Teal Armoire finished & moved in!

This week we got our new piece of furniture moved into our kitchen, HORRAY! My mother and I worked on this piece together. She got it for free on the side of the road about a year ago. It's a huge piece that is nice and sturdy. It was originally an oak color. She then primed it white. Her and I painted it two coats with a teal paint. Then we sanded/distressed the crap out of this thing. Last we stained it with a dark dark dark wood stain. It turned out PERFECT! It only cost me a total of $23.00 for the paint and stain. AMAZING! This piece of furniture has lots of storage and will be used for baby items. Here she is, isn't she lovely?

While I was taking picture of this lovely piece I took some other pictures of our new carpet. Take a peek. I am in the process of redecorating so stay tuned for more updated pictures of the decor. The pictures really do not do the carpet justice. It's soooo shaggy and sooo cozy! But you will get the idea.

On to Baby bump pics

26 weeks

27 weeks

How far along: 27 weeks

Total weight gain: 21 pounds, Guess the Holidays were good to me! 

Maternity clothes: None, just work pants

Stretch marks: I'm getting a few little red lines on my upper leg but I'm lathering on lotion as much as possible

Sleep: good I'm switching side to side more.

Best moment: This week starting on the nursery with Brian

Miss anything: Nope

Movement: Lots. Her head is up by my ribs and her little feet are nice and low dancing on my bladder!

Food cravings: Oranges of course, and salads with Caesar Parmesan vinaigrette dressing. I've also gotten Coke Slurpee's a few times this week. MmMmMm

Queasy or sick: nope

Showing: Oh yes!

Gender: Girl

Labor signs: Nope

Belly button: It's still in and so is my belly button ring

Wedding rings: On

Mood: Happy!!! 

Looking forward to: Getting the Nursery completely painted and moving in the crib and furniture! I think when we do this it will feel even more REAL!

Christmas Crafts!

I forgot to take pictures of ALL the lovely things Brian and I made for our family members this year! One thing, we need to get is a picture of this huge frame thing we made his mom! Hope to get a picture of it soon to show all of you!

Here are some of the little things we got pictures of! We had lots of fun being crafty this past Christmas.

Yummie Oreo Truffles I made for all my Teacher Friends

Here are the Truffles all packaged up and ready to give/eat

Coasters I made out of tiles, scrapbook paper and modge podge. Here is one set. I made a total of 4 different sets.

Scarves made out of soft cozy jersey material with lace. I made a green one and black one.

Just trying it on to see if it looks good. Ignore my no makeup and pj's!

These next are my favorite. They are pictures frames. Made out of wood, knobs and rosettes/buttons. They really turned out adorable. We gave a lot of these to family and included our family pictures from our wedding, so fun!

Gray/Silver with cream buttons

Navy with black polka dot rosette

Light Brown with gray, cream and black rosette

Here is what it looked like with a picture attached!

That's it for now. Stay tuned for our new deep teal kitchen cabinet/pantry piece that is finished and ready for a sneak peak! It looks great. I'm just trying to figure out what fun decor to put on top of the cabinet and what to place on the wall next to the cabinet.

I'm Back!

Holy Smokes, It's been WAY too long since I've posted anything. School started so my life has been consumed with teacher shmeacher stuff and by 26 little 3rd grade monsters! I will say this year has gone great! Besides one of my days last week that was a little nutso. All in one day I had outraged parents come up to school about something rather silly that happened at recess, one of my children was physically restrained and another student brought a weapon to school. ALL in one day! Yup craziest day ever. That was the short quick nice version too! The beginning of school usually wipes me out. Once I get home from school around 5, we cook dinner, watch some tv, and I of course am known for going to bed super grandma early! If I don't get my sleep I'm a crab! :) This is basically my excuse to why I have not been blogging!! I'm going to try and get better!

I have also still had wedding galore surround me! I'm really over this wedding thing. lol. One (mine) was enough for us!! Anyways my bestest friend in the world is getting married so I crafted some gifts for her! Which I am soooo excited for her and her future hubby! I also hosted a shower for her last weekend and those pictures are to come!

Here are some cute girlie bows I made for my dear friend Erin Bassi's baby girl! 

Enjoy!

Crafts-SOON!

