More Disney Monday Made-Its! :)

So I was so excited.  After looking at last week's Made-Its, I finally started working on some stuff for school!  I was like, Woohoo!!  I'm actually going to have a school Made-It to show you all.  Well some yucky family stuff went on at the end of the week and I didn't get them finished.  That just means that I will have them for you NEXT week!
So let's get started!

So Tuesday we had our Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs lunch at my house.  We went for a miniature foods theme (for the dwarfs, as we weren't going to make German food).  So I made little smokies in crescent rolls, pretzel bites, and miniature fresh veggie cups.  My sister made apple dumplings.  

Before the movie we had the girls make rock candy.  I thought it would go along with the dwarfs and their mining and the jewels they dig for.  It was a great concept and the girls had fun with it, but almost a week later and it's an epic fail.  lol  No candy forming at all.  Oh well.  We tried!  lol  

After lunch, my sister had come up with a magic mirror craft for the girls to do.  She wrapped cardboard ovals with aluminum foil and then the girls picked paper to glue them on to, cut around them, and decorated them.  

So it was a success and another movie down in our countdown.  

When we started planning our trip we were shown the DIS boards and a friend of my sister recommended the creative DISigners they have on there.  She recommended one named Mandy.  The DISigners will customize anything Disney you want, all for free.  She will design and post it and then you save it to your computer and print it out how you want.  Mandy made and customized invitations for my niece Brynn for our hotel and the restaurants we have character dining reservations for.  She also customized things for t-shirts we wanted to make, and Tinker Bell cards for the gifts that Tinker Bell will leave for Brynn for good behavior and sleeping habits at Disney.  So awesome!  It's amazing and really does spread the pixie dust and Disney Magic.  I was able to work on the DISigns for my shirts.  Just printed them out on t-shirt transfers cut them out, and ironed them on.  Here they are:

The Disney Princesses dressed as the villain from their movie.  Loved the idea!  I just had her put it in the word "Disney."  

Mickey word and image.  

This is actually the back of this tank.  On the front, in the lapel area, is a small Cinderella picture and my name.  

We have all tank tops since it's going to be so warm.  Didn't they turn out great?  And she'll customize them however you want!  I have others to do print out for Brynn and my sister.  So fun!  

I also found on the DIS boards about how people decorate their windows at Disney and found another creative DISigner, Lady B, through there that does the same type of things, but obviously she has different DISigns.  We had her customize some Mickey heads to display in our window.  

You can kind of see them laying there on my couch.  So I cut some ribbon to longer than what the window height is from what I read online.  They will be tied to suction cups and hung on the window to decorate it and make it easier to find our room.  So the one ready to go is Brynn's.  She requested Pocahontas so it has her picture in the middle and on one ear it says Brynn and the other says 2013.  Then I used my cameo to cut out the mickey heads and flowers.  I have a Cinderella head.  Jodie has a Tinker Bell head.  I just changed the colors of the flowers for each one.  The Pinocchio one is going to my sister's father-in-law.  I cut out stars instead of flowers for him.  Then there is a Mickey head that says Our 1st Disney Trip in the middle and the outline of the head is our trip details.  I made some silhouettes of Little Mermaid characters to go on the ribbon with that one since we'll be staying in the Little Mermaid rooms.  I also want to bring a strand of white Christmas lights to string up making it easier to find in the dark.  We're excited to do this and I know Brynn will love it too when she sees it.  :)

So Thursday was supposed to be our Aladdin dinner night.  We were going to have grilled chicken kabobs, cous-cous, and this jeweled jello cake (for the Cave of Wonders).  Well that's when the yucky family stuff went down and my sister and niece ended up coming over to my house.  There was no time to make the dinner and we didn't feel like eating it anyway.  Brynn and I still watched the movie as a distraction and also made Abu hats using red cups and construction paper.  

Gotta love how resilient kids are.  Smiling when it was not a smiley night. Such a pretty model.  :)

We did eat the dessert too, which was basically just 4 different colors of jello made and broken up into pieces (to look kind of like jewels) and then poured into a cake pan with clear jello poured on top to set it.  Then you frost it with cool whip.  They slept over at my house so the next day we did the coloring sheet and made felt magic carpets.  

