Our school district is conducting 100% distance learning until at least Thanksgiving. So what do you do when you’re facing 3+ months with a Kindergartener and a 3rd Grader doing school from home? If you’re me, you completely ignore all the stressful parts of it and convert your dining room into a super awesome classroom!

I think it was mid-June when I decided to go all in on this. I knew that our method of lazily plodding through my daughter’s list of assignments wasn’t sustainable with 2 kids, so I decided we were going to need a designated space and a structure to our day. Then I went to Target, and the not-a-dollar section was full of cute little bins and school supplies and classroom decorations. So I bought…all of them. Then I went to the actual school supply section and went nuts (have I ever mentioned that I LOVE school supply shopping?) Then I did the same at Michael’s. And as things came together I started placing 6-7 Amazon orders a day for new stuff I’d just thought of.

And now here we are. Our house is on the small side. My husband set up an “office” in the corner of our bedroom. The kids each have their own bedroom, but they are cramped and every spare inch of space is used for toy and clothing storage. I have my craft room, but it is always (ALWAYS) a mess. It was clear that the best space we had for home learning was the dining room that almost never gets used (especially in these times when we can’t have guests over anyway).

The first thing I did was take the art off the open wall and hang a white board and 2 bulletin boards in its place. It feels like a miniature version of a typical school setup to me. Next, I created a calendar center and daily schedule. I want to start each day before they Zoom in to their classes with a quick overview of what they can expect for the day, and what to look forward to in the coming week.

The weather station is a little extra (okay okay, the whole room is a lot extra), but I saw it at Target and it seemed like a fun thing that can help get both kids (but especially my Kindergartener) engaged early in the day. Because I’m me, I had a large roll of magnet material on hand. So I added a cute border used double-sided tape to attach all the main pieces to it. Then I laminated all of the accessory pieces and glued little rare-earth magnets to the backs of them. The kids are already having a great time looking up the forecast and dressing the panda bear every morning.

To finish this wall, I got maps and the alphabet (it continues on the opposite wall) from Amazon, and a pad of different dry-erase charts from Target. The chip-board words are also from Target, and are strategically placed to cover the nail holes from the art that used to hang on this wall. (Notice anything familiar about the words I chose? When I found them it felt like destiny.) Everything is hung with Command Strips or Command Hooks, so when this long national nightmare is over I can take it all down and you’ll never know it happened.

The window treatment is my favorite (I loves me some decorated windows). I had already started gathering classroom supplies when I found this idea on Pinterest, but this is definitely the piece that made the whole vision come together. I got quart-sized paint cans and a bunch of tulle, and with an awl, some butcher’s twine, and a couple of tension rods, I had curtains!

In the back corner we have a little reading nook. I made the pouf years ago for Allie’s first “big girl room,” which was Frozen-themed. The book rack came from Amazon and the posters came from Michael’s. I love the “100 Acts of Kindness” chart. It’s another thing that makes it feel like an actual classroom to me, and helps bring the learning from online to real-life.

On the other side of the china cabinet, I put a low bookcase where we can store books, school supplies, the printer, and whatever other essentials we find we need this year. I added a couple of motivational posters because of course I did.

Finally, I found this adorable clock on Amazon and decided to hang it over the doorway. It fits my rainbow color scheme, and it has enough information on it that I’m hoping it will help me help my kids to learn how to tell time. The motivational sayings above the doorway (and above the windows on the opposite wall) are a border set from Target.

The second-grade moms have an ongoing group text thread that has only gotten more active and hilarious over the past week as we’ve shared memes, learning resources, and all kinds of ideas for how to keep our kids out of our hair.

I’m not sure where the idea originated, but one of my friends found this post and shared it with the group. Another friend shared a list for a leprechaun-themed scavenger hunt, and we all jumped on it: the perfect distraction for our first few days of isolation.

My household, of course, took these challenges very seriously. We have large picture windows in our front hall, so I wanted to create something striking that would make our neighbors smile. My kids love rainbows (what 5- and 8-year-olds don’t?) so that’s where we started.

