Teacher Crafting

Today is our LAST official day of summer vacation, so I'm watching movies of "The Twilight Saga" and crafting.  If you'll remember back a couple of years, my mom and I did some "HOME Work" by taking extra slats out of the blinds, hanging curtains, rearranging some things, etc.  I planned to reupholster the chairs but . . . uuuhhh . . . that hasn't happened.  Todd is NOT happy about that but I can't find fabric I like, not to mention I'm daunted by the project and really want to buy chairs with lower backs.  Enough about the damn chairs.

And the slats from the blinds?  Wwwweeelllllll . . . let's just say they've been sitting on the floor of our imaginary baby's nursery just waiting to be used for something.  In one of my recent fits of insomnia, I created a use for those lonely little (big) slats.  I decided to make HALL PASSES for school!  Yes, it sounds sad but you'll probably understand my excitement if you're a crafter, a teacher, or a crafty teacher.

When I asked Todd to lend me his power saw skills, his response was "perhaps."  Living in the world of immediate gratification, I decided to get started on my own.  Come to find out, I didn't need his stinkin' saw anyway!  :)  Supplies: extra slats from faux wood blinds, cutting blade, duck tape, paint pens, and clear spray (optional).

Level of Difficulty for this project = 1462 on a 100 point scale.  It was so very, very difficult.  (note: sarcasm)

Today's craft area: the coffee table.

First, I took my blade along the natural notches of the blind slat and (didn't really) score it with a straight line.  And for safety's sake, I didn't use a mat or anything - just threw it across my knee.  Then I simply snapped the blind along the score line.

See that fancy, straight line?  Who needs a ruler??  (me!)

It made a lovely snapping sound.

Continuing the difficult work of this project, I cut my duck tape a little over 2x the width of the slat.  I got skull & crossbones for the boys' passes & dots for girls.

To protect the ends, I cut a tiny slit off the end of my large piece, stuck it on the end, and folded it over.  Just make sure it adheres well.  Told ya this was going to be difficult.

In preparation for any students with ADD/ADHD needs, I took a break to screw with the dog.  Couldn't help myself!!!

MOMMMM!  I iz not a pirate boy.  Argh.

After lovingly placing the tape around one side of the slat, I wrapped it around completely and made sure it formed a good bond by pressing on it with  my fingers.

From there, I fancied them up with some old-school paint pen lettering.  I must be too tired and lazy from summer to use my Cricut and actually cut out and rub on vinyl lettering!

Most likely, I will drill a small hole in the end and tie string so I can hang them on hooks.  The last thing I plan to do is spray over the lettering with clear acrylic spray paint to hopefully add some toughness and longevity to the hall passes.  Kids seem love to destroy any & every thing I make.

Another New Hobby

I took a beginner's sewing class and made this little bag:

Not bad for someone who hasn't independently used a sewing machine for almost 30 years!  My adventure will be new throw pillow covers.  Don't worry.  I bought extremely inexpensive fabric since the dogs will eventually destroy my handiwork.  :/

Kristinmas Krafting

I got a wild crafting hair last week and made these little wall hanger thingies from some wood blocks I found in the garage.  With some sanding, painting, papering, modge-podging, gluing, glittering, and more, they are a fun addition to our holiday decor.  They are cuter in person than they are in the pic.

Welcome Fall!

With the gorgeous weather and amazing temperatures we've had the past couple of weeks, I decided to do a little bit of "autumning" around the house.  Both Todd and I have been SO VERY BUSY with work, but we are enjoying the changing of the seasons.

I bought mums last weekend and can't wait for them to fully bloom.  Today I bought pumpkins and decorated them.  We can carve them if we want when it gets closer to Halloween.  They definitely aren't perfect, but I had a good time making them, so I'm okay with that!  Here are a few blurry shots of my handiwork.

IKEA-Hacking & Scrapbooking

I've told you before about my Scrapbooking Armoire/Craft Area. I decided - thanks to IKEA - to do some "IKEA Hacking" to my area to add some storage and make it more organized and user-friendly. Some people on the IKEA Hacker blog know the names of the items they use, but I do not. It just comes from IKEA and gets named what I call it (such as "trays on racks" and "metal strips".

Below are some shots I took of what I did. You might need to pause it and go photo by photo if you're a caption reader.



