Trimming the Hedges

Yard work. The bane of my existence, really. I've been super busy the last couple of weeks preparing for student teaching, coordinating trip plans, cleaning the house, and all that other good stuff that I have thoroughly neglected the yard. Completely. Seriously my dog was getting lost in the grass...

Check out the unruly before:

It looked like a field rather than a lawn... Sebastian thought it was fun. You can't see him but he was over on the far left of the picture. Seriously it was that bad.

So I got out my lawn mower, weed eater, and electric hedge trimmer and got after it. I've learned if I keep my mulberry bush/tree sheared down pretty short it keeps the berries from growing, which then prevents the awful stains on the concrete and on your shoes as well as hundreds of birds out of the yard. I don't mind birds really, I think they're pretty. What's not pretty is my three animals all about 10 pounds launching themselves at the windows in an attempt to get the birds. That's not good.

So it gets shortened!

I was actually outside early enough to see

Winey Cork.

Pinterest has always been an awesome source of inspiration especially as I am starting to think of what I would want to do with my next house once I move in December or January. Oh yeah if you follow me on there, look out for a lot of kitchens and bathrooms!

 But I still like to make a few things for my house now. I mean I do have 130 days left until I graduate college. Not that I'm counting, but it's coming up. December 15th. It's a Saturday. Just so everyone is aware. :)

Sadly the problem is that I'm a little on the poor-er end because I'm having to budget a lot tighter for student teaching. Unpaid internship, yay! Anyways after spending 30 minutes on Pinterest I decided I needed to do something! So I scaveged my house for crap  items that I already had.

I came up with:

• corks from wine bottles
• 2x4 wood thing
• construction adhesive
• silver or brown spray paint

Looks like we're making a cork board! First thing I did was lay down the 2x4 to see how many wine corks I would need. 24 was the magic number on this, but if you make it yourself it really depends on how you'd want to space it.

I then took it outside and used the leather brown Rustoleum spray paint that I had left over from painting my deck furniture a couple months ago, I did a light coat so that it would give the wood a layer of protection but still appear rustic. .

Next step... construction adhesive! I don't recommend getting this on any of your body parts or surfaces aside from where it was assigned. We used this for the toe kicks in my kitchen. Strong stuff. One at a time I lined up my corks...

Looks so pretty! And easy! I let it dry for a couple of hours so that the adhesive had a chance to set without the corks sliding around, I stacked some books on it for good measure also.

I stood it up for a bit just to make sure that none of the corks would fall off or get unruly. Thankfully it turned out great!

I took my drill and put one of the bigger bits that I had in it and put two holes for nails to hook on, that way it would lay really flush against the wall. As though they were one!

And voila! For zero dollars I've got a personalized, vintagized, awesome-ized, corkitized place for memories. It also just so happens to look fabulous.

Have you made any awesome projects out of random items around your house?

Linked to: Shabby Nest House of Hepworths  Beyond the Picket Fence Christina's Adventures

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?