 Decorating hers.  

The final product to show.  

Because of all of the craziness I did not make a menu and I didn't feel the need to make one afterwards because we didn't do it as normal anyway.  

Now things are settling down again.  We saw Monsters University Sunday afternoon.  Cute.  Loved seeing little Mike Wazowski.  We should hopefully get our 2 movie meals done as usual this week and I should get my school things done.  Hopefully I'll finish up the iron-ons for the others shirts as well.  

Hope all is well with everyone else.  Can't wait to get inspired!  :)

http://4thgradefrolics.blogspot.com/2013/07/monday-made-it-71513.html

A busy start to July!

Well I'm back again for Monday Made-it!  I may not be getting anything done for school yet (although I have ideas, thanks to you guys), but at least I'm blogging once a week!  lol

We'll start off with last Monday.  So with it being a busy week, we had our Disney Dinner Meal on Monday evening.  We had a Cars night.  Brynn had never seen the movie and really had no desire to as in her words, "It's a boy movie."  Now my sister and I already knew she felt this way so we kept playing up Sally in the movie.  lol  

We started with a game that was kind of like Bozo Buckets.  We put out 3 baskets and put a green circle, yellow circle, and red circle to make traffic light.  Then the girls had to throw bean bags in to each one.  It was quick with only 3 baskets, but still fun.  Then we got onto dinner and the movie.  My sister made individual meat loafs and used toothpicks to put carrots as the wheels so that they looked like cars.  We went for Route 66 diner food.  We then used the ideas of buying mini chocolate donuts to making Luigi's Leaning Tower of Tires and hot fudge sundaes for Mater's oil.  I then made Cozy Cone Motels out of orange paper for the girls to decorate and bought mini Cars matchbox cars to go into them to play with, which they loved.  

Brynn liked the movie, but it didn't hold her attention like the other movies usually do.  She was more antsy, but she did like Sally and Mater.  

Then Tuesday I went into school to meet with the rest of my team to work on common core planning for the fall.  We shared some stuff and seem to be good for first trimester at least.  We won't really know until we begin...

Wednesday we did an Alice in Wonderland lunch.  We did NOT do a tea party as the girls do not like tea (since we had them try some fruity iced tea during Beauty and the Beast).  We just went with the theme of the "Eat Me" "Drink Me" that Alice experiences.  

We started out with a game that you can print out from the Disney Go site.  You had to collect all of these treasures around Wonderland and end up with the Alice card, but NOT the Queen of Hearts card.  It was cute and easy for the girls to understand.  

Then we watched the movie and ate lunch.  I had made fun shaped pb&j sandwiches, Jodie made a fruit tray, we had juice boxes, and I made sugar cookies.  

It was good.  The girls were a little bit antsy during this movie too, but they had seen it before.  After eating the girls made construction paper flowers with faces on them to match the ones from the movie (no pics of that, sorry!).  

After lunch I hung out and Jodie and I made these Disney princess ribbons we had pinned ages ago that we wanted to make for Brynn to wear at Disney.  The directions given are for Cinderella, but we used them for Belle too, just changing up the colors.  For Ariel we used the directions for the head and part of the hair and body, but we winged the rest.  lol  

Here are ours.  We were happy with how they turned out.  We'll put a barrette through them or a headband.  Or even a safety pin to wear as a pin.  

So that was another thing checked off of our Disney to-do list!  We also got everything finalized and confirmed with the reservations.  Now just a warning on those ribbons, Cinderella took a long time to figure out how to get everything to work nicely, the other 2 went much quicker.  Small fingers help.  lol  

Then Thursday was the normal 4th of July cookout at my parents.  I made the dessert as usual.  

I called it a cheater pie, cause it's refrigerated pie crust and pie filling.  You can find the recipe here.  

Then Friday I finished up the Minnie Mouse head tank tops for my sister and myself.  I actually finished hers on Monday before I went over for dinner and I finished mine on Friday before my dinner plans.  

Hers is pink and mine is red to match the bows.  Red is my favorite color and it really feels Minnieish with the red and polka dots to me.  Happy with how it turned out.  Now this week I will work on the iron-on transfers.  