I had a few goals for this project. It needed to be:

• time consuming: we’ve got A LOT of time to kill over the next however-long, let’s drag things out as much as possible.
• medium-to-low on the messy scale: in my house this means nothing that can stain or permanently mar clothes and work surfaces, and supplies and scraps can be cleaned up in 3 minutes or less.
• child-led: I help them lay down a foundation, and guide them toward plans that are workable, and then they do most of the work without supervision.

A torn-paper collage fit the bill perfectly. They could rip the paper and use the tape without my help. I did cut out the pot of gold, and a bunch of yellow circles for coins. I also taped one loose row of each color, and they filled in the rest.

Of course, we also needed shamrocks. For this I let Allie cut lots and lots of green hearts and staple them together into shamrock shapes, while I used acrylic paint to write “Happy St. Paddy’s Day” on the window.

The whole window display took us about 4 hours from start to finish–not something I ever would have had the time or motivation for if we weren’t housebound. But we all had a great time doing it, and while we were working we got to say hi to a bunch of friends who walked past.

Once we were done, we headed out for our shamrock hunt. I had a list of houses I knew were participating, so we mapped out a little route through the neighborhood, and printed out our scavenger hunt list. I also grabbed a pack of sidewalk chalk so we could draw pictures or write messages in front of our friends’ houses. This was super fun for the kids, and helped soften the blow of not being able to go in and see the people whose houses we stopped at.

We were out for over an hour and a half and walked almost 3 miles! We found everything on our scavenger hunt list except for a Starbucks Cup (which is good! No litter and no one ignoring Shelter In Place rules for their coffee!) It was so much fun that I think we’ll make window decorating a regular thing, and we’ll definitely be taking lots of long walks for the foreseeable future.

Guys, this is hard. I’m not going to pretend this isn’t hard. I give SO much credit working parents, single parents, and parents who work in the health industry or other essential services. We don’t have any of those extra challenges and it’s barely been a week, and I am STRUGGLING.

Allie’s (8, second grade) school has set up home-learning, which right now looks like it will involve 1-2 hours of work a day. She is independent and creative, so although she misses her friends and doesn’t understand why she can’t watch YouTube all day, I can at least count on her to be self-sufficient for large portions of the day.

Theo (5, pre-K) is…a different story. Like many 5-year-olds, he is SO energetic and SO social and SO curious and SO stubborn. Being his mom takes a lot of patience on a good day. A week into social isolation and he is losing his poor little mind.

But we’re making lemonade. (And I’m pouring vodka into mine.) As a crafter, my homeschooling curriculum is heavily weighted toward the arts. I’m trying to focus on the opportunities of this unique situation, and one of them is more time to let my kids explore creativity (and make messes).

We’ve done a lot of St. Patrick’s Day themed activities this week, including decorating our windows, and setting a leprechaun trap. We also did some pour-painting (look for an upcoming YouTube tutorial), and have been exploring all kinds of unique learning resources, both online and “analog.” Watch this space for our projects, and our stories–and my venting.

A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of testing the Julianne pattern for the Do It Better Yourself Club. You guys, this is such a great pattern. It’s easy to follow, and Jessica and Kelly provided a super-robust tutorial that covers everything from how to print a PDF pattern to how to make custom adjustments to fit your specific size. I consider myself a confident-intermediate sewist, and I really had no trouble with it. I would definitely encourage any confident-beginner or better to try it.

I know, it’s full of things that are really intimidating for people who are new to sewing–like cuffs and collars and button-plackets–but I promise you all the info you need to be successful is in there. And there are so many options that you can start with a short-sleeved button-up in a light cotton and work your way to a curved-hem dress with a half placket, drawstring, and button cuffs in perfectly stripe-matched plaid . It’s just an awesome, versatile pattern. I’ve already bought another flannel to do a tunic-length version, and once spring rolls around I have some lightweight wovens that would be great for it.

Overall I give this pattern an A, and the awkward pictures of me a C-.

