Chalk Board Art- Christmas

I think that the picture pretty much speaks for it self. When I got home from work Steve was working on this. It is really cool. I wish I could say that I did it but everyone knows better than that.

This is his favorite part the the picture, the lights. He highlighted them and they look like they are actually glowing.

Classroom Treats

This year for Ashlynn's class I did a pretty easy and cute treat. I have seen on Pinterest a snowman from a white syrofoam cute and I thought they were pretty cute. I bought the cups but then couldn't find the lids anywhere unless I ordered them. Well the other day when we were in Target I found these red Solo cups with lids. We talked about it and decided that I could do a Santa instead of a snowman.

I used Black electrical tape for the belt, and then a square punch for the buckle. I think they turned out pretty cute. I did run into one problem while I was working on them, half the box was green cups. I thought I guess you could do a Christmas tree, but Ashley said the grinch or an elf. I decided that would work and the green ones are just as cute as the red ones.

These cups were small and perfect for the first grade. Inside I put a small container of Play Doh, eraser, and a couple of pieces of candy. Ashlynn loved them and I am sure so will the kids in her class.

Chevron Stockings

I have been struggling to come with something to give my students this year. I've always had my mom crochet hats, but the kids don't seem to love them like they did a couple of years ago. I hate giving my students stuff that they are going to just throw in the garbage--I prefer something that they will actually use. Well--those kind of ideas are hard to come up with. Last Saturday I knew I just had to decide. I'd seen an idea on a teacher's blog, that the kids made stocking and they were writing kind notes to everyone in the class. The teacher then put the notes inside the stocking. Great idea--but sometimes those type of activities don't turn out too well.

But--I needed to do something. So--I bought some material to make stockings (for my mom to make:) I have a little bit of a chevron obsession---so I thought it would be cute to do chevron stockings. They turned out SOOOO good. My awesome mom whipped them out (22 stockings) in one day. I cut the monogram letters out on my Silhouette using iron-on fabric interfacing.

I love them so much I hurried to school this morning to hang them in the windows.I am going to have the kids draw two names of other students and write them a nice note to put inside. I have some miscellaneous school supplies to put in them on Friday, and might even do an orange to get them a little bit fuller. Next year I might do it again and put them up earlier and have them write a note to each student.

 the kids were pretty excited to see them. They wanted to know what they were for and they are very concerned about knowing which one belongs to which student, as I have several repeat letters.

Caring & Sharing 2013

This year, one of the ladies I worked with wanted our students to do a tree for Caring & Sharing again. I love to do trees for this, but it is always so hard to find ornaments that are cute and that kids can make without too much help. This trees was a little nerve-wracking. We had some really great ideas, but we weren't sure how it was going to turn out. We had a few mishaps along the way, and I had a group of girls that leaned a lesson on taking your time when doing crafts, but everything got fixed and I loved how the tree turned out. One of the best that we've done. The other teacher liked it so much, she bought it.

 

OH---what a cute chair---I still love how great it turned out.

 

 

This is what we donated from the Stapelman family. We made a really cute rag quilt. We wrapped a book for each day of December. It turned out pretty cute too.

Christmas Headband

So-spending several days in a hospital sitting around brings on boredom--definitely. It also provides plenty of Internet cruising--blogs, Pinterest. Which all means finding ideas of things to create. UCreate had this cute headband the other day and we decided it was something we could make while we were sitting down. So, on one of our hospital breaks, we went to JoAnns and rounded up the supplies---glue gun and scissors too. The funny thing is, we didn't do it until the last night (as we waited to see if our hotel room smell would get under control). Side Story: We came back to the hotel room after being gone for 10 hours and it smelled as if someone had just left after smoking---it was AWFUL. They sprayed some odor neutralizer--but we had to switch rooms.

We started the project in the hotel lobby--next to the fireplace. There are three different types of flowers and I put some metallic silver netting in it for fun. We'll have to add a picture of it actually in someone's hair. It was good to have something else to think about for a while and we've decided we need an emergency craft kit in the car.