Saturday I spent the day working on the cupcakes for my niece Josie's birthday party.  I did cupcakes because we were having her party at a zoo and I thought that would be easier than a cake.  She was having a Barbie theme so I made Barbie cupcake liners and decorations using my cameo and scrapbooking supplies and I bought a mini Barbie dollar topper from amazon to use to make her cupcake more special.  

She requested strawberry cake with chocolate marshmallow frosting.  I just use boxed mixes and the frosting was the new Duncan Hines flavors you can mix in.  Ran out of the chocolate, but luckily I had bought some strawberry frosting too so that way it would match the Barbie topper so that got used too.  I sprinkled them with the leftover edible pearls I had from our Beauty and the Beast dessert.  She was very happy with them.  

Sunday was the big day, we packed up, and headed off to the zoo.  We had a great time picnicing.  Found some great tables under a big tree for shade.  She opened up her presents and then we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around.  The zoo we went to was a small zoo, but still tiring.  

So I had one crazy, busy week!  This week shouldn't be so bad.  I do of course have things going on almost every day, but they are more low key.  This week's Disney movies are Snow White and Aladdin.  

All right off I go!  Have a great week!  :)

http://4thgradefrolics.blogspot.com/2013/07/monday-made-it-july-8-and-giveawayd.html

More Disney Fun with Monday Made-It!

So here we are again for another fun Monday Made-it!

Again, mine is Disney themed as we're doing 2 movies/meals/activities a week as part of a countdown to our trip so I have Disney on the brain!!
So Tuesday we did a Sleeping Beauty lunch.  Brynn had never seen it because she was frightened of Malificent so we thought we better do this one for lunch instead of dinner, which is closer to bedtime.

We wore pajamas (SLEEPING beauty) and the girls (Brynn & Jaslene) watched the movie in sleeping bags on the floor.  My sister dyed mac and cheese pink with a dab of food coloring to go with the dress.  Then we had grapes and berries with it and I made cupcakes.  

I called them Briar Rose, since that's her name at the beginning. I went with a pink and blue theme since Flora and Merriweather keep switching everything between pink and blue.  The cupcake itself was pink, but I baked a blue cake ball in the middle as a surprise.  Then I lined my piping bag with the blue dye and filled it with pink frosting and piped the roses on top.  I was happy with how they turned out.  

The girls made Princess Aurora crowns while waiting for lunch, which was just made out of yellow card stock and gem stickers.  

My niece liked a lot of bling on hers.  lol  

We did another coloring sheet between courses and then after we finished eating we made pom pom birds to go with the birds that are in the forest.  

Brynn ended up not being scared at all, watched the whole movie, and enjoyed it.  Since Tuesday, she has watched it a few more times.  So I was happy about that.  :)  

Thursday we did Little Mermaid, which was Brynn's request.  

Jodie made dinner and I made dessert, as usual.  My dessert was this Sand-Dollar cookie recipe that I found that I thought would be good for an under the sea type theme.  They ended up being more like mini-blueberry pies, but they were still tasty. 

I used whole wheat flour instead of regular to make it look more sandish, but it also looked more pieish.  lol  

We came up with a treasure hunt for the girls to do together.  It was like they were Ariel finding all of these human "treasures."  We picked things that were in her trove and I found images online to go with.  I made a check-off sheet for them to use and printed out all of the images, cut them out, and Jodie hid them.  

The girls had a lot of fun with this and loved when they got to mark something off.  They also did a good job working together, which is something they both need to work on since they are each only children.  

We did another coloring sheet and at the end of the movie Brynn made a paper plate fish (Josie had been picked up by then).  We also watched Little Mermaid III which is actually a prequel to the original.  None of us had seen it.  We've all seen and own the 2nd one, but not the 3rd one, so that was a nice bonus and it was cute.  

Then Saturday I started making our shirts for Disney.  They are based on the idea from here.  We had bought fabric a few week ago and got the tank tops last week.  We're going in August so it's going to be HOT, so we opted for tanks over t-shirts.  I washed them and they are ready to go.  I used my cameo and the fabric interfacing and it worked great!  

