beds, we decided to get him a couple of pillows and a comforter from the thrift store--all for the low price of $10. ...And of these three items, one died for each of the three consecutive days following their arrival to maison du Tanner. We finally bought one last bed and were only putting it in his crate during the night, which we decided was our best solution to the problem. We continued that way for a few weeks successfully...until Jeff forgot to take the bed out one day. Without fail, it was destroyed when we returned.

Because I am my mother's child, I saved the batting from each of Tanner's casualties, and we've had about 6 garbage bags of batting stuffed into our guest room closet for quite a while. For my Saturday Project, yesterday I broke down and made a bed for Tanner out of some scrap fabric and 3 bags of the old batting:

He wasn't sure about it at first because it is extremely thick and fluffy; I think he was afraid he would fall off :) But he got settled in before long...
And it fits perfectly in his crate! Problem solved! Hurray for Saturday projects!

So far Tanner has slept happily on it for one night...although there was a button missing this morning...who knows where we'll find it. And hopefully I won't have to replace all of them. We'll see how this goes.