“Integrating Social Media into Your Learning Strategy – Local Success Stories”

Eric,

I know you don’t like it when I post personal things about it us but I want you and everyone in the inter web to know how much I love you, how much you give me strength, and how much you mean to me. I know the last seven years haven’t been the easiest but we’ve made it through. There were time neither of us thought we would but we have. I truly believe there is nothing we, together, can’t over come or conquer. All my love to you!

Jona

The Marketplace.. just one of the MANY vendors

My weekend really started on Friday. I took the day off to go to the Sock Summit with my best friend Natalie. She and I have known each other for many years. We met when we both worked at Intel in the training department for IT. Natalie is one of my very best friends. She’s an instructional designer too and a VERY avid knitter. She’s into technology too. She’s actually got a great podcast that she’s doing, Cloudy with a chance of fibers. If you haven’t listened to it, you should. She and I went to the Sock Summit on Friday. Who would have known that there were SO many people interested in socks. It was so crazy to see all the booths with yarn!

Results of my shopping binge!

I loved looking at all the beautiful hand dyed yarns and the combinations of bamboo, wool, alpaca, etc. There were so many booths, many more than I think I’ve ever seen for the scrapbook convention. The vendors came from all over the place too! I found so many yarns that I fell in love with. I did a little bit of damage while Natalie and I were there. It was sort of funny when we went because we’d start out walking the marketplace together, one of us would stop, the other would keep going and before you knew it we would loose each other. I don’t know how many times that happened. Ordinarily I would have just texted Natalie on my computer but we were both having a heck of a time with getting our phones working there. I guess most people were having issues. It did make things frustrating. Natalie organized a yarn crawl for those that listen to her podcast, or know her on twitter for the afternoon. We all met at the bell and then took the yellow line Max and headed to The Naked Sheep in North Portland (NoPo). I love that place. They’ve got great seating for people to just hang out and knit. They’ve also got a great collection of yarns and other knitting paraphernalia. So we hung out there for a while and then got pizza and Ruby Jewel ice cream at Atomic Pizza just two doors down. After that it was a walking trip back to the Max and then to Mississippi Avenue to walk the street and have some great dinner. It was such a long day but so AMAZING! I had a great time.

Saturday started out as a lazy day for me. Eric planned to go to the Beer Fest. I’m not a beer drinker so I really had no interest in going. I did want to go downtown though and enjoy the beautiful day. Eric and I hopped on the Max and headed downtown. After eating at the food carts we headed down to the waterfront. Eric headed to the Beer Fest and I headed to Pioneer Mall to get a new shirt because it was so hot.. I needed a new shirt. After hitting the mall I walked down to the waterfront and walked the esplanade. It was so nice to be out in the sunshine and just enjoy being warm. After walking around for a while I decided to head back up toward the Pearl District. I went to Cool Moon Ice Cream. It’s on 11th and Johnson, a bit of a walk but on a nice day, nothing big. I love Cool Moon. They make some of the most amazing custom ice creams. I ended up having the very best Salty Carmel ice cream I’ve ever had.

After grabbing my ice cream I headed across the street to the park to people watch, sit on a park bench in the shade, and knit my sock. It was so nice and cool, I loved it. I could do that every day. Maybe not the ice cream but just being outside on a nice day… that’s amazing. Once I’d been there for a while, and finished my ice cream I decided to head to Powell’s Books. I love that place and it seems that every time. So I went and checked out some books, but nothing spoke to me so I headed off to Stumptown coffee and the Ace Hotel lobby to hang out for a while until Eric, his cousin Brian, and Brian’s wife Diana finished at the Beer Fest. I ended up meeting them down in Old Town at Ground Kontrol. I hadn’t seen Brian in ages and I’d never met his wife until Saturday. Diana is so awesome. She and I chatted for a long time while the guys relived their childhood and played video games. It’s so funny to see Eric get excited about old video games he used to play. At one point I found Eric and Brian playing Joust. After everyone ran out of quarter we headed to dinner at Kin in the Pearl. It’s one of Eric favorite places to go. We sat there and chatted about everything from law, to politics, to family, to wine, and I can’t remember what else. I couldn’t help thinking the whole time that it was nice to see Brian again and nice to meet Diana. She and I would often break off in our own conversation and talk about socks, knitting, sewing, or our jobs. We were there for hours just chatting about everything. Once we were done eating we were off to Clyde Common for a drink. Diana has worked as a bartender so we wanted to take her there to give her the experience of unique drinks. We got there only to find out that junior had just clocked out so we headed to Tear Drop for great drinks. We sat and hung out together enjoying good drinks and just chatting. Junior ended up coming over for a while too which made it just that much more fun. It was such a great night. I loved meeting Diana and seeing Brian again.

