Monday Made It Week 10

I'm joining Tara @4th Grade Frolics for her weekly linky party Monday Made It. I really should be working on lesson plans, but crafting is so much more fun!

First is is more of a recycle. My sister gave me this really cute cup. I love the design on it. When the cup broke, I just hated to throw it in the trash. The design was printed on some sort of plastic film, so I decided to take it out and try to frame it. 

Here's the finished product, I think it turned out really cute and it matches the colors in my classroom. :) 

Someone at school discarded some shelves ( I forgot to take a before picture). I really liked them except they hadn't ever been painted. I decided to go with some super glossy black paint. 

I've been working on a few signs for the classroom. The colors in the pictures are off for some reason.

After making the one above, I wasn't sure I liked it so I made another set.

That's it for this week. I had a couple of things I was working on, but did not finish. Hopefully you will be seeing this stool totally transformed next week! 

We almost finished painting the classroom. We have only worked about 5-6 hours total, but as you can see in the photos, I've had a lot of help. We are going to put the finishing touches on Monday. 

These two pictures are the same wall. They sure don't look the same color do they? 

Don't forget to check out your favorite TPT sellers today and tomorrow. There is a big Back To School sale. I found some terrific items from The Science Penguin that are going to make it a lot easier to get ready for the beginning of the year. :)

Monday Made It Week 9

I'm linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for her linky Monday Made It. It has taken me a while to get myself started making things. Now I'm almost out of time. Hopefully, I'll get a few more things finished this week. ;)

First up, I bought this chalkboard at Hobby Lobby and decided to paint it to match my classroom colors.

After a little spray paint and chalk marker...I love it!!! 

The best part is I can change the message. Just erase with a damp cloth and write a new message. :)

A couple of years ago, I bought three brightly colored boxes that were different sizes. None of them went with my new color scheme. Here is the middle-sized one. I am going to paint it black or maybe red.

I painted the biggest and smallest ones turquoise. they are much brighter that the photograph.

I found this foam pennant at Hobby Lobby, I used a Sharpie marker to color the edge which was white. Then I used some stickers I already had to decorate it.

I saved my favorite thing for last. I made a banner for my classroom. I really loved the way it turned out. If you can't read it, it says "Welcome to 3rd Grade". I decided to make it a two tier banner this year for something different. No, I wasn't trying to put the letters on straight. ;P

I loved it the way it was. Then when I was going through boxes trying to figure out what I needed to take to my new room, I found these little sock monkeys. Now I love it even more!!! I can't wait to get it hung in my room!!!

Have a great week!!!

Monday Made It - Summer Week 8

I'm linky up with Tara for her Monday Made It linky party. I had a late start with my summer this year. We had so many snow days that we worked until June 9 (should have been out May 31). Then with me changing districts for next year more of my time was spent moving things from my old room to my garage. So this is the first time for me to link up this summer. I had planned to have more things made, but Made It #2 will explain.

Here's my little teaser picture I posted the other day.

Our school theme is supposed to be "Our Future's So Bright" using neon colors. Here is what I came up with. It is a poster, I have been in my new school, but I don't remember is there are bulletin boards, tack strips or what out in the hallways. I don't even know if this will work. I hope it does, my computer/printer was having an "issue" the other day. I was just going to print it out poster size, but for some reason it kept printing without the background so I printed it and had to cut out the letters to put on poster board. I did a google image search for some of the sunglasses. The bright colored ones with the black lenses I got FREE from Ashley Hughes. Here is a link to it at her TPT store. Check her site out, she has lots of great things. 

Here is an close up of the glasses, they each have a different occupation on them.

My final one has no picture and believe me you wouldn't want to see a picture. I have made myself crazy this last week! I need my social security card to take up to my new district. So I went home and looked where I normally keep it, it wasn't there. So I thought about it for a while, the last time I had the envelope out was when I enrolled my daughter last Fall Break into the neighborhood school. Oh, I forgot to mention, the envelope had my social security card, Delaney's social security card and her birth certificate! I have spent three days tearing our house up trying to find them. I couldn't sleep because I would keep thinking about it, so I would get back up and look some more (until 5AM, good thing it is summer!). I never have found them. The only thing I can figure out is that they ended up in our recycle bin. I was going through a bunch of files and getting rid of stuff. I had a little portable file box that I had filed papers from this year. I'm thinking that maybe I had stuck the envelope in the file box intending to put it up later and when I was recycling, I didn't check the box very carefully. Just writing about this is making me want to go look through every thing again for about the 4th or 5th time. On a positive note, I have gotten rid of a lot of junk while searching for them and I also went through Delaney's stuff (supposed to be for a scrapbook) and sorted it by grades.

