Baked Potato and Bacon Soup

The weather is just barely beginning to get crispy, and already I’m breaking out my hearty soups. I love soup at any time of the year, but there’s nothing quite like getting cozy on the couch with a warm bowl of soup on a crisp fall day. 

That’s why this week I made baked potato and bacon soup 

I know, I know, that looks gross. Hey, my job is not to make food pretty, it’s to make food yummy. And that food you see up there… well it was YUMMY!! 

Upcycling Tin Cups to Office Supply Holders

I have a confession. Sometimes I buy certain brands of food because I like the packaging they come in. This is the case with these peach slices:

There’s something nostalgic about those little metal tins that just cannot be matched by plastic cups. But then, after throwing who knows how many in the recycling bin, I had a small epiphany: I can do something crafty-like with those. 

After some debate amongst the different ideas that came into my head, I landed on making a handful of them into office supply holders. 

Easy DIY Jewellery Organizer

Well, it took a couple weeks, but my apartment is 100% unpacked. *YAY* 

The very last thing I had to set up was my jewellery organizer.  

I made this organizer pre-blog, and therefore don’t have pictures of the construction process, but it was very easy, and only about $3 to make. 

Group Painting: An Exercise in Social Skills

It’s the beginning of a new week. The first week of real classes for me, seeing as last week was mostly introductions and icebreaker games. It’s is impossible for me to believe that in three short weeks I will be in an elementary school for my first practicum, teaching children in a real classroom.

Speaking of children in a classroom, today I would like to share an art project I did with my daycare kids over the summer. This group project was very easy, but reinforced lessons taught about cooperation, compromise, and respect for other peoples’ space. 

Student Life: Time Management

Over the past week I have truly begun to embrace the idiom “there are not enough hours in the day”.

Getting a Bachelor of Education is hard work guys! No… that’s not right… it’s time consuming. The work itself is not all that hard, but there’s just so much of it! Rather than the conventional course load of 5 full-time classes, I have 12 full-time classes, and 4 3-week practicums, all squished tightly into an 8 month period. It’s madness. The workload was not nearly this overwhelming during my undergrad or my college diploma program. 

That being said, I know that the key to success is organization. And I’m pretty stellar at that. I went out and bought myself a shiny new agenda, and that made me feel better. It’s (pleather) bound, and has refillable pages for upcoming years, and a little pen loop. It looks very spiffy and professional. 

BBQ Beef Tarts

I haven’t started cooking yet here in The City, because unpacking, job seeking, and school orientation has been taking up all of my time. I have been living off of pizza pockets, frozen lasagna, and microwave popcorn for the most part. What a healthy diet for the week! No wonder I’ve been feeling a bit sick. I have plans to start cooking again soon, but who knows, really. 

Anyways, this is a quick and easy dish I made while I was still in Small-Town. The original recipe can be found here. Paired with mashed potatoes would be great, but if you’re too lazy to make mashed potatoes, like me, you can pair these tarts with mini carrots and apple slices. 

I'm Back

Well, that was a long, and very busy 2 weeks. But I am happy to say that I have moved to The City, finished orientation at university, and start classes on Monday! Everything looks to be lining up perfectly… except for employment… which is probably because I haven’t had time to pass out resumes yet. That’s happening tomorrow. 

I had a pretty small moving team: For the in-town move of half of my possessions to storage, I had my dad and two of my brothers, and for the long-haul move, I was accompanied by my dad and one brother. It all worked out though. My new apartment is on the ground floor, so that makes it much easier to move things in. 

When we left Small-Town, this is what came with us: 

The truck was way too big for what I had, but on the most popular moving weekend of the entire year, it was all that was available.