Monday Made It!

I'm linking up this week with 4th Grade Frolics for my first Monday Made It of the summer, even though they are on #5. I'm behind, eek!

We decided to have our house repainted this week, and our house completely transformed between Thursday and today, so that has been super exciting! I had been talking to the hubster about wanting to move, but now that we have all new windows, new paint, and a resurfaced fireplace, I'm rethinking it!

Our window was broken upstairs, and the shutter had ripped off in a storm, so we were completely embarrassed about how our house looked, until yesterday! 

Original

After storm, and after tree removal

As of yesterday!

Living Room/Dining Room

Before we moved in...

As of last year...

Now!

Before we moved

Last year

Now

Family Room

Before

During

Now! (Tile on fireplace getting grout today)

Finally, I recovered the valance? whatever it is, over our kitchen door...

Since I'm doing "9 to 5" the musical this year, I feel like I haven't really had a summer yet. I love doing summer theatre, but I kind of wish I had listened to everyone and just relaxed all summer. But, I was so geeked out over my name tag on my locker yesterday at rehearsal :)

Since I have most of my classroom already set from last year, and I'm actually NOT going to completely overhaul my design this year, I'm adding accessories and other things to complement my room :)

First, I found some great mugs at Michael's for $1.50 each that perfectly match my classroom colors! I'm going to use them for pencils and pens.

Next, my favorite accessory at Michael's is their LARGE clothespins, because I mount them on the walls to hold various items like late work, no name work, etc... I grabbed some of my washi tape stash and prettied them up a bit.

This is my ridiculous washi tape collection on a spool holder (also from Michaels) It has grown exponentially since then, but this is when it looked all pretty and neat!

 Next, I made some "no sew" pillows, since I left my sewing machine at school this summer, and I was too lazy to go pick it up.

I threaded some large ribbon I had leftover still from wedding invitations (over six years ago!)

I found this fabric at Jo-Ann, and it also fits great with my color scheme! These are going on my gray bench from a few years ago

(Remember me?)

 Finished products!

This week I'm going to be blogging about a few things I received e-mail questions on, so look forward to some information on how to start doing close reading, classroom set-up and organization, and interactive student notebook help!