Gussying up a 2-inch binder

Well it's back to school time again.  Time for those long school supply lists and new clothes, and backpacks, and science calculators... you get the drift.  Anyway, now that I'm the proud owner of some teens and tweens, we have added 2-inch binders added to our lists of things we need. The required 2-inch binders the school requested are plain, boring, and usually only available in two colors (black or white), as opposed to the 1 1/2 in binders, which come in every pretty and/ or sparkly pattern in the known universe. Why the larger binders don't get the same fancy treatment? We may never know.  The girls had the thought last year that we really needed to gussy up our binders by personalizing them. We ended up having so much fun doing it again this year, I thought we'd post about it.  

School Binders - all gussied up and personalized

All you will need for this project is a plain, plastic sleeve binder (of any size), and then scrapbook paper, magazines, old calendars, print outs from the computer, stickers, anything your heart desires. This doesn't have to be just for school kids.  I ended up using this same technique on some plain 3-ring binders for my work as well and they are so pretty to look at now!

I let the girls first pick a "theme" for the binder. We used scrapbook paper in pretty colors to use as a background.  My middle loves leopards, so her was pretty easy to start with. 

She LOOOOOVES leopards.

We ended up using some computer print-outs we had left over from her leopard party, and that strip in the middle binding area is a leopard paper sack lunch bag (we had used them as favor bags at the party). We had an extra one of lying around that we trimmed up and it was put to good use.

Leopards on the inside too! She can put school papers behind the leopard print out, and fun drawings she did in front of it.

Don't forget the inside sleeves!  More leopards and to top it off, we found a leopard pencil holder pouch, which finished off the look.  The possibilities are limited only by your imagination!

a few different pages of scrapbook paper in coordinating colors

The other two girls originally just picked pretty scrapbook paper in coordinating colors the first year.

My youngest wanted shades of pink on the inside (but of course), with sparkling folders and a pink pencil pouch to tie everything together.

These folders are a fun way to add some pizzazz and fun into your work or school day.

This year we got a little more fancy!  We still used the scrapbook paper as a background, but added pictures according to the new themes they picked this year.  For my youngest, she loves all things having to do with husky dogs.  Check our her folder this year:

Husky dogs make adorable binder covers

We used an old calendar.  Okay not even an old one, it was THIS YEAR's calendar, and we used all the months up to August.  We also used the tiny thumbnails on the back of the calendar and used the tiny pictures as both the seam down the middle of the binder, and the pockets on the inside. To help keep the smaller pics from sliding around, we taped them to some scrapbook paper to keep them in place under the plastic sleeve.

The scrapbook paper keeps the little pictures in place

Not to mention the scrapbook paper makes it so much easier to slide the smaller pictures down into sleeve area, which can be a tight fit.  It looks adorable now.

And my oldest had immersed herself in all things K-pop (Korean pop music) culture, k-drama, etc. and wanted groups like BTS, NCT, Red Velvet, and Stray kids all over her binder.

I'm sure if your kids are in the BTS "army" right now they are probably gasping all the air out of the room.

Meanwhile, her binder edge she thought some of the band logos would fit nicely down the side.

She was so excited to find these vertical logos for the groups

Even my somewhat boring work folders received a make over too and they are quite enjoyable to look at now throughout the work week. It's a win win for all.  

Such a nice thing to look at during the work day!

 So all and all we had a great time, we used recycled materials or things we had on hand to personalize and gussy up the folders for school.  If they change their mind or want to add to the folder throughout the year it totally up to them and easily adjustable! Happy creating to you and yours!

Getting to Know Your Teacher - Male (free printable)

It was pointed out that my printable of 'Getting to know your teacher' I gave out yesterday was aimed at a female teacher.  I went back and retooled it a bit in case you have a male teacher (or wish for a more gender neutral questionnaire). There are no questions of favorite flowers, scented candles or lotions.  To tell them apart, I gave the second version a "star" border instead of apples.  Here is a sneak peek of what it will look like:

Feel free to click the link below and print it out on your home computer.

Getting to Know My Teacher (male) Click here

Thanks for the head up Robb.  

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I hope everyone has a great school year.

