Life Lately

Life has just been so nice lately. The other day, after Matthew finished the bar, we had a weekend all to ourselves, and it was just pure bliss. One of the days was absolutely beautiful... the perfect 72 degrees with a breeze and not a cloud in the sky. So we all went outside, my little family of two humans and two fur babies, and we sat under the tree in our yard and painted pots to put my succulents in. I know, I know... succulents are oh-so-trendy and I am usually annoyed, by default, with oh-so-trendy things, but oftentimes things are trendy because they're wonderful, and in this case, I feel that succulents are just wonderful.  They are such beautiful little plants, and there's so much variety, and they are hard to kill. Massive bonus points for being hard to kill. 

Anyway, I sat on a towel under that tree, with my husband and my babies and my cardboard box to paint our pots on, and it wasn't Pinterest-worthy or necessarily even blog worthy, but it was perfect and I think I've done so much growing up lately, to be able to see and fully appreciate the beauty of my own life, and to be fully present in the moment without having to Instagram something or blog it immediately as if its existence on social media makes it somehow more valid. Lord knows, I don't judge anyone who loves to share on social media. Been there, done that, still doing it. All I'm saying is, for me, I've found quite a bit of peace lately, in just living my life a little more quietly, and enjoying the things and people put before me a little more fully. 

Here's a couple more photos from our sunny day. Happy Wednesday... :) 

 

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Hope Riley Calligraphy {shop spotlight}

Even though I'm phasing out most advertising on my site, I'd still like to occasionally highlight great shops I've worked with or I love... and today, I'd like to introduce you to lovely Hope Riley Calligraphy. Hope is the artist behind my new J. Noel Photography logo and the logo for my boudoir site, once I get around to finishing it!  Here's a little peek at both, if you haven't seen them yet:

my website in action...

and the gorgeous logo I'll be using once I branch off with a separate boudoir site...

Hope is so talented and an absolute doll, with bonus points for being really determined to do right by you. I'm a pretty picky client when it comes to things like this, and she was so kind to patiently work with me to get my new baby logos just so. If you're in the market for some custom calligraphy, whether for wedding invites or a logo or some other project, check out Hope's website and if you'd like to place an order, contact her here first. She is also kindly offering SOML readers 25% off their purchase - sweet! :)

Dolce Neve, Austin

The other day I got to try out a new little gelato spot here in Austin, Dolce Neve, and it was to. die. for. It had all of the marks of my favorite places in town: super great aesthetics, locally owned, friendly staff, and oh so yummy. Austinites (or visitors!), I'd recommend this spot most highly! Add it to your list! :)

 

See other Austin recs here. :)

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Hello, March

^^proof I'm still alive. This was taken on a walk this morning, during the March Arctic Blast of 2014 here in Texas. Giant puffy winter coat not shown. Vest from Stitchfix.

Woah. March came quickly, y’all! I’ve missed you, I really have, but it’s been so nice to wake up in the morning without that panicky “what the bleep am I going to blog about today?!” feeling. Other more responsible bloggers have their posts planned and scheduled days in advance, but that has never been me. I require a sense of slightly frenzied urgency to get things done in life, for the most part. For example, I had an entire month to pre-blog things for March, and I’m writing this on Thursday afternoon, February 27th. Which I actually feel is a small triumph considering it isn’t Monday morning, March 3rd, when I plan to post this. :)

Anyway. February was a busy month! Let’s see. There was Matthew’s birthday and our anniversary and Valentine’s Day and the law Bar exam for Matthew, which is obviously a huge deal and signifies the end of the end of law school, assuming he passes. Now the poor guy has two months of solid freaking out before exam results are released in May.  It should be really fantastic.

Nothing too terribly exciting happend in the last several weeks - though I did experience several eye-opening revelations regarding food, spurred by a couple documentaries Matthew and I stumbled into watching out of sheer lack of other options on Netflix. I can say that these revelations are actually quite immense in nature and will forever change how I eat and how I view food. Post on this to come, you can bet your bum on it. A wise friend (the lovely Ashley) said to me the other day, “once your eyes have been opened and you've walked out of the cave, you dont go back unless you are trying to get others out, too.”

In terms of social media this last month, I have actually done some purging and cleansing of my accounts, specifically on Instagram. I unfollowed a lot of people, not because I hate them or even dislike them, but because I think everyone has the right to filter what they fill their minds with every day. Some people’s Instagram feeds just didn’t interest me anymore, and many of them were ladies with new babies, which are of course wonderful and adorable, but when you’re scrolling through your Instagram and you see Baby, Baby, Baby, Pregnancy Announcement, Bump Pic, Baby, Baby, Bump Pic, Baby, Pregnancy Announcement, Baby… and then you start it all over again on Facebook... and you are not in that stage of life yet and possibly disgruntled and/or confused on that topic, it can cause needless negative feelings, and I am just all about minimizing the negative feelings I feel.  Know what I’m sayin’?

Oh, how’s the photography biz going, you ask? Why, fantastically, thank you. I expected January and February to be very slow months, and February was more so, but I’ve managed to maintain a steady flow of clients and sessions, and I have even taken on an intern starting this week to help me out with tasks in the next couple months! Sweet.

And maybe that’s all for now. Just a general overview of some things going on round these parts, to ease us back into March. Thanks for reading, loves, and for coming back again even after this month-long hiatus. You deserve a medal. Happy Monday. :)

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Happy February, see you in March

I haven't blogged in over a week, and it has been the weirdest thing - the first time in years that I took a little time off of blogging for reasons other than vacation or a loss in my family. I took the week off of blogging simply because I have nothing to say, and because my heart just isn't in it right now. The funny thing is, though, I am happier than I've been in longer than I can remember. I wake up every morning in love with my home and my family, and excited to get to work on a business I'm so passionate about. A million thoughts are swimming around in my head 24/7, and none of them have to do with blogging, or even leave any room for thoughts about blogging. I truly am a one-thing-at-a-time kind of girl. That worries me for when we have children, but that's another post for another day.

