Classroom Mini Posters

Here are some posters I made for my classroom. I wanted some of these posters from a teacher supply magazine but refused to  pay the price. 

Classroom Signs & New Puppies!

Okay here are 2 signs I worked on tonight. The first one was a free printable I found on a blog. I cannot seem to find the blog to give it credit, so if anyone knows let me know! All I did was cute out the letters, glued buttons on the top and magnets on the back. The little buses in between are my fav. So cute.
This project cost me: $1.85. All I had to purchase was the magnets. I had all the other materials.

Next sign I made is a banner. I of course had to incorporate burlap because I'm still obsessed. I cute out squares of burlap and used twine to attach it. I was going to sew the twine on but the twine I used was rather thick so I just hot glued everything on the back and folded part of the material over  so that the twine was nice and secured. As for the letters. They were $0.99 for 2 at Hobby Lobby. I then found one piece of 12 x 12 scrap book paper that I liked. I modge podge the paper on the letters. Then I used an exact knife to cute out the paper. I then put another layer of modge podge on top of the paper. I then hot glued the letters on the burlap. This project cost me just under $4.00. A little more expensive then I normally would spend, but hey that's okay. I will have this banner forever and ever since I'm now forever a Shields!!!!!! :)

Oh yes I also organized new school files on my computer today. Things are slowly slowly getting done. 

We got new DOGS. Not 1 but 2! They are 2 huskies. Okay, okay we are not the owners. We are fostering them. So we have a total of 5 ENORMOUS dogs at our house. Okay okay it's not really fostering either but Brian wants to call it that because we used to be foster parents. But we are watching the dogs for our dear friend Dustin. We should have them for a few weeks!! Meet Big Denver & sweet little Aspen girl!

Blog Shout Out & Classroom Fun!

Alright everyone, I've really been inspired this past weekend. I stumbled across this blog, an amazing one might I add. To top it off, she is a teacher! This teacher has it all. Holy cow, I am so incredibly jealous of her and the million zillion adorable documents, activities, and things she has created for her classroom. Her name is Miss Megan Farley. I actually emailed her to see if she could resend me an adorable substitute document. I really didn't think she would respond. Because lets get real, it's almost back to school time and teachers are cramming to get things done for their classroom. Well boy was I wrong, she emailed me back asap with the attached file and she created this chic vintage lesson plan binder cover that has my name on it as a bonus! I of course couldn't stop smiling when she emailed me back! Ugh.... I'm still drooling over these 2 documents. I cannot wait to put the binders together and show you how adorable my desk is going to look with them sitting on it! 

Megan also gave me a few pointers on how to create adorable documents just like her. Meg thanks for sharing, you've inspired me and I've already started creating. It by no means is fancy shmancy yet but I'm on my way. I am sure I will spend oddles amount of time creating and making fun things for my classroom. Everyone please go check out Megan's blog so you can too see all the outstanding and utterly amazing things she's done for her classroom. Thanks again Meg I will forever be a blog follower of yours!!

Click Here: Oh Boy 3rd Grade!

Below is a quick document I just threw together in 2 minutes. I call it the giving tree. This is a way for me to ask for donations of some of the supplies I know we will need throughout the year. I sit this list out during Back to School Night. I place cute post its next to it so the parents can write it on a post it and take it home. An easy reminder so that they will remember to bring it in. Last year I did this and it was great. I had lots of parents want to bring items which was surprising considering the area in which I teach. I did try this again half way through the year and I only had one parent bring stuff in. So I think it's great that I got such participation at the beginning of the year. I will for sure be doing this again. I know there are more great items I need but I can't think of them now. What other items do you think would be great to ask for? 

Just wanted to share one of my creations. Back to creating I go.....

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!