Music Momma Arts Sale!

Hello faithful followers!  Check out Music Momma Arts and use the coupon code FACEBOOK15 to get 15% off of your order between now and the end of August! New items were uploaded last week!

Tree of Life Earrings

These and much more! What are you waiting for?  Go check it out!

The Latest and Greatest

I have spent about two weeks working on a custom jewelry order for my Etsy shop (Music Momma Arts).  It was my first custom order for jewelry that wasn't all based on something I'd already made and it was quite an experience.  Our communications were, of course, all via Etsy conversations and I quickly learned that a picture truly IS worth a thousand words. 

So anyway, the bracelet was fairly easy to do (as soon as I found the instructions again).  When I finished that, the customer asked if I'd make a necklace as well.  "Piece of cake," I thought.  HA!!!  Here is the first necklace, but it wasn't what the customer was looking for.  I'm adding one more layer to it, but I ran out of rings. After I finish, it will go up for sale as well.

(FYI, that black stand is about 6" tall, so that's not quite "to scale.")

After some Google pictures were shared, here is the finished product.

Once my creative juices got flowing, I wanted to add some earrings. (More selling power, right?)  Two different designs are shown here, but then I was told that she can't wear heavy earrings.

So in the end, I'm sending this completed set and adding in some super light earrings on the house.  Hopefully she'll love them!

And that, my friends, is two posts in one week. Huzzah!

It's Been a While...

Ok, so it's been two years (since the last time that I sat here at the eLEAD professional development conference), but since I only have 8 followers ... I'm sure you didn't miss it too much.  I just sat with +Kristi Shrode in a session about Adobe Spark. I am excited about using it more for my websites and social media than I am for education, but excited nevertheless.  Here's what I made:

Keep an eye out ... I'm hoping to upload a few new patterns in the next month or two!!

Confession: I'm a Geek

I love music. I love teaching.  I love technology.  I love teaching music and I am occasionally terrified of technology much more than my high schoolers terrify me.  I admit that I am currently sitting at a technology conference for teachers.  Here's my first tweet.

Impressive isn't it?  My husband is sitting beside me making fun of my mad typing skills.  My brain is feeling completely overloaded with all of the information that I have received in the last 36 hours.  In the middle of the session about Google Sites, I gave up and just started jotting down notes in the body of my new website which is probably somewhere in the abyss of the internet, being accessed by a creeper in the middle of nowhere instead of being offline like I mean it to be.  Information is overwhelming.

Let's see, some of the tools that I've learned about (so that I can remember them in the future):

Twitter (I've finally succumbed to this)
Aurasma
Quiver
Shazam
Google Classroom
Musictheory.net
Google Sites
Storify.com
Formative
Kahoots (Check out my second tweet. I won!)

(OK, I admit that I find it a bit creepy that all of these people tweeted the picture of my name.)

Do you have favorite teaching apps that would work for music? I'm in one of those moods right now that I would like to explore tons of different things.  Is there anyone out there that would like to be a geeky music teacher with me?

Sundays with Suna

This is my first attempt at creating and writing a knitting pattern.  I made this hat for my daughter Susanna (nicknamed Suna by her two year old brother).  Of course, she is in the 97th percentile for head circumference, so it BARELY fits.  I blame her daddy for her big head. :)

(Isn't she the cutest thing ever?!)

Below is the pattern.  Please let me know if you run across any problems in the pattern.  I'm new to this!  Happy knitting!

Be sure to add it to your Ravelry queue by clicking here:

Sundays with Suna on Ravelry

Also check out my other patterns in my Etsy store:

Music Momma Arts

Bacon Breakfast Bites

Bacon Breakfast Bites

Being just over four months pregnant, I am still having trouble finding anything that I actually want to eat for breakfast.  My little protein shakes are all well and good, but there’s certainly not anything filling about them. (You know it’s bad when I barely make it to my first period prep without feeling hunger pangs.)

So as I was perusing Pinterest, I found a recipe for breakfast bites (blogs.­babble.­com/­family-­kitchen/­2012/­05/­24/­breakfast-­potato-­bites-­to-­go/­).  After checking out reviews and such (and knowing how much I generally dislike the taste of eggs), I decided to tweak the recipe and see what happened.

At this point, I should also add that, in an effort to save money, my husband and I do a lot of shopping at Sams’ Club and GFS, so I usually get food in bulk.  That being said, I guessed at the approximate amounts that might equate to what was in the given recipe.  (I bought a 6lb bag of Ore Ida shredded hashbrowns for something like $5.88 instead of a 20oz bag of Simply Potatoes for $3.49.)  The only ingredients in this recipe that I didn’t buy in bulk at one of those places were the eggs.

Here is what I came up with:

They’re not really crispy, but I like the flavor (especially with some Frank’s Hot Sauce).  I popped a few in my mouth for a quick lunch and then froze the rest.  I warm them up for one minute (5 bites at a time) and take them with me on the way to school.

Here’s the recipe:

1 T dried minced onions (with 2 T cold water to rehydrate)

3 c frozen hash browns (microwave for two minutes to thaw)

1 t garlic salt

1/2 c shredded cheddar

1/2 c bacon bits

3 eggs

1. Preheat oven to 350*.  Grease mini muffin tin.

2. Mix together onions, hash browns, and garlic salt.

3. Beat eggs and add to potato mixture.

4. Add cheese and bacon bits.

5. Fill muffin tin with mixture. I use my tablespoon cookie scoop so that the size was fairly uniform.  It filled all of the muffin cups.

Bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

Hopefully this will spark some ideas.  I think I am going to try it with sausage whenever I feel the urge to actually cook meat again!

*This was originally published on my Tumblr blog in 2013 when I was pregnant with Susanna.  I am NOT prego now!*