Okay so I've literally spent one million hours this weekend blog stalking! I've also been pinning a lot on my boards on www.pinterest.com. Follow me: Jenniferkaylyn.

My brain hurts I have so many ideas, crafts,etc that I NEED TO DO!!! Geeeze. I need to really kick it in gear this week.

Okay so I went to a sale with my mom yesterday. It's jamie's furniture collections called High & Dry. LOVE her stuff. I really hate paying some of her prices because my mom can literally do EVERYTHING she does. But we really love to go for ideas, inspiration,etc. Crossing our fingers that my mom will someday build her own shop on their land in Gardner! Okay so my mom got an adorable wood tray. It was actually a table but the legs got burned off in a fire. So Jamie made it a tray.

I got this huge heavy wood drawer. It is distressed and painted a gray/silvery color. Brian and I are needing wall storage in our master bathroom. So we plan to put our glass apothecary jars (from Crate & Barrel, yay!) in here and hang it on the wall!

Here is an adorable magnetic tray I got. I LOVE the colors and I love this little thing. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. But it inspired me to make my own. I bought a million trays for our wedding and chalked them. They are magnetic. I will be making my own magnets, drilling holes, and putting ribbon on these babies. What an easy gift. My best friends will be getting this for their birthday & wedding shower. Can't wait to do this project. I wish I got the 3 other red trays though because I'm in love.

Lastly, I got this adorable tray. It can be used for so many things. On our dresser to hold jewelry, etc. Or it could be tilted up against a counter of shelf. I could add a clip on it and it could become a great little note tray you can leave notes on. Ohhh the options are endless.

Onto my THRIFT STORE FINDS. I got all of this stuff for $20.00, ALL of it. I get so excited to go to the Thrift stores. I love when they have sales too!

The chair will either be going in my sewing/craft room. Or it will be added to our new dining room farm table and chairs. I like the thought of random chairs. Goal this week-get the dining room table and chairs done so I can pull my jeep into our cleaned garage! Here's some inspiration:

All those candle stick holders are for a project my mom has been dying to do. We will of course paint these little guys and then be adding vintage plates on the top. They will be cute dessert trays & dinner serving trays, or they could hold jewelry like the picture below. Here is some inspiration:

Those 4 magnetic trays I got, two of them are muffin tins will be used to create magnetic signs. I will paint the ugly designed one. I am sure they will be gifts. I am not sure about the muffin tins though. I will still be searching for projects. Here are some inspiration pictures for the magnetic trays:

Ohhh.... I found this for my muffin tins. Pretty cute huh?

Onto my classroom. Oh man Brian is starting to get annoyed that I've been glued to teacher blogs and staying up really and I mean really LATE searching and downloading FREE, did I say FREE templates, lessons, ideas for my classroom!!!! Now I need to start printing them out, sorting them into files, etc. I really need to stop because I just have so many files now that I need to focus on doing something with them.

But here are some ideas that I will be doing in my classroom:
Modge Podge new name magnets for me since it will now be Ms.Shields! Eeekk so fun! (Yes, I'm still going by Ms. because I'm not ready to be called Mrs.) It sounds old. I'm in denial that I'm a grown up.

Make fabric sling bookshelves. Look at this picture. Amazing. Those sling bookshelves are super duper easy to make and I will be showing them off in my classroom this year!

Making math station tubs

Laminate one million things

Make activity sticks for quick brain breaks

Make a new Lesson Planner Notebook

Make a new Substitute Notebook

Get new tubs for my reading corner

Back to school postcards for our 3rd graders

Back to school goodies for the kiddos

New classroom jobs

Decide on the official layout of my classroom, cause this girl needs a change!

Information packet parents

FIND Cubbies for my classroom. Any suggestions? Of course something free or diy would be more my style! :)

I really could sit here and go on and on and on and on on the ONE million things I need to do for my classroom. I though this was suppose to get easier each year? Well in my case I have way to many new ideas flowing that I think it's going to be a slight bit harder.

Off I go..... I wish I could say that I will be working on one of these projects today but..... I have to go cut music and choreograph a routine for tomorrow. BOOOO!! I mean I love dance but I'm not quite ready for it to start up again!! What a busy time of the year it is going to be!! Where did summer go? Oh yeah I got married and left the country for the whole month of June & then moved, cleaned, fixed up and consolidated houses with my amazing husband in July. Time flies!

