Oxford Shirt Art Smocks

I am a new art teacher.
I also am a slob.
My clothes need protection from the dangers of the art room.
I needed a
quick,
easy,
inexpensive way
to create some art smocks
that I could wear in my new classroom.
I needed them to be big enough to cover me completely.
My clever solution was to make these clever smocks out of stripey men's shirts!

I cut off the collars.

I even recycled the cuff of the sleeve to make a pocket! Pockets are a must!

I made a short sleeve version, too.

In my next post I will give a little tutorial on how to put these fun little art smocks together!

A New Identity for Clever Karen

If you are a regular follower of my blog, you may recall that around this time last year I found out that I was going to be teaching 5th grade. It was an unexpected and a totally new teacher assignment for me. Being a new fifth grade teacher seemed to consume every moment of my life last year and I did not find much time for many extracurricular clever pursuits or the time to blog about them.

Well, my life as a teacher has taken another interesting twist. I was asked to return to my position teaching K - 8 technology in the computer lab - a job that I always loved. But in early August, I was also asked if I could fill in for our art teacher, who had a stroke, and teach elementary art. Now, I have never taught art, other than what I have done in my third grade classroom. But hopefully, all my clever genes will serve me well in this new position. I spent several weeks in August cleaning and organizing all the materials and treasures in the art room. Now I am busy finding all kinds of interesting project ideas for the students to create.

So I'm not sure if I am going to have much time for Clever Karen blogging over the next few months. But if you are interested, you can check out my new tech/art blog Pixels and Paintbrushes. There isn't anything much there yet, but I promise there will be lots of clever work from my students throughout the school year!

Dining in and around Glacier National Park

For my final post about Glacier, let me share a bit about dining during our visit. If you are staying at the historic inns located in the park, there are limited options. Here are some of the places we ate:

Lake McDonald Inn - we ate dinner at Jammer Joe's Grill. Meals were casual - burgers, pizza, and pasta. I had a delicious bison burger with onion rings. We ate breakfast in the dining room in the main lodge. Most of the historic inns have a breakfast buffet for around 10 - 12 dollars. Nothing fancy, but it typically includes coffee, tea, juices, and a variety of pancakes, French toast, fruit, pastries, and eggs. Usually it was plenty to hold us until dinner (with some kind of snack during the afternoon).


Prince of Wales Hotel - we ate in Royal Stewart Dining Room and it was a big disappointment. Expensive, with mediocre food. I think you might do better having the high tea at the Prince of Wales if you arrive in the afternoon before 4 pm. The town of Waterton is nearby and there are a number of local restaurants. We ate breakfast pastries at a coffee shop called Pearl's so we could take advantage of their free wifi. We got sandwiches for lunch at another place in town near the boat dock. It was fine, but overpriced.

Glacier Park Lodge - We had a huge pile of nachos at the Empire Bar one evening. Really good and cheesy! The windows look out at the mountains - great view!


There are a number of family restaurants in the East Glacier area near Glacier Park Inn. Almost all of them feature huckleberry pie, cobbler, and ice cream. I say get the cobbler and the ice cream together!


And you don't want to miss the Red Jammer Huckleberry Cream Soda. (They also have a Red Jammer Rootbeer.) My brother liked combining huckleberry ice cream to the soda to make a float.


We had this THICK fried stuffed French toast at the Whistle Stop Restaurant. It was almost too much!


Many Glacier Inn - The inn has a Swiss theme and features a cheese fondue. It came to our table very runny and the cheese wouldn't stick to the bread, carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower that came with the meal. We asked if they could heat it up a bit - much better when it came back. Very filling - I was disappointed that we didn't have room for the chocolate fondue!


When we got back to Calgary, we ate at a Canadian chain restaurant called Joey Tomato's that was very good!

So that tells you a bit about what we discovered about dining in Glacier. If anyone out there has any other good tips about dining in Glacier, please add them into the comments! Thanks!

Many Glacier Lodge - Glacier National Park

Our last night in Glacier was spent at Many Glacier Lodge. It is tucked in a valley next to a lake with gorgeous mountains in the background. This was my favorite lodge location of the four historic lodges that we stayed at in Glacier. We had misty rainy weather during most of our stay.





The lodge looks like a Swiss Chalet. The lobby is small and has a great fireplace in the center that is very cozy on a rainy afternoon.





Unfortunately, the rooms are very deary. We had a shared balcony again, with an unfortunate view of the road to the parking lot. I had a peak at some of the lake view rooms and they were very tiny. We heard that the lodge and the dining room are scheduled for some refurbishing next year. Good news.





We did some hiking around the lake and there are lots of trails that start by the lodge. I was very nervous while hiking because of all the recent bear activity, including Jack Hanna being charged by a grizzly bear about a week before our visit. We did watch a couple bears on the north slope - but they were very distant and we viewed them through binoculars.







Here are a few more shots of the Many Glacier area:












- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Wildflowers of Glacier

Personally, I thought the wildflowers in Glacier were even more spectacular than the mountains! The roadsides and meadows were carpeted with color, and provided a good distraction for me when there was a high edge on the roadway. Here are a few of my favorite shots:




These puffs are called "bear grass" - Glacier is famous for them!























- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Red Bus Tour - Glacier National Park

One of the unique and charming parts of Glacier National Park is the "Red Bus Tours" that explore various parts of the park. These refurbished ecofriendly buses from the 1930's let you visit the park with the help of an entertaining bus driver.


We took the "Secret Valley Tour" which left from the Glacier Lodge. We enjoyed the open air bus, but unfortunately we had several bursts of rain that required putting the top up twice!


Our tour took us to an area called Two Medicine where we took a boat tour on another historic boat.


We also took a short hike to Running Eagle Falls. On the way our guide pointed out the grizzly bear claw marks on the trees.



I enjoyed the trip and the buses are very cool. However going with a group means you are at the mercy of everyone who needs to take a bathroom break or forgets something along the way. Those guides have to be extremely patient! It was a fun way to spend an afternoon!

Glacier Park Lodge

After our overnight stay at the Prince of Wales, we headed back south into Montana along the east side of Glacier. We stayed for the next two nights at the Glacier Park Lodge. This spectacular inn was built almost 100 years ago by the Great Northern Railroad and was located directly across from their railroad station. The gardens in front are quite lovely!

The hotel and lobby is held up by immense timbers that still retain their original bark. There are skylights in the ceiling which makes the interior seem more open and roomy than many of the other national park inns that I've stayed in. There were lots of comfortable chairs and cozy corners to relax in.

Our room was on the second floor. Here I am right outside our door. I can barely put my arms around the logs.

The room was a bit more updated (early 80s??) than previous ones and was quite large. We had a shared balcony that overlooked the gardens in front of the inn. (Too bad we didn't have a mountain view.)

I spent a lot of time on the balcony in the back of the lodge that overlooked the mountains. We discovered that there was an area of about 30 feet where you could pick up a VERY ssslllllooooowwww ATT signal. I would log into my email and then sit for about 10 minutes while my email would download. While waiting I would enjoy the view and pray and relax.

One really can't complain about a slow signal when you get to enjoy a fiery sunset like this!

I enjoyed our stay here. It was relaxing to find a cozy corner with a view and read. I hadn't had much down time this summer, so I appreciated having time to take it easy.