4 AM

It's 4:00 AM and I'm awake, but you'll never guess why.  It's the night before I go back to school so could it be....

Nerves about the the first day?  ........... No

Teacher back to school nightmares?  ........... No

EXCITEMENT about the first day?   ...... No

The cat peeing on my leg? ........ BINGO!!!!!!

Ah the joys of owning an older cat.  That once cute little kitten who won your heart now tortures you in her old age.

The list of places my cat has chosen to pee, OTHER than the litter box, has grown tremendously this summer.  I thought I had her all figured out and the house strategically set up to avoid further accidents, but she foiled me again. There's nothing like the feel of warm pee pouring on your leg to send you flying out of bed.

My other favorite part of an aging feline is that she has stopped grooming herself.  Of course she didn't bother to TELL anyone about this change.  She just quietly stopped until the parts of her that never get pet, namely her butt and her stomach, were such a tangled mess the we had to completely shave all of her fur off.  Now she and I enjoy a lovely afternoon brushing each day.

Here's a picture of the culprit from her FBI files.  She's actually an all black cat, but the shave took off her black outer layer and left only the white undercoat behind. The black is SLOWLY growing back in.

Do you have war stories about your aging pets?  I'd love to hear them.

Meet the Teacher Blogger

Thanks so much to Stephanie over at Falling into First.  She had the great idea to start a Meet the Teacher Blogger Linky Party.  What a great way to get to know some new bloggers.

My name is Amy Krebs.  I've been teaching for 20 years.  (No calculating how old that makes me!!!!) I've taught a variety of grades and subjects, but spent 13 years teaching 2nd grade and have taught 3rd for the past 4 years.  

 I live in Oregon with my 11 year old, soon to be middle schooler, son. We also have a 15 year old cat, Boca and 1year old dog Daisy, named after Daisy from the Dukes of Hazard.  (We didn't name her, but her brothers are Bo and Luke  :-)

This summer I taught three reading groups to earn extra money.  This is how I rewarded myself.

I just LOVE LOVE LOVE my new sewing machine.  It has inspired me to completely redecorate my classroom.  It's a good thing we still have a week before the kids come back, because I still have some sewin' to do to get ready!   ;-)

 THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS...

Good books, good friends, playing games with my son, sleeping late on Saturdays and snuggling with my kitty.

 IF YOU WEREN'T A TEACHER, WHAT WOULD YOU WANT TO BE?

An entrepreneur.  I'd have my own little shop somewhere where I could be creative and crafty and my own boss.

THREE LITTLE WORDS THAT DESCRIBE YOU.

Driven, social, creative 

 

FINISH THE SENTENCE, "________,  SAID NO TEACHER EVER!!"

 Sure, let's make up all of those snow days ...said no teacher EVER!!"
 

Q: IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY AND YOU CAN INVITE ANYONE {DEAD OR ALIVE} TO THE PARTY. WHO ARE YOU INVITING?

Jim Carrey, for the laughs

Q: IF SOMEONE WROTE A BOOK ABOUT YOUR LIFE, WHAT WOULD BE THE TITLE?

A Line of Strong Women

 Q:YOU GET TO PICK ONE SUPERPOWER. WHAT IS IT?

I'd LOVE to be able to fly like Superman.  Every once in a while I have a flying dream and it's AWESOME!

Q: WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE QUOTE OR SAYING?

"He who saves one life, saves the world entire."   

Q: IF YOU HAD TO SING ONE SONG ON AMERICAN IDOL, WHAT WOULD IT BE? 

 "Popular" from Wicked.  Because that show just rocks!

 Q: ARE YOU A MORNING PERSON OR A NIGHT OWL?

NIGHT OWL for sure!  Am already stressing about having to get to bed to in time to get up for work on Monday morning.  

 

Q: WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE RESOURCE THAT YOU'VE CREATED IN YOUR TPT SHOP?

I'm super excited about my teacher binders right now.  I've got mine all set up and ready for the new crop of kids this year.  

  

But  I can't pass up the opportunity to show off my latest product.  It's a Thesaurus that you can use in three different ways, hang it on a wall as a bulletin board, make a mini flip chart, or make a booklet for each kid.  I've had mine hanging on the wall for the last 13 years, and my kids use it constantly.

Q: SHARE SOMETHING WE MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT YOU! 

In 2007 I spent over 6 weeks in Kazakhstan while I adopted my son.

Head on over to Stephanie's blog to find more new Teacher Bloggers or create your own post.

DIY Crate Chairs - 6 Simple Steps

I've really been working hard this summer at redecorating my classroom.  I love all those cute classrooms you see all over the internet and I'm hoping to make mine just as cute.   The next step on my cute classroom quest was to make crate chairs to put around my circle table for small group time.  I can't believe how great they turned out and I thought I'd give a little tutorial on how I did it.  (I have to give a shout out to Eric and the lady at Joann fabrics who both helped me figure out how to do these.)

Material's You'll Need

Crates - I found them for less than $4 a piece at Target

Wood - About an inch or so thick and cut to fit so that they rest on the inner rim of your crates.

Fabric - I used outdoor fabric because it's thick and easily wiped clean.

Staple Gun

Card stock - cut into 1 inch strips

Foam - I used 1" - but thicker would probably be better

Spray Adhesive

Ribbon - optional

Process

Step 1:

I started by heading to Home Depot's scrap wood section.  I found a large board that looked sturdy but not too thick and asked the guy to cut it for me.  (Note that I made sure to go at a time when I knew Home Depot wouldn't be too busy, so the worker would have time to make multiple cuts for me.)  I had measured my crates ahead of time and the Home Depot guy made perfect cuts for me.  I ended up with these boards shown below. (And the best part about it was that since they were scrap pieces they were free!)

