Baby Room

  Believe it or not, I did eventually finish Munchy's room.

The sanded and painted desk.

My Craft Fail Curtains.

Room Details. 
Crib and Shelves: Ikea.
Bedding/Toy Net: Target
Rocker: Vintage
Desk: Vintage DIY
Art: Vintage and family made.

#Loveatfirststitch Brigitte Scarf

OMG you guys. Some of you might know that I have been reading Tilly and the Buttons since 2011. Well today is the day that everyone has been waiting for.... she launched her new book, Love at First Stitch. It is kind of a bittersweet day for me, because it won't be available in the US till October, and I'm about to have a whole summer in front of me. I guess I can wait, and have already pre-orderd my copy. As part of her online book launch many people made a Brigitte scarf and tweeted it to show support. Here is mine.

I don't have the world's best fabric stash, But I like how the print looks. So many students told me how nice I looked! Maybe that means I should put more effort into my hair.....

Last night Tilly even retweeted me! So exciting!

Doesn't Munchy look cute in my scarf?

I guess I will have to make some other projects until October.....
The Artsy Girl

2014 Art show

If wanted some day I can write a post on how to put a thing like this on.

YoCP March

 I know you thought I forgot about it, but I am totally still doing the Year of the Clean Person, just slowly. I totally failed at the March challenge of making my bed everyday, but I did manage to revamp my sleeping space a little.

Before

After

After

I painted the room gray, (Mark Twain's Boyhood Home by Valspar) used Guitar hooks to hang M's collection, rearranged the furniture, cleared off the dresser, hung art/pictures/ mirror, and made New curtains and a headboard.

 The curtains are the same construction as the ones I used in the condo, but I made two pockets instead of one so there would be a ruffle at the top.

For the headboard I used a big piece of cardboard and wrapped quilt batting and fabric around it. I nailed it to the wall, and added upholstery tacks to the outer edge. 

Unrelated, but I also made a wreath this month.

Student teacher!

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It has been a crazy semester! I got the call right before break that I was going to have a student teacher in the spring semester! It has been really fun, and she is leaving next week to go on to middle school. I have a love hate relationship with the way my Alma Mater deals with student teachers, I wish she could stay so much longer and learn more, but It is nice that having her has barley disrupted my year. 

My wonderful stint teaching someone who is teaching my classes has afforded me tons of almost free time during the day. I have been making posters to go with lessons I repeat every year, planing new lessons, and creating things for my classroom. 

This week I created a poster of Blooms Taxonomy.

I found a poster on Pinterest that had each of the levels of the taxonomy with words around each level that described what that level looks like in art class. I modified it for my spcae, and this is what I came up with:

The levels

The colorful clouds have the art words for each level, clolor coded for the level. Here is what they all
say:

Creating

Designing

Constructing

Developing

Producing

Manipulating

Painting

 Drawing

Sculpting

Evaluating

Judging

Appraising

Defending

Assessing

Justifying

Interpreting

 Analyzing

Comparing

Contrasting

Experimenting

Testing

Questioning Examining

Criticizing

Inferring

Applying

Dramatizing

Sketch

Using

Solving

Illustrating

Writing

Demonstrating

Practice

Understanding

Classifying

Describing

Discussing

Explaining

Paraphrasing

Locating

Translating

Remembering

Memorizing

Listing

 Recalling

Repeating

Reproducing

Copying 

This is one of those things that I do, but don't ever have time to refer to directly. I hope this poster will lodge itself into  someones subconscious and they will recognize it when they come across it again. And who knows, maybe someday I will have time to point to one and say, "Hey kids, we are creating, that's the highest level of learning!" Who knows.

Later,

The Artsy Girl

Craft room + Year of the Clean Person

I got so much done over Christmas break. If you are my real-life friend you saw my chronicles on   Facebook. My main accomplishment was the craft room:

 

 Also known as the place where everything goes to die.
 It took DAYS, but I cleaned EVERYTHING out, took some to work, threw some away, filed some, reorganized some storage, and even put a table back there for the sewing machine. My white whale is done.

 Closet, storage bins.

 Sewing table, books, pile of sketchbooks (Ok, I still have some work to do.)

 Couldn't get rid of M's Piano :/

I even decorated a little.

It feels good to finally have a room dedicated to art in my new house, despite the fact that I know it will be short lived (Baby #2 will be considered in the next few years) Then I will have to go back to small space, corner of the room crafting.