I haven't really read another blog in weeks, maybe months, and I'm OK with that.

I don't have the urge to share every aspect of every moment of my life anymore (slight exaggeration), and I'm OK with that.

I don't miss outfit posts at all, and the way planning for the next one always made me feel like my wardrobe isn't good enough. Now it all just seems silly.

Bottom line, I think I've grown out of what my blog was before. I think it served it's purpose for a time, and I have no regrets. But now I need to really figure out what I want this blog to be going forward.

One thing I know for sure is that most readers can just tell when your heart isn't in it. I believe that everything you do in life will be received one thousand times better if you do it from a place of true joy and passion for that work. And I just haven't had that for blogging since somewhere in the fall, and I think I need to take a step back and re-evaluate. I don't think I'll ever decide to shut this blog down. I really, truly do enjoy blogging. Or at least I did, and I think I can get that back. I just need a break.

So I'm taking February off. February, because it's a shorter month, and because it's a cold month, and because it's the month of Matthew's birthday and our anniversary and the Bar Exam, and because there's a lot of brand maintenance I'd like to fully devote myself to in the next few weeks, before the blossoming of a busy spring for my photography business.

I'll be be back in March. March begins my favorite time of year in Austin, and it just seems like the perfect time to start fresh here. I'm going to really try to devote myself to getting caught up in February - caught up on putting my home together, caught up on emails in my blog inbox, caught up on that brand maintenance I mentioned, and hopefully all of that catching up will leave me invigorated and creative again when it comes to this online space that really is so dear to me.

I'll still be posting as per usual on Instagram if you'd like to keep up with me there, otherwise, I'll see you all back here in a few weeks. Happy February and happy month of love... :)

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Valentine Minis!

Just a little announcement courtesy of j. noel photography, if anyone in town is interested! :) 

(all sessions will be held next Sunday in Southwest Austin - email me at jnoelphotography@gmail.com for more details or to book your family!)

Managing behaviour in the digital age

If you ask most teachers, especially newly trained ones, what one of the biggest challenges of teaching is, they would probably say managing student behaviour. Especially as class sizes grow and more students are bringing along potentially distracting digital devices, making sure you are keeping students on task is becoming ever more important. If this is something that concerns you, then read on.

ClassCharts could be the solution to your problem. ClassCharts is a digital management tool which can help you, your students and their parents to track and improve student behaviour across the whole school.

Using ClassCharts you can set up seating charts for every room in your school and create a profile for each student. Teachers can then use ClassCharts to monitor and reward positive behaviour as well as track negative behaviour. As the teacher builds up data across classes they can start to understand how different seating arrangements and student pairing and grouping can impact on behaviour, then generate seating charts for students that group them in ways that help them to work more efficiently and harmoniously.


So how does it work?

Well one of the first things to do is to add seating plans of your rooms. This is easy to do and you can drag the virtual desks around into whatever configuration you have in your classroom.

Then you also need to upload your students. What I really like about ClassCharts is that you can also upload a photograph of each one, and this can be really useful if you have large classes and lots of students names to remember, especially when it comes to writing reports.

You can then either manually assign seats or generate a random seating chart. During the class you can use ClassCharts acknowledge a range of positive and negative behaviours. These behaviours are all customisable so you can create your own or use the default ones.

ClassCharts uses html 5 so should run in any modern browser whether it’s a laptop, iPad or Android tablet, so the teacher can use an tablet during the class to instantly update behaviours.

Either before or during the class the teacher can also shuffle the class seating depending on a number of criteria from things like attainment targets to gender or previous behaviour.

One of the real time-savers of ClassCharts though is when it comes to report writing time. Each students’ behaviour has been tracked through their various classes and teachers can get a detailed report, including dates when different behaviours were recorded.

Both students and parents can also access live reports and monitor progress throughout the term, so students and parents know how they are doing and parents don’t have to wait until the end of term to find out what’s been going on with their child.

This helps to share responsibility and makes it much easier to get parents involved in dealing with any negative behaviour at the earliest possible date.

Although ClassCharts is free and has been designed so that a single teacher can set it up to track their own classes independently, the real power of the platform is its ability to work across the school and track student behaviour in every class. To make this easier ClassCharts also interconnects with a range of other educational management software systems, from simple tools like Edmodo to more complex ones like SIMS and PowerSchool.


What I like about ClassCharts

• I’m really impressed by the fact that such a powerful and well designed tool is free.
• It’s great that a system like this and the data it collects can be applied and shared across a whole school.
• I really like that you can see the student and access a range of information about them from targets, to behaviour and even a little about their background.
• Great to get parents involved and students monitoring their own progress.

What I’m not so sure about

• This is quite a complex tool and creates a lot of data, so I think it’s going to take a bit of getting used to for teachers and perhaps a bit of training too.
• It does produce a lot of data and you can easily get a bit too tied up in this and forget about the person.

Well I hope you find ClassCharts useful and give it a try.

Related links:

• Digital books for teacher development  
• Making lectures and lessons more interactive with mQlicker  
• Evaluating authentic mobile apps for learning
• Publishing 3.0 - A new model for independent educational publishing 
• The Digital Classrooms on Indiegogo
• Digital Classrooms on Facebook
• Digital Classroom on Flipboard

Nik Peachey