My Dream Living Room

Isn't it beautiful???

Oh I am SO in love with it. Lately, my super white walls and lack of fun furniture and decor has really been bugging me, especially with the living room. (And yes I hear you saying, "we don't even know what your living room looks like because you STILL haven't posted the photo tour. Oops. It still is gonna happen!)

I expressed this angst to my mom this weekend and started describing what I wanted to her. Then I got on Pinterest and showed her some of my inspiration.  She suggested I try making a design with Polyvore. I've seen these inspiration boards all over Pinterest, but had never tried it myself. So I quickly created an account and less than 10 minutes later it was done! AND...I was even able to find the exact curtains and rug I want from World Market!  The sofa and coffee table are also from World Market. However, I am not totally sold on that particular couch. I know I want a small light gray sectional. As for the coffee table, I want to make one with my hubby that looks VERY much like that one. My mom and I have plans to paint an existing dresser I have with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint for our media center in a light yellow color! I also would LOVE to find a rustic, plank wall clock and a cute yellow lamp like that. 

Ooooo, I'm just bubbling with excitement! I currently have the curtains on hold in a city an hour away so I can pick up this weekend. We plan to paint the dresser in a couple weekends and hubby and I have started searching for gray couches! This could become a reality sooner than I thought! This picture just makes me so happy!

Any advice for decorating an entire "blank" room? Any advice for picking/buying a couch? I am completely new at all this so any advice with interior design would be great! :)

Fall Decorations

Amidst all the craziness with school and coaching, I did manage to do some decorating for fall two weekends ago. I started by finding some fun printables on Pinterest. I found about 10 I liked and asked for hubby's input of which ones to actually get. Then I uploaded them to Costco's photo center and had them printed at our local store. They were ready for pick up in less than 2 hours and cost less $4.88 for three 8x10's and one 4x6. I got a third 8x10 for my kitchen but have not put it up yet.

After picking up my printables, I gathered all my fall candles, and my colored vases along with a picture we took last fall. Then I wandered around the house finding various decor items and started playing. It took me quite a while of rearranging, fudging, himming, hawing, and asking for input before I was happy with the end result. I learned that it is not the best idea to decorate the living room while the husband is watching football. When a man is watching football, he is not as likely going to offer any sort of helpful decorating advice especially considering that helpful decorating advice from a man is hard to come by even when the TV is off. Oh well, a girl can dream. :)

Well, in spite of football, it got done and I'm happy with it.

I decided to go with orange and teal on my piano "mantel". 

This is the fall version of my two favorite summery colors: coral and aqua.

You can find this free printable here. I love all the fall-y things it lists. 

And the colors fit perfectly with my mantle theme.

I have that Farmer's Market candle burning now and it smells so cozy and lovely. 

My mom gave it to me last year.

I browsed around on Pinterest for a bit to find some inspiration for chalk art. I am by no means creative at coming up with my own ideas. And when it comes to drawing, I have to totally copy someone else's picture because I cannot freehand. I'm pretty proud of how it turned out. I quizzed Nate to see if he could identify each picture to see if I drew it well enough. He got them all right so I must not have done too bad.

I also wanted to add a little bit of decor to our entertainment center. The globe had already been there. When I used up all the teal and orange things I was left with yellow and green. It seemed meant to be.

You can find this free printable here. Once again, loving everything on the list! I have the caramel pumpkin latte candle here from Bath & Body Works. It smells like something I want to eat!

My mom gave me this globe and suggested I paint it. I may at some point, but right now I'm loving the vintage look it has with the colors. That bouquet of dried Baby's Breath is what my flower girl carried on my wedding day! It has been used in so many decor arrangements.

You can find this cute free printable here.

Here is my entry way decor. Not a whole lot, but with my supplies and 

time it's what I'm going with for this year.

I used the burlap "B" from our wedding. I grabbed my teal and pink ball of yarn and created a little "nest" of them. Three frappucino bottles in a little picket fence box. I plan to paint the fence someday.

