My 2014-2015 Chevron Teacher Lesson Planner

On my education blog, The Learning Effect, I wrote a post about my 2014-2015 lesson planner.

To see the rest of the pictures and the full post, please visit The Learning Effect!

The Handiwork of My Father

At the beginning of August I was in Pennsylvania visiting family. I stayed with my father and stepmother for part of the trip. My father is pretty creative and can pretty much create anything out of anything. He never ceases to amaze me. I had to take pictures of his handiwork while I was in to share.

The wooden box above the old soda machine is to house a TV for outside use.

Pool house

This is by far my favorite. The bar stools were purchased off of Craigslist. The base of the table is an old tin house roof. The table is on wheels so it's easy to move around, if needed.

Bridge over the creek {this is where I married last summer}

Log bench

Pretty cool stuff, huh? Be back tomorrow with some technology tips!

DIY Project: Table Skirt - Part 2

Last week I posted part 1 of my table skirt DIY project.

Yesterday I continued the project and finished one side of the table. Here are the steps I took to complete it.

First I ironed the piece of fabric, removing the wrinkles. I used the steam setting to remove most of them.

I used Dritz Stitch Witchery Fusible Bonding Web to hem the sides and top of the fabric.

The directions on the packaging of the bonding web says to use a damp pressing pad and let the iron steam on the fabric for 30 seconds. It was super easy to do and worked perfectly without having to re-do anything.

After hemming 3 of the sides, I added Velcro Fabric Fusion Tape to the top of the fabric that would be attached to the top of the table. In order to cut costs and save on materials, I only attached 3 strips to the fabric.

Attaching the Velcro Fabric Fusion strips was super simple - 90 seconds of back and forth motion of the iron on the opposite side of the Velcro strip. That's it!

I ended up buying a roll of Velcro Sticky-Back Hook and Loop Fastener Tape as well to attach to the table. The Velcro Fabric Fusion tape wouldn't work on the table - so I went with the regular sticky back.

I attached the finished fabric skirt to the side of the table.

I went with Velcro to attach the fabric to the table so that I can remove the fabric if I need to. It took me about a hour to get this one piece done. I don't expect it to take me that long for each of the next pieces, but who knows. So far I'm loving the one piece I have up though. It makes such a difference.

DIY Project: Table Skirt - Part 1

A few weeks ago I showed you my "new office". My desk is a kitchen table and we use it for storage underneath. I'm not really a big fan of the way it looks, so I decided that I wanted to make a table skirt to go around the sides. I'm going to use velcro so that it can be taken off, if needed, to get/see underneath.

I got the idea from Craft-O-Maniac.

Source: craftomaniac.blogspot.com via Tiffany on Pinterest

Because of my lack of housekeeping skills, I didn't own an ironing board (but had the iron), so I had to go out and purchase one. I had never purchased fabric before, so I had no idea where to go. This has been a project in the making for over a month now, and only did I even start this project last week.

I bought the fabric from Hobby Lobby. It was my first time ever in one and I was in heaven. What an amazing store. Here's the fabric I picked out:

I started out by measuring the sides of the table. I'm only doing 3 sides (not worrying about the one against the wall), but splitting the longest side (where my chair is) in half. After I had the measurements, I measured and marked the lengths on the fabric. (I bought 3 yards, which happened to be just enough.) I added 4 inches onto the length so that I could hem the sides as well.

Ignore the clips. I thought it was going to make it easier to find where I marked, but it really didn't make anything easier. I used a pencil to mark where to cut and did so on both ends so I could easily fold the fabric in half and know where to cut.

After measuring/marking everything all out, I folded the fabric in half at the cutting points and used clips to hold the fabric in place so I didn't lose my spot.

After clipping off my ends and middle, I ironed along the crease to make it easier to a semi-straight (as best as I could) line. This was definitely a brilliant idea.

I then cut each section down the crease and repeated until all 4 sections were cut out. That's where I stopped for now. This all took me almost an hour to do. I'm challenged when it comes to using an iron/sewing. lol

I plan on continuing the project this week, and will post more as I continue. Up next: ironing each piece (I tried this last week, but the wrinkles wouldn't disappear - perhaps adding water to the iron and steaming may help??), hemming the sides, adding velcro, and attaching to the table. This will all probably come in parts...not all at once. =]

October Project: DIY Paper Pockets

Love this post and want to see more like it? Each month through 2012 I will be tackling different topics and creating free printables to go along with the project. View the projects here.

On Monday I announced that I'm going to be tackling a month long paper and digital clutter project.

Yesterday I took the time to update a project I completed back in August. I absolutely love my magnetic recipe holder that is on my fridge. The only problem: it wasn't durable enough for weekly use. I decided to try something that I really thought wasn't going to work, but luckily it did. =]

Here are the old recipe pockets:

And here's how I created the new ones...

I made the larger one first to see if I could even get it to work. So I didn't take pictures of the process of making this particular one.

Step 1: pick out coordinating paper.

Step 2: mark the exact size of your largest recipe (in this case, the pocket I'm making is for the small, 4x6 cards) on the back of the paper. (Yes, this recipe is for real. My step-mom gave me a bunch of easy, common-sense recipes a couple years ago. They're not common sense to me, even now. I struggle in the kitchen. lol)

Step 3: take a piece of card stock (or any other paper really, but card stock will be durable) and line it up under the colored paper you're using. I found it's easier if you cut them together. This ensures the same measurements all the way around on both. My paper cutter = best investment ever, especially when it comes to clipping the hundreds of coupons I print ever month (no joke).

Step 4: cut about an inch larger than where you drew your lines on both sides. This allows you to get your recipes in and out of the pockets without a lot of problems. If you trim the exact size and laminate, then it will be too tight to fit your recipes in.

Step 5: take the recipe card again and line it up on the card stock so that some of it is above the card stock (see the picture below). You can have your card stick out as much or as little as you want. Mark the bottom of the card stock only and cut the bottom portion off (don't do this on the colored paper).

Step 6: take the card stock and line it up with the colored paper. Fold the excess portion of the color paper over the card stock. This creates a pocket to hold your recipe in so it doesn't puncture through the laminate. Once the flap is folded over, your pocket should all be the same size all the way around. I used double sided tape to stick my flap down, but you can use glue or whatever else you want.

Step 7: take a laminating sheet and line up your paper at the very edge. You want your opening to be at the edge so it doesn't get laminated shut, but not over the edge so that you have paper hanging out.

Step 8: send it through the laminator.

Step 9: trim the extra laminate off. I left about a half inch around the edge so that it wasn't trimmed too close.

Step 10: When you trim, it makes a sharp corner, which I don't really care for. So I used my edge rounding punch to take care of that problem. If you want to do this step, then that's another reason to leave an edge around the pocket when you cut off the extra laminate. If you cut too close and then edge the corners, you may puncture the paper and then the laminate won't be over the corners.

Step 11: test to make sure you can still get your recipes in and out.

Step 12: attached the smaller pocket to the larger one. I used double sided tape. You can use whatever you want, of course.

Step 13: label the pocket. I was going to use scrapbook letter stickers, but I didn't have enough "e"s in my white letters. I used my Cricut Expression machine to cut vinyl letters out. I cut them at 1".

The cartridge I used was Lyrical Letters.

Step 14: add magnets to the back of the pockets.

Step 15: hang it up!

I'm sure there are plenty of ways to use these pockets around the house. I'm just getting started. When I come up with more ideas, I'll let ya know.

Enjoy your Wednesday!

where i'm linking up this post