Nerding Out.

Since the age group that I'm going to be working with for student teaching is ninth graders I really wanted to jump on the Hunger Games band wagon because sooooo many of my students last semester loved the books. I haven't had a chance to read them yet because of my heavy course load the last couple years so I decided this summer was the perfect time.

 

Little did I know that reading these books would keep me up until 4 am several nights in a week. Sebastian was appreciative of my new found passionate reading situation, especially since that meant he got to fall asleep on my lap in the bed instead of in his kennel. 

Which means waking up to this:

So needless to say I'm totally a fan of the novels. Love them! I can't wait to introduce some students to the books this year, they have some awesome themes and are part of a genre called dystopian (opposite of Eutopian) and they get more complex the older you get as you read them. 

I also found this fun printable for my future classroom:

I have one week and the next books I've got to tackle?

 

Yup. It's gonna happen! What are you reading? Any recommendations?

Miss Fix-It

Sometimes around my house things start to fall apart. Or fall down. Or break. Or they fall apart, fall down, and break things on the way. For example my sweet and wonderful built in jewelry display in my master bathroom. Remember how it looked when I first did it last year? It was so pretty! The tension rod was wonderful and well... tense. Now, however. I walked into my bathroom to see it looking like this:

The tension rod had fallen down and two of my pictures had practically jumped off the top shelf. Curse. Broke one of my cute vintage apothecary bottles on the way down.

Obviously the weight of the necklaces was to much for the small tension rod that I was employing to do the job. So I decided to break out the hookums.

I decided to use just three, one on each side and one in the center. I could still use the tension rod so I didn't need to add in a whole bunch of these.

Sebastian is the construction manager around here. He is obviously super excited to hear that there is more house stuff happening.

I took my trusty little Ryobi drill and did the first hole and cranked the hook in... easy peasy. Why didn't I do this before?

I then added the next two hooks using the same method. I will advise if you decided to do one of these built ins they are totally awesome, but make sure you paint everything BEFORE installing it. My ex that did this was too excited and I had to paint it in place. Hard stuff.

I then reset the tension rod with all the necklaces and worked on dispersing them evenly across the rod. Plus I organized them by style and popularity....

What? I like to pretend my closet and bathroom is my own vintage clothing/accessory/home goods boutique.  hehe.

I took two beer bottles and spray painted them with metallic spray paint to add some cool height (plus I won't care if they fall and break, gives me an excuse to buy more beer anyways) and I put my favorite bracelets on them for easy access.

Not too bad for a five minute quick fix! Plus I know that my jewelry is going to stay put now and not go jumping around or getting tangled up.

Not So Trashy Now!

I have been trying to prep my house for the whole "back to school" thing that is going to be happening in the next couple weeks. My life is going from working forty hours a week during the summer to working thirty hours at my job for AT&T and teaching full time at the high school where I'm student teaching. I would just like to say, I hope I don't die. But alas. Must pay thee bills! #singleladyproblems

Anyways! I have been wanting to redo the trashcan in my bathroom since I did the remodel way back when.

I've had this blue guy since I first bought my house. He was a dollar at the dollar store and he fits PERFECTLY next to the toilet because of his funky shape.

But he is a weird plastic blue color. Lack luster, zero character. Sad trashcan.

So I sprayed him down!! The power of white spray paint... knows no bounds.

After a good healthy dose of white spray paint, Sir Trashcan got a good taping off in a chevron pattern. I wanted to do two big solid stripes because a) he's tiny b) that's too much taping for me.

I love to paint so I had some inexpensive craft paint on hand already and got to work painting. I just used a basic sponge brush that I had because it wasn't anything that required any particular artistic finesse.

Sometimes I get over excited... such as when I peeled the tape in haste rather than going slowly to make sure that all the white paint stayed on the trashcan. Damn.

Sebastian's disappointment is entirely evident as he pulled the blanket off the couch to  lay on. He's clearly not as thrilled about this trashcan thing as I am.

Ta-da! Sure, it's not perfect. Not all trashcans are really. He looks much cooler though! The yellow and white fits better in my bathroom then the random ice blue did.

See what I mean?

Yay! Trashcan happiness for only $1.00!!

Linked to: Beyond the Picket Fence