So the 6th grader's final end of year research project for his social studies class was - aside for all the researching and note cards and report writing and typing and editing - which were, bless his teacher, ALL DONE IN SCHOOL - to present something about his topic to the class.

His topic: Pompei and the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. 
He made a video, and it was pretty darn funny, with a homemade erupting volcano and Lego people running away from it. 

And then the very next day, after he had handed it all in and was done, I saw this: 

Poor guy. 
At least the 6th grader got an awesome grade. 

:)
​jen 

I don't think we've ever made it all the way before, but this year, the boys counted sefira, not just for the first few days, or even a few weeks, but every single solitary day. They made sure to remind each other, and they even got back out of bed on a few nights to come back down and count. #dedication 

I don't know about your house, but that was HUGE here. 
:)
​jen 

Something happened in my oven. 
You might want to look away, cover your eyes or just stop reading, cause it's kinda gross. 

About a year ago, I started baking gefilte fish instead of boiling it. It seemed that when I boiled it, my house would smell like fish for days, but when I baked it, the air would clear by the end of the day, maybe the next morning at the latest. 

So I bake it. 
At 450 degrees for 2 hours. 
It always works, except this last time. 

It exploded. In my oven. 
My poor oven. 
How did this even happen? 
And more important, who is going to clean that? 

​I was in the kitchen for the last 30 minutes of the timer, washing dishes, not seven feet away - and I didn't hear anything. Nothing exploding, nothing hitting the oven door. 

It looks like the fish jumped out the pan and tried to make it's way out the front door of the oven. 
Disgusting to look at and even worse to clean. 

Needless to say, we did not have any fish this week for Shabbos. 
I wish I knew how to use the vomit emoji here, it seems appropriate. 

:)
​jen 

Two giggling girls came to me the other day and asked if they might be able to bake a cheesecake for Shavuot. 

Inwardly I cringed, because baking cheesecake is just so ugh, so time intensive and it never comes out as well as the very already-baked cheesecake I can buy Shoprite. Also, my goodness, water baths for a cake? Even I do not get to relax in a bath, why should the cheesecake? 

But outwardly, I said, SURE! Because they worked together to formulate their request, they researched (and printed out) a few recipes and because they're cute. 

Ultimately, we did not end up using the recipes they found because I've found from sad experience that cheesecake that requires baking is usually a finicky cheesecake, whose directions need to be followed exactly -  and I think we all know that the odds of that happening here were quite slim. So I subtly steered them towards the wonder of no-bake cheesecake. 

Today, after school, the cheesecake making commenced. 
​
One girl made a vanilla cheesecake in a pie crust and the other chose to make chocolate cheesecake mousse and fill mini cups with the mousse for a pretty dessert. 

(Also, I'm a huge nerd and I learned how to change the color pictures to black and white on my phone and now I think I am a photographer.)

Happy Shavuot :)
jen 

I make these green beans quite often because the combination of green beans and Trader Joe's Everything Bagel Seasoning is marriage made in heaven. 

I like them because they taste good, but also because it will take longer to preheat the oven than it will to prep these. Actually, it might be a good idea to turn the oven on now - go ahead, we're looking for 450 degrees. 

Start with a bag of frozen green beans, we like the skinnier kind, because skinny :)
Lay the green beans out on a parchment lined cookie sheet.
Drizzle with olive oil. 
Sprinkle Everything Bagel* seasoning over the green beans. 
Roast in the oven for 15-20 minutes. 

 *You can definitely make your own everything bagel seasoning, but if you live anywhere within an hour's drive of a Trader Joe's, get into your car and start driving because this spice has changed my life. It is literally delicious on everything, and not because it has the everything in the title. My kids and I put it on almost every plate of food we eat - any kind of eggs, salad, roasted vegetables, on vegetable soup, chicken, hamburgers, salmon burgers, any grilled fish. We even brush a little bit of water on the outside of bagels before we toast them and sprinkle this stuff on the outside of the bagels for DIY everything bagels. Just be aware - and I can only speak for my local Trader Joe's, but this spice is so popular that they are now limiting customers to three per order. Three! That's nothing. But for $1.99 each, I am totally okay buying three every single time I go. 

I'll show you a slightly embarrassing picture, but I'm cool with it. 

I might have a lazy susan that is devoted almost exclusively to my Everything Bagel collection. If only Trader Joe's had a punch card for a free one when you buy ten... 

:)
​Jen 

Teacher Appreciation is one of those quasi-holidays that I am okay with, mostly because I really do appreciate my children's teachers, but also because the PTA or at the very least, the class moms usually take care of the festivities on behalf of all the other moms. 

For some reason though, that didn't happen this year. No email arrived, asking for money/flowers/cards/love notes for teachers. And unless I totally missed it, no whatsapp request came either. It seems it was each mom for herself this year. 

I will admit that I did fall down the Pinterest hole and had a hard time pulling myself away from all the creative and time-intensive gifts that I would have loved to create for my kids' teachers. Those ideas were all things that  I would have jumped on in my early mommying days - and I am sometimes sad that I no longer have the time/motivation/time to make these fun projects. 

I did, however, find one idea that appealed to me, and as so often happens, the Pinterest link led me to nowhere except to a photo, with no instructions. Why people cannot properly pin webpages is beyond me, so let me just say that this was NOT my idea, but more power to whoever came up with this.  

I started by making little note cards on Canva.com. Canva is my new favorite place to design just about anything, and in fact, I just made my son's bar mitzvah invitation (bar mitzvah! 13 years old! I just turned 40! WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?) on Canva and I've been feeling quite impressed with myself. I am still trying to figure out how Paperless Post (the fancy version of Evite) works, but heck, I have almost 13 year old now, I'm sure he can figure that out for me. 

Anyway, so then I bought the oranges. Two big bags of them. Even the cashier in Target want to know why I needed so many oranges. So I told her, and now her kids are going to bring oranges to their teachers too!

I also bought the orange-strawberry drink mix in Target, in case you're wondering where you might pick some up as well. And the cellophane bags - those were left over from Purim, I'm sorry! But they do sell them on Amazon if that helps. 

I cut out the note cards that I had printed out, let the girls draw on the oranges for their teachers with Sharpies because they will do anything I ask if they can also use a Sharpie, packaged up an orange, a drink mix and a note card in a small cellophane bag, tied it with pink ribbon because we had no orange ribbon and sent the girls off to school with their admittedly heavy teacher gifts. 

I feel pretty proud of myself - these took less than 10 minutes, from printing to cutting to packaging (not that that means we love our teachers any less!) and I found a way to not send in sugar and candy and chocolates. And who wouldn't want an orange? No one has ever felt bad about themselves after eating an orange. Not that eating chocolate is shameful, it's not. It's delicious. But so are oranges.

And also, "Chocolate you glad it's almost summer?" makes no sense at all. 

:) Jen