Duct Tape Tote Bag

Tonight I attended a class at one of the local scrapbook stores and created my very own duct tape tote bag. It was a ton of fun and fairly easy to put together. I cannot wait to try to create a smaller one or different sizes of them. They could work out for cute little gifts. I made mine teal and black...watch for a photo soon. I am heading to bed for the evening but hope to post a photo sometime tomorrow after school.

Yes I am still here...

I know that many of you are probably wondering how everything is going and if I survived my first few weeks of school. YES YES YES...I certainly did survive and am loving it. As most of you already know, I am no longer working at Down Memory Lane (the scrapbook store) as I got a teaching job in Chippewa Falls. I am teaching at the alternative school there, one of the elementary schools, AND the high school. I was so scared of the high schools but at this point, they are my favorite! At this point, I somewhat dread going to the elementary school each day. I never thought that would ever happen! I think it is just so early in the year and the kindergarteners and 1st graders are not into the swing of school quite yet. Those are the only kiddies that I teach...the REALLY young ones. They are fun but they never close their mouths or sit in their seats. There is constantly things being blurted across the room or kids coming to me asking me to tie their shoes or if they can go to the bathroom when they just had a bathroom break before class. I also get a lot of hands in the air wanting to tell me about their birthdays or their teeth or their shoes. I even get lots of stuff that I don't want to hear and try to get them to stop talking mid sentence because I feel like I shouldn't be hearing the words that are coming out of their little mouths. Oh kids - they can be so cute and funny and SO frustrating at the same time. Gotta love them. My alternative school guys are pretty good. The first day I asked them to come up to the front of the class to come look at something that I wanted to show them and they all just sat there and stared at me. That day I thought I would have my hands full as I had to think long and hard to figure out how to get them to move off their lazy butts and how I could motivate them. After a few class periods they are much better...they will actually get up and walk around if needed. There are 12 boys and 1 girl at the alternative school and the majority of them are really fun to work with. Now for the high school and that darn computer animation class. I haven't really stressed about the class much, yet kindof just slid by at this point. We have been working with a program to create our first project so we haven't even started on the animation program...that starts this week. Let the stress set in! I am still waiting to figure this darn thing out. I worked with it a little bit and then school crept up on us and I started to focus on things that were taking place at that time and set the animation stuff aside. Now the time has come to begin frantically (AGAIN) getting ready for that part of the class. Overall, I have had no problems with my older students, just those little guys. I even had to send one kindergartener to the principal's office already...after his 2nd class of Art. Oh how those little tykes can be a CHALLENGE! So overall school is good.

I have been keeping busy with trying to get things situated for my Close To My Heart convention in Minneapolis in the beginning of October. CAN'T WAIT! Should be a ton of fun. Just trying to get the rooms situated and we will be all set. Oh, I cannot forget, I still have to create my 16 cards for my card swap that I am participating in but that shouldn't be too hard and shouldn't take TOO long.

My mom and I have been super busy lately with trying to get a bunch of "stuff" created. We are going to have a booth set up at a chuch festival this weekend near Mondovi. Should be lots of fun. We have created lots of fun creative things that we hope everyone likes. I am hoping to get more of this stuff in my Etsy shop in the near future so you can all see it and purchase any of it too.

Well, I am off to bed now as the week is only about to begin. This week is going to be a LONG one as I am taking a duct tape tote class tomorrow night (super excited!!) and then lots of other stuff. Noah's first teacher conference, Nate has two meetings, Scrapbook Til Midnight this Friday night at Down Memory Lane, and the festival fun on Sunday. Wow what a fast week this will most likely be. I hope to be back soon to show you some of our fun creations!!!