Weekly Reflection- Week Three

I cannot believe that Senior Project has finally come to a close!  These last three weeks certainly flew by, as Becca and I were busy working on our project.  I had a lot of fun with Becca this past week wrapping things up and putting our binder and condensed book together.  Though it was a lot of work, I enjoyed every second of this week!  

This week, I learned that if two people really put their heads together and work as a team to create a project, it can happen!  I am so pleased with the end product of our project, and can't wait to hand it over to Proctor's Admissions Office.  I also learned the importance of opinions this week. Becca and I are very different individuals, thus bringing different ideas and opinions to the table every day.  If we hadn't listened to each other, I do not believe that our project could have turned out the way it did.  We both added our own personal flare into the book we created, and can really show it off as something special.  

If Becca and I hadn't completed this weeks activities, we certainly would be in trouble right now!  This week was crucial as we edited, printed, cut and paste everything to create our binder and condensed book on the computer.  We had the perfect amount of work for this week due to good time management.  Becca and I had plenty to do, though not so much that we were cramming to get things done.  We ended on Friday so that we only had a few small things to go over this weekend for our binder.  I am so happy with what we have done and finished this week!  Our binder and smaller book are professional works of art!

There was only one thing that wasn't expected this week, which was the addition of The Old Courthouse into our book.  Since Becca and I had decided to eliminate La Meridiana during our second week of Senior Project, we weren't sure which restaurant we would add into our book. There were three restaurants that we had in mind, though we weren't sure which to choose.  We knew we had to choose a restaurant quickly because this was our final week, so we made reservations for The Old Courthouse on Wednesday.  We were so excited with our meals at The Old Courthouse and were thankful that it was the first restaurant we had tried!  Although we weren't positive at the beginning of the week which restaurant we would include, we are certainly glad that we have The Old Courthouse in our book now to recommend to Proctor's  families!

Becca and I will benefit from this week's activities because our project is now complete and we can present it!  We feel confident in what we have produced and feel our work is top notch.  We hope that as much as we have enjoyed and benefited from our Senior Project experience, Proctor's Admissions Office will benefit from our work as well!       

The Final Day of Week 3

Today was the last day of week 3, the final week of Senior Project!  Though Becca and I have completed most all of our work, we do still plan to meet with each other this weekend to polish up a few things.  We are very happy and proud of our work and cannot wait to present it to Proctor's Admissions Office.  Today was busy as we finished all sorts of components of our project.  Becca came over at 9:00 this morning and we worked until 11:00. Becca showed me the title page she created last night, and it looks nice and is the perfect introduction to our book.  She sent it to my computer, and I added pictures of both of us that we had taken Wednesday night at The Old Courthouse.  After I proofread the title page and added the pictures to it, I printed it out and cut it to fit into our book.  I also worked on the Google Map that I am creating for our binder and condensed book.  I found it pretty hard to figure it out, because I couldn't  add text to each marker that I put to mark the 20 different restaurants.  I have an idea of what I will do to fix this problem though, and am going to play with it this weekend.  Other than that small problem though, the map is mostly finished.  During our time this morning, Becca printed out, cut, and placed into our binder all of her reviews.  It looks so nice!  We are so happy to have it completed.  Becca took the book home today to paste in all of our reviews this weekend!  We also have our Clickbook condensed version completed!  This weekend, all we have left to do is add on the Google Map and get it bound!  Around 11:15, Becca and I went over to Margaret's house for an hour.  She looked through our completed binder and was very pleased.  She had a few last minute suggestions and caught one or two spelling errors, which we were so happy she pointed out!  Becca and I appreciate her help so much and plan to see her one more time on Monday!  This afternoon, I met with our mentor Jane at Jack's.  She also read and looked through our binder and loved it.  She was a big help too!  After my meeting with Jane, I went to Proctor to turn in our Time Sheets and see the musical.  I was very happy with how smoothly today went and glad to be almost done with our project!  I have only one more blog left, my Weekly Reflection on Sunday, so goodbye for now!  

