I Dream in Fleece

OMG! OMG! OMG!!!!  Look!!!!!

This, my friends, is a dream come true. Yes, yes, that is a very large pile of fleece you see before you. But the best part is that it's MY large pile of fleece!

I have been invited to participate in Shopper's Night hosted by the prestigious Women's Club of Hackberry Creek! This will be the debut of my new line of blankets and gifts called Sami & Joe Giftables.

*Side note, I'd love to hear your opinion on which logo you like best...

A

B

C

I am so very excited to introduce my crafts to the public.  But to be honest, what I'm most excited about, is making all of these blankets!!! Seriously, this makes me soooooooooo happy.  That's why up until recently I have always given these blankets out as gifts.  It's just something I LOVE doing! 

So, I'm off to work on getting 16 blankets done in 15 days.  Yep, you read that right.  Shopper's Night is on October 15th.  You won't hear back from me until after the event, but I promise to share with you how it went.  Love and fleece to you all.  ;) 

I am your Commander!

OK, so school has started, and with that the papers have come a' flyin' in from my kids' school.  Man! Did I ever send home this many papers? I don't think so.  But an informed Mommy is a happy Mommy.

Alas, a disorganized Mommy is a cranky Mommy.  Drum roll please......... enter our new Command Center!
So, this is a perfect example of a chaos fix.  I saw a need, and fixed it with jazz hands.  I do often wonder to myself (and now out loud to you, I guess) if I create the disorganization on purpose so I can have an undeniable excuse to get creative.  Oh well, chicken or the egg, blah blah blah.  What's important is that I LOVE my Command Center!

Yay!!!!!

So I found this amazing sheet metal place that cuts and binds custom sized sheet metal! They are local, they are inexpensive, and they are awesome! (Thank you Google!) I Command Stripped it to the side cabinet of my oven/microwave and now it's the base of my magnetic command center, and it cost me $28!!!!! Yes, that's right.  Not a typo.

I have made most of these components in the past, but with a few new additions, I have the perfect Command Center for me. I just Gorilla glued the SUPER STRONG mini magnets to the backs of the frames, pads, etc and then bought some more magnets that would do the rest of the work for me. Here they are from the top down:

This is my cleaning schedule.  Now that I'm home more, I cannot get away with "I'm too busy to clean", and let's just say that I'm waaaaaaaaaaaay out of practice.  So I found this fabulous schedule idea on Pinterest and I tweaked it to fit my life.

This was my first attempt at chaos fixing, about a year ago.  I LOVE this meal planner, once again stealing the idea from Pinterest.  I'm going to do a separate post on this one, how I made it, etc.

 This is my To Do level.  I just framed a sheet of paper that I printed "To Do" on and now it's a dry-erase To Do list.  Love it.  Then a little note pad, where I'm keeping track of the allowance I owe the kids. Then of course the ever important monthly calendar that I found at Office Depot. It mostly fits with my scheme.

cups for markers, pencils, erasers, etc and a reciept and mail (and coupon) holder

I love these.  I was walking Target's office supply isle, looking for a file holder for my kids' forms, work, etc from school for the command center.  Everything there was either too heavy, the wrong color, or way too expensive.  So, I made my own! I found one that would work and copied the design using my own fabric, chip board, paint, felt and a ton of adhesive spray.  See the original from Target and my copy below:

Lastly, I have the Lunch Box Station.  I just made that name up two seconds ago.  I'll have to work on that.  Anyhow, every night my kids sit down on the floor and pick one item from each box.  This is what goes in their lunches the next day.  I was making lunches with sandwiches, chips in a baggie, a veggie and a dessert.  Guess what was coming home in their lunch box every day... yep, you're right.  The veggie and the sandwich.  Well, no mare of that.  With this new system, I came to find out they don't even like sandwiches.  They picked the items to choose from, and that's how we came up with the chart above.  The chart and choices change according to my grocery trip for the week, but I try to stick to what they like, since it's working great! Now they eat everything, and haven't even mentioned that there isn't a dessert anymore!  

