Another snow day! Hooray!

Today is the 3rd snow day of the school year. It snowed for about an hour and not a flake in sight 2 hours later! Oh well, I spent the morning grading 65 10page tests, and this afternoon I've been working on baby shower gifts.

My husband's cousin is due with her baby (boy or girl no one knows) on March 18th! I decided to make her gifts, because when I looked up the registry a lot of things had already been purchased! Hope she likes the items! I used the colors she's decorating the nursery with, so hopefully everything will match!

Per my mom's suggestion: I bought cloth baby diapers and then chose items to embellish them with: ric-rak, ribbon and material - I've been told these make the "best burp rags"


I also made a matching blanket w/ the same paisley fabric and a light green fleece on the inside.

So here's everything together: hope the baby and mama will enjoy!

Knitting

Knitting is so fun...and rewarding! You can sit around and chat while you make a beautiful product! I've started a mini-knitting club at school with 8 7th grade girls.

Sorry about the image quality. This was taken on my camera phone. From left to right" Keosha, Tian, Jontinea, myself, Latoya, Ashley and in the front Kanisha and Bria.

These girls are unbelievable knitters. None of them had ever knitted before and they picked it up in about an hour. We meet 3 times a week for 50 mins. We are each knitting our own scarf.

I just started working with this knew "yarn". It's called flounce from Joanne's Fabric. It is really easy to work with and the result is so original. Check it out:












This scarf did not take half as long to make as it would with regular yarn! Total of about 3 hours or so (I'm totally estimating because I did not do this in one or even 2 sittings) Here is the finished product. Looks like a good Valentine's Day gift for someone!

Here's the finished product:

An excellent day!

January 22, 2009 will go down in history as an excellent day! The winter months are a difficult time of year to sustain a positive attitude. We leave for work when it's dark in the morning and come home from work in the dark. The weather is dreary. The closest I come to sunlight is through my classroom window! On my way to work this morning I was reflecting upon the lack of success I've had with my classes over the past week. I thought to myself...what can I do...what can I do...? I told myself that today the only change I am going to make today is this...

"Attitudes are contagious. Are yours worth catching?" ~Dennis and Wendy Mannering

Will my positive attitude and a happy smile on my face make the students in my classroom be motivated to learn and willing to behave appropriately in order for the best learning to be able to take place?

The answer (today) is: YES!

My students were excellent in every sense of the word: participatory, motivated, encouraging, patient, creative, curious...etc...

Very exciting to see immediate results! Such a small change with such a huge impact!


Also, the 7th grade girls knitting club is a huge success! The girls want to knit at lunch and during all their free time. Which is AWESOME! Life skill. Harpeth Hall, a local, all girl private school donated over 80 scarves to our school's students. We let the knitting club look through all the scarves and analyze the different stitches and then they each got to choose their own scarf! They were thrilled and very inspired. Here's a horrible picture of my group!

An exciting day!

There is electricity in the air today! Enough said!

I've been looking for a "head and footboard" for our guest bedroom's queen size bed. I put head and footboard in quotes because it doesn't necessarily have to be an actual head/footboard just something I could make into a head/foot board. So...I'm a craigslist addict and I check it weekly...well to be honest every other day or so (so sad, I know, but you can just search a few words see if there's anythig you're looking for...only a few moments) Yesterday I saw these wooden window shutters.

I'm going to check them out tomorrow after work...well, actually Jason is going to check them out, and to be perfectly honest he's not exactly thrilled about it. Last time I "made/asked" him to do a craigslist exchange for me let's just say it wasn't exactly the smoothest transaction. Which is very ironic because ALL my experiences have gone very smoothly and successfully. Let's just hope this exchange is not in any way similar to his last!

To describe the shutters: 47" high and 15" wide In going to get 8 for $30
The queen size bed is 59" wide wich means 4 x 15" shutter will only stick out 1/2" on each side! Perfect!

The vision is this:
1. place 4 of the 8 shutters as the headboard attached "somehow"
2. cut the remaining 4 shutters down to a reasonable hight and attach them together "somehow" and make the footboard

I know what you're thinking...very vague plans...I'll keep you posted!

Here is what the bedding looks like...hoping the blue will match the blue in the comforter.

We'll see...

Best thing ever!