Today I decided I’d sew. I had a couple projects left to finish for my friend Natalie so I got those done. I also got a couple of things done for myself and for some friends. I have to say it was really nice to take a break today and just spend time doing what I wanted. Sometimes we all need those days where you do much of nothing but the things you enjoy by yourself.

Knit dress with simple elastic waist. (For Natalie)

50's inspired skirt made of hemp fabric. (For Natalie)

Summer sleeveless blouse made of batik fabric. (For me)

Felt bags with fabric lining. (For ?)

Eric admiring the herb garden and drinking lavender lemonade.

Last weekend was AMAZING! Saturday was a beautiful day in Portland. It being a great day means you HAVE to enjoy the day outside. I mean it’s not often that good days come to Portland. After thinking about our options we decide to go out to Sauvie Island and just “check things out”. We’ve been out there before but never just cruzed around, checking out all the places there. So we decided to hit the road.

We drove all over the place and just explored. Of the many great places one that really caught my attention was the Blue Heron Herbary. I’ve never been to a Herbary so I wasn’t sure what to expect besides.. well herbs.There were a TON of them and the gardens were beautiful. I was blown aways by the hundreds and hundreds of herbs. There were several varieties of the same herb too. I think there were like 20 types of lavender. We bought a couple mint plants, just for mojitos, as well as lavender tea, pepper, and whole mess of other food items.

Kruger Farms for lunch!

After traveling over much of the island, we decided to stop at Kruger’s farm for a picnic. Eric had packed one before we left. It was so yummy. Eric made this great salad of jicima, tomatoes, cucumber, roasted corn, black beans, and I don’t know what else. Maybe he’ll post it on his website Grub n Glug. In any case it was terrific. The best was the avocados on it. After lunch we walked around the farm and checked out the place. I think we’ll go back when the berries are ready and go picking.

If you haven’t done so you should go to Sauvie Island! It’s super fun!

I was having so much fun and just enjoying the evening I didn’t take many pictures. Here’s one of Eric!

Last weekend Eric and I met up with a colleague of mine and a good friend, Rothrock, to show him around some good Mexican grocery stores in Hillsboro. As the three of us were shopping I notices that limes were dirt cheap and it got me to thinking about making pickle. Last year Rothrock and Julia made it together so I knew Rothrock would be the one to ask how to do it. He referred me to this great website: http://www.indianfoodrocks.com/. The site has some great Indian recipes and was quite the find. I can’t wait until it’s all made and we can use it. YUM!

Ingredients

10 limes, reserve 1 for juice
30 green Thai chillies
3/4 cup julienned ginger
1 tablespoon whole fenugreek seeds, to be added whole
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup salt
3 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp fenugreek seeds, to toast and grind
1 tsp mustard seeds
1/4 tsp powdered hing (asafoetida)

Directions

1. Quarter 9 limes, reserving 1 for juice later, after slicing off the stalk scars. Pick limes with few blemishes and smooth skins. Wash the limes well, making sure that any outer wax has been washed off. Dry well. There must be no moisture on the limes.
2. Wash and dry the green chillis. Use less if you can’t take the heat; more if you want to up the heat! Cut the stem off and cut each green chilli into two.
3. Wash and dry a 2 inch piece of ginger. Peel it and julienne into slices that are about an inch long. I used about 3/4 cup of julienned ginger.
4. Add 1 tablespoon of whole fenugreek seeds.
5. Add the salt, sugar and the turmeric powder.
6. Toast 1 tsp fenugreek seeds, the mustard seeds and the powdered hing (asafoetida) for 4-5 minutes until the methi seeds are nicely tanned.
7. Cool completely and grind them to a fine powder in your coffee grinder or spice grinder and add it to the jar.
8. Squeeze the juice of 1 lime into the jar. Shake the jar well and set it out in the sun to cook.
9. Give it a good shake as you bring it in and put it out every day. Open it once every couple of weeks to adjust it for taste as well as to check to see how well it’s cooking.
10. When the juices have thickened and the peel soft, it’s ready. Let it rest for 4-5 days in a dark and cool place. Then spoon it – a very dry spoon always – into smaller jars and refrigerate to make it last that much longer.

In the last couple weeks I’ve been saving what I consider a lot of money. I mean 50-70% savings on my grocery bill. I have to say that it’s really nice to save that much and enables the hubby and I to go dine out more with friends and family. As I’ve been saving people have been asking me things like, “how do you do it?”, “what sites do you go to”, etc. So this post is going to be about just that.

1. Between Eric and I we’ve created quite a shopping price book. We list the items we like to buy and how much they cost at each store. We then figure out the unit price cost and determine where that item is the cheapest at it’s regular price.
2. When the sales curriculars come we sit down and look at them and determine if there’s anything on sale that we need. We also compare the sale price to the lowest retail price. You’d be surprised how many “sales” aren’t really sales.
3. Next step is to compare our shopping list, sales items and all with our coupons. I get coupons from several places, the newspaper,coupons.com, redplum.com, smartsource.com and I always go to thekrazycouponlady.com. I’m a BIG fan of the printed coupons.
4. Then we create a list for each store identifying the items we’ll purchase, the coupons we’ll use and the final price we expect to pay. It’s nice because then we know, before we leave, how much we’ll expect to spend.

