Everyone loves "pretty" things!

So I'm sitting at my computer convincing my family that I'm hard at work, organizing and creating my folder for school. This year has to start smoothly mainly because it is the start of having 2 children in "full" schooling (last year Noah was only schooled when convenient with simple PreK lessons) but also because we have spent LOTS *sigh* of money on this full-blown, in-depth, curriculum. So I have been working very hard at preparing for the start of school this coming up Monday. But there has to be ways for Mama to enjoy all of this work, right?!? So instead of just a simple black and white calendar in a binder this year, Pinterest inspired me to shoot for more! A "pretty" calendar and lesson plans in a binder. *Yes, it doesn't take much to please me! Just some color ink and a few generous bloggers with free printables!*

So I will share my binder as many teacher friends do. This is just the home-teacher version!

First is my calendar, I fell in love with all the cute calendars on pinterest but a lot of the links were leading to blogs that were from past years and I needed a current calendar I finally found this one at fun-in-first blogspot calendars

Isn't it precious?!?! Each month has a kid at the top that is season/monthly themed.

For lesson plans I used these. Donna Young's Lesson Planner for TWO last year and they seemed to work well so I just made copies for a blank I kept as my original last year

But like I said before everyone likes "pretty" things so let's make it a little easier on the eye.












Here's what I came up with just from shrinking down the lesson plan form a little and laying it over the top of this freebie

 crab apple designs

This is my end result... Sorry I really wanted to have a pdf file so anyone could use it but I'm sure you can figure out how to create it like I did, faster than I can figure out how to put it on here!!!
Now won't I be much more productive since my lesson plans are pretty!  LOL! And I complain about not having enough time in the day to do all I need to accomplish *sigh*!!

Valentine Tutorial?! I THINK!!! LOL!

Since after Christmas I have been doing lots of research for ideas for decorating, party foods, valentine hand-outs, crafts, worksheets for school, all things valentine to prepare for our big day. My hubby plans to take off work to make it a family fun day and I can't wait to put all my preparing into action. I came across a picture of a mantle that had a picture over it that said "We love because He first loved us" at this website:  tatertotsandjello. I thought I just have to use this on something in my Valentine decor/day. So after awhile of tinkering with it. This is what I got and knowing that surely there are more people out there that would love to but don't know all the tricks of doing something like this with just your normal WORD software, I thought I would share a somewhat tutorial of how I did it. (sorry I don't have pics, but I am short on time)

If you click on this and zoom in you will see that there is more than just the english language on here. 

STEP ONE: I took the verses from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a and typed them once in one of my favorite fonts in a new word document. I selected and copied the verses. Of course you could use any phrase/word/or bible verse you like.  

STEP TWO: Then I opened my internet explorer and went to Google Translate. You'll see when first pull up google translate that there is a box to the left. Right click in that box and paste your selection. Above the box there is a place where it says TO: as in what language to translate it to. If you click this little box it will show a list of tons of languages that you can choose from. Select the language you prefer. In the box to the right you will see where your text was translated! Select and copy this text.

STEP THREE: Back at your word document under your english version of your text right click and paste your translated version into your text. Do this as many times with as many different languages as you like.

STEP FOUR: After you have all your text in place if you select it you can change the font size to fit whatever you like for your project. I wanted to put a good number of languages on one page so I chose to set mine at 14.  You can also change the font color to set your liking.

STEP FIVE: Select your writing. Click copy. In Paste click PASTE SPECIAL. Select the option to paste as a picture. Once the "picture" has pasted if you right click on it you can "save as" and choose to save the writing as a jpg on your computer for later use. (I will say check for any typos if you're going with an all english text and make sure it's in the color and font you want. You WILL NOT be able to change all this once you've saved it as a picture.) Delete everything your seperate text from before that is not the "picture" from your document. That's it. There's your background

STEP SIX:

To keep from deleting your background pic document, create a new word document.

