Friday Finds #220: Best of May

 

1

All my students are getting new binders this year. I’ve been rotating quite a few over and over but it’s time to start fresh. At their final evaluation meeting, I laid out 8 color options for them to choose from: black, blue, red, lime green, and peach, pink, periwinkle, and teal. 

Since I purchased them in sets of 4, I made students give me 3 color choices in order of favorite. That allowed me to utilize every binder I purchased.

Once I had everyone’s options, I sat down and assigned colors. It sounds like a lot of work but it really was quite easy.

Let me just say that the pastels were by far the favorite colors. Next time I may limit to those 4 colors.

 

2

Price-setting and finding the right balance for your business as well as your local community is definitely a difficult game to play. Clinton Pratt developed a really useful Tuition Calculator that can help you play around with numbers in a variety of settings/situations.

 

3

Nicola’s recent video on Project Management Software had me ready to give them a shot again.

I’ve tried Trello and Asana both in the past but am really picky about my workflow and I just didn’t love them. While Evernote has worked pretty well for me in the current format I’m using, I was starting to feel something a little more robust was needed. Nicola convinced me to give ClickUp a shot. I’ll let you know down the road if I stick with it!

 

4

Piano Studio Business Claims: The best things in life are tax-deductible (Rebekah Maxner)

 

5

Anyone else struggle to keep your dishwasher from getting nasty? I rinse everything before it goes in and take a paper towel and wipe out the gunk at the bottom hinge after I put away every load but it’s amazing how yucky they still get. Ever looked inside the side gears? Ick!

I’ve struggled off and on with having way too many dishes still come out unclean (and our dishwasher is only a year old). I would alternate back and forth between Cascade liquid and powder and others.

The pods have always felt way too expensive to me for something that isn’t really inconvenient.

However, that all changed when I became desperate to not have to re-wash half a dozen items every time and finally broke down and bought the most expensive pods. Voila. Problem solved.

Finish Quantum Powerball.

Haven’t had to re-wash one dish since.

I got the big pack.

 

6

Overcome the Disadvantage of Friday Piano Lessons (Nicola Cantan)

 

7

If only I had a reason or good space for this piano rug…

 

 

 

8

If you’re interested in learning about MLT. Andy Mullen over at The Improving Musician is a great place to start. He has loads of quality resources in his Free Student Library.

 

9

Recently, I stumbled across a fantastic Ukulele teaching resource from Musical Mama. Uke lessons are a great 2nd instrument for teachers to offer. Entrepreneur that I am, a few years ago, I taught myself just so I could teach one of my student’s lessons that were interested instead of passing the income into someone else. Something to consider!

 

10

The past two weeks I have definitely been in a bit of a food funk. The last week of lessons was so crazy and my first week of I’m just tired and recouping. My drive to cook has been minimal, however, I never like to leave you hanging with food fun so here it is:

Grilled Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts (Cook’s Illustrated)

Olive Garden Salad copycat recipe (Dinner at the Zoo)

Cashew Crunch Salad with Sesame Dressing (Pinch of Yum)

Chicken Porridge a.k.a. Chicken Congee (Seonkyoung Longest)

 

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