So I tend to feel this extreme pressure to make Allie’s Halloween costume. That is, after all, the whole reason I bought my first machine. I love doing it, truly. But it always leads to a challenging project with a hard deadline, right at a particularly busy and stressful part of the year. Elsa was the first dress I had ever made, and I was 8 months pregnant with Theo when I made it. The Fairy Godmother was sewn on the tiny kitchen table in our rental house while we were trying to get our place built. And this year. Glinda the Good Witch.

I was trying to talk Allie into being Dorothy. My friend has a tiny little dog who would have made an excellent Toto, we already have sparkly red shoes, and a blue gingham dress would have been a fairly straightforward project. So one day I showed her clips from The Wizard of Oz. She took one look at Glinda’s big fluffy pink dress and her mind was made up.

Okay, I thought. The Fairy Godmother dress was basically a giant tutu, so I knew that part would be straightforward enough. Since it was going to take a lot of tulle to get the fullness I wanted, I decided to make a separate tutu that would go underneath a thinner dress. That way the skirt wouldn’t weigh down the bodice, and it would be easier to get in and out of.

I can get kindof picky over accuracy, so I wasn’t satisfied with any of the Glinda dress patterns I found. Glinda’s dress in the movie is a v-neck, with a gathered sheer overlay. Simplicity and McCalls figured a scoop neck in a solid fabric was fine. Nope. I decided the easiest solution would be to make a wrap dress that went over the giant tutu. I happened to already own the Made for Mermaids Isabel pattern, so I used that to construct the bodice and added puffy sleeves and another layer of gathered tulle for the skirt. It took a couple of tries to get the sheer gathering to work to my liking. I ended up doing pleats so that the tulle would lay flat but still give a gathered appearance.

The crown took me a long time to plan but was actually fairly quick to execute. I was nervous about it turning out right since I’d never made anything like it, but luckily it came together exactly as I imagined. Basically, I used a large sheet of stiff plastic (the kind you use in place of glass in poster frames), the same tulle I used for the dress, and a lot of Elmer’s glue. And rhinestones.

Finally, her wand is super straight forward shiny cardstock, foam core, and a dowel painted silver.

The costume was a huge hit, but I think next year I’m going to guide her toward something that’s easier to sit in.

I’m totally one of those moms who wants her kids to stay little forever, but the one thing I was really looking forward to with Allie growing up was Girl Scouts. I LOVED scouting as a kid, and could not wait to introduce it to my little girl. Unfortunately our school didn’t have a Daisy troop, so I signed Allie up with a school nearby. It was going to be kindof annoying to rush her from school to meetings once a month, and I was a little bummed that she only really knew one of the other girls in the troop.

Then a miracle happened, and her name is Meg. She’s the mom of one of Allie’s classmates, and she casually mentioned one day, “I signed up with Girl Scouts to be a Daisy leader. I’m hoping to get enough interest from our class to start a troop.” I immediately told her that not only was I interested, but I would help her in any way necessary to get the troop started. This quickly led to me registering as the troop’s Co-Leader. It seems so obvious now. For some reason I shied away from taking that first step of starting the troop, but thanks to Meg I ended up jumping in and I can’t be more excited.

I’m not kidding, I feel like I’ve found my calling. Obviously the craft aspect is totally my wheelhouse, but I can’t wait to take these girls camping and do science projects, and teach them how to be good citizens, and mold them into strong, powerful young women. When I taught them the Girl Scout Promise at our first meeting, I cried. And when we sang Make New Friends, I cried again.

My mind is swirling with ideas and plans. And while I’m totally new to all of this and still learning the ropes, I’m so committed to making this troop successful. I’ve already started thinking about what these girls’ Gold Award projects might be.

I tried to fix that by using functional stickers for each day, and then ended up top-heavy and boring.

Then I realized, if I wanted to recreate one of the pretty spreads I saw on Instagram, I should just recreate a spread I saw on Instagram. In scrapbooking and card making I often work from sketches–black and white diagrams of potential layouts–when I need inspiration. There don’t seem to be a lot of planner sketches out there, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use an existing spread as a sketch.

