Amanda Rose Zampelli | the blog

photo-a-day January 2013 compilation party!

January 2013 is OVER. Boom. Done. Good.

I can't believe I got through it with not one bubble bath.  

It feels like ages ago that I ate those tiny Frozen Taro Yogurt cups the night before heading back to school after Christmas YAYcation. Tons and tons and tons of karaoke was sung, and saved my soul, actually.  Cats, ZUMBA on wii, ice cream cones, LOTS and LOTS of tea and coffee and tea was my January.

...and I fell in looove with the new Studio Calico Project Life kit! 

I was dreaming of spring dresses and summer colors, survived a rough couple of weeks as a teacher, and am going to focus on these two things...

More coffee, junkfood, and karaoke. The usual teacher-craziness, and my classroom's cow portrait (that I'm going to save, frame, and decorate my home with). Sleeping; gorgeous morning colors, snow, Grandma's birthday weekend, and a morning-after mimosa.

The final four above are from this week so far.  Just quick snaps I try to fit into the prompt.

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The 'look' of this month was made with the PFX 15 filter on the app Picfx, then the Bloom filter on the app Afterglow, and the words were put on top with the font app Over.  The font is Mensch.

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I don't know yet if I'll continue with this look for February's list, or if I'll change it up.

You'll have to follow me on Instagram to find out.

 

Have a happy last day of JAN!

For last year's collection
of Photo-a-Days,
click HERE.

For my thoughts on
Photo-a-Day,
click HERE.

short 6-second looping video instagrams -- that's Vine

So, probably like you, I've been seeing a bunch of teal & grey Vine profiles flashing through my instagram feed, and although I was initially hesitant to go check out the 'latest trend', I still wanted to inform myself as to what is this 'Vine' people speak of.

I found out: It's a dummy-proof way to record second-long clips of video and post it for all to see.

I think as a blogger and scrapbooker and life crafter, whose personal thrill it is to MAKE ART OF LIFE, Vine naturally excites me.  ...and GO FIGURE!  I find out about this app the DAY my GRAMS LEAVES after her long 80th Birthday weekend of fun, family, and partying! Jeez!

That's all for now.  Oh that, and PREPARE.  Prepare for the enormous amount of hoopla about this app...I guess starting here. Haa haa!

app info HERE

Bri's take on the Vine app HERE

my Vine profile looks like THiS 

and

my first Vine post is (of course!) me singing karaoke...HERE

 

♥ ♥ ♥
Have fun, readers & peepers!

xOxO,

another vid...a stamp of mine being stamped on Vine :)

and capturing my soup for lunch today on Vine

...this could get addicting

Hey, ChickenPox font, you were fun to make.

I got the itch to make my own font, after I became smitten with this lady's.

The lowercases are spotty and the uppercases are hand-written and basic.  

I used the popular iPad app iFontMaker to make it, and I look forward to unapologetically experimenting more with it. :)

You can download it for yourself here.

Look for more of my font in the future!

Happy, snappy Sunday ALL!

xOxO,

Grams arrived...with only one shoe...

Yep.

Leave it to my grandma to arrive with a story.

My Aunt Laura picked up my grandma from the airport and Grams didn't realize until they drove out of the arrival gates that she was missing a shoe.  She didn't feel it NOT on her foot!  My cousin and Grams were scrambling to look for this shoe in the car, and it was no where to be found. Supposedly, she showed up at my house with one bare foot in 15-degree weather! Haa haa! OMG!

I'm so excited for these next three days with Grams!  I have to practice and perfect my rendition of "Cant Take My Eyes Off of You" with our changed lyrics...(see here)...for tomorrow's festivies.  

Today will consist of cleaning and cooking and errands and good things.  

I'll see you when I see you.

xOxO,

a poem featuring my Grams

Grams's Floridan condo

this madness is finite. it has an end date. (repeat. repeat.)

I suppose it's time to talk about the hashtag I've created to document the amount of paper I, as a special education teacher in the New York City Department of Education, scrounge for, accumulate, and have to print on a daily basis in order to survive a typical work day.  