To make the front "picture" it does take some tinkering. If you just type in at a 72 font or more on a page you'll get spacing between each line of text that's huge. I wanted all mine to be closer together so that's the reasoning for doing it this way. I'll give you the jest of what I did and you can play with it from there. Here are the key things.

a. Draw a text box and fill it with your choice of text, color, font, size.

b. In every different version of word it will label it different, mine says drawing tools format. In that I changed the shape fill to "no fill" and the shape outline to "no outline." With this done to make it easier on yourself just copy your box and paste it then delete the words in it and type in your next text. (let me ellaborate. First I typed We Love, then after pasting another box I typed because, and so forth) This way you don't have to format the fill color and outline on every box. Got it?! Good, moving forward.

c.  Place your boxes as you like. I overlapped mine a little. Like I said I wanted the lines to be close together. 

d. Now you can do just as before in step five and save as a picture.

Top "picture" done.

To make it easiest on myself, since I am still learning too, and because I had created two seperate documents, I sent my cardstock (you could use photo paper) through the printer with the background printing first. Then sent it back through printing the top picture.

VOILA!

Not too bad right?!?! Hope this gives someone some information they didn't know before.

I went back and scanned my finished printing and saved the entire project as a picture. I plan to use this to decorate as a picture once I frame it, to put it as a covering on a bucket I will use as a flower vase, and also in smaller format as the front of cards I am sending out as valentines. And...I just had a great idea of how wonderful it would be to make notes in specific languages to send to missionaries that my children learn about at church. Using google translate the possibilities are endless!

I will try to post pics of all that later! 

Another upcycle!

So as you know the craftiness is pouring out of me right now and while the jucies are flowing I have to act on it. The dishes and laundry can wait!
I have stored this frame and (sorry brain freeze) whatever these plastic pieces are called for I won't admit how many years waiting for something to use them for.

So my idea was for a jewelry organizer and I still had the paint out from yesterday's upcylce project so I painted the frame, took out all its insides including glass and cut the plastic to size. With this frame the plastic stays off the wall just enough to hook in my earrings so all I did was add the plastic in just like you would a picture and folded down the little metal prongs to hold it in place.

I decided while I had the paint out and with knowing I have tons of earrings to do two more smaller frames. With the way these are made the prongs wouldn't have held the plastic far enough off the wall, so I hot glued the needle point canvas (called my mama mid blog to find correct name!) to the outside of the frame and covered my mess of hot glue with some matching rick-rack. Here's the result!

Then again while the paint was out I decided to use an old jewelry box that I wasn't using for jewelry because I have way to much to fit in one box. Here's what it now looks like. The front is just glued on scrapbook paper (wonder if my friend Jennifer recognizes it?).

I'm using it for my makeup!

(still haven't figured out how to make the flash on my camera not drown out the color, it's really a pretty turquoise color!)

Upcycling a chest of drawers!

I have always liked taking old things and giving them a fresh look and with my newest addiction of pinterest feeding my hunger of everything crafty I was eager when Mama asked me if I wanted an old dresser. She really had no use for it but was going to have to drag upstairs. Mama gets rid of no storage type furniture knowing we all end up asking her for pieces when we remodel/redo/add to our families/etc. Long story short I came home with what others call a chest of drawers but to me they're all dressers for 0 dollars. Since my aunt is a professional painter I just dropped by her house and "borrowed" a few quarts of turqouiseish paint (thanks Da-Da)
Taking that into the equation makes this "dresser" completely FREE!!!

Here it is, I didn't think to take pics until I had already sanded and took out drawers and taken off pulls. I was eager to get started.

Painting starts... Sorry I didn't take pics of that process :(
After seeing some pieces similar to this online that looked distressed and somewhat white-washed I had really wanted that look, but after my kids asked to help I ended up doing two coats just to cover their dripping of paint and all over the place brush strokes.
Also I thought about spray painting the pulls but that would've taken a trip to the store and money for paint. So to keep it totally free I left them as is and I think it was a good call.

Just a fyi, for anyone that has ever read "do the stripes, it's so easy" PLEASE for your sake, try the stripes but don't think they're easy. Well, maybe easy, but also VERY time consuming. But now that it's done I'm glad I did them. LOVE IT!