Doesn't the cameo do such a nice clean line cutting out the fabric?  I was happy.  I then hand-stitched around it, and then added the ribbon and button.  This one is Brynn's.  It's the only one I have completely finished.  I have our heads cut out and ironed on, but not finished.  Brynn's is purple to go with the Minnie ears headband she has.  It's outlined in purple thread and then the bow.  Jodie's will be pink to go with her headband and mine will be red.  Brynn is very excited to match us.  

I also got this one done which was based on this.  

Again it was made using fabric that Brynn picked out (purple and sparkles, her fave), the fabric interfacing, and my cameo.  Cut out and ironed on.  Jodie said if I have time she'd like me to sew around it too, but they are very well stuck on there.  I used the interfacing that you can't use with a sewing machine because it's so thick and sticky, but she wants to make sure after multiple washings.  I thought this turned out very cute as well!  

Well now I have to work on the Cars menu as we are doing that for dinner.  Usually we have been doing Tuesday lunch, Thursday dinner but this week I have a meeting at school on Tuesday and Thursday is the 4th so we're doing Monday dinner and Wednesday lunch.  At least for dinner it's store bought dessert this week!  lol  

Can't wait to see what everyone else has been up to!  Talk to you next week!  :)  

Disney Made-Its!

I'm back for another week of Monday Made-it!  Yippee!!

So again I've just been in the Disney prep theme and we continued on with our movie countdown.  Tuesday it was Beauty and the Beast.  

Jodie, Brynn, and Jaslene came over to my house for lunch this time.  We are planning on trying the new Be Our Guest restaurant when we're at Disney for lunch so we took some menu items from there.  I made croque monsieurs for lunch, which are just grilled ham and cheese sandwiches with a béchamel sauce.  I also found a recipe for "The Grey Stuff."  You know, "try the grey stuff it's delicious, don't believe me ask the dishes..."  It's basically just vanilla pudding, oreos, cool whip, and a little chocolate pudding, but you pipe it fancy onto a plate and add edible pearls to make it look fancy.  

That's not my pic as you can tell, but mine DID look exactly like that!

We watched the movie, did a coloring sheet, and the girls and Jodie made a Lumiere craft.  Jodie took the pictures with her camera so I don't have any of them from the meals this week.  But you can check out the craft and directions, here.  It was just made using toilet paper tubes, an egg carton, paint, pipe cleaners, and hot glue.  Then we made tissue paper red roses as well.  So that was a fun afternoon.  

Then Thursday it was time for dinner at Jodie's house again with Brynn and Josie.  This time it was Lady and the Tramp night.  

Jodie made the meal and I made cannolis for dessert.  I got the recipe from allears.net where they have menus and recipes for a lot of Disney recipes. This one was from Tony's Town Square Restaurant, where we have reservations when we go.  It's themed for this movie.  Before dinner I took the girls outside while my sister hid these paw prints I made around the house.  

There were 12 that they had to find.  Brynn was better at this than Josie and found 9 of the 12.  We ate dinner, colored the coloring sheet, and made a spaghetti and meatballs craft.  

Again, not my pic, but this was the gist.  

Josie had gone home by then so it was just Brynn who made it.  I had beige yarn, brown pom poms, and red paint to be tomato sauce.  Again the real pictures are on Jodie's camera.  

This week we will be doing Sleeping Beauty and Little Mermaid.  

My final Made-It for the week is a purse/bag that I did for myself for Disney.  I had asked my mom to make one for me that I had seen on Pinterest, but she isn't going to have time so I decided to look for one and got inspired by one I saw on e-bay.  So I went out to Hobby Lobby and bought a red canvas bag (13.5 by 13.5), yellow buttons, some ribbon and trim, and sparkly fabric.  Here is my finished product.  

I'm super happy with it!  I cut the Mickey head using my Silhouette Cameo and I hand stitched it around the bottom and sides to make it a pocket.  I also used the leftover red fabric from the wreath I made my mom to make a pocket that I hand stitched inside.  I also hand sewed in ribbons to close the bag with.  My mom taught me to cross-stitch when I was little so I can do basic sewing, but I never learned how to use a sewing machine.  I did the inside pocket first, then the Mickey head, and inside ribbons.  After that I added the yellow buttons, and the black ruffly trim.  The last part was the yellow bow.  So I have a cute bag to carry around when I go.   I had bought an organizer for like $2 to go inside the bag my mom was going to make and it works perfectly in this bag too so it's not just a bottomless pit!  