Getting to Know Your Teacher (free printable)

I know in some parts of the country, school already started a few weeks ago.  Around here school starts today or tomorrow.  I thought I would give you grade school moms out there a little back to school gift, to start the year off right.  It's a "get to know your teacher" free printable!  I made these for my girls two years ago and have figured out how to make it into a pdf so you can print too! I have my girls take this to school on the first day and give to the teacher.  The teacher (when they have a free second) can fill it out and send it home with your student.  Here's a sneak peek of what it will look like:

  
I thought the cute apple border was a nice touch!  This has really helped us get to know our teachers so much better.  Teachers do so much for our kids all year, and our kids are in their care seven hours a day. This is the perfect way to understand them better as a person.  Soon you will know many secrets, like when their birthday is, what their favorite baked good is, and if they have a favorite scent.  If you know that their favorite kind of candy is a Kit Kat bar, how nice would it be at the end of a long testing week to sneak a king-sized candy bar on their desk.  Do they drink Diet Coke religiously or do they love Wild Cherry Pepsi?  At Christmas time you will know exactly what kind of gift to give them, because you will know they are a huge sports fan, an avid scrapbooker, or that their Scotty dog is the love of their life.  I also learned invaluable things like our Kindergarten teacher does not like candles of any kind (candles are a common present for many teachers) because she owns birds, and apparently birds and scented candles do not mix.

My girls and I always try to make their favorite baked good and bring them a plate of it on their birthday with a kiddie hand made card.  Being thoughtful is the key here!  I think this is a win win for everyone.  You can get the inside track on the things your teacher loves the most (hello, brownie points) and at the same time, the teacher feels extra love and appreciation for the amazing  job they do every day.

So without much further ado, I give you the free printable:

Click HERE for the pdf and print from your computer.  Enjoy!

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Thanks, and have a great school year!

Library Card - Let's try this again...

So, today was a big day for us.  We decided it was time to try and obtain a library card.  Again.  Oh we've had one before in the distant past when the girls were 5, 4, and 2, but with such tragic results we've been scarred and scared away for over two years.  Should I share the story?  Well, I don't really want to, but okay, here it is.  The long and the short of it goes something like this: Two years ago we went to the library.  We instantly lost a DVD and simultaneously got pink eye.  We haven't been back since.  True. story.  

Yup.  The pink eye part is hands to God true.  We had not been out of the house in over a week, with the library being the only place we decided to visit on a whim.  There were a number of toys the girls played with as we were looking for books, then bam, two days later, we had a pink eye outbreak.  Gross.  We also had, on first check out, brought home a Veggietales DVD which we watched non-stop for a few days, then it mysteriously vanished.  A scour of the land high and low revealed nothing. Weeks went by, and it never turned up.  Ashamed, we returned to the library at the end of our 3 week borrowing time I humbly had to tell the nice lady behind the counter I had lost their property.  For an avid book reader this was a very deep shame.  Fifteen dollars later we were back on speaking terms but I knew I could never show my face in there again...

Flash forward to today and I decided, now that we've got ourselves a couple of little readers, we need to be immersed in books all summer so that when school comes around, we are ahead of the game.  (Side note: I even ended up finding that lost DVD a year later and saved it to bring back, even though I had already paid for it).  Would the alarms go off?  Would the library lady gaze sternly at me from behind her glasses?  Luckily, no. Once inside we found a nice lady who looked up our info and we were still in the system.  She gave us a new library card lickety split and signed the girls up for a summer reading program where they can earn prizes and a trip to the zoo to boot!  No long lecture on lost things, no "this is a big responsibility" speech.  Nothing. Just a smile and can I help you find chapter books for your future 2nd grader.  Sweet.  She trusts me!

Technically, we should have taken it slow and just check out a few books for our first time back, but truth be told we went a little bit gaga over the books once we were released into the kid's book shelf area. Each girl starting picking out books they wanted, and soon I was standing there with a tower of heavy books in my arms, thirteen to be exact!  Wow. These girls are excited about this.  They were even more excited to discover we could check these books out all by ourselves! Scanning with glee accompanied by a satisfying "beep" and all three girls wanted to scan their own books for checkout.

After the drive home the books were piled precariously on the floor, and I knew right away I was going to need a system so that our books are not lost forever, or find their way into our own book shelves, or worst of all, vanish into a painful time warp.  Within minutes of getting home we got back in the car.  We need something to store these books in, with easy access, and we need a big bag to take them to and from the library.  This is what I came up with.

Isn't this great?  I got it for about $5 at Walmart. It is made for file folders, which made it nice and deep for all of those over sized library books.  This was handy because the lid folded in two.  Therefore if we had a huge book, we could tuck most of them away under the lid but if need be, but the giant book would be free to stick out of the top.

Luckily all the books fit with the lid closed.  This surprised me because some of them were pretty big.

Hooray.  Now we can tuck this little tub somewhere and keep all the books in one place.  I made the rule that the library books can not go up stairs and this little tub is like our library shelf at  home.  I'll let you know how that works.  Also I have a little folder in here that keeps our print out receipt we got at check out so we can check off the list before we have to go back and get more books.  It also is holding their reading charts where they color in a star every time they read for 20 minutes.  All in one place.  Genius.  Speaking of more books, I don't want to be standing there loaded down with an unbalanced tower of books again, so I also got this cute "designer" reusable shopping bag for $4 to lug our books back and forth with.

