Projects: School and Porch!

Today was a day for accomplishing projects at the Thompson house! I cleaned out and reorganized all the school stuff for the next school year starting in July! We officially finished our 180 days, though Katie still has a few math things to do during her "break" (probably get that done next week). Here are the newly organized shelves and my favorite portable cart in our bedroom....

We finally replaced our ink cartridges so I got busy on the printing bandwagon today as well. I cleaned out and stored all our 2009/10 grades and records, and made my nice new shiny notebook for this next year....


I have heard of and browsed the Donna Young website in the past, but I actually went through and printed several forms to use this year for the first time..including a very nice grading record sheet. I have two students to keep grades on this year, so I gotta get ahead of the game on organizing the info.


Some up close shots of the shelves...because I am a dork and I am so proud of the work I got done today! ha ha.

Top left shelf has my organizer and our Bible/character ed. materials. I kind of slacked on the character ed. this year and I could tell a difference. We will just pick and choose from this shelf daily (that's the plan anyway). The box that has the Beginner Bible pictures actually has a bunch of cards inside. Each one has a Bible symbol or word with info about it and some of them have stories as well.

Middle left has our Reading, Language, Spelling, and Handwriting stuff. I have each of their sets of readers in the magazine holders, and a bin in the middle for games and activities. It's all Abeka for these subjects.

This shelf has our Math stuff on it. Math-U-See has been awesome so far! I have Alpha and Beta, and if Katie finishes Beta before the end of the year we can go ahead and order the next level. Right now we have about five more lessons to finish for her in Alpha and Noah is about a third of the way through Alpha. That tissue box actually has oversized coins that we use for practicing our money counting.


Middle right shelf: Art. We kind of slacked off on art throughout this year so we still have stuff to use this year also. I will put our music on this shelf too. We are going to start the Alfred's Basic Piano Course. The Music for Little Mozarts set I bought for last year turned out to be way too "preschool-y" for them.

Last but not least: Science and Social Studies, bottom right shelf. I have our Homeschool Science Adventures curriculum, and a new History reader from Abeka... We will be doing science units on birds, astronomy, and magnets. I plan on doing some independent Social Studies/History by getting books from the library. The top right shelf has my office supplies and index cards. We use a lot of index cards around here!

Next on my planning agenda: finish up Katie's last few math lessons and get the lesson plan form ready to go. Since I am so far ahead I may end up writing the first few weeks of lessons as well!

While I was busy at work in the bedroom/schoolroom, Corey was busy outdoors! We got our settlement check from the insurance company but we are hoping to get everything done for much less by doing it mostly ourselves....

The unpainted rail is a teeny bit lopsided which can be easily fixed, but Corey was starving and ready to come in...he can fix that when we paint. I think he did a great job on it!! A lot of the previous pieces were reused...a great way to save money! The plan is to pressure wash and paint next weekend. The siding is a whole other can of worms...ugh....

I can't remember the last time we got so much done on a Saturday! Staying home on the weekend really pays off!

DIY Weekend

I was very busy over the weekend working on projects while Corey was out of town. The photo above is the result of a makeover on my coupon binder. Isn't it cute? I know....spending money making over my "savings" method...oh well. It looks so much better! It was very boring before....
And...I made message boards for the kids. I inherited a couple of corkboard bulletin boards and decided to make one into a cute message board for Katie's room for her to put her cards and photos and notes on. Well, Noah wanted one too...so we went to Walmart and picked out some supplies. Here's what we started with:
And here is Noah's final product. The lighting on this picture is bad...sorry...the colors look much darker and rich in person. Sometimes it is difficult for me to really see how the photos look anyway because I use a laptop and the screen can sometimes be different depending on the angle.... ANYWAY...He wanted "army" material. So, I picked out brown ribbon and used gold thumbtacks to hold the ribbon down. It is all pulled and stapled on the back of the board.
Here's an up close which shows the color a little better. I know, my squares aren't perfect, but I don't like taking HOURS to do a project, that takes all the fun out for me and I think it looks great to me...gives it personality! ha. It's for a boy anyway, so who's to say I wasn't going for a "rough" look.
Here's a close up of Katie's board. Her's is "supergirl" material. I got black "girly" ribbon and used white thumbtacks for her's. I even got out some cards to make sure it would work okay.
Here are Katie and Noah wearing headbands they wanted to make out of the scraps.
For some reason the headband inspired Noah to skate. He took quite a fall shortly after this photo.
So, those were my projects for the weekend. What did you do?

Sunday Sewing with Carrie

I did it! I sewed!

I have been meaning to blog about the awesome sewing machine I recently inherited from Corey's grandmother. They are clearing out all their belongings and getting ready to move, so they are passing along things they don't want to take with them. Corey's grandmother is a very talented seamstress and has collected a lot of sewing supplies throughout the years. She actually had several sewing machines and I was blessed to have one passed along to me!! I have had it for a couple of months now probably, and just now have gotten around to making something.

Here is a picture of the sewing machine. It is nicely displayed in my new "sewing corner" in my bedroom. The desk was inherited from Corey's great grandad who recently passed away. It is a beautiful desk and it just perfect for this use!!

Here is a picture of the material which was also passed along with the machine. Three HUGE plastic containers filled with tons of beautiful material! Corduroy, polyester, cottons, blends, etc...all kinds of prints and patterns. Wow...I have NO excuse right?!

Here is a picture of the drawer holding all the little extras that were also passed along to me....thread and more thread (including embroidery thread for the embroidery attachment!), measuring tape, scissors, buttons, zippers, extra needles for the machine, and more....and beside the drawer is a large cutting board also passed down. I can't remember now if this was also Corey's great-grandmother's...I want to get all that specific information again so I can record it somewhere. It is great to be set up for a great hobby that will be fun and useful, but even more awesome that all this stuff is special because it has been passed down from a previous generation. Supplies that were used to create clothes and toys for my husband and his mom...

And HERE is a picture of my first ever sewing project! I made a pillow for the living room using some dark brown corduroy. It definitely has....character! ha ha! Unfortunately, I forgot about the cutting board in my enthusiasm to get to working on something finally, so the cutting out process wasn't very precise, therefore the pillow isn't exactly a perfect square. AND, since I have absolutely no experience sewing, the finishing up of the pillow after it was stuffed definitely could be better. But, I am very proud of it....it really adds to the couch to have an accessory, and I can't wait to try making more with the other shades of brown corduroy I have. It really made a pretty pillow, the photo I don't think does it justice...the color is very pretty.