The problem was that they didn't quite fit in my crates.  My crates had rounded corners and the boards had square corners.  So at home I took my handy circular saw, set it at a 45 degree angle and cut off all of the corners.  (I always feel so self-sufficient when I whip out the circular saw.  Like I can handle ANYTHING!)

Step 2

The next step was to cut the foam to fit.  I used the cut wood as tracers, traced as many as I needed and cut the foam so that it was the same size as the boards.  I then attached the foam to the boards using spray adhesive so that they wouldn't slide around as I was covering them with fabric.

Next, I cut a piece of fabric so that there was plenty of excess for wrapping around the edges and flipped the wood-foam piece upside-down.

Step 3

The next step I tweaked thanks to the advice of the Joann 's Fabric lady.  I was worried that my outdoor fabric, which frays easily, would come loose.  So, she suggested putting a piece of card stock inside each folded over edge and stapling through the fabric and the card stock.  This way, some of the pressure from the staple goes into the card stock and not completely into the fabric.  So, I cut a large piece of card stock into one inch strips.  I lay one of the strips along the edge of the fabric, as shown below.

Then I folded over the edge, coving the card stock.  Next, I pulled that side up and over the edge of the wood and stapled it in place with a staple gun. 

I then did the same process on the opposite side of the wood, making sure to pull the fabric straight and tight.

Step 4

The corners were a little bit trickier.  I am no expert at this, but I knew I needed to make sure that fabric was taut and straight.  I realized pretty early on that I had too much fabric right at the corners, so I cut off a triangle of extra fabric right at the corner.  This helped everything lay more smoothly.

Then, I folded over one corner at a time, something like wrapping a present, but trying not to create that complete triangle shape that presents get.   You can see in the photo below, that I tucked the excess fabric into itself, creating a quadruple layer of fabric right at the corner. 

I pulled everything down as tight as possible and then folded the corner up, like a present.  I then put in one staple close to the edge and started working on the other corner that was on the same side.

Step 5

Now I had a big flap of triangular material secured only by 2 staples.  I took another piece of card stock and trimmed it to fit the triangle.

Then I placed the card stock under the triangle, and folded the top half of the triangle under the card stock.  I was then able to staple this side down pulling it tight and securing it well.

Step 6

I then turned the board and did the same process on the opposite side.  Finally I went around and added staples to all four sides, making sure they were really secure.  Not all of the staples went in as deeply as I would have liked, so I also went around with a hammer and pounded a few of them in deeper.

And DONE!

Now my cushion was done.  I added a bit of ribbon around the top set of holes on my crate, dropped the cushion in place and voila!  I can't wait to add this to my classroom!

I LOVE Pinterest

I was just sitting here at my computer pinning away on Pinterest.  I was taking the time to reorganize my boards and had posted a few things when I realized that I LOVE LOVE LOVE watching that little red number pop up telling me how many people have re-pinned my pins.  Its such an amazing way to reach out and connect with random people all over the world.  I love watching to see which of my pins get re-pinned the most.  What are other people most interested in?  Even as I sit here typing I keep popping over to my Pinterest window to see how many people are re-pinning my pins.


You can see it's up to 61 more re-pins since last time.

WHAT IS PINTEREST?

For those of you who haven't been bitten by the Pinterest bug yet, let me explain. Pinterest is like an online bulletin board.  You know how your grandma used to cut out newspaper clippings and stick them in a scrap book to refer back to later?  Well Pinterest is grandma's scrap book.  Ever have that moment when you're surfing the web and you come across a great website.  You think wow, this is a great idea!  The only problem is it's 11:00 at night and I can't actually do this great thing right now. How am I going to remember it?  You could email yourself the link, take a screen shot of the web page, download the web page ..... OR.... you could PIN it.  Pinterest allows you to save your favorite websites all in one well organized place.  You create a folder for each topic that you're interested in and save those interesting websites to that folder.

Here's a screen shot of six of my folders from my Pinterest home page.  You can choose to make your folders public, allowing others to see what you've pinned or private, just for yourself. Click on the picture above to be taken to my Pinterest home page.

PINTEREST AS A RESOURCE

The other side of Pinterest is that it can be really helpful when you're looking for great web ideas. Looking for some fresh bedroom decor ideas?  So were about a million other people.  Let's see what they liked.

THE DOWNSIDE

Unfortunately, John Q Public is not the only one to discover Pinterest's benefits. Advertising America has found it too and some days it feels like it's being taken over by advertisements.  The biggest offender in my little world seems to be Teachers Pay Teachers.  Now don't get me wrong, I AM a TpT seller and I have DEFINITELY used Pinterest to spread the word about my new products.  But, I try to spread my advertisements out and pin lots of other websites that I think are just great resources. When I'm on Pinterest as a browser I DON'T want to see nothing but TpT product covers like this screen.

If I land on a screen with nothing but product covers I am quick to move on to a new screen.  I've really been on the lookout recently for educational Pinterest boards that try to strike a balance between freely given ideas and paid products.  So I thought I'd take a moment to give a shout out to a few people who are trying to keep Pinterest a positive viewing experience for teachers.

                               

                                 

                              

I don't know any of these people, but I enjoy their boards and follow them.

What Pinterest boards do you enjoy following?  Share your favorites in the comments.