Chevron chair

Merlynn still has a few chairs left from her grain silo adventure. When they showed me this wooden one, I knew it would be the perfect chair to paint. As we were talking about our tree for Caring & Sharing, we decided we would incorporate some chevron into the tree. At that point--I KNEW what I needed to do with this chair.

I spray painted the seat white.

Then, I cut Chevron stripes from vinyl with my Silhouette. It took two of us to apply these stripes to the chair. (Yes, it was kind of a pain!) Then I spray painted the entire chair red. After I let the paint dry for several hours--I just pulled the vinyl off the chair.

 And I ended up with this VERY cute chair. I love it.

 It looks very cute next to our decorated Christmas tree. The only thing that would make it cuter is if it wasn't red:)

 And one more picture because I love it so much:)

Sneak Peek

It's getting to be Christmas time! I am working a little Christmas project. My class and another teacher's in the school are decorating a tree for the Caring & Sharing Festival. I am sooo excited about it. We've got the ornaments figured out, now we just need to the kids to make them. Here is a sneak peek. I can't wait to put it all together on the tree. #chevronlove

This chair is going to be sooo cool (I Hope). It's a chair from Merlynn & Steve's storage shed buying. I have great plans for it--lets' hope it looks as good as I want it to.

Halloween decorations

I've seen these cute styrofoam pumpkins all over lately. Well--once I saw the Chevron pumpkin---I knew I needed them.They are a little pricey, but I love how they turned out. The little one I put glitter on, I sprayed the black one with chalkboard spray paint, and the Chevron--it was a real pain. I taped off the Chevron stripes, them sprayed the pumpkin white.

A trip to the Wood Connection a couple weeks ago resulted in the following projects. I just though the witch hat was cute.

I needed new Boo letters and these were just too cute.

These apothecary jars were the real reason for The Wood Connection stop. I had bought one in March, I think. I liked how it turned out, so decided to get the other two. I totally love how fun these are and I'll be able to change them out for holidays. They were super easy to make as well.

I now have updated and cute Halloween decorations.

Crazy Adventures

Remember these chairs that I redid and put in my scrapbook room? Well they are the inspiration for this super crazy dirty adventure.

When we were looking for chairs that I could redo and make them cute it was pretty hard to find. We went to several stores and finally did find a couple that worked great, but Steve remembers how hard we had to look. He is always looking at online auctions and this last Wednesday was no different. When I got home from work he showed me several pictures of an online estate sale, this being one of the pictures.

Pretty cool picture, kind of tempting remembering how we had a hard time finding the chairs for the room that I just redid. I called Ashley and sent her a picture and she said cool. Steve said okay how much should I bid? He put in a fairly low bid and we didn't really think to much else about it. Thursday night came and we were thinking no way, someone else will bid on it, we watched it starting with 1 hour and 20 minutes. We checked it every 15 or so minutes and nobody put in another bid, I still thought no way someone will put a bid in at the last minute, I don't really need those chairs. Well at one minute no one else had bid so I knew that they were ours. Friday came and off we went to collect our treasures. This is what we found:

A few surprises

I was pretty excited initially and thought it was cool, but as the loading went on and on I was loosing my excitement. It was so dirty and disgusting. We had a lot of stuff to load and didn't think that we were going to be able to get it all in one trip. A lot of stuff can be shoved into a grain silo. I told Steve no way we had to somehow find a way for it to all fit. We we did manage to fit it all in on load this is what it looked like

We ended up breaking everything that wasn't worth anything up into little pieces so that we could fit it all. We had the trailer and pickup loaded up. We got a lot of stares as we were driving home. It was a lot of fun to go through everything and think of the potential of what could be done with it. You can buy a lot of stuff for a little bit of money in this case. The good news is that we did find some pretty cool things. We found a chair that will work for Ashley classroom and I have several others that are in good shape. We have the four glass doors that are cool looking and in good shape. This is what is left of the original picture. I don't need most of this stuff so I am going to try and sell it, including the doors. (If you know of anyone interested let them know, I will be making some great deals)