Yes, pretty sparse. I'm not really sure what to put in these cupboards that you will be able to see well enough that it doesn't seem like I'm hiding it. Obviously I haven't figured that out yet since I have arranged my items so you can clearly see them. Hmm...not thrilled with this, but again with my limited supplies, time, and ideas right now, it's as good as it's gonna get. Suggestions?

Unintentionally I created somewhat of a "bird" theme here with the sign, wooden bird, and "nest" of yarn. I didn't even realize that until I uploaded the picture.

What are your favorite fall colors to decorate with? Do you have any areas in your house that get decorated you really aren't wild about it? Does your hubby help with decorating or have you learned better than this one-year-wife to ask anymore? :)

Personal Birthday Gift Ideas

We've all been there. And by 'there' I mean a week or so before someone's birthday with NO idea what to get them because they have everything already and you don't just want to grab another bottle of lotion, Almond Rocas, picture frame, pack of stationery, DVD, or t-shirt because they have tons of those too and really how special are those kinds of gifts all the time? This cluelessness occurs most for me in regards to my parents for a couple of reasons.

1. there are 3 times a year to give them something (Birthdays, Christmas, Mother's/Father's Day) and

B. they really do have everything!

So this year was no different. UNTIL, I hatched a great on-the-spot idea. My mom wanted to do the Color Run for her birthday so that was kinda all our gifts to her. But I wanted to still get her a little something.

I already had a pack of red crayons that I had gotten during one of my many school-supply-shopping adventures. Then when my college roommates was visiting and we went to the farmer's market, I saw this adorable red pot turned into a pin-cushion/sewing container. Somehow I just knew I had to get it for my mom. It was too cute, it was red, and it was about sewing.

(Insert important sidenote to mention that my mom's favorite color is red and she loves sewing.)

So now I had crayons and a pin-cushion container. I suddenly decided I would get her a bunch of small, inexpensive items that were red and some of her favorite things. My friend and I headed to WalMart and the gift giving shopping began (among craft supply shopping for our girl's weekend of course). It was really fun and kind of a challenge to find things that were red, and her favorite, and small, and inexpensive. But I think I did pretty good.

I bought a bag of M&M's and picked out all the red ones. (Which incidentally means I ate all the other colors).

 I just love the cupcake liners!

I used the buttons, an 8x10 canvas, and various forms of glue dots (Zots, Double Stick Tape, Zig Pen, etc. basically because I kept running out of whatever I used) to make this:

Then I got on my Silhouette Cameo and made a red heart-shaped card. I even found a red gift bag in our stash and a box with a red lid for the canvas!

Finally, I wrote her a song on my hour drive to her house. I used the tune "Favorite Things" from Sound of Music and inserted my mom's favorite things include free shipping, sewing, chocolate, chai, etc. It had 4 verses I think and then a chorus. It was fun to write and my mom loved it! I gave her the lyrics to keep and she took a video on her phone. And no, I'm not going to post the video. :)

My dad had no idea about my all-red plan when he ordered his gifts for my mom and yet somehow he followed the same theme! He got her a red case for her iPhone and red Wonder Clips. The only non-red thing she got was The Purple Thang, which is okay because the name alone is cool enough to justify it not being red in all-red birthday.

All in all I spent $24. It was really fun and even though some of the items were pretty trivial, the fact that they were red and represented her favorite things made it personal and special.

Who do you know that is hard to buy gifts for? Have you ever done a color theme to your gifts? Do you think you would try this idea? If you do, I'd love to hear about it!

Classroom Before and After

I had a lot of fun setting my classroom up! Last year, I was hired a few days before school started and shared a classroom with the afternoon teacher so I never really got to set up a classroom or make it my own much. This year it was overwhelming knowing where to start because I had SO many Pinterest ideas filling my head along with some space constraints in my new room.  Here are some pictures to show you what I walked into and had to work with.

Standing in the doorway looking left. The file cabinet and cupboard are gonna move.