#ImNotATeacherImATextbookMaker is meant to point out that with the incredible amounts of time, energy, and brain power it takes to create the curriculum, classwork, and homework meant to reinforce what you teach everyday in your classroom, how can teachers focus on doing their best teaching?!

It's like having a recipe for chicken pot pie that you have to prepare for the president in two hours, but none of the ingredients to do so.  So you rush to the store, scrounge for as many ingredients you can in the small amount of time you have, and quickly scan the recipe so you can make something...SOMETHING!...relatively edible, because there's just no humanly possible way you could make a dish in that amount time be what it's supposed to be without the initial ingredients at your disposal.  That is our current education system.

There is something dangerously wrong with this.  If teachers don't know what's going on and feel insecure about what they enter their day with, then their students willl suffer.  If the curriculum doesn't make sense to us teachers, how can we make it comprehensible to our students?

Bottom line: time is money and do you know how many unpaid hours I spend textbook-making?

I didn't sign up for this. 

What keeps me going is knowing that this all-consuming paper-portion of my life has an end date.
It is finite.  

I will NOT being doing this maddening work in 20 years. I will NOT be doing this soul-stifling work in 10 years. I will NOT be doing this work next year.  Teaching  Textbook-making is not for me. (I think I've said that before.) Neither is force-feeding ridiculous "common core" down my students throats, or preparing them in vain for a test high schoolers would have trouble with.

"Did you ever wish you could freeze frame a moment in your day, look at it and say 'This is not my life'?" --Daniel in Mrs. Doubtfire

I don't know how I'm going to make through to June 26th, but I'm really going to try and push through, and do my best.  That way, nobody could tell me different.  I gave all of myself -- in spite of myself -- to these ten kiddos, and then I'm saying "Goodbye, and Good Night!" "That's all, folks!" ...and I'm tap-dancing out of this job.

Moving on.  Moving forward.

That's all for today.

On a MUCH brighter note,
my grams is coming in tomorrow
and staying the weekend.

It's going to be completely fabulous!

...and it will certainly
MAKE JANUARY AWESOME.

xOxO,

she's 24 today

My little sister is 24 today, and yes, we celebrate that she was born on this day and all balloons and butterflies and all that, but also on this day...

...I personally and silently celebrate the coming of my soulmate,
my little present from the heavens of a lifelong
companion in the form of my sis.

For 24 years, I've had someone who makes me laugh harder than anyone ever, really,
who sings so I can dance and dances when I sing,
who knows me like no other, and
makes all the same associations and connections.

She's is here, and she's been here for 24 years.

Happiest of Birthdays, my sister!

See her instagramed present from me here.

time for the post about...

Readers and peepers of this here blog, I professed at the beginning of this month that I wanted to MAKE JANUARY AWESOME.  There are a number of strategically planned ways I am going to make sure this happens, and one most definite way is with the new KARAOKE system Christmas vacay brought with it.

It's actually far surpassed my expectations of awesomeness.

...and it's so easy to set up:

I cannot express in enough words how much fun and excitement this system has brought to the first few weeks of this year.  I first came across this system at Tomas's extended family's house two Christmases ago (see here) and I knew I had to incorporate it into my world.

With my Grandma's 80th Birthday being celebrated this coming weekend at our house, you can betcha by golly that the KARAOKE will suck our guests into its vortex. Yep.  That's what I decided it does. No matter who you are or how much you love/hate your voice, to sing, karaoke, etc. YOU WILL SUCCUMB TO THIS KARAOKE SYSTEM'S MAGIC VORTEX OF AWESOMENESS. 

Case in point was yesterday, at the Zampelli house, with my friend, Elisa.  She has a very high-pitched, nasally (dare I say) Fran Drescher Queens, NY voice and she was so closed off to the idea of karaoke.

"I'll watch you girls sing," she declared.

I knew the karaoke's vortex would pull her and there would be no escape.  FOUR HOURS LATER...and a whole ABBA album of karaoke-singing later, I was right. ;)

Here ae some shots of my awesome January Sunday:

All this morning my mom and I were in awe that we sang for four hours straight. 