My next goal: Quit spending so much freaking money on scrapbooking stuff & actually scrapbook! :)

Scrapbooking

I returned home this afternoon after a weekend scrapbook retreat. It was a wonderful time full of fun, laughter, creativity, relaxation, good snacks, wine, and no sleep. I think I've had only 15 hours of sleep since Friday morning.

I completed sixteen scrapbook pages and most look really, really good. There are two that are ugly, and one that was the ugliest page I have ever attempted. It was torn out of my book and slapped on the wall. That way all of my scrapping friends would feel good about themselves (at my expense)!

Good night.

Great Programs/Sites for Creative Types

I found some neat/fun/cool sites today that I think are great!!!

Picnik - free photo editing software

Some things you can do:

* Turn you photo into a pencil sketch.

* Doodle all over your image.

* Add a frame.

* Fix blemishes, red-eye, whiten teeth.

* Regular editing stuff to. (Sharpen, resize, rotate, change color, change the format (jpeg, gif, tif, etc.)

Inkscape - Download a FREE program that will help you write in spirals, waves, etc.

Here how I did it (thanks to Scraperfect's Blog):

1. Using the "A" text tool on left, write a sentence. Using the Spiral, draw a spiral.
2. Select both (edit --> select all). Go to top menu and choose TEXT--> Put on Path.
3. To remove the spiral line, Go to top menu Object---> Fill and Stroke. Then click Stroke Paint and check NO PAINT. (I didn't click NO PAINT, so you can see the lines on mine.)
4. Save it. It saves as a .svg format. To change the file format, export and choose .png format. You can change the resolution (dpi) to 300 if you want to print it. The resolution is fine for the internet. Open it, chang the format to jpeg, and save it.

Your Fonts - turn your own handwriting into a font ($7.50) An example from their site -

Spell with Flickr - get help designing your own words. Here's a nice one:

Just type in the word/words and the site will create it for you. You can change a letter by clicking on it. I captured it off the site, so I'm not sure if you can save the whole word or each letter.

Scrapbook Retreat

I finally have a chance to post pics from our scrapbook retreat last weekend. We went to a wonderful B&B in McKinney of all places! The Memory Lane Inn was SO CUTE, had plenty of space for the twelve of us, a great crop house, delicious food, and was a peaceful getaway that was still close to home.

Since my camera is somewhere (meaning I don't know where), I took all of these photos with my phone. The website has better photos if you want to see those.

I was able to complete around 25 pages that weekend & still had time to drink wine, chat, watch TV, sleep (a little) & just relax. We're already planning our next retreat!

Photos:

Lightning Update

We are completely up & running over a week after our home got hit by lightning. Come to find out though, it wasn't the house that got hit. It was the underground wiring in our backyard's sprinkler system! Todd had sprinkler repair guys out today because one zone of the sprinklers out back wouldn't work. They dug & dug & dug and finally found it - the wire that had been hit.

When the storm hit that night, I was in our bedroom. The main exterior wall is a few feet from the huge maple tree we have out back. I heard a loud pop that night and naturally assumed the tree got hit. Nope, it was the sprinkler wiring between the tree and our house. I'm feeling very fortunate that it didn't get any closer to our home and that we were safe.

My awesome husband (that's Todd - you know - the guy in the picture at the top of this blog) has replaced our automatic garage door opener, replaced the panel to the sprinkler system, and worked with the sprinkler people and telephone people to get everything replaced. Like I said, Todd is awesome.

Monday: Restoreth My Self-Esteem

I love doing puzzles - crosswords, Sudoku, Scrabble, etc. Since we've been off for the summer, I've been doing my puzzles in the newspapers every day. The puzzles get harder & harder as the week progresses, and I usually find myself struggling to finish the Sudoku by the week's end.

Well, today is Monday. Back to the easy puzzles! My self-esteem has been restored!

Places, everything. Places!

For those of you who know me IRL, you know how I love things to be orderly and organized. I'm one of those strange people who actually enjoy organizing because (in my ideal world) there is a place for everything and everything is in its place. Aaahhh, I digress . . .

I spent hours setting up and organizing my scrapbook/craft/office area and had a blast! As I've posted before, I bought a computer armoire off Craig's List and set it up for all my scrapbooking stuff. However, in the process, I lost the desk that held my office supplies & such.

At a recent shopping trip to Ikea, I found a glass door in the "as is" section of the store. I asked Todd if he thought it might work & we decided to try it since it was only $10. On Friday, we set it up using some old shelving units and it works great!