Craft room Desk

Sorry it has taken me so long to finish up the post on my scrapbook room. The last thing I wanted to show was the desk. It actually turned out a little different that what we had originally planned to do but it turned out better. I wanted the desk to go on one wall, the one before wrapped around onto two walls but I didn't love it and felt like it took up to much room. I think Steve still wishes that we went on two walls but I love that it is just all on one. A couple of years ago my friend redid her scrapbook room and she had these drawer sets from Pottery Barn and she was getting rid of them so I asked her if I could have them. She was great with giving them to me all I had to do was go and pick them up. There are three of them and they just all sat together against my wall so they pretty much were the inspiration to how I wanted the desk to look.

We lined them up and it gave us a lot of chair space and working space with the three of them, but I had a major problem, I didn't have any way to store 12 X 12 paper. The drawers in the Pottery barn set were actually legal size drawers. We had one drawer from cropper hopper and then a couple of cubby hole boxes from them as well. As you can see from the above picture I had Steve take the cropper hopper boxes and he made another 12X12 drawer for the paper, and then added a small cubby hole to hold paper on top of that so that it was the right size for the top to set on. He also add a small cubby to the already made drawer and then I had the base of my desk done.

It turned out really cool. We didn't really want to wait on Alan to build us a top and we didn't really want it out of plain white board wood so we went to Lowe's and bought the counter top already done. We anchored it on to our drawers and we were done.

One last thing that I did was make these painted mason jars, I have loved how they look so I thought I would give it a try. They were a little harder to do than I thought they would be.

I painted them with a couple of coats of paint and then let them dry over night. I then took sand paper and distressed the, which was the hard part, I had to try a finger nail file but what really worked the best was a 100 grit sandpaper. They work great to hold all of my colored pens and pencils.

Classroom Makeover--Reveal

At the end of the school year, I was thinking about changing my classroom up a little bit. It's been relatively the same for a couple years I felt like I wanted something a little different. I love the combination of turquoise and lime green, and I would be able to use quite a bit of the things I already had. So, I went shopping---in JUNE. (Impressed with myself that I was thinking about this so early in the year). I found some great stuff--really cute baskets--which were my biggest expense, but I {love} them! I went into school about the middle of July and put my classroom together--I figure I spend a lot of time in this room, so it should be something that I like. I really like how it turned out.

Hanging on the door. I've been obsessed with turquoise for a while. Recently obsessed with chevron.

 

This is my whiteboard--which doesn't get as much use now that I have a big screen TV--so the big black squares will have posters we make as  a class hanging from them...Chevron border:)

 

My Reading Corner---LOVE it.

I added a green ruffle to the curtains. The rug is from IKEA, recovered some pillow....forgot to get that orange frame painted..haha---I think it's the only think not turquoise or green in the entire room.

 

I recovered my wooden Read letters. This is the third time I've redone them--I don't think they'll make it through another round.

My new baskets--seriously--there was not way I could pass these up.

 

Another view of the Reading Corner

Some small details throughout the room.

Clothespins covered with washi tape to hold student work.

My paint cans that hold supplies. I love these because I don't have to see the mess inside.

Small table, with post-its, markers, cleaning cloth for iPads.

This was a Hobby Lobby find. I had to paint the pedestal turquoise--but it is SOO cool.

 

This is above sink area. I get so many compliments on that globe.

I have to give credit to my brother-in-law for this bulletin board. Every year we have a school-wide theme. (which can get kinda old). This year it is BE.... I had an idea, but it wasn't going to work. And...back to school night was last week. Well...I was beyond stressed--and he pulled through for me. He went and found this real chalkboard at the thrift store and wrote all the math on it. Then, he came and hung it for me. I think it turned out pretty cool.

 

WOW! That was a lot of pictures--but that's my classroom. It looks so much better in person. Now, I just need my students to come--tomorrow.