sewing paper

does it get any easier than that? i think not.

for my classroom, i needed some bright, cheap, & easy decorations. and cheap.
so what's cheaper than free paint chips? i also threw in a pack of cardstock and ended up with lots of fun stuff to hang on the walls that i'm pretty sure no one in my class has noticed except for me. but it makes me happy, so that's all that counts, right?

easy peasy - cut out shapes

string them through the sewing machine

and walla! fun little banners

oh how i love easy projects

24 weeks

it's so fun teaching kindergarten with a growing belly. this week, my favorite comment was from one of my little guys who said, "your belly is really getting humongous. i mean, just look at that thing!" they certainly don't hold back.

since it's getting dark about 4:30 here, i finally broke and headed up to wheaton's gym last week. while messaging my aching back, i glanced in the mirror and realized, i'm sooo not in college anymore. at least there was one old professor in there who was struggling worse than me. but barely.

but really everything is going great and i'm so very thankful. i'm afraid i'm one of those annoying people who loves being pregnant. there's definitely odd stuff going on, but when he flips and moves, it's just totally amazing. i'm so thankful for those little kicks.

less than 4 monthes to go and i'm afraid they're going to fly by just a little too quick. better hit up the movies while we can.

covering a lampshade

so these little lampshade projects are all over the blogosphere and look simple enough, right? well, i had a some serious trouble with actually getting this thing finished. it took me weeks and i'm usually way too crazy to let things go for weeks unfinished. i'm totally blaming it on the baby.

it all started with this ginormous lampshade from ikea. i'm pretty sure lampshades are the hardest things to move. seriously. ours have gotten crushed everytime we've moved. i'm obviously not packing them right. so we picked up this big shade from ikea to replace one that got crushed but then it didn't fit the lamp. and then i lost the receipt. so it sat there on the guest bed forever before i realized that it could probably fit over the awesome, 80's, apt grade fixture we had going on over our table. and then it sat for some more while i tried to work up the energy to actually start this project.

excuse the horrible pictures. i'm more writing this so if i ever try this again, i won't forget how to fix all the mistakes i made.

first, i taped a bunch of newspaper together and traced the shape of the shade onto the paper. i might have done this 3 times before i got it right. again, blaming it on the baby.

cut it out

and tried it on for size. woohoo! this one finally, sorta fits

fabric was a whole other hold-up on this project. i finally settled on this suuuuper cheap blue from hobby lobby after i realized there was a pretty good chance of me messing this up. it's not my favorite shade of blue, but it goes with the curtains we already had and it actually looks better with the light shining through it. so i pinned my pattern on and cut it out, leaving tons on the edges 'cause i was so nervous.

i used my favorite sticky spray to get the fabric on (don't fear for baby - it was a well venilated area and i had extra fabric wrapped around my head as a mask. real cute.) i love this stuff because i can just pull it up and start over when i messed up. lesson learned - you can spray too much of it and get dark spots through solid fabric. thankfully, it ends up that you can't see them when the light shines through.

i just sprayed the edges under too, but now i wish that i'd just cut them even with the edge of the shade. at this point though, i had no idea how i was going to finish the edges, so this worked.

i ended up making some far from perfect bias tape that's not really cut on the bias for the edges. don't be jealous of my golf-towel-on-the-counter ironing board.

then i hot glued it on. once i hung it up, i realized how bad the inside edge looked, so i made one more strip and hot glued it to the inside edge.

so to the fun part:

before:
i gotta a little antsy and forgot to take a before pic, but just imagine this on a gold chain. it was lovely.

and after:


not perfect, but much, much better.
now james is figuring out if we could spray paint that gold chain without taking it out of the ceiling and without our landlord noticing...

a little art

the day we found out we were having a boy, i was itching to find something boyish.

enter goodwill: $1 frame with a sweet mountain picture and a $1 pack of eric carle cards that just happen to say 'it's a boy'

side note - i have a slight obsession with eric carle. when i pull one of his books out to read at school, my kids say 'we knoooooow, he's your faaaavorite author/illustrator.' (ok, we're still working on the illustrator part) but just look at his pictures! the colors, the animals, you can almost feel the texture through the paper! there is a reason i teach kindergarten.

a little blue paint and 2 minutes later, we've got a little bit of art for our little guy. i'm sure he's totally going to love it.

easy peasy lemon squeezy - my favorite kind of projects

we're having a...

baby boy!

and super, super excited about it.

visitors!

my sweet friend abby from chattanooga came to see us last weekend! it's so fun exploring new places with friends, especially when they don't mind you dragging them to school meetings or hitting up every garage sale and thrift store within 30 miles. doesn't that make you want to come see us! plus it was all part of her birthday celebration. yep, she's that good.

after all the fun of school meetings and thrifting, we of course had to make a trip downtown.

taking the water taxi from the train station to michigan ave is one of my favorite things to do. it's like getting one of the big water tours for $2, without all the interesting chicago facts of course :)

we hit up navy pier for the first time which was lots of fun. side note - there were real camel rides for kids outside the pier. definitely not expecting that one.

we ate our very first chicago hot dogs and they were great. mine was totally plain, not exactly chicago style, but james and abs raved about theirs too.

we also tried the huge ferris for the first time and it was awesome. the best $6 we've spent in chicago.

it's the best view of the city shoreline for sure

but definitely a little freaky at the top. i loved it.

we hit up michigan ave for some maternity clothes, drooled over cute kids decor at the land of nod, and tried on every vest at patagonia before we - literally - ran 12 blocks in 12 minutes to make it back for our train home. preggo running 12 blocks in boots was so not attractive. but cars totally stopped to let us pass. or maybe they just stopped to laugh at me. either way, we made it. and had a total blast doing it.

thanks, abby for making the trip! it meant the world to me and happy happy birthday!!