Sweeping to the right

Looking straight ahead towards the back door

Standing in the corner looking back

Facing the front door and front of the room. Notice the empty bookshelf on the right. 

That small cabinet is moving too.

So those wooden boxes on the wall are actually the student desks. They are built onto the wall and fold down to create a desk surface and about 6 inches depth of storage space. Cool idea but definitely something I had to really get creative to make work for me since I couldn't move any of them and they use up almost all of the wall space.

Starting to bring all my stuff in and unpack.

Moved the file cabinet and cupboard and shifted the bookshelves down so the projector cart could fit.

Small cabinet moved to the empty wasted space by the back door.

It has to get messy before it can get organized.

Fun things first! After getting the bulletin borders and cursive ABC's up, we covered cans (just empty cans from canned food) with fun paper to match the colors of the borders. Then we filled them with all brand new school supplies! Mmmmm

My hubby helped me color all the letters of the alphabet for my Boggle board. I wanted to give the letters some color and had it match the borders. After one set of the alphabet, he took it to his fancy copier at work and made 3 more sets. I laminated them at school and am all set for Boggle all year!

Emptying old files, organizing throwing away, re-organizing by color.

Assembling my pocket chart stand!

Ta-da!

This is going to come in SO handy with little wall space.

All finished! Looking towards the back door.

The whiteboard always has the Entry Task and Journal Prompt for the day. That door leads to the 2nd grade classroom. The closed wooden cabinet has 2 computers in it.

This cabinet has all the extra supplies very neatly organized in it. As students break or wear out pencils they put them in the pink bucket and the Pencil Sharpener person sharpens all of them at the end of the day.

Close-up of the crayon wreath. My mom made it for me last year.

Classroom rules and reminders.

Using the pencil vase my mom made for me last year to hold our flags. You can see how the desks work now. During the week they rotate all their books like you would on a bookshelf and keep personal supplies on the other side. On Thursdays, we have to turn the book again and shut the desks so a Sunday School class can use our room.

p.s. the desks are no where NEAR that neat anymore.

I used border strips to break the wall into different sections. Each section is for posters, charts, pictures, and class work for different subjects. For the first week of school, I had 6 questions up that the kids answered with sticky notes. The questions were color-coded to match the different sticky notes I had and the kids had to write their answer on a sticky note that the matched the color of the question. I like things to match, okay?

Those pom-poms were from the wedding I got to decorate for this summer. They were just going to be thrown away and so I grabbed a few to add some fun by my desk.

Loving my supply cart! My mom got it for me from Ikea. I keep everything we need (in the cute cans) on a daily or weekly basis here and since it rolls around I can move it out based on our needs.

I used 3M double-stick strip to stick a corkboard strip to the top of my whiteboard. I then used pushpins to hold my pocket chart up. I created my own schedule cards based on the size of my pockets. I have since added a second pocket chart below hanging from suction cup hooks since our schedule would not all fit in just one after the first week of school.

I used the little chalkboard frames for the kids to hold for first-day-of-school pictures.

Closer view of my corner. The jobs are on those two cork boards. I just rotate the names under the jobs each week. You can kind of tell but the bookshelf is now full. Our school joined with another last year and they had hundreds of books up for grabs so I filled two plastic totes FULL. YAY. I'm working on a library app on my iPhone that allows me to check the books out to kids and then back in when they return.

I returned the 27pocket organizer because it held papers and folders vertically and was actually to narrow for folders. I got a second 10 pocket organizer and the two of them together works great! Folders and papers fit horizontally. Each student has their own "mailbox" I call it. 3rd graders are green and on the left, and 4th graders are blue and on the right. I keep my copies for the week in the pockets above. I can't imagine NOT having this.

It's a tight fit and some days we feel more cramped for space than others. But it works! I'm really proud of the ways I figured out to use my space best and get creative with storing things taking up as least amount of space as possible. I love my classroom. I've also received several compliments from parents saying they love the colors and how fun it looks. YAY :)

First Day of School!

My 21st first-day-of-school picture.

2nd as a teacher.