Project Life: April 2-8 & 9-15, 2012

Hey all!  A quick update on PL (I know it's been awhile).  Still sticking with this; I know how rewarding it is on December 31 to have a whole year of memories and journaling broken down week-by-week.  So here we go!
April 2-8, 2012:

Here's the whole spread; I included an insert this week, of the card my aunt sent the boys for Easter.

The left hand side: I'm still really liking the way the date looks typed onto the date card.  I decorated the date card with 2 stickers that my aunt included in the Easter card to the boys.  In the journaling card spot, I put a cut out of the stain chart from the stain we got for the front porch.  That was a project we took on this weekend, and I LOVE the way it turned out!  We hadn't done anything to our porch since we moved in almost 6 years ago, and the color looks so rich!  The bottom left-hand photo is a picture of some toilet paper origami my sister did for us...unfortunately we didn't have a spare roll in the bathroom, so the artwork was short-lived.

Here's the Easter card insert; I didn't want to sacrifice any of my 4x6 photos spaces for this, but I wanted to include it.  I adhered the card to a piece of card stock and punches 2 holes so it would fit in the binder.  It was important to me to include this, because my aunt has always been really great about sending cards for every holiday when I was little, so I'm glad my boys get to experience this tradition too (plus, how fun is it to get something other than a bill in the mail?!)

And more pictures from the week, including some from a friend's 30th birthday party where my boys met a new friend.  The middle 2 pictures in the journaling card spaces is actually a 4x6 that I wanted to include, but didn't have room for it in the 4x6 spaces.  I just cropped the photo to 3x4 on one side, then 3x4 on the other side; there's a little overlap, but I wanted to get the picture in there.  I also included a screen shot from my iPhone (hold down the home key and the on/off switch at the top-the picture will save to your Camera Roll).

April 9-15, 2012:

Another week of lots of photos and an insert.

Here's the left hand side; there's another screen shot of my Weight Watchers progress (I've lost 36 pounds since I came back to work from maternity leave) and some journaling about my progress, along with a picture of the Teacher Appreciation cake my friend and I made on Saturday for her daughter's pre-school teacher (interested?  find the post here!)  The bottom right-hand picture?!  Taken by my uber-talented photographer friend!  I never saw the point of having your family professional photographed...until I saw these images.  LOVE them!  (more to come on the right-hand side of this PL)

This week I included the map from our zoo trip.  It's in a 12x12 protector, that I cut down slightly.

And the right hand side: some more of Krista's photography, and some pictures of the boys at the zoo.

Thanks so much for visiting!

Teacher Appreciation Cake...of School Supplies!

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So, did you know that May 7-11 is National Teacher Appreciation Week this year?  I didn't either, until I had a girls' night with one of my best-est friends, Amanda, and we went shopping for supplies and put together a Teacher's Cake for her daughter's pre-school teacher.

She got the idea from something she pinned on Pinterest from The Butler's blog, but we modified it a bit, since this was for a pre-school teacher.  We got the supplies from Hobby Lobby and Wal-Mart, and used a couple of things she had already.

So on to how we put our Teacher Appreciation cake together:

Supplies:

12" round piece of sturdy corrugated cardboard

12" x 12" piece of scrapbook paper

YES! Paste (you can find this at any craft store, and it's a great general adhesive to have in your stash)

Clorox wipes (in the round container)

1 paper towel tubing to cut up for extra height

6 thin-ish coloring books

8 16-count Crayon boxes

20 glue sticks

10 bottles total of white and clear school glue (5 of each)

24 pack of colored pencils

a straight-sided container (pencil cup, ribbon spool, etc.) that's about 2.5"-3" in diameter for the colored pencils

4-5 different colored grosgrain ribbons, in varying widths

6 silk Gerber daisies

hot glue gun

rubber bands or string to tie the supplies in your layers together

Step 1: Cover a STURDY piece of 12" round corrugated cardboard with pretty scrapbook paper  (You can see from the pictures that we started with a 10" circle in pink, but it wasn't wide enough).  It really has to be sturdy, because ours ended up weighing about 10 pounds!  This was my job, and Amanda recommended YES! Paste.  Seriously good adhesive that doesn't leave ripples and bumps like regular white glue does.  After the paper is dried to the cardboard, cut it out.

Step 2: Start assembling the 'tower'.  We used a container of Clorox wipes (what pre-school teacher wouldn't want/need extra Clorox wipes?!) and added some height to it by putting 3 cut-down pieces (about 2.5") of paper towel tubing underneath.

Step 3: Fan 6 coloring books around the Clorox wipes (you could use fewer than 6, if they're kind of thick, but try to use thin ones).  This is where it helps to have an extra set of hands.  Someone needs to hold the coloring books while someone else either rubber bands-them or ties them tight with a piece of string.

Step 4: Line up your crayon boxes and glue sticks around the base, alternating them (crayon box, glue stick, crayon box, glue stick...).  We used 10 glue sticks around the base and 8 16-count crayon boxes.  Then tie this layer up like you did the coloring books.

Step 5: Folding down the flaps on the crayon boxes, add your glue bottles on top.  We alternated between white and clear school glue, (mainly because Wal-Mart didn't have the 10 bottles we needed in white) but I think it looked pretty cool.  Then tie the glue bottles together (another time it's good to have 2 sets of hands!).

Step 6: We decorated a spool from some ribbon with scrapbook paper, but you could use a straight-sided pencil cup if you wanted, and add that to the top of the Clorox container.  We didn't adhere it to the container, but you could if you think it needs it.  Amanda had the ribbon spool already (I won't detail how long we spent un-spooling the ribbon so we could use the spool...but I will say that the ribbon hadn't been used yet, and there had to be 60 feet on there...maybe that's an exaggeration-maybe not).  Then line the rest of your glue sticks around the cup.  She had bought 3 6-packs of glue sticks for the whole project, but we could have used 2 or 3 more, after using 10 on the bottom layer.  We decided the flowers we added later would fill that gap.  Again, tie the layer together.  We added a 24 pack of colored pencils to the covered ribbon spool.

Last step: Add your ribbon!  On the bottom layer, we used a wide solid grosgrain ribbon with a striped ric-rac ribbon on top; middle layer, wide polka-dotted grosgrain ribbon; top layer, medium satin ribbon with a small ribbon that said 'school days' on it.  We pulled the ribbons tight, and then added a line of hot glue to join them together.  Make sure to line up where each layer joins, so that they will be covered when you add the flowers.  We used 6 silk Gerber daisy blooms (1 on the top, 2 in the middle and 3 at the bottom) in colors that coordinated with the school supplies and ribbon.

And that was it!  We had a finished Teacher Appreciation cake!  How exciting would it be to get something so packed with crafty cool-ness?!  I can't wait to hear how the teacher reacts when she gets the cake!  Also, now that I know it's Teacher Appreciation Week, I need to get in gear and figure out something for 4 daycare teacher gifts...I'll keep you posted...

Thanks for visiting!