Happy Year of the Rabbit!, originally uploaded by maralina!.

Okay - a day late - we celebrated some of the Korean students returning home with a cake decorated with a rabbit - but it wasn't a "Year of the Rabbit" cake as much as it was a map of Korea shaped like a rabbit cake. Our manager did a great job making it - tasted great and so moist - a carrot cake but with pineapple as well. From Canadian Living.  You can find the recipe here.
Canada's Best Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing recipe - Food - Canadian Living

The students enjoyed it and I was called on to wish them Happy New Year Korean style:

새해 복 많이 받으세요

(seh heh bok mahn ee bahd euh sae yo)

 - they applauded - it was funny. My Korean is sadly lacking. I found myself pulling out my language books later to look up words I couldn't remember. Like delicious and what to say when you serve food or accept food.  I have great Korean language books.  I could make that a project when all my other many projects are ticked off.
 
I felt like I was in a fishbowl though because of my temporary lenses, new lenses have come in twice with flaws so I'm still waiting to be able to see at all distances. I'll be so glad to get the correct ones. I hope so. Cross your fingers for me.
 
I topped the night off by breaking a tooth on popcorn. You know the crunch that doesn't feel like a popcorn kernel and you stop mid bite to feel around - well  - I found a big hole where half of my tooth used to be.  Happy Lunar New Years to me!
 
By the way,  now that we've had the Lunar New Year does that mean my Christmas tree should come down now??

Happy Groundhog Day!, originally uploaded by Boy_Wonder.

It's that time of year again. Based on the Scottish couplet "If Candlemas Day is bright and clear, there'll be two winters in the year" we are all anxiously awaiting to know if spring is right around the corner or not. I always forget whether seeing a shadow is good or not but I guess if a bright and clear day means double the winter then shadows are bad.  It seems like we have a few winters and springs here in Calgary due to the chinooks, so I don't put much stock into Punxsatawny Phil or Balzac Billy's predictions but it's fun to hear what the celebrity groundhog's shadow report tells us.  I always enjoyed sharing this cultural tidbit with my ESL students - learning that we look to a rodent for a weather prediction.  The movie "Groundhog Day" was a particular favourite to view - with all the repetition, even the lower levels could pick up what was happening and it was always a hit.

You can check out our local groundhog at the Balzac Billy website here and find out about the official celebrations but be warned - there is a soundtrack to this site! 

And here's to an overcast day - which I don't think we are expecting to get or to at least a few more chinooks to balance it all out.

Looking for a Theme

The beginning - a very young group of wizards and witches

It started with a party that was all things Harry Potter.  I loved the books and the first movie had just come out.  I borrowed some kids so it wasn't just a party for me but in actual fact, I think that is how it started.  I turned my living room into the Great Hall with a long dining table  and a roaring fire - wizardy decorations and a list of activities for the night. We decorated our personal wands (out of chopsticks with glitter glue and paint) and the children were sorted by the sorting hat.  We had a charms lesson and levitated our animals (stuffies), potions class where we mixed coloured ice cubes into our clear seven-up. Herbology was planting magical looking 99cent plants into Harry Potter cups of potting soil. We dipped some gummy frogs into chocolate and had Bertie Botts every flavoured bean. We walked down to the dungeons (the basement) where the picture frames had living art behind them - a mirror of erised to look into and a few other surprises. The last activity was a game of quidditch (looking for golden ping pong balls hidden around the house). I had a lot of fun planning the night and I think we made some great memories.

My very elegant guests



I didn't at first plan for this to be a reoccuring event but there have been a few other special parties (Barbie get together, a Nancy Drew detective party)  that followed. Initially a plan to get my neice Madi together with my cousin's Vi's girls (as we all lived in the northwest but rarely got together) it became quite a bit more formal this past year with a girls tea party. - not quite Mad Hatters and much more Victorian. The plan now is to get the "girl's tent" occupants together before the reunion to renew friendships and make more memories. I know it is even more important as it took a bit of time for the girls to warm up to each other at the tea party but by the end - they were all playing twister together and had lost all the initial awkwardness. That day was about the food, the costumes and photo session and stories and photos of ancestors. And again - it was probably more of an opportunity for me to pull out all the tea cups I could gather, share the stories and photos I had been collecting and justify the dress-up tub of old fashioned dresses in my basement.

In order to save a Saturday, I need to start thinking now of my theme and invitations. It is harder with the age range of girls increasing - I would so love to invite the little ones but it makes the theme and activities that much harder. It was so easy when they were all within a few years of each other.  But I'm sure a theme exists that will make this work. So ideas are certainly welcome!