Monday Made-It - Birthday Cupcakes and an Awesome Piano!

Made-It #1

 

 

Aren't these cute?

 

I'm glad you think so...

 

...because getting to this final product was a nightmare!

 

You know when you have a "great idea" but then you get started and that great idea transforms...many times. I'm not going to go into details, but I will admit that I spent about 2 hours total getting to this point and it took a friend of mine (thanks Sara!) to give me the idea to line them up in this straight line.

 

Go ahead...laugh and make fun of me (Kristi).

 

I will admit that I am--hmmm--particular about things. I had seen the cupcakes with candles for birthdays on Pinterest. I thought it would be pretty cool to somehow make them 3-D -- easier thought than done.

 

Anyway, I'm going to tell you how to make these cool cupcakes and save you the headache (and trial and error) that I had after messing with them.

 

First, get the corrugated border that has been hiding in your cabinet or closet from back when it was cool. Then cut it the length you want to make the bottom of your cupcakes. Hold in place and staple to your bulletin board. Next fluff and stuff tissue paper in the top. Finally, add glittery "fire-looking" poms to craft sticks (mine are small because I wanted colored and my jumbos were plain - I think jumbos would be easier to see...). Write your kiddos' names and birthdays on the sticks. Use a tiny bit of hot glue to hold them in place. Add the month labels--I'm sure you could make your labels cuter but I was DONE by this point in my experiment. Ha!

 

Easy peasy...well, for you anyway because you get to benefit from my OCD ways! :-)

 

Made-It #2

 

Check out this piano!

 

I tell you, my kids are such a blessing to me! They are always willing to help me in my classroom. My 13-year-old son made this awesome piano and put together this bulletin board. We are planning to add some black Mustangs (that is our school mascot) to finish it off.

 

Why am I decorating a music bulletin board? Well, I told you I'd explain later so I guess this is it...

 

My new job is at a very small  K-2 school. The specials teacher--she taught music, PE, art, and technology--retired and the district decided not to fill her position so the classroom teachers are each taking a "special."

 

The K teacher is also teaching PE.

The 1st grade teacher is also teaching Art/Technology.

The 2nd grade teacher (me) is also teaching Music.

 

We will have one hour a day where we rotate the classes through the specials (20 minutes each).

 

No, I do not play piano nor do I consider myself all that musical, but I can push play on a CD player and the school does have a music curriculum for me to use. It's going to be a learning experience, but I am going to try my best! I made the principal promise that I wouldn't get fired over my music teaching - HA!

 

My son has played piano since he was in the first grade. He loves music AND he loves to organize. While I worked in my 2nd grade classroom, I was able to send him over to the music room to organize and tidy up. He was perfectly happy to do so because it meant he could stop and play on the Clavinova every so often. :-)

 

My daughter was also helping during this time. She did another bulletin board, passed out all my books, and labeled almost everything.

 

Like I said I really do have the best kids!

 

Oh, and the winner is...

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Congrats, Jennifer! I'll be e-mailing you shortly. :-) 

 

Head on over to link up your Monday Made-It (or to check out all the other cool projects)!

 

 

 

 

Monday Made-It Linky and a Horse, Of Course! :-)

I've been inspired by all you crafty people linking up for Monday Made-It with 4th Grade Frolics so I decided to get busy and link up. I have been working on a few things this week for my classroom.

Here we go:

1. Football themed behavior clipchart (my classroom theme is sports):

Before - Clips only went down...

After - Clips will go up and down...still a little nervous about this, but I'm going for it! Sorry the pics aren't clearer. Some days my camera works great and other days not so much. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the operator. Ha! I just found some cute football ribbon to use to hang it! Hooray!

Everyone starts here - Cute sports kids are from Scrappin' Doodles and borders from Clipart by Carrie.

 2. Baseball themed job clipchart

Before

After - I'm freeing up bulletin board space because I know I'll need it if I start Daily 5! I got the idea of making it into a clip chart from April at Wolfelicious. I just found some cute baseball ribbon to hang it with! Yeah!

Again cute sports kids are from Scrappin' Doodles and borders from Clipart by Carrie. All my jobs titles end in manager. The General Manager is my special helper for the week.

I've included both of these items and the sports birthday badges found here in a Mini Theme Pack on TPT. Click here to grab them! Hope to add pictures of these HANGING in my room soon!

This next one may be cheating a bit because technically my son made them, but I have enjoyed them! Here's the Pinterest motivation:

Lemon Melting Moments

And here is our version...

Yum-O! My son felt the extra frosting needed to go on top. Ha ha! If we make them again, I'd just frost each cookie individually and not make into a sandwich cookie or make the cookies smaller. This was huge! :-)

What else is keeping us busy? A horse, of course! My daughter has had a love for horses since she was 3 years old - and not because we have horses. Apparently, she is a natural with them too (according to people who know about horses). We have found opportunities for her to ride them, learn about them and how to care for them. Over the years, we've had people offer to give her a horse and we always said, "No!" Finally, in January we decided we should at least pray about the latest offer...Saturday she became the proud owner of Dusty Doc Jack (Cosmo is what he goes by - not sure where the nickname came from). He is a 26 year old, gentle giant.

That's me and Cosmo.

Harley and Cosmo - after saddling him by ourselves for the first time. All I can say is thank the Lord he is a patient horse! If he were shorter or she was taller, she could do it by herself and be fine. My husband and I are the ones who need practice!

Hey, did you notice anything special about our followers? We hit 50!! Woohoo! We're working on the giveaway and it is going to be great!

Oh, and think of Kristi...Last I heard her flight had been delayed for three hours, possibly overnight. I texted her this AM and no response so I hope that means she made it home and is sleeping!

Crystal

Birthday Freebie

How many of you have seen this on Pinterest?

I realize I am probably late for the party, but I am doing this for next year! I have used a birthday bulletin board the last two years and stapled "birthday bags" to it at the beginning of the year. That worked fine, but I would really like to have that bulletin board for something else!

So I have been playing around creating the toppers for my pixy-stix. By the way, where can you find the big pixy-stix? I came up with these...yours for the taking. I made a smaller version (12 per page) and a larger version (9 per page) in two different styles. Both styles of circle borders are from Graphics From the Pond.

Large version - click here.

Small version - click here.

Here's what mine look like (to go with my sports theme):

I'd love to share these too, but I got the sports kids from Scrappin' Doodles and I don't have the license to share yet. Does anyone else think that is weird? Why is it okay to sell things we make, but we need a license to give them away?

Happy Monday!

Crystal