Not sure how I lucked out on that one.  :)

And that adorable little broom and dustpan comes in very handy at night when I spot sweep according to my cleaning schedule.  Got that baby at Hobby Lobby.  Love.  Lots and lots of love.

That's it! Now I feel calm, collected and ready to create more chaos so I can get on to my next fix!

What Now? and Here's to the Moms

So, all my teacher friends are setting up their classrooms this week and just had Meet the Teacher night.  It's beyond weird not to have my own classroom and students to meet.  But it certainly was a pleasure to finally attend Meet the Teacher for my OWN offspring. This was a first for me, since my own night was always at the same time as my kids'.  I was even able to sell some t-shirts at the PTA table...so needless to say I'm feeling very Mother of the Year.  (enter slight sarcasm here)

But, even though I have frequent opportunity of late to give myself a pat on the back for how great of a mom I am (you know what to do), I am having a hard time with this adjustment.  Luckily, my dear mother and mother-in-law are taking pity on me.  They have all of the sudden starting asking me for help with projects here and there, which of course makes me not a little thrilled.  :)  You need help with a... project you say??? PROJECTS!!!  and there's my fix.

For my fabulous MIL, Tiny, I am on a quest to sell some of her fancy baby toys that my little kiddos played with long ago, I have made her a blanket, and I am now about to begin to design her 40th Anniversary Invitations.  This is something I'm very excited about.  I LOVE designing and digital scrapbooking, and I make my own Christmas cards.  But this takes my little hobby to a new level, and I hope I can deliver.

My own dear mother has commissioned a slew of teacher supplies & decor from my collection, and that has made my hands super happy.  If I get to use pretty card stock, glue and fun fonts, that's pretty close to paradise for me.  And thanks to mom, her requests have led me to further develop my Teachers Pay Teachers store, which just might help me get a pedicure once a month!  Yay, mom!

So even though it's not my own household chaos being cured this week, thanks to the moms in my life I am satiated and happy.  Cheers to you lovely ladies.

Introducing The Sawyer, The Shelby and The Sic Em

This was the week of blankets. I've made three in the last 6 days, and this one is named for its new owner, my adorable nephew. I have a happy customer. :) 

Introducing The Sawyer:

The other two blankets were birthday presents for 8 year old girls. 

This is one if them, The Shelby:

While at Denise's, my fabulous sister-in-law, she let me take a pic of the blanket I made for her birthday. I love this one. We are a Baylor family, Denise, my husband and I all attending, but they don't make a Baylor licensed fleece. So in honor of Baylor, and Denise's love for it, I made my own Baylor creation. 

Introducing The Sic Em: 

Want one? Let me know! I'll make it happen. :)

Cheers!

And then, I was a housewife

So, it's back to school time, and I don't have a school to go back to. After 8 years of teaching 4th-6th grade, I'm taking a "sabbatical" from the classroom to be more accessible to my own children. Working 70+ hours a week and 20 miles from home has made being a mom a challenge (some might call be obsessive). I know you teachers out there can relate.

I LOVE teaching, and I am lucky enough to get my teaching fix twice a week as a tutor with the AVID program in my former district. But without a classroom to set up, organize, and make ADORABLE, what do I do for my chaos fix?

What's a chaos fix? Well, it's when I get to find a solution to the dysfunction that has come to a boiling point around me. I have found that I crave this chaos so that I can find a way to make it organized, but the key is to make it super cute in the process. If there's a chance to make a project out of a mess or an organization challenge, I'll find it! I try to fix the issue while giving it "jazz hands" with what I have on hand in the house.

Let me be clear, I'm in no way a neat freak or completely organized.  Anyone who knows me will tell you that the best they can say about my order is that it's organized chaos. (Need those Science cut-ups from last month? No problem, I know exactly what pile of chaos it's in. ;) I'd really call myself more of a project freak. So, taking inspiration from Pinterest, blogs, and other teachers, I get my fix when and where I can in the most creative and thrifty way possible.

On this blog you'll see all sorts of things from classroom organization and lesson plans, to my home projects and crafty solutions. You can find my lesson plans and classroom solutions at my TPT store: www.teacherspayteachers.com/Heather-Van-Houten

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope to see you again!