Teacher Appreciation-Movie Night

Thanks to many of the ideas found online for teacher appreciation week, I selected the movie night option for my kids to give to their teachers. Secrets of a Super Mommy had this idea and it was fantastic! The teachers loved it so much. My son's teacher mentioned that he carried it around to show to all the other teachers. As a teacher myself, I would have loved getting this gift myself.

I found the popcorn containers at the local Goodwill, but I also saw them at Michaels craft store. Inside the red envelope I used a regular card and copied the saying from Secrets of a Super Mommy and inserted a dollar bill.The kids put mini candy bars, licorice, and popcorn inside the containers. Check out the other ideas here that I debated on using. I realized that I will probably save those other ideas for next year. Maybe even do two gifts during that special week. This same blog has some great last day of school party ideas. I can't wait to plan one for this year. Thanks for the great inspiration Secrets of a Super Mommy!

A Mad Hatter Tea Party

Every year, I host a special tea party or a brunch for local alumnae and active members of my sorority. This year I chose the theme of a Mad Hatter Tea Party.
Here is the invitation:

I designed the invite to look like a card from a deck and had them printed on white card stock. They turned out so cute!

Centerpieces were cupcakes made by a local senior in High School as part of her senior project. She hand made roses white and sprayed them red to look like they were painted red. Some cupcakes had a small heart card in them. I also made fruit kabobs to go with the cupcake centerpieces. Since this was a tea party theme, I also put tea pots and tea cups out. I made tags that said, "eat me" and "drink me" for the tables and tea cups. With the bright pink table linens it looked so festive.

I used hot pink and lime green as accent colors too. I love all the bright color!

Of course, festive hats were needed too. This is a picture of me and the hat I purchased at the local Herbergers store. Being that the Kentucky Derby was that same weekend, hats were easy to find and on sale. What a great party it turned out to be!

Money Management

It is that time in all of our lives, I know, that we tighten our financial belts. Well, if not in your household, it is for sure in mine. After another struggle to make ends meet this winter and the trials of financial burden continuing this spring, my husband and I decided to step out in our faith and be vigilant in tightening our financial expenses and to learn how to use a budget. It isn't like we've never learned how to budget, it is just a task difficult to accomplish when only one of our incomes stays the same on a monthly basis. My husband owns his own business and with the construction world in our state taking a hit, we decided there really is no better time to be better with our finances.

So, our first step today really involved sitting down and taking an honest look at our finances. We wrote down all the bills that I take care of out of our personal account and then we did the same for our business. This gave us a good idea of a couple things. First, we now have a better understanding of what we have to bring in to cover our everyday expenses. Secondly, it helped us see what areas we could maybe cut back.

Since I've been using Quickbooks for a few years for personal and business balancing, I looked back and averaged some of our expenses like food, eating out, entertainment, fuel, etc. for 2008, 2009 and then for the last three months. I used these monthly averages to figure out how much would be reasonable for us in the expenses categories. Now comes the hard part for us...living within our budgeted means.

I started to research on the web how to really attack my finances. Thanks to Money Saving Mom's website and the 31 Days to a Better Budget she ran in March, I got a ton of ideas and some great links.

If you are interested in checking out some of the links that I find useful here they are:
Crown Money Map ~ This link is really great for a step by step process through managing your finances and working towards financial freedom, including electronic forms to fill out. Plus percentages of your income to guide spending in specific categories. Love it!
Oprah Debt Management  ~ Oprah is known for great ideas. This site has great stuff to help eliminate debt. Great forms to fill out too!

I hope this might help you in your finances. I'll continue to post my success!

Paper Eggs

I came across a project that I thought I'd try with the kids. Thanks for the inspiration, This Is The Year blog! I love the end result. I will say, that my daughter had more fun cutting the strips of paper for me than gluing them on. This blog site has all the details if you want to try them! Another twist on this idea comes from Creative Attempts. Check out that blog to see how she did the same project, but with tissue paper. Super cute!

Paper Cutter Extraordinaire

Seasonal Decor Blocks

I continually eye these decorative blocks when out shopping. I have no need for restraint now. I made my own. Thanks to Whimsi Kel and the great lists of letters and words, this project really was quite simple.

 I decided to use house paint as my block colors so that they would match my house during all seasons. I started with a base color of Sherwin Williams: Aqua Sphere. I painted five sides and when they were dry I painted the sixth sides. I then watered down some Weathered Shingle (tan color) from Sherwin Williams and brushed it on and wiped it off after a few seconds to get the antiqued look. Once this coat was dry, I cut letters out with my Cricut and used Modge Podge matte finish to secure them to the blocks. I had two extra blocks that I had painted and decided I'd cut out shapes to stick on them. Overall, I am thrilled with the turn out! I can't wait to use them all year round! Thanks Whimsi Kel for this great idea!

Rocket Launcher

I continually find that I am surrounded by so many people that bless my life. My dad is one of those people. He drove down to surprise us all and hang out for a bit. Of course hanging out turned into project time. I always have something that I want to work on. This particular project seemed a bit more overwhelming, so I was happy to have my dad jump right in on making the rocket launcher. My inspiration came from my summer 2009 trip to Houston, TX. More specifically, Johnson Space Center (NASA). After a week long educators only workshop on how to include Math and Science activities, NASA style, into my teaching I came home with more ideas than I could implement. As this school year seems to be zooming past and my aviation/NASA unit coming up, I figured what better time than the present to get this project underway. So here are the details.

The Parts:

The Parts Expert:

The Supervisor:

The Finished Rocket Launcher:

$32.67 for Home Depot Rocket Launcher Parts

20 minutes of quality time with my dad and my son putting the parts together

2 trials with no major injuries (launching over 30 feet in the air!)

hours of future entertainment: PRICELESS!

Quick Quilted Pillows

I decided to try my hand at recovering a few pillows. The original pillows had a zipper so I just stitched the quilted pillow so that the zipper could continue to be used. It worked and so I went with it! I love fleur de lis prints and had bought so much of it. I am just so happy that I found another great use for it!