Not bad eh?  So now I am feeling much more organized and ready to take on the responsibility of a public library card (also I think it helps if your kids are out of the toddler "wander off with everything" stage).  I want my girls to love reading as much as I do, and I think this is the first step to making life long readers out of them.

So far... so good (Doing the happy mom dance here)!

Cute Teacher Gift - An Acrostic Poem

We wanted to do something special for my daughter's kindergarten teacher.  She had been such a great teacher and positive influence on my middle child.  We wanted to make her something homemade, and I noticed in her classroom she has some gifts from former students displayed on the walls (pictures with cool teacher sayings, notes from parents, etc).  So we decided to make an acrostic.  What's an acrostic you say?  Well at the time I didn't know what it's official name was.  When the teacher actually pulled it out of the bag I thought she had said, "Oh a cross stitch"... which turns out was not the case.  The true definition is: An acrostic poem uses the letters in a word to begin each line of the poem. All lines of the poem relate to or describe the main topic word. We just took the first letters of her last name and stacked the vertically, then horizontally we added one characteristic/adjective about her for each letter.

The supplies were not expensive.  We bought a nice document frame from Walmart for $5, a piece of wide-spaced notebook paper, a package of sparkly letter stickers for $3, and a package of doggie stickers $2.  Then we customized it for this particular teacher.  This teacher loves scottie dogs, so we picked out those stickers.  My daughter did most of this work herself.  (It was hard for me as a perfectionist to let her do most of the placing, as I wanted it so bad to be lined up and with properly with good visual white space around it.  However it was also important that she do most of the lettering because it with this teacher who taught her all the letters).  I wrote out the big words on a piece of paper and placed it underneath so my daughter could trace the letters. We left the putting on of the capital letter stickers for last, in case there were any mistakes.

At the end we decided the creamy white border was a bit bland and we decided to gussy it up with some color.  My daughter had fun picking all kinds of colors and coloring away.  At the end she signed her name and the year then we wrapped it up ready to give on the last day of school.

 
This is Eva and her teacher Mrs. Mulcrone after she gave her the present.  She was so proud of her picture and the teacher loved it.  Even though there were only 10 minute left in class on the last day, she told the kids what an acrostic is, then used it to teach the letters in her name, even had the class count the scottie dogs across the top (you have to love teachers, they love to teach). After that she read them a book called "The last day of Kindergarten".  I love her so much, she is such a warm caring teacher.  By the way if you were wondering, the "Rawr-some" for the R letter is because their class has the theme of grizzly bears and they do this little cheer where all the kids "rawr" at the end of it, so we made awesome into "rawr-some".

So there you have it, a nice little unique and personalized end of the year teacher gift from your little ones. You could also use this idea for a parent, or grandparent, father's day or mother's day, get as creative as you want! Have fun.

Love Notes

I was remembering my childhood the other day, and how my mom would sometimes put little love notes in our lunch.  A little encouragement, and "I love you" was such a sweet and easy gesture that really let you know how much you were loved, even when you were far away at school.  I thought, when I'm a mom I'm going to do fun things in my kid's lunches too.  Flash forward to now and almost every time they have a sandwich I will use a fun cookie cutter and make fun shapes out of them.  Who could resist a dog bone shaped sandwich or one made of four puzzle pieces you have to put together before you eat?  Sometimes I will put random fun things they normally don't get in there, popcorn, giant marshmallows, one time I put a bowl, a baggie of cereal and a quarter to buy a milk.  They were thrilled!

So this newfangled notion of all day kindergarten really put me on the spot these last couple of years.  I could write "I love you" or some other simple note on a napkin, but my kindergartener couldn't read just yet.  

So I had the BRIGHT idea one morning to pick up a couple of different party napkins while I was at the grocery store.  They were only a small amount of money and there were so many themes to choose from.  

Just a small assortment of our fun napkin arsenal.  You can always add to it, that's the fun part.

Each day my daughters could open up their lunch and find a surprise face or favorite character to greet them.  They loved it!  I started stocking up, any time after a holiday I'd snag a bunch on clearance.  (Note: I try not to buy any with holiday words on them, I try to keep it generic, so they can be used any time of year).  Now it's been a full year and I have a cute little arsenal of fun napkins to choose from.  Like if we are wishing for a snow day I can toss in a snowflake napkin from last winter's clearance sale.  If it's their birthday I send a happy birthday napkin.  Who wouldn't want to open their lunch to see a friendly Hello Kitty or Minnie Mouse looking back up at you?  Anyway, just thought I'd pass the tip along.  I'm thinking they will be diggin' these surprise napkins notes even long after they can read the real "I love you"