Help Me Please! Pyramids

Tomorrow marks the official beginning of in-service!  I am so excited to be getting back to school.  It's lovely to have the summer off, but I don't have a family to take care of, and my summer school only runs four weeks, so that leaves me time to do want I want, and then some.  It leaves me with empty time as well, since most others are at work during the day.  I can't wait to see the kids!

I was looking through one of those wonderful, goody-filled teaching catalogs, and I came across this awesome product!  It's red, green, and yellow, put into a pyramid-type shape that lies on its side.  I can't remember the exact wording, but the green side says that the student doesn't need help, the yellow says the student needs help, but can continue to work, and the red says that the student needs help and cannot continue to work.

I thought that they were a wonderful idea, but there was no way I was going to pay $12.95 or whatever they were asking for them.  Instead, we made them!

First, we took a piece of 8 1/2" x 11" piece of red card stock (Nice, scrapbook paper.  We have to use these all year!), and divided it into three sections by folding (hamburger way...with the 11" wide).  I have a paper cutter that has an attachment for making creases for nice folds.  That's what we used to make all the folds on this project so they'd be neat and even.  We also made a crease at 5 1/2".  You'll see why in a bit.

Then, we cut it in half (hot dog way).

This is the base of our pyramid.  Next we took pieces of yellow and green scrapbook paper, and made a single-fold piece that will match up with two-thirds of our red piece (some were yellow, some were green).

This we glued onto the red piece so that one yellow side would show, and one would not.  This helps to strengthen our pyramid.  DO NOT glue either the yellow or the green paper to the side of the pyramid with the extra fold in it.  Looking at the second picture, you can see that I'm leaving that fold on the bottom.

The next step is to cut a "single" out of either yellow or green paper - the opposite of what you just put on.  This will be the final side of our pyramid.

And now you've finished!  The reason for the fold on the bottom is so the students can fold it up and put it in their pencil box when they don't need it.  The last thing we need is extra stuff on our desks!

Happy School Year!

Emily

Almost Back to School!

It's August, and my lack of blogging is due to the fact that I've been at school getting set up for the new year!  I'm so excited for this year.  As of right now, my class has doubled in size from last year (from six to twelve!), which I think is great.  Sometimes six is great, but sometimes it limits what you can do with a class.

Because I've been at school, I'm spending less time crafting, and spending less time on here.  I'm sure that I won't be as frequent as I was once school starts, either.  I will be able to start posting some school ideas, though!

One thing I tried was putting magnets on the back of those 3M hooks instead of one of the sticky strips.  In theory it was great!  In reality, though, they weren't strong enough to put anything on.  I wanted to hang my coin chart on these, but the magnet wouldn't hold it.  I will do this, though, if I can find stronger strip magnets.  Here are some pictures of the basic idea:

My fingerless gloves are moving along slowly.  It's not usually a good idea for me to not put a deadline in a project, yet if it's not really for Christmas or another event, deadlines won't mean anything to me.  That's a mindset I really should get over.

I'm past the gusset on the first one, and am working on the palm.

Please excuse the flowery couch.  You'll see it a lot in this post!

I've also started a new project.  Surprise!  My boyfriend's sister is about to have a baby.  I felt bad that I hadn't started something sooner, so I decided to make the baby a stuffed animal.  I've never made one before!  I'm knitting a cute elephant.  The only change I'm going to make is to make an i-cord bow to put around it's neck.  We still don't know if the baby's a boy or a girl, so once we know I'll pick either a nice blue/green baby yarn I have, or a little bit of the pink yarn I'm using for the fingerless gloves pictured above. 

I started the elephant using a pretty light blue yarn that I have, thinking I'd just go pick up another skein the next day.  Unfortunately, they had the yarn but not the right color, so I had to buy new yarn!  Here's a lesson:  have ALL the yarn you need right away!  I'm saving the two panels I finished, though, because I'm going to check for this color yarn every once in a while, and if I find another skein I can make another elephant with what I have completed already.

I'm trying a new bread recipe tonight.  It's already puffed up nicely!  I'll write more about it after the boyfriend has tested it later this week.

Emily

Purse Re-Vamp

So I tried baking a whole two loaves of bread again, and AGAIN they came out flat!  Well, not flat like flat bread, but definitely not sandwich-bread sized.  The extra honey worked to sweeten it a bit (not even 1/6 cup extra), but next time I think I'm either going to try the 8" pan, or put the whole thing in one loaf pan, since my pans are coming out half-full.  The recipe says it's for two loaves, but it works out differently for everyone.  Another question I have is whether I need to get my yeast to room temperature first.  I use bread machine yeast so I don't have to activate it before putting it in the recipe, and I store it in the fridge.  Perhaps next time I'll try that as well.

For weeks I've had a purse sitting here awaiting repair.  It was a cute purse that I made with a pattern I bought at Hancock Fabrics on sale.  It pattern is Simplicity Learn to Sew 2164.  I made bag "c" and I even made it a bit bigger so my planner could fit in comfortably!  I had some reservations about this bag after using it, though.  I felt like the handles were going to come off, some of the seems for pockets were showing, and sure enough, when I put my keys in one of the front pockets, the pocket started to come off!  :(  I like the purse in general, and I wanted to repair it.  I also realized in the process of ripping stitches out that I'd never taken pictures of it, so here are some pictures while ripping:

I'm very proud of this pocket...I added it without a pattern!

I also added interfacing to the bag to make it more substantial.

I learned a lot while re-doing some of the purse.  My problem with the front pocket was that I had sewn it on, but when I sewed the actual bag together, I didn't sew in far enough to cover that seem.  There were many places like that, so I ended up just sewing another seen closer in.

My other main problem was my worry about the straps being weak.  I decided to sew them in differently than just the top-seem, so I sewed them in like this instead:

 

It worked beautifully to steady the straps!  Unfortunately, in the end, I found that I'd sewn the straps on backwards, so I had to go back and rip all that nice, tight stitching out.  It took me longer to take that out than it had been to do all the other repairs on the bag in general!

Another problem is now the purse is too short.  There's no where for the button on the front to be places, and the strap is too short for my liking.  I'm glad I did this because now I know how to make it a better bag next time, but I'm not sure what to do with this bag.  I only did repairs to the front, patterned part.  Perhaps I could take out the lining and use that to make a new bag?  Who knows!

Here's a picture of the purse as it is currently:

See how there's no room for a button anymore?

Now it's August and I'm going to start doing more for school, so watch for some classroom pictures!

Emily