So this is my very lame Monday Made It. I have somethings I have been working on and hopefully this week will go a little better and I will get them finished.

Made It Monday and Favorite Song Linky, Plus a Freebie.

This week I'm joining Tara @ 4th Grade Frolics, once again, for her "Monday Made It" linky party.

I have been working on things for the classroom since I report back on Wednesday.

The first thing I have made I got from this pin.

I loved this poster! When I was working on mine, I decided to get  most of my words from the Great Expectations Life Principals. So if the life principle is curiosity, I put curious. I made a few words to start with and I'm thinking about adding one word a week to make sure the kids will know each word. Here a picture of some of my words. As you can see, I haven't actually made the poster. I just got the pages laminated. Hopefully I'll get it on my board tomorrow. 

I also worked on a set of motivational quotes that are in my TPT store. Here are a few that are printed, laminated and trimmed.

My last Made It came from Math Coach's Corner. she has blank ten frames you can print. Then you use colored dots to make cards for the students to practice subitizing. This was a very easy made it thanks to Donna.

I also wanted to link up with Barb from Grade ONEderful and share one of my favorite poems/songs. When I used to teach kindergarten, it was always the class' favorite song out of all of the songs we would learn. I found the song in a Mailbox magazine years ago, I don't know who to credit. You can grab a copy HERE if you like.

The kids love the song and as you can see it also has some wonderful vocabulary to introduce.

Enjoy your freedom, while it lasts, I go back Wednesday.

Monday Made It - July 15, 2013

I'm joining Tara @ 4th Grade Frolics for another edition of Monday Made It.

This week, I tackled recovering an office chair. I have never done anything like this before and it was kind of a learning experience. I was trying to save money and used fabric that I already had.  When I first began, I had a lot of trouble using the heavy duty  stapler. I could not get it to staple without using both hands to squeeze the "trigger". As I continued, I found that it was much easier to squeeze if I had the stapler on a flat surface instead of hanging off of the chair. I used spray adhesive to keep the fabric formed to the seat and seatback. I also had trouble with the back cover. I couldn't use the little hidden nails, they were rather bent up and I couldn't get them nailed in. I took them all out and thought I would use upholstery nails. There must be some trick to using them, I couldn't get any of them nailed in so I used my trusty can of spray adhesive. I think it turned out OK, I might even try recovering something else.

Here's the chair before.

Here it is after.

I had planned on taking the chair back to school, but as I was working on it, I realized that it would look really good in my poor excuse for an office that I am trying to re-vamp. The colors in it go great with the curtains. Last week, a neighbor put a round, black pedestal table on the side of the street. I brought it home and cleaned it. Now it is in my office area as a work table, the brightly colored chair will be perfect with the black table. I also decided to hang the bulletin board I made last week by the table. I remember that Reagan @Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits had framed a picture of her blog logo in her beautiful office. My redo won't even compare to hers, but I did make a picture of my logo.

If Once I get it all together I'll post a picture.

I saw this graphing idea HERE. I loved the idea of having a graphing board that was easy to use. I changed mine a little bit. I made a border around my dry erase board using duct tape and then because I was impatient, I also folded the duct tape over to use instead of ribbon. I wanted to make it where I could use more than 2 graphing choices so I put 5 velcro dots on the back and I made 5 strips that I could attach depending on what the question is. Here's what the back looks like.

Here it is with 3 strips

Here it is with 2 strips. 

The last thing I made this week is a bunting to hang out in the hallway.  After I got it made, I decided that the font was a little hard to read. UGH! I'm not redoing it because I don't want to use anymore colored ink. If you can't read it, it says, "Welcome to 1st Grade", so original.  ;P

Hope this is the beginning of a fantastic week for you and me!