So you might be thinking that this takes A LOT of time. I won’t lie and say it only takes a few minutes. I does take a while but with a little determination you can make things quicker and save a lot of money. I actually took all of our data and put it in a database to make things easier and quicker for us. Now all we do is put the things we think we might get in a form, push a button and instantly we know if we’ve got coupons for that item, how many coupons and the value. Then I just have to export it to Excel, make a few formula calculations and instantly we know what the price of the item is with the coupon and how much we’ll be saving. If we’re not saving more that 50% of the lowest retail price for the item, it comes off the list.

OK, so lots of work.. what does it mean? Well, here’s an example:

In the photo are the following:

4 boxes of Morning Star Veggie Burgers
6 bottles of Tonic Water
2 bottles of Ginger Ale
3 bottles of Ranch Dressing
4 boxes of toothpaste,
1 box of tea
2 pounds of Tillamook cheese
2 Cantaloupe
3 Onions
5 bananas
5 tomatoes
3 bags of frozen vegetables
2 bottles of mustard
1 tub of plain yogurt
4 buns

So what so you think you might pay for that? Well, I can tell you, you’d spend about $106.00 retail for that. Me, I got all that for $50.00. Yup, $50 using coupons and store rewards. Pretty exciting if you ask me.

Here’s another one. This cost me only $6.00. I bought this all at Walgreen’s and only spent $6.00 out of pocket.

Here’s how I did it:

$24.00    Walgreen’s price for all items (4 shampoos and 4 hair products)
- $12.00 using 4 coupons from the Sunday paper that gave $3.00 off when you bought an Aussie hair product.
- $6.00 Walgreen’s register rewards from purchases made the previous week.
$6.00 out of pocket!

It’s pretty amazing when you start looking at things and think just putting in a few hours a week can get you such great rewards. This last weekend I bought a TON of stuff that we use and only spent $70.00. If we would not have used coupons and rewards it would have cost us $186.00. We SAVED $115.78, that’s 62.19% …. AMAZING!

I have to say I’ve drunk the juice and I like it. I like the challenge of figuring things out and getting the lowest price. An additional perk is that Eric and I now do the couponing and shopping together We’re doing a great job of keeping each other honest and making sure we’re not stock piling more than a couple months worth of anything, unless of course when we can get the item for free.

Happy couponing! Oh, if you have any questions I’m happy to share just post them here and I’ll answer them.

Here’s a tip: When you take the cakes out of the oven to cool, consider putting them right in the freezer. I actually put mine in the freezer to cool. It gets them cool faster and keeps them moist.

So while you’re enjoying the holiday, BBQ with family and friends consider making this cake.

Ingredients

Directions

For cake

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter and flour two 8-inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper (to ensure that the cake will not stick), or place liners in 2 muffin pans for 24 cupcakes. Set aside.
2. Place the dried coconut in a cup of warm water to soften and set it aside for 15 minutes.
3. Place the carrots in a food processor and pulse on and off for 1 minute. Then add the pineapple and pulse until the carrots are cut into very small pieces and the pineapple is pureed, 1 to 2 minutes.
4. In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. Add the brown sugar and use a whisk to break up any lumps.
5. Drain the coconut and place it in a medium bowl. Add the oil, vanilla extract, eggs, and carrot-pineapple mixture, and whisk to combine.
6. Add the wet ingredients into the dry, mixing with a rubber spatula to incorporate but not overmix. When the batter is almost mixed, stir in the additions, if using. Pour the batter into the prepared pans.
7. Bake for 55 minutes, or until the tops are a very golden brown and a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. (It may look as if the cake is too well done, but it takes a while to bake because it’s so dense.) For cupcakes, the baking time is 35 to 40 minutes.
8. Let the cakes cool in the pans for 10 minutes. Then invert them onto a wire rack and let them cool completely.
   
9. Fill and frost the cake with the Cream Cheese-Lemon Zest Frosting (for added oomph, add 1/2 tablespoon minced fresh ginger to the frosting).

1. In a standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the cream cheese and butter on medium-high speed until combined and airy, about 2 minutes. Mix in the lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla.
2. Sift the powdered sugar onto a piece of parchment or wax paper. With the mixer on low speed, slowly pour the sifted powdered sugar into the frosting (use both hands to bend the paper so the sugar pours slowly into the bowl).
3. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. If the frosting seems too soft to spread, allow it to chill for 15 minutes in the refrigerator.

Yield: Makes one 8-inch layer cake or 24 cupcakes