Love Burlap & Love Cleaning!

My mama came over last night and we fixed my sewing machine,hooray!! My sewing machine was back in action. I first made a burlap pillow. Some of you know my father is in the coffee business & has been asking his warehouses to keep all of the extra burlap bags! Each burlap bag ranges to hold 132.276-154.322lbs. of coffee. (BAM) I remembered this from working for him my whole life.  We also used TONS of these burlap bags for our wedding & then recently my sister in law Laurel started up an Etsy shop that uses all the coffee bags in various ways. She is so creative & I just love her work. She did lots of amazing crafts for our wedding. We love you La! Here is her Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/LaurelHanson?ref=pr_shop_more

Back to my burlap pillow. I'm slightly obsessed with burlap. I cut out the burlap, pinned and started sewing. Because of the burlap bag I actually only had to sew two sides. I sewed one and half of another side with the sewing machine. I then turned the pillow right side out. Then my mom and I Jam/Crammed my pillow inside of the burlap. Then my crafty mama showed me how to do an invisible stitch. This little pillow took me maybe 7 minutes, okay okay maybe 10 minutes since we had to pin lots!

Ta da!

I love how it turned out. I will be making more don't worry. I also just love the wording on the pillows so fun! 

Next Project.....

Brian and I wanted something new to hang outside by our front door. He invisioned something with our last name on it! 

I of course immediately thought....burlap! I found an old canvas that my sister in law used to practice making me a painting for my classroom. I'm glad I kept this canvas because usually I throw everything away.

This canvas roughly measures 16 x24 but any size canvas will do

Cut out any fabric you would like to use. Leave 2 inches on each side so that you can tuck it and staple it to the back when we are finished. 

I then wanted to create a color contrast and a rough vintage look. I decided that I was going to use a piece of muslin to go on top of the burlap. The muslin I cut into a rectangle. Roughly a 6 x20 section. I doubled this up too since this muslin was soo thin. This is left over material from our wedding. We had tons of muslin at our wedding, muslin is my second favorite material right now! 

Now I needed to iron my fabric out. I called my mom and asked her if I could iron burlap. She said ehhh probably not I think it's highly flammable! hehe. It's not, I ironed it. I did place a towel and fabric over it so that I did not come in direct contact with the iron as she recommended to do. But I did try the iron directly on the burlap and it didn't do anything! I took precaution just in case!

Next step pin the muslin to the burlap wherever it is that you like it. I tucked under the 2 inch border when I did this so that I did not pin it in the wrong place. 

Sewing time: I left my edges of my muslin out because I wanted the raw look! I sewed the entire piece of muslin to my burlap.

Stencil time. I got out my dark gray paint and stencils. I carefully, carefully, carefully stenciled these words. Of course if you look close you can see all the tiny imperfections, but hey that's okay!!! I'm not perfect! It gives it uniqueness right!

I then realized there was too big of a place space after Shields. I of course thought of burlap roses. I made 3 of them and place some extra burlap behind them to look like a little leaf attached to the flower. This rose I folded the burlap in half and just rolled it up like a cinnamon roll! ha! Seriously, I did! I then hot glued along the way. 

Hot glue the burlap roses on the muslin.

Next step: No picture- I used a staple gun and stapled the material to the back. I tried to make it look nice by folding it under in the back and then stapling. I actually lined the white canvas with a gray fabric because you could see through the burlap. You don't have to do this but I did since I had stuff on my white canvas. 

I added a muslin ribbon I got from one of our wedding presents to the back. Shout out to the Bassi's! :) I also used a staple gun to staple the ribbon on the back.

Here it is! How cute! It's by NO means perfect but we love it! 

As for Cleaning.....

I LOVE cleaning too! Mr.Shields has decided to take on a HUGE task. REORGANIZING OUR KITCHEN now that we have made the consolidation! Here are some pics of him in action. I can't wait. I get my own baking cabinet! So exciting! I will be baking soon. Mr. Shields is trying to decide on whoopie pies or chocolate pudding chip cookies! Yum Yum Yum!