Busy Thursday!-Day 14

It was an extremely long Thursday.  Becca and I had lots of work to do today, so much so that I worked for a total of 9 1/2 hours!  We woke up this morning and got right to work at 10:00.  I worked on so many little details of our project this morning that I am having trouble remembering them all. The first thing that I did this morning though was to polish the half of my reviews that I didn't print the other night.  I realized that it was kind of silly for me to print out five of my reviews the other night because although I had spellchecked them, I still wanted Becca to read over them (I think I must have just gotten a little excited that they were complete!).  We decided we would switch computers and read each others reviews later on today, because we were just so busy with our own individual little things this morning.  The next thing that I did this morning was create labels with a label maker for the restaurants that did not provide us with contact cards. For six different restaurants, I composed and printed out labels with their name, address, telephone number, website, and email.  After I had all of them printed, I stuck them on their proper restaurant page in our binder. Our binder certainly looked great this morning as Becca finished adding all of the pictures onto each page!  At 2:30 this afternoon, Becca and I took a short lunch break and then began working again from 3:00 to 5:00, when Becca left to go home.  During this time, we read and edited each others reviews.  We welcomed each other to change and add in anything that we thought a certain review was lacking.  I thought Becca's reviews were great though, and barely changed a thing.  We mainly made sure that spelling and grammar was perfect in all 20 of our reviews and that they matched each other in approximate sizes and fonts.  We spoke with Margaret after this today and the phone to catch up and plan a meeting with her tomorrow. She will be a great help in looking through our reviews with us and catching any spelling or grammatical errors that each of us might have missed. Becca and I will also be meeting with Jane tomorrow (we spoke with her over email) to go over our binder!  We are so grateful to be getting lots of help from such bright individuals!  After we spoke with Margaret, Becca flipped through the binder and discovered that a few of our restaurants didn't have a picture of their sign stating their name.  We fixed this though by simply typing the titles of these few restaurants onto a Word document, choosing a pretty color and font, printing them out, cutting them, and pasting them into our binder.  For the little time left this afternoon that Becca was at my house, we both began the review process using Clickbooks.  In our condensed version of our Top 20 Restaurants for Proctor Families book, we are going to include a cover page, title page, map, and 20 restaurants review pages that will each also give MapQuest directions and restaurant websites.  I began condensing my information onto one Word document as Becca did the same thing on her computer.  I recopied my reviews onto a new document and had to retrieve each restaurants MapQuest directions and websites again.  This process took a long time, and I wasn't even close to finished when Becca left to go home. After she left, I took a much needed break to relax and eat dinner and began working again from 7:00 to 10:00.  During this time, I re-read and printed out all of my restaurant reviews.  They all looked great with their different fonts, and I cut them out and added them into our binder.  I didn't paste them in yet though!  This will come tomorrow after even more thorough editing is done by Margaret and Jane.   I also finished my condensed version of our book on one Word document tonight.  At this point, I checked my email to find that Becca had sent her condensed version Word document over as she said she would.  Clickbooks requires that all of our information is in one Word document and in the exact order that it will be printed and bound together as, so I opened up Becca's Word document and I got to work combining our documents together.  I looked into our binder to refer to the order that our restaurant are in, which is by closest area, so this is exactly how I arranged the new combined document.  This took quite some time, seeing as the document came out to be 30 pages, though I was very excited to have completed this. Tomorrow, Becca and I are ready to print out our condensed book through Clickbooks and paste in our cut our reviews in the binder!   

Week 3, Day 13...2 Days Left!