"I can't believe we got nothing done yesterday," my mom's been saying.

...and you know what?! Thank God.  We both needed a day of nothing, of stress-relief, of relax.

I needed a day with the girls, a day with wine, a day with unbridled dancing and singing, a day of

laughing and more laughing, and a day of pure silly.

Thankful for it yesterday.

Thankful for this awesome karaoke system.

It's a constant in a time when a lot of my world is changing.

It makes sense to me in a time that's hella confusing.
 

Yay.

I have so many favorite songs to karaoke but some are:

"Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" by Starship

anything by Heart

Madonna's "Cherish"

"Heaven is a Place On Earth" by Belinda Carlisle

Janet Jackson's "Again"

...and my big hit from yesterday: "Baby Got Back" ...I do a mean Sir Mix A Lot ;)

 

to buy a system of your very own, visit here

PL 2013 |week 3|

Dang, |week 3|. You put me through the ringer.  

It's weeks like this past one that going back in your mind to its events and images might stir up a tear or two. However, I feel it is just as (if not more) necessary a week to flesh out in Project Life.

my left side:

I was able to come back to the Central Park insert that I hit a wall with yesterday because it was kind of a sad memory...

The Lumineer's 'Ho Hey' was a big part of |week 3|.

My imagine. make happen. poem made it into a middle insert of the spread:

It really explains where my mind is at this point in the teacher game...I wrote it in about five minutes in the early morning hours of the day Tuesday, in my classroom by myself, 45 minutes before the kids walked in.  Then, I spent the day teaching. 

the right side:

Below explains the strain of this past week:

Oofah! As those last few journalled words say above, I am ready to move to this |week 4|.  It starts today at The Brooklyn Flea with my bitt and my bish, is made up of only a three-day work week (woot woot), and brings my Grandma to New York for the weekend.  

Love love love the plans for these next seven days.

Stay tuned, lovies!

xOxO,

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For more of my past Project Life spreads, go HERE.

For more on Project Life itself, go HERE.

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as grey as the day

On a grey and blah-weathered Saturday, this is what I wore to meet my honey boo boo, Elisa, for a brunch out.  My usual Saturday M.O. is to craft early, teacher-work mid day 'til a nap-attack happens, then wake up and roam my house, kissing cats, doing chores, etc.  I'm never out of my puh-jays.  Getting 'dressed' (a.k.a. 'putting jeans on') this past Saturday was a treat...

Some of the shots of our Saturday afternoon adventure:

Such a fun afternoon!

(...and yes, I did bring my Instax on the trip.)

Yesterday was a nightmare of a Wednesday.
I fell asleep at 6:45 in the evening just to escape it!
Let's hope this workday's a lot better. ;)

Happy almost-the-weekend!

xOxO,

imagine. make happen.

image found here

imagine...

imagine waking up with no rushed responsibility
    with the ability to make coffee and kiss the cats and appreciate the morning's silence...with coffee sips and thoughts of the creativity that potentially might muster in your mind throughout the day 

imagine getting to work, slowly easing yourself on your computer's creative design space and     starting...being paid for play...all morning, paid for play

then maybe pause for a meeting or a walk outside for lunch
    gather air and inspiration and sweet time for yourself...nourishment...this is your day, but
you're working 
    and imagine this still feels like your day even though its your working day

'cause it's not work you're afraid of, no no ...it's loss of yourself in work, like now
     where are you? 

then imagine you return to work and continue to play...MORE PLAY, they say
    shapes, font, type, color, pattern, mixing, ideas to convey, more play
no more grinding teeth
no more scrounging for calm
no more hectic chaos, shitty system

just getting paid for play, nestled in a job I fit right into, that allows room for happy
        like a big open warehouse for happy
        that I fill to the brim each day,
            and when I look in the mirror, I see me 

                                    imagine.  make happen.

a tiny career poem by

because I feel like this year it
is more clear than ever before