I was at the grocery store today shopping for the week ahead and saw this! It brightened my day and brought joy to my life! haha

Chocolate Brownie Fudge is my favorite flavor! I think this is a great idea for those evenings that you just need something sweet after dinner or after a school day where the middle schoolers chew you up and spit you out. These portions will prevent me from eating the usual pint of Chocolate Brownie Fudge ice cream! Great find!

livingroom -> bathroom project

Well, this started out as a living room project and has now become a guest bathroom project due to the "neon-ness" of the colors I chose. Good thing is that I've been thinking about what to put on the wall in the bathroom, and I still hadn't found anything. Problem solved! I painted 2 coats of my base colors on this yesterday evening and today I'm going to write: Wash Brush Floss Flush. I'm worried about my handwriting, but you know - if you don't try you'll never know.

Before

Here are some pictures of my guest bathroom so you get an idea of what colors I'm working with. - The canvas will go on the wall in front of the toilet above the towel rack.

By the way...this shower curtain started out as a square tablecloth from Williams Sonoma. I just made button holes on one of the 4 sides and hung it on shower rings!

My husband really likes the manliness of the colors and pattern!

Here is the first coat of black paint on the canvas. Needs at least one or two more coats! And I'm not even sure I like the lettering...but what you gonna do now?

During

Well, it's done. I'm not completely satisfied with the finished product, but for now it will have to do. Jason helped me hang it.

After

MLK Day! aka: Eve of the inauguration

A Day of Service - a "day on" instead of a "day off"! Today is such a wonderful day! It reminds me of the wonderful country that the United States of America is. I hope that the upcoming months and years will help bring a sense of personal responsibility to the citizens of this great country. It is going to take each-and-every-one-of-us to take action and truly set this country back on a track of being the land of opportunity. Even during these times of uncertainty many people are still willing to risk everything to come to this country and make a better life for themselves and their families!

"Rosa sat so Martin could march Martin marched so Obama could run."

I'm feeling as though I could be getting sick, so I am not going to venture out in the snow today, but I am going to take this day to plan a few service projects for the year.

The Kitchen - my favorite room

Recently all of my free time and free money has been spent on improvements and decorations to my first house my husband and I purchased in August! We love having our own home, and I truly find things every day that I could fix/change/buy/improve! It's fun but can often be overwhelming. I must keep reminding myself that I have all the time in the world to get these things done. I'm going to post some current picture of the house, so you can check it out. Feel free to offer any suggestions or critiques.














Some of these pictures were taken while the house was still decorated for Christmas...Here are the picture of my kitchen and eat in dinning area. This weekend I had Fri, Sat, Sun and Mon off work, so I immediately started thinking about what project(s) I could do. I was and still am thinking about covering my kitchen cabinet knobs in the same fabric I made the kitchen curtains out of. My husband isn't a big fan, but...he's not exactly a decorating expert, so I compromised for the time being and put the fabric over 3 of the knobs with a rubber band just for us to test it out for a period of time and then decide if we'd like to cover the rest or just abort the mission...I suspect he will give in and I will end up proceeding on with the project.

Since that project became unavailable for this weekend I decided to tackle the tiny lamp shade on the kitchen chandelier. I made my own 1/4" bias tape out of the same fabric as my kitchen curtains and hot glued it to the top and bottom edges of the 5 lamp shades. I was most excited about the fact that I didn't have to purchase anything to complete this project. I already had the fabric leftover and all I did was remove the previous ribbon (which was so ugly) from the white silk shades and attach the new trim. FREE! my favorite kind of project!

I've talked a lot about my kitchen curtains...they were my first project for the house and the first time I had ever sewn curtains before. Check them out:

Alright, enough for tonight. I'll update with the rest of the house soon!

first blog

Well, I've browsed others' blogs for a long time now, and I've finally decided to start one of my own. I'm fearful that I won't have time to blog as much as I would like...or am I fearful that I will blog instead of doing other things I "need" to get done.

I hope to use my blog to post my frequent around the house projects as well as recipes. Let's begin...!

I'm the one in the middle with my sister to the left and my wonderful husband to the right! This was taken on Thanksgiving day 2008! Don't you love the center piece. My mom's idea! And it actually lasted longer than I thought.