I can't believe that Senior Project is almost over!  Becca and I still have a few things to do, but we have it all under control! Today, Becca and I woke up and started work at 9:00.  Becca finished all the pasting of menus and cards into our binder, while I had a lot of little things to do.  First, I called all of the restaurants that I had discovered the other night didn't have hours listed on their websites.  I wrote down all of their times, and sent them to Becca so she could include them at the end of her reviews.  Becca and I talked about how we wanted to our reviews to look with information at the bottom of them.  We both decided on having bullets under the review on the left hand side of it.  Our first bullet will state the days and hours for which the restaurant is open.  The second bullet will state "Becca's Favorite Dish" and our third bullet will state "Erin's Favorite Dish".  We also decided to state in a bullet if the restaurant has lodging or not, which we found a few of them do.  After writing up all of these bullets for each of my reviews, I starting searching online for all of the contact information I needed for a few of the restaurants that didn't have business cards.  This took quite a while, considering some of the restaurants didn't have websites.  I gathered all of this information and typed it into a Word document.  I plan to use a label maker tomorrow to create "business cards" for the restaurants that don't have their own.  For the rest of the morning, I also worked on my reviews and arranging them in one Word document.  My reviews, as well as Becca's, need to all be in one document for our Clickbook software (I learned how to use it this afternoon) that we will use to arrange our condensed book tomorrow!  I finished work with Becca at 1:00, when I left her house.  Tonight, Becca came over at 7:00 and we departed for The Old Courthouse in Newport. Since we have removed La Meridiana from our list, we knew that this week we had to choose a new restaurant.  We were so glad that tonight's dinner was perfect!  It is a great replacement and new recommendation in our book.  We took pictures and Becca and I spoke with the owner.  She was very pleased we were adding her restaurant into our book and gave us her card, a menu, a magnet, and a recent article published in New Hampshire Magazine about The Old Courthouse.  Becca and I both loved our dishes and had a great time.  We left and returned back to my house at 9:30. Tonight, for a half hour,  I worked on and printed out half of my reviews.  Tomorrow, Becca and I look forward to finishing our binder and starting Clickbooks!       

Day 12

Becca and I got a good amount accomplished today.  I drove to pick Becca up at 3:45 this afternoon and at 4:00 we went over to Margaret's.  Here, we were proud to show her our newly enhanced restaurant binder.  She loved it, and she had some great little ideas to improve it.  We discussed with her how the rest of our week is planned and when we can meet with her again.  It's the final week, so we are going to need a lot of help editing!  We left with Margaret the sponsor evaluation sheets when we left to go to Becca's at 4:45.  Tonight, Becca and I worked on a few different things.  First, I showed Becca the pictures of Carpaccio's and the Inn at Danbury and she liked them and agreed they were the best ones for our binder.  Becca began the pasting process tonight of the menus, photographs cut from yesterday, and contact cards into each restaurants page in the binder.  While she did this from 5:00 to 7:00, I worked on reviews in that time.  Tomorrow I will print them at my house and cut them out for our binder.  After a quick break for dinner, Becca and I began working again from 7:30 to 10:15.  I sat and looked online and through our book at all the top 20 menus.  I chose my favorite dish at each restaurant and also asked Becca what her favorite dish was for our "Erin and Becca's Favorite Dishes" section in our book.  After I wrote our favorite dishes down, I looked through our book again to determine which restaurants didn't have contact information cards.  Becca and I are going to have to write out contact information for Four Corners, Milestone, Lui Lui, Yama, and Jesse's.  I then looked through our book to figure out if any restaurants had their hours of operation listed either on their contact card or menu.  Almost no restaurant did, so I had to go onto each restaurants website and write down their hours for lunch and dinner.  A few of the restaurants either didn't have websites or their hours were not listed on their website, so I will have to call these places tomorrow for their hours.  The final thing that I did tonight was to go through our book to see if prices for each restaurant were listed on their menus.  Becca and I had thought that we would need to include a sentence at the end of each restaurant review on prices of food, but luckily each restaurant, with the exception of two, have their prices listed next to each dish on the menu.  We are going to somehow incorporate into the two restaurants reviews that don't list prices on their menus how pricey they actually are.  Tomorrow should be another good day of work!  

The Beginning of the Last Week!