I still have not been motivated to work on school stuff yet this summer so although I have ideas of things I want to do, I haven't started yet.  I'm meeting a friend of mine on Wednesday who is going back to teaching 2nd grade after a few years in 3rd so we can share files, and hopefully I'll be motivated after that.  Can't wait to see what everyone has this week!  :)  

Week 2 :)

So here it is the start of my 2nd week of summer vacation.  Woohoo!  It is also my 2nd link up with Monday Made-It! for the summer (even though I'm later with posting this week).

So last week was busy for me.  Tuesday I baby-sat my niece Josie who is here all summer from Texas. My brother has shared custody of her so before it was 6 weeks here, 6 weeks in TX.  Now that she will be starting kindergarten, she will be in Texas during the school year and here during all of her breaks.  2 of my sisters and I take turns watching her while my brother is at work.  My other 2 sisters do most of the watching as usually I'm teaching, but with summer I'm able to help out more.  So Josie came over and we went Father's Day shopping and we made a present for her to make for her Dad for Father's Day.  

Just a simple large popsicle stick frame that she decorated.  

She picked out the color of the sticks and then I helped her glue it together.  Then I helped her spell out Daddy's Girl and she put all of the stickers on herself.  Then I took a picture, printed it out, glued it to the back, and added some leftover baseball ribbon I had.  She was very excited about it, but did manage to wait until Sunday to give it to him.  

Also, as I have mentioned (and you can see on the blog), I'm going to Disney before school starts again in August (48 Days!).  I'm super excited about this as I have done 2 different day trips to Disney, but I have never done a whole week long vacation there!  I'm going with my younger sister's family (her daughter, husband, and father-in-law).  I've been the planner for the whole trip and have booked things.  So I found online to do a movie and meal countdown before going.  My sister and I made a list of the movies we thought Brynn should see or watch again before our trip and planned meals and activities to go with each one.  So our first one was Cinderella.  My sister had already planned her menu for the week before we decided to do this.  She was having chicken kievs and rice so we figured Cinderella was a fancy movie for a fancy meal.  

The little menu I created.

We then took the suggestion and borrowed some of my parents' china to serve the dinner on and we dressed up.  I also made the Strawberry Soup from the Cinderella dinner at 1900 Park Fare and pumpkin cream cheese truffles for dessert (I dyed the almond bark orange to really go for the little pumpkin look too).  While my sister was finishing the meal, the girls and I (my nieces Brynn and Josie, as my sister was watching her that day) made magic wands using wooden skewers, fun foam stars I had gotten from Michaels and different ribbon that I had.  I thought the stars were stickers, but they weren't so I used tacky glue to glue them together.  Here's mine:

We waved them around during Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.  Before dessert we each colored a coloring page too.  The girls had a lot of fun.  :)  

Friday my sister, Jodie, and Brynn came over to my house for a sleepover.  My brother-in-law has been out of town so we thought it would be fun to do while he's gone and to see how Brynn does not sleeping at home (to prepare for our trip).  We went to Panera for dinner and then came back to my house and I made mickey mouse ice creams to eat for dessert.  

It's just cookies and cream frozen yogurt, oreos for the ears and chocolate chips for the eyes and nose. 

We wore our Minnie ears that I bought from ebay and watched some Mickey Mouse movies on Netflix while we ate our ice cream.  

Then Saturday while Jodie and Brynn were still at my house, I watched Josie again and we bought the fabric we need to make our Disney shirts we'll be making.  Then Sunday we went to my parents to celebrate Father's Day (I made a cake for my dad for Father's Day too of course).  So it has been busy!  

Tomorrow Jodie, Brynn, and Jaslene (a cousin Brynn's age that Jodie watches) will be coming to my house for a Beauty and the Beast lunch.  I'll talk about everything we're doing for that, next week!  