While I was doing this, and cleaning the whole house, I read on Jezebel about the Year of the Clean Person movement. I have already completed the January task of making a list of goals:

2014 cleaning goals

*Clean Kitchen every night

*Clear surfaces in living/dining areas twice a week

*Sweep/vacuum/ mop once a week

*Dust once a month

*Bathrooms once a month

*Deep clean one room once a month

*Follow all monthly challenges 

It sounded like the list was supposed to include specific things you want to clean, but I spent the entire Christmas Break scrubbing, organizing, purging etc, so my house is in pretty good shape-- all problem areas of last year have been dealt with. I am using this challenge to keep all the hard work from reverting back to a pile of mess by creating habits that will stick. Why am I telling you about this? What does this have to do with my normal blog? Well it's a life style thing, and I know that the mess I live in is directly related to not having any time as a teacher. Plus its my blog, so I can post whatever I want, and I know you will help keep me accountable. I really need to do this though, Munchy ate two dust bunnies yesterday!

In case you don't want to click the link and read the really long post about the schedule, here is a brief recap of the monthly goals, with the things I'm likely to add. 

January- Make a list of goals. I am also going to try to implement my list. I already deep cleaned the craft room!

February- Clean the book shelves. I will add to this the entertainment center and china cabinet (very similar pieces of furniture) Plus I have to baby proof all of it. I'll deep clean the living room this month. as I will have put so much work into it already. 

March- Make your bed everyday! Ugh. I'm also going to deep clean the master bedroom this month, because it is spring break, and I would like to paint that room. 

April- Create your dream bathroom. This is two bathrooms for me. I don't have much money to spend, so I hope I can sell some stuff I have in the garage to finance this (we are trying to pay down the credit cards.) I will focus on the hall bath, as our master is in pretty good shape. I'll deep clean both bathrooms this month (duh)

May- Winter cloths purge. OK so I basically have no cloths, and as a new mom I doubt that will change any time soon. so I'll do my best with that, but I don't think I'll be getting rid of much. my deep clean this month is cleaning all the closets.

June- Car wash. I'll make sure M's gets done too, I'll add deep clean the Garage here, maybe I'll get my laundry area looking like a room.
July- Shoe purge, over my dead body. Ok ok, I'll look and see what is out of style or needs to be fixed. Deep clean the baby's room, she has some shoes to get rid of.
August-Clean your desk. This is back to school time. I'll be doing good if I don't drop all the good habits I hope to have created this year. I'll be deep cleaning my classroom, and trying to not let the house explode.
September- Summer cloths purge. It's cute that Jolie thinks I'm not still wearing all my summer cloths in September. She must not live in Texas. I'll get rid of things that don't fit here. Dining room deep clean.
October-Kitchen organization, another task that will potentially cost me way too much money. I would really like to to use counter-top paint on the kitchen this month and get rid of my laminate butcher block counters.  Deep clean Kitchen (duh)
November- Pantry/fridge clean out, I feel like I do this every time I go to the store, but I'll do it.  I'm back to deep cleaning the living room. I guess I'll need to if I am putting a tree up soon.

Well I'll be pricing grout brushes the rest of the day.
What are your goals this year?
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Artist Traiding Cards

Its that time of year. Projects are finished up and there are not enough days left to justify starting another project. It's time for Artist Trading Cards.

 They really are cool, the kids like the hook that it is something artists really do (although I never heard of it till I was in my Art Ed classes, so who knows really) and they like that it is small, so they can easily finish at least one, and then take it home when they are done.

I usually have a bad example, and a good example, we talk about how the good example has a background, color, and details, and the bad example is a quick sketch. We also talk about how you want to make your card something that someone would be willing to trade a card they worked hard on for.

If you want to do this all you have to do is cut some card stock into 4x3 inch cards. They also sell pre-made cards, but I have a ton of donated card stock. I like to put out a variety of supplies, so they really feel like they are getting to do something, if I just have them use crayons, they don't get as excited.

My problem comes with the little guys, they start to get into competition with each other, and by about minuet 30 they are rushing to get another every 5 min! That's when class stops, and we have a conversation about how it is not a race, and the person with the most is not going to win, they are just going to have lots of sub par cards on their hands. Nobody will want to trade with that!

I'm glad I had this in my back pocket when everyone finished up projects with a few days till break. We are doing we are doing winter centers after this, If I have time I'll scan my worksheets for you.

How are you using these last few days?
Until Next time
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