DIYs with a freebie!

How can it be July already? What happened to June? I've been too busy to keep up with my own self lately but I wanted to share with you what projects I have completed. (This post has lots of pictures and a freebie!)

First up, is my book boxes. Remember these from my Ikea trip? Well they got a make-over!

I needed them to be more colorful without being too busy, so I spray painted them to match the colors in my room. The colors I used are Berry Frost, Exotic Sea, Everglade Glen and I finished with a sealer. I picked up all of these from Lowes. To paint the boxes, I laid them flat on a sheet like in the pic below and sprayed one side at a time, then flipped it over when it was dry and sprayed the other side.

You can see from this picture that I wasn't all the way finished when I took this. I was chased away from this project by a bunch of bees! I guess they thought my boxes were big, bright flowers. Once I finished with the spray painting all that was left to do was fold the boxes together which was very easy. My six year old helped me with all the folding :)

Fold... 

Fold...

Tuck.

 then repeat 24 more times and you end up with...

All that I have left to do now is add some labels. Aside from the bees and 95+ degree weather, it was a fun project!

Between the boxes and my the next project my family took a week long trip to see my BFF Rebecca in Virginia. We taught together for a few years and our kids are the same age so we bonded instantly when we met and I love her like a sister! Here we are at the beach!

We even had a fun girls night with shopping, dinner, and Magic Mike!

When I came home, I tackled my latest pinterest project. I was inspired by this pin from Mrs. Rojas over at Create Teach Share. She has great tutorial and a you can download her labels (wish I would have found her labels before I spent so much time making my own).

Here's my box! I spray painted it with the Berry Frost that I used on the book boxes. Then I printed the labels, cut them out, and stuck them on with some double sided tape. Very quick and easy! Now I'm fighting the urge to run to the store and buy supplies to fill up each drawer! -->Side note-our stores already have the back to school aisles all filled up!

 

If you want to use my labels, click the picture to get them. The labels are typed on the background, so there's no need for cardstock or colored paper.

I hope you can use this! If you have any questions about either of these projects, feel free to ask!
Click here to see what everyone else is making :)

Sophia

Winner!!! (a little late, I'll explain below)

The winner of the planner from April over @ A Modern Teacher is .... Amber!
Congrats, Amber! I hope you enjoy it and get a lot of use from it. Thank you, April for giving away the planner!

***Note: I originally wrote the above post last Sunday, but realized today that I never hit "Publish". At least I emailed Amber the planner before I announced the winner :P I'm sorry everyone! I was caught up in printing and binding my own copy of the planner that night.***

I've been super busy this week trying to get some summer purging done around the house so I won't feel guilty when I spend the weekend spray painting (classroom project!) I'm crossing my fingers that it turns out okay in this humidity. Speaking of humidity, I cut about 8 inches of hair off yesterday due to the pile of frizz that had taken over my head. TN humidity is awful and the bad news is that it only gets worse. :(
Who else fights humidity all summer? It has to be worse further south...

Meanwhile, my last blog post had 447 views in less than a week. That about blew my socks off when I saw that! And I'm over 75 followers! WOW! I love my followers and all of your comments! I get so excited when my email chimes telling me I have a new email on my gmail account!

*****Sorry for the rambling- my ADD has kicked into high gear tonight! LOL! I promise to have a more organized post next time :)
 Have a great Friday!

Sophia

Binder Freebie!

 My DIBELS binder is now a freebie! You can get your 8 page sample of the Binder cover and Dividers here. (when you click the link, the preview will not show up because the file is too large, but it will still download)

 If you can use this freebie, leave a comment or consider becoming a follower so you don't miss future freebies!
You can grab other great freebies from great bloggers by clicking here

Have a great Friday, everyone!

First Giveaway! and DIBELS Binder

I'm so excited to tell you about my first give away! April over at The Modern Teacher has agreed to give away one of her Teacher Planners to one of my followers! All you have to do is follow her Teachers Pay Teachers Store and her Blog, then leave a comment telling me you follow all three (my blog, her blog, and her TpT store). The winner be chosen on Saturday afternoon. Let the fun begin!

*Note this give away is over but you can still grab this planner, some coordinating labels, and notebook/binder dividers at April's TpT store*

   

 One of the planners you could win! She'll even personalize the cover for you!

Thanks, April for making this so cute and so fun!

Have you seen all of the Binder Organization going on in blogland and on Pinterest?

I'm itching to get my Binders ready and decided to start with my DIBELs binder. Our Academic Coach gave us a binder to use for administering the DIBELs assessment and I like how she had it separated by assessment types and types of progress monitoring. I decided to spruce up the binder cover and add some page dividers. Maybe having a cute binder will help make doing the assessment little more enjoyable. Here's a sneak peak at the cover and dividers.

 

Is this something you would use?  I think it would be great for any K-2 teacher who administers  DIBELs. Let me know what you think!

Sophia

My first giveaway and IKEA fun

I jumped on real quick to share about my Ikea adventure and find that I have over 50 followers now!!!!!! Doing my happy dance! I love my followers so it's time for my first giveaway! I'll be back later today to post about it (I have a few details to work out...) So check back later!


Yesterday my mom, my sister, and I all made a one day road trip to Atlanta to hit Ikea. We left at 5:00am and made it there right after the store opened at 10:00. All I can say about the experience is "WOW!" There was so much stuff to see! It's amazing what they have there and me being the teacher I am, I could only see how much potential everything had for my classroom. What teacher doesn't do that?

My first find of the day was the super cute Leaf Canopy!

I had to have 3 of them. I'm picturing these in the corner with bean bags and pillows under them. It will be an awesome reading area! Even I want to sit under there and read a good book!

My next find was a steal! How many of us have done this to use as book boxes or to hold journals?

I thought this was a simple solution one year, but I really wanted all of the boxes to match, which would be a huge project in itself by doing all of the cutting and gluing to cover the boxes.
Ikea solved that problem for me! They sell a pack of 5 magazine holders for $1.99!

So I bought 25 magazine holders for $10!!! You can't buy 25 boxes of cereal that cheap! These will get a makeover somehow...looks like I'll be hitting Pinterest for some ideas for how to make these pop:)

My splurge of the day was this beautiful table!

Right now it's sitting in it's box in the garage while I decide if I want to put it in my house or my classroom. It has a large drawer that slides out in the front so it could be a cute desk IF I decided to use it in my classroom. It's small so it wouldn't collect a mountain of paperwork on it. But it would also be soooo pretty in my bedroom as a dressing table... Decisions, decisions :)

Sophia