I decided to CASE Heather Kell’s planner for the week of February 20-26. And there it was. #PlannerPeace.

I thought maybe I’d do this for about a month until I got the hang of it. But honestly, after that one spread it just clicked for me, and I’ve really been enjoying the process ever since. I look forward to my planning days now, and have to restrain myself from working weeks into the future.

So I thought I could help some other planner newbies by sharing my process for this coming week. I took pictures of each element as I added it, and will include some of my thought processes as I planned along. Here we go!

Step 1: The Theme.

It’s probably obvious, but I start each week by choosing a color scheme or theme. Several of the Mambi sticker books contain color-coordinated sheets that you can use as kits (Color Story, Rainbow, the one that’s just called Stickers with 1050 pieces, and Seasonal). So usually I start there and then flip through my other books for stickers that match my chosen theme. I have a lot of sticker books, so I use Post-it flags to mark stickers that might work.

This week I started with the first 4 pages of the Color Story pack, and coordinated them with stickers from the several other packs. I’m gearing up for kindof a rough week–flying home to visit my grandfather who has not been doing well–so I wanted this spread to be full of bright colors and positive affirmations.

Step 2: The Weekend.

I always start with the bottom right corner of the spread. Like most people, my weekends aren’s as busy as the rest of the week, so I can burn 2 blocks (or more) on a quote or decoration. This “Think Happy Thoughts” sticker was perfect, but being on a white background I felt like it needed something extra. Enter washi tape. Washi is a perfect accent and space filler, and as you will see, I use it a lot. Still, I felt like this corner was lacking something with just a stark, square border.

My rotary cutter has an optional scallop blade, so I used that to put a decorative edge on my tape. It’s super easy to cut washi tape, because you just stick it down to the cutter and it peels right up when you’re done.

Step 3: Major Events.

Once I was happy with my corner, I moved to Tuesday, which is the day of my flight home. I got my flight info sticker from the Watercolor pack. Since most of that day will be spent it the air and I don’t need a lot of space for other plans, I decided to put a packing list right on the day. The list banner came from the Color Story pages; I just cut off whatever tag was at the top and used a packing list sticker from the flight page. A little washi tape brought in some extra color and filled some of the awkward space above the banner.

Finally, my daughter (who is staying home with my husband) has a playdate on Tuesday that I don’t want them to forget. So I added a reminder for myself to remind them :) These little blocks from the productivity pack are narrower than the columns in the Classic planner, so again I used some washi to fill the space. The finishing touches were the little heart and the “Today Can Be Great” sticker–a joke to myself considering a day spent on an airplane with a toddler is pretty much the opposite of great.

Step 4: Fill

From Tuesday I moved to Monday. The day before a trip is typically full of last minute errands and lots of running around, so I wanted to leave a lot of space for notes. The Get it Done block is from Color Story, and the little Busy Day flag is from Productivity. I used the leftover washi from my corner to add some interest since the day was pretty stark otherwise.

I don’t really have any set plans from Wednesday on. The “Let Your Faith be Bigger Than Your Fear” from the Quotes stack jumped out at me, and it fits the color scheme of the page pretty well. I usually put a full block in the middle of Thursday or Friday, and I picked Thursday this week so it wouldn’t obstruct the corner of my washi boarder. Lining one side of a quote block with super-skinny glitter washi is one of my favorite ways to highlight something on a page, so I did that here.

The “Remember This” sticker went on Wednesday because I assume I’ll be seeing my grandfather that day. And I used a 2-day “Family Time” banner for Thursday and Friday, seeing as how I’ll obviously be spending time with my family for most of the week. Both of those stickers also came from the Quotes pack.

Back to the Color Story pages, I grabbed a couple background stickers. The blue dots made a nice contrasting background for the pink Plans block, so I put those at the top of my weekend. The Shine Bright sticker helped pull some of the yellow elements onto that side of the spread.