Here it is with the armoire closed:



And open:




I still have a few things I want to add or reorganize, but I love having a space that I can pretty much close up after making my mess. :) My main challenge now - packing up what I need for a scrapbook retreat!

Old Rocking Chair

We have an old rocking chair that belonged to Todd's grandparents, and I haven't been able to figure out what to do with it. However, I hated to get rid of it. It's been sitting in the garage collecting dust and spider eggs for months now. I finally decided to clean it up, put fresh fabric on it, and take it to school to use in my classroom.

Before - dusty & ugly. (Mindy thought I was taking her picture.)



Nasty, dusty, ugly, and torn cusion.


Fabric and "trim" tacked to the back of the chair.



AFTER! The cushion has been recovered, but the fabric isn't as purplish looking as the photo shows. It's a burgundy chenille that I've had laying around for a couple of years now.




Now I'll have a rocking chair for share time in my classroom. I love to rock, so I'm sure I'll be using it as a stress-reliever this year as well. :)

Coming Soon: pics of my new scrapbooking/craft/office area!

Sale at Snapfish!

I have been so busy printing out photos to use for our wedding album/scrapbooks that I haven't printed any others. Until now! My friend Kelly let me know that Snapfish is having a sale - fifty 4x6 mail-order prints for only a penny each! Additional 4x6 prints are just 9¢ each (which is a lot better than Kodak or Sfly that I usually use). The coupon code is JUL4PENNY08 at checkout. Offer ends July 12!

If you're a new customer (like me!), you get twenty free prints. I'm not sure if the specials work in conjunction with each other, but I'll find out as soon as my uploading is done. This is perfect timing to FINALLY print out photos from our Vegas trip last summer and start scrapping those! Don't know if I'll ever finish our wedding stuff, but I do need a break from it all. :)

Here are a couple of our pics from Vegas, Baby!!


Todd and I kissing at the Trevi Fountain in Caesar's Palace.


After the water show at the Bellagio. (Todd, me, Amy, Troy, Sonya & Mike)

Like the New Header?

I made it on Scrapblog! My friend Martha, who also scrapbooks, told me about the site and I decided to try it out. They have a lot of neat features, but honestly, the website is a total pita. I could have done paper pages must faster without as much difficulty. I wasn't able to publish the page I made into a header, so I had to capture it from the page to use it. There are also several other glitches I faced, but at least we have a nice, new header.

Think I'll still with regular paper scrapbooks for now though. :)

The Movies!!!

I'm so excited!!! We're leaving in a little bit to see IronMan.

I know you're probably thinking I'm crazy for being so excited, but I am! We love movies (Todd even more than me), but we have VERY different taste & don't hit the theater very often. It's sometimes difficult to find ways to stay busy during the summer, and we're always looking for ways to get out of the house. I like Robert Downey, Jr. even though he's proven a lack of character through his many indiscretions. (But him in Ally McBeal? Oh baby!)

However, my FAVORITE part of going to any movie is popcorn. Especially when I can add my own butter and even get my fatass some refills. Get the napkins ready. OMG I can't wait!

Update - We saw IronMan & it was SO COOL. I even liked it better than the popcorn! (I couldn't dispense my own butter & the kid doing it put too much on there & didn't layer it like I asked!) ANYWAY --- go see IronMan. Very cool.

Sometimes It's the Little Things

I bought an armoire off Craig's List last weekend. It is a computer armoire (which I wanted), so I can organize & store my scrapbook stuff, work on scrapbooking, and then close it all up. So far, it's great! It's really big - about 7 feet tall, 4 feet wide and a few feet deep! Here's a view of it closed. (Note: all photos in this blog entry were taken w/ my phone's camera.)

Here's a picture of it open. The lower portion slides out to the right to set up the desk and there are shelves/storage below the desk as well. I want to get some bags or something to hang on the insides of the doors to use for storage.

To inaugurate my new work-in-progress workspace I scrapped a few pages for Shaun & Lisa, friends of ours that had twin girls after Thanksgiving. They're coming over Saturday, so I'm going to give her a book with just a few quick pages I did for the girls. They aren't my best pages (esp. since I left them in the protective covers & used my phone for pics), but they'll give her a start. I'm trying to suck Lisa into the cult known as scrapbooking! :)