Today, Becca and I really got a lot accomplished.  At 11:30 I drove to her house and picked her up.  We then drove back to my house to begin work. We started right at noon with our computers, a printer, scissors, papers, pencils, and glue. While Becca chose to work on printing out and cutting photographs today, I chose to work on and perfect my reviews. Though I had thought that reviews would be easy to write, I have found that they are actually quite difficult!  It took me quite a while to formulate different ways to write similar descriptions for each restaurant.  I referred to each restaurants website (if they had one) to read about each chef and their restaurant.  After writing for a while, I read my reviews to Becca, and she really liked them so I was happy about that!  She also read a few of her reviews to me.  We both can't wait to share our reviews with Margaret and Jane and know that they will be filled with any great ideas that we have forgotten. I am getting ready to start editing and printing out these reviews! Today was also a great day because Becca and I were introduced to a computer software, Clickbooks, that will allow us to create our smaller book that can be mailed to Proctor families.  The computer software is on my home computer and I will be taking time to learn about it. Becca will come over later one day this week and we will put together our book.  We will do this after our binder for the admissions office is finished (which will be in the next day or two).  Becca and I worked up until 5:00, when she left to go home for the night.  Before she left though, we discussed our plans for tomorrow and decided that I would work at her house tomorrow afternoon and stay the night so we could get a lot done!  Tonight, from 7:00 to 9:00, I did a few things.  First, I finished up reviews that I wrote today and did some editing.  I also created a multicolored cover for our binder out of different scraps of scrapbook paper.  Finally, I uploaded pictures that I took at the Inn at Danbury and Carpaccio's.  I chose the pictures at each restaurant that would be best for our binder and edited them.  Tomorrow should be another long day of work as Becca and I crunch down and try to complete our binder!       

Weekly Reflection- Week Two

This week has gone by very fast as the end of Senior Project approaches. Becca and I have accomplished quite a lot this week and are very on top of all that we still need to do to complete our final book.  One of the big things that I have learned this week is the importance of time management. Though Becca and I are at a good place with our workload, this last week has really snuck up on us and we really have to accelerate! I have also learned how to use Google Map tools.  This was a great tool to create a map for our top 20 restaurants and flag the area where each restaurant is on the map.  This project has really been reiterating the importance of teamwork to me. Becca and I each have different tasks in this project as well as a few of the same, and if one of us started to slack off, our project wouldn't be nearly as nice as it is becoming.  I am certainly glad that I have Becca to work with! 

Becca and I have had a lot of fun this past week putting together our book! Though it was time consuming to cut each restaurant menu and around 100 scrapbook paper sheets, our book looks so beautiful!  Our reviews are coming along nicely as well, and we will soon be finished with them to print them out and add them into our book.  We will also be printing out all of Becca's photographs soon too.  Although I know that this upcoming week will be very busy, Becca and I make fun with whatever we do! 

I am so glad that Becca and I got accomplished everything that we planned we would this week. I think that if we hadn't, next week would be way to crazy for us!  We have really used our time well and have thus a perfect scheduled week of work starting tomorrow.  For the most part, everything has happened as I expected it would this week.  The only thing that was different from what Becca and I had planned was our reconsideration of La Meridiana.  I was glad that I had the opportunity to go to La Meridiana, though I only wish it would have been better.  I expected more, and in some ways was let down, so after a talk with Becca, we have now decided to replace the restaurant with another one.  We have in mind what restaurant we want to add though, so in no way will this choice mess up our book, but instead, only make it better for the Proctor families that view it.  

Becca and I will greatly benefit from this past weeks activities.  We are prepared for what we have to finish and what we still have to do, and feel totally confident that everything is going to get done.  If we hadn't done all the work we did this week, I don't think that everything could have gotten done next week.  I am sure we would have found some way to get everything done if this was the case, but it wouldn't be done with perfection and such detail that we are putting into our book.  I am excited for this upcoming week because I can't wait to see the outcome of our final project. Becca and I cannot wait to present our book to the admissions office!