The stripes were one background block that I cut in half lengthwise to use as layering elements. It seems like “Life is so good” is a good thing to remember, so I put it below the “Remember This” sticker. Then “Family Time” needed some more interest, so I put the other half of the sticker above it. It’s not long enough to cover two columns, so I used the “Good Vibes Only” dot to fill the space.

Then the bottom of Thursday and Friday was looking pretty lonely, and I figured I’d probably need a bulleted list at some point in the second half of the week, so I stuck one down there.

Step 5: Sidebar

I use the notes section to put reminders and to-do items that don’t have a due date assigned to them. Usually I put a quote or decoration at the bottom of the sidebar, but since I have a large sticker at the bottom of Monday and the quote I wanted to use is wider than the sidebar, I placed it in the middle. A few weeks ago I also started incorporating a “Goals” box somewhere in each spread, which has really helped me focus on one or two things each week. This week it fit perfectly in the bottom corner below my quote.

Step 6: Bullets and Icons

To finish, I place little bullet and icon stickers in all the empty spaces. It gives me more space to jot down little notes throughout the week, and helps balance the white space. This week I decided on a whim to use some of the little flag bullets to make a banner at the top of Friday. Sometimes the little unplanned elements that I end up liking the most.

So there you have it. That’s how I plan. I hope that walking you through my thought processes helped inspire your own spreads! If you case this one, Tag me on Instagram (@inklingsnyarns) so I can see!

Supplies:

Happy Planner Classic Kit Color Story Stickers Quotes Stickers Productivity Stickers Watercolor Stickers Washi Tape Fiskars Rotary Cutter Fiskars Scallop Blade

InLinkz.com

If you watch my Instagram, you’ve noticed that I’ve been doing a lot of coloring lately. That’s all thanks to the Daily Marker 30 Day Coloring Challenge. I love this challenge for forcing me to sit down and practice my coloring every day. (Yes I know that sounds crazy.) When you bounce between crafts the way I do, it’s easy for some of your oldest, truest ones to get back-burnered. So it’s nice to have this excuse to focus on one particular hobby for an extended period of time, and I like to use it to expand into areas I’m either unfamiliar with or don’t have much of a knack for.

I’ve been coloring with Copics for so long that the watercolor trend has really thrown me for a loop. So my goal this month has been to focus more on watercolors, and to stop expecting my Zig markers to blend the way Copics do. So last week I broke out some paints and decided to try painting a galaxy. There are approximately 285,000 video tutorials on youtube for how to do this, and every last one of them makes it seem really easy.

I don’t know if I’d call it easy. What I ended up with felt kindof like an ugly mess at first, but I’m learning that that’s just a step that all watercolor goes through. Eventually as it dried it started to look passably similar to what I’d had in mind. I used Crayola watercolor paints, and sprayed it with an old bottle of Glimmer Mist. Eventually I added white puff paint for more noticeable stars. (I have a lot of money invested in a lot of different coloring mediums; I’m going cheap on this one until I feel a little more comfortable with it.)

Now, the unspoken portion of the coloring challenge is the actual using of the things you color. Check the #thedailymarker30day hashtag on Instagram and pretty much everyone’s posting beautiful finished cards featuring their coloring. Not me. Most days its all I can do to find the time to color. Trying to figure out a background and embellishments too is generally beyond my current capabilities. But this little galaxy was already perfectly sized for a card back, and it was pretty enough that it didn’t require a whole lot of embellishment, and I needed a card to send to my grandfather…so it all just came together.

I call my grandfather Moredad, and my kids call him Much Moredad (get it?).

He’s 95, and he lives on the other side of the country, and he’s amazing. He’s also been sick, so I wanted to send him a card to let him know that we’re missing him and thinking about him. So the sentiment’s kindof obvious, right? I printed it (the font is Janda Swirlygirl) on Neenah and cut it out with the Lawn Fawn Puffy Clouds border die. Then I added a little bit of clear Spica pen to emphasize the “Much More,” and mounted it all onto some shimmery black cardstock.

Easy peasy! I just need a few more cards to come together this quickly for me and maybe I’ll really get back into the swing of things with this daily crafting.

Supplies:

InLinkz.com