I also made this wreath for my Mom.  It's just 2 in. strips of different fabric that I pinned to the back of a wreath.  Then I made those little stars by accordion folding some of the extra white fabric and running a needle and thread through it to close it together (I am NOT a sewer).  Then I glued the button into the middle of each and pinned them in place and added the ribbon to hang it with.  She has it hanging on their front door.  

So those are my made-its for this week!  :)  

Yay for Summer Vacation!

I'm officially on summer vacation!!!  My last day with kids was Thursday and although Friday was my official day, I was busy doing stuff so it didn't really feel like summer vacation.  That also probably had to do with the fact that we are not having very summer like weather.  It was a busy hectic last week and I'm glad that I can finally catch my breath and do things at my own pace.
Last week I made an iMovie for my kids of our year together, their little goodie bags with card below, and an owl cake for my niece's 1st birthday.

I found this a long time ago on the web (Thanks to whomever originated it!) and made this card with old DJ Inkers graphics.  If you would like a copy, I turned it into a pdf and you can grab it by clicking on the picture above.  I get most of the stuff that's on the list at the Dollar Store.  The only thing I couldn't get there were the Hugs & Kisses candy.  So all of the above goes in the bag with this note and the iMovie for their end of the year gift.  I think it's a cute little end of year present and it only costs a little over a dollar a kid (I spent $17 at the Dollar Store and then $7 at Jewel).  I already had colored paper lunch bags to put it in.  

 Here is my niece Mandy's owl cake I made for her.  I got inspired by a design on pinterest (of course) since her birthday theme was owls.  I like to make cakes so I thought, no problem, I'll use my Pampered Chef batter bowl twice to make the body and my sphere baking pan for the head to stack it to make the owl.  Then I found a marshmallow fondant recipe (recipe can be found here) that I had also found on pinterest.  I had never made, nor worked, with fondant before so that was something new for me.  The fondant was fine, but the cake was a disaster!  My bottom layer completely broke and the head cracked.  So I was freaking out that I wasn't going to have a cake for my niece, but then my sister helped me "bandage" the head and I used the middle piece, which was still whole, to make the owl body instead. I cut hearts out of the fondant and made the above.  Even the ears and beak are hearts I just rolled and stuck on.  I am very proud of how it came out!  Even with all of the drama!

So those are my Monday Made-Its for this week and for my first link up this summer!!  Now I'll be better motivated to blog and get things done since this is back to a weekly thing and I have time to do stuff (instead of being tired and laying on my couch after school, lol).  

My To-Do List for this summer:

*Figure out how to do a Daily 5 Math/guided math groups for my class next school year.

*Learn more about Common Core and get it organized into binders for next school year.  

*Work on Disney shirts and other Disney things for our Disney trip in August.  

*Make Family Birthday Board for parents anniversary.  

*Work on new items for tpt/tn stores. 

I'm happy that I have the time now to actually be able to work on things!  I also can't wait to get inspired by what everyone else is doing!  :)

Last Day!!!

So as per usual, haven't been on.  No surprise there.  lol  Today was the last full day of school and tomorrow is the last day with having the kids 1hr. 15 min.  Here's the crazy thing, and maybe some of you feel this way too, when I'm at school and it's a whirlwind with trying to get everything cleaned up and put away and ready for the end of the year and the kids are crazy because they need summer break NOW, I can't wait for the year to be over and summer to start.  I just want to say good-bye to everyone and everything.  Then I get home and I'm settled and doing other things and I start to think about my kiddos and I think, awww I can't believe it's the end of the year and they won't be in my room anymore, how sad!  So I was feeling that way and then I started talking to my sister about my day and I got all riled up again.  lol  Oh well.  It is what it is.  They will be gone tomorrow and I'm sure tomorrow will be a good day with them.  I'm never one of those teachers that gets teary-eyed on the last day though because I know I'll see the kids again, I'm just ready to say good-bye.  lol  Then I can relax and enjoy my laziness.  I made an iMovie for my kiddos about our year together with pictures from the whole year and put it to great music and watching that at home had me teary-eyed!  It should be a nice end of the year gift for them to remember the year by, along with the other small goodies I gave them.  Well I'm going to leave this as a short post.  I just wanted to come on here and ask if anyone else was as crazy as I am!  lol  :)