Someday I Might Be Like Martha Stewart....

Hi my name is Jessica and I am addicted to Pinterest.  Is there a support group for that?  It seems like there should be, we can meet at my house and do crafts while we discuss our addiction.  A side effect of this addiction is that I have started to look around my house and see it as an endless parade of possible projects.  If you know me that probably has you ready to come over here with popcorn to watch because you know there will be some craziness involved in figuring out how to accomplish any kind of craft. 

Since up until now I have only been brave enough to try Pinterest ideas that can be applied to my classroom I decided to try my hand at restyling a piece of furniture.  Enter unsuspecting side table.

After I moved into my new place a few months ago a very sweet friend of mine helped me out by giving me this side table (a side table that I'm hoping she does not mind that I have now used as my learning experience so hopefully it isn't too bad for my first shot).  Yes, I did paint it inside and yes I do know that was probably not the best option but when you live in an apartment sometimes you gotta do whatcha gotta do. :)

Well, here is the adventurous part.  This side table is laminate with a shiny finish so I should have used a primer.  Guess what.  . I used something different! My Grandma'am was in town and she told me a trick she uses that she learned somewhere on the Internet.  I bought some paint and she mixed in baking soda.  Yes, that's all, baking soda!!! At this point I wish I could say I was a believer but I was less than cooperative thinking that this is the craziest thing I had ever heard.  I mean baking soda? I even went as far as to buy the primer because I thought I had to have misunderstood her. Well, she apparently knows how to research because it worked.    
 

 

This is only part way through the process but the paint was sticking! I was in complete shock.  It took about 2 coats but the baking soda not only makes it stick to the wood it also makes the paint super thick!  After it dried and I examined it to make sure all the wood parts were covered I just went over it with a decent amount of clear coat (that's a really important step otherwise the paint can peel off down the road).  I know it may not be as amazing as a lot of the stuff on Pinterest but I have to say I am rather pleased with how it turned out. 

 

 



Ready or Not...Here They Come

Alright I guess I should start by sharing that this is not an education blog.  It will probably have a ton of education stuff but only because I teach and it kind of consumes my life because I think about it all day long and I stalk ideas on pinterest.

Today was my last day working in my classroom before official start back for teachers which is, oh ya know, tomorrow.  Today I brought in another of my friends as a recruit to help me finish up all my last minute chaos.  Have I mentioned how much I appreciate all the help I got!  Typically I start working in my classroom several weeks before school starts back but since our school was having some renovations I wasn't able to get in my room until last Thursday.

Anyway, today was mostly finishing touches which meant there was a little down time to play around (which you can probably tell from the picture). 

We got all my desks arranged, grade level materials sorted (for 8 teachers), worked on the kids back to school gifts, and played a rousing round of which student desk will be the same size as all the other desks.  That may not sound like an actual activity but I made about 4 trips to the storage room because I kept having Goldilocks and the Three Bear moments: this desk is too short, this desk is too tall, this desk is wobbly, this desk is just right.

Let's back track and revisit my back to school gift for my students:















You are probably wondering what these are.  Well, these little balls of awesomeness are light up bouncy balls.  My mom found these somewhere last year (I have absolutely no idea where but good money is on WalMart).  Anyway, I decided to hang on to them for this year so that my class can "Bounce Into a Bright Year".

 

After working hard the past few days I felt I deserved one of my favorite rewards for dinner: Barbeque Chicken Personal Pizza....oh, and I decided to be nice share with my helper :)

Extreme Makeover: Classroom Edition

Yep, it's true, I have a lot of stuff.  I mean tons.  So when my friends offered to help me set up my classroom I decided not to share that minor fun fact with them.  This means that when they walked into my classroom they were met with a mountain of first grade fabulousness.

Why yes that is all my stuff and sadly this is after we started working.  Believe it or not it did look WAAAAY worse when we started (for my own personal dignity I did not document that and if I had I more than likely would not share it with the world via the Internet.  It was a mountain of stuff that would have the producers of Hoarders sign me up for the next episode).

Because my friends are pretty much the most amazing people every they attacked my chaos with as much excitement as they could muster.

I mean, really, look at that face.  Don't you just love how excited she is that she got to vacuum my room about 20 times!  That's not even the greatest thing she did.  She cleaned ALL of my computers and helped me with some items that have been on my to-do list for about, oh I'd say 4 years.

Because I'm really good at bossing people around I sent another of my amazing helpers to assemble my outside hallway display.  I documented her progress because well she just looked so official with the ladder and the glue gun is now her best friend :) If you're ever on Craft Wars this is a girl you want on your team, she's awesome!

Didn't she do just a fantastic job! I was so excited with how it turned out because we ventured far from my original plan and it turned out better than I anticipated!

I'm thankful she's such a trooper cause I think she got some of the more irritating jobs.  I don't think she even knows how much it helped me that she was willing to do them though!

So the next few pictures are basically just a couple pictures of what was accomplished in my classroom over the past few days. What you are about to see is (quick math calculation: 9 hours Thursday + 9.5 hours Friday + 9 hours today = 27.5 hours) 27.5 hours worth of work.  I sure hope my recruit for Monday is ready for the final push cause teachers start back Tuesday :)

Hakuna Matata

To begin I am so incredibly thankful that my groups awesome driver was okay with the fact that the entire safari I referenced animals by their name in The Lion King and other kid movies.

Let me show you a fewanimals  that we saw:
First up Nala (the Swahili word for lion in Simba but since she was a lioness she will forever be Nala)

 She walked in front of our van with an attitude of, "oh, I'm sorry, was that where you were driving" and believe me no one in our van was going to argue with her.  As far as we were concerned we got in her way and we would move when she was ready for us to move.

That white part in the corner, yep that's our vehicle.  That's how close we were to this lion who looked at us with an air of "fine take my picture but you are boring".  (She was kind enough to allow us to humor her with our presence until she deemed us unworthy and left with her friend whom I did not get pictures of.)

Next we had an ostrich (I couldn't think of any well known ostrich characters so we will just say this is Road Runner's cousin or something like that).

I kept waiting on it to get scared and stick its head in the ground or something but my group must have really not been intimidating because it just meandered around like we were invisible.

Then, of course we saw several Melman's (Madagascar movie character for anyone without kids). We saw tons of giraffes and zebras.

 Look, isn't he cute....at least I think it's a he....but really what does it matter it's not like the giraffe is ever going to read this....so as of now it's a he.

Ahhh, the amazing zebra.  These were probably some of the most fun to see just because of their color and because they reminded me of the Jersey Shore cast....make your own opinion about that but yes I watch and I am not ashamed.

In the above picture if you look really close you can see the zebra walk in straight lines, naturally.  I never once saw or heard a teacher zebra having to remind them that walking in a straight line is necessary for survival.  This will be shared with my students this year.

I'm not sure what these birds are, I think I was told that they are called Secretary birds.  Regardless every bird I saw was promptly named Zazu.  Thank you Disney for giving me names for all safari animals whether they are correct or not is beside the point. 

The last picture is of a water buffalo.  Don't you want to wake up next to this face every morning.  Handsome isn't he ladies.  Yes, I am aware that this is another instance where the animal could be a girl but I'm defaulting that all of the animals are boys except for the lionesses.

Well that's all I've got. I hope you enjoyed this random glance at safari!