We bought a house!

This is kind of old news, but Andrew and I bought a house! It is our first house and after nearly 6 years of renting, we are glad to be homeowners!



We are super excited to share with you some of the projects that we will be doing around our house, but first here are some before pictures. This is how the house looked when we bought it.

We both really like the front elevation and especially love the color of the brick. We will eventually redo the landscaping in the front and most likely take out the shrubs and replace them with flowers.

When you walk in, my craft room is on the left and you walk into the formal dining room. We are currently making this into our second living room which really hasn't taken too much work.

This is the craft room which faces the front of the house. I love the windows and floors in here! For my birthday, Andrew bought me some pieces that have helped me organize all of my stuff since there is no closet in here.

If you continue walking straight you will find yourself with this view of our kitchen. Our old kitchen only had 2 drawers, so when we saw the peninsula had 10 alone we got pretty excited! We like the layout of the kitchen and will only replace the back splash, lights, sink, and counters as well as install a built in microwave. A double wall oven would be a dream of mine, but we'll see if it happens in this house!

If you were to go around the kitchen to the right, you would go down a small hall straight into the living room. Some people don't like brick fireplaces, but I think that's the way they should all be! You can also see the breakfast nook to the left of this picture and it's big enough to fit our table of 8 and not feel crowded. The only thing we are doing in these two rooms is decor and paint. We will eventually have to replace some windows that don't stay open.

This is the view from the opposite side of the living room and you can really see how open this part of the house is. I really like that I can be cooking and still see the tv or be apart of the conversation without everyone being crowded in our kitchen.

The view from the breakfast nook. That door way near the center left of the picture leads to the laundry room and master bedroom.

Our bedroom has a great bay window. Maybe we'll build a window seat for it which could double as a dog bed. The dogs love sitting on Andrew's window seat in his room at his parents' house.

Our bathroom is a very nice size! The closet is about the size as our guest room at our rent house! And the toilet has it's own room. We weren't expecting to get all of this out of our bathroom. There is nothing urgent that needs to be done in here, but we will eventually replace the counters since they both have burn marks, update the mirrors, add shelves by the tub, and replace the shower with tile and a new surround.

Guest bedroom #1 has lots of space and the closet is huge! No issues here besides it facing the West and getting real hot in the afternoon.

Guest room #2 which will be used as our workout room and Andrew's office until a little Hohlt comes along.

The hall bathroom was recently updated before we bought the house. We have painted and put our own style into it, but the only thing we will replace is the toilet. I think it is 20 years old and is even short for me!

The backyard! We have 2 pecan trees and 2 oak tress back here as well as this giant deck! This is the type of backyard I have always wanted. The trees provide a lot of shade of the dogs in the heat and once we paint the deck it will be awesome of entertain on (of course it needs to be cooler). Over on the right side is a brick patio where Andrew keeps his grill. We will be creating some raised garden beds and attempting to have a little vegetable garden next year.

Another angle of the backyard. These pictures were taken in early March and you can see the trees aren't very full and green. Right now it looks totally different. I'm not looking forward to all the leaves in our yard come fall, but the dogs love jumping in piles of leaves! The fence doesn't look too hot in this picture, but we thought it would survive until the winter when we could replace it in nice weather. However, when Ava broke a board and almost escaped we tried to nail it back on and found that its all rotted. So our plans to replace the fence will probably come much sooner than expected. We are planning on doing it ourselves after getting quotes that were nearly twice the materials.






I hope you have enjoyed looking at some pictures of our house. We fell in love with the yard, all the windows, and the space that it provided us! We have many projects planned that you can keep up with here. First up is scraping down all 2300 sq. ft. of popcorn ceilings in the house before we can move in! Stay tuned to see how we did this torturous task!

One Hole Washers Board

We were having a July 4th gathering and Andrew decided that we needed to make a washers board to add to our lawn game collection. We turned to Pinterest to get some ideas on measurements, but we could only find tutorials on 3-hole washer boards and we are NOT into that! I actually learned that it is played different ways in different states, but in Texas is started off with a cup in the ground and you get points for getting the washer in the pit, leaning on the cup, and in the cup. This is how we still play it, but instead of using a sand pit we play on a board.

We used the advice of my awesome Uncle Donny who has made washers boards and cornhole boards as well as random tips we found on the internet.



Materials:

Plywood 2'x4'
Outdoor Carpet (Optional)
2- 2'x4'x8'
wood screws/nails (We ended up using 32 total)
8 washers 2.5" Outer Diameter (1" inner diameter)
Spray paint
Tacky Glue (Or any craft glue on hand)
jig saw, circular saw, drill
Exacto knife/box cutter/pocket knife

1. Cut Plywood in half to make 2-2'x2' squares using the circular saw.

2. Cut the 2x4's to have 4 pieces be 24" long and 4 pieces be 21" long.

3. Take a 24" and 21" piece and set them perpendicular to each other. Use your square to make sure they are actually square. Pre-drill and then screw 2 wood screws to attach the pieces. Repeat this to each corner to make a square.

4. Place the plywood on top of your square frame. Line them up and them pre-drill 2 holes on one side. Screw in the wood screws. Now pre-drill the other 3 sides with 2 holes each. Screw in wood screws. You should have a total of 8 screws on top.

5. Go through your entire kitchen and try to find a circular object that is 3.5" diameter. Trace it in the center of the board and use a jig saw to cut out the center. (We do not own one yet so this part took forever and our circle looks pretty horrible. But as my dad said, "The washers won't care!", so neither do we!

6. Spray paint the base with your desired color. You can seal it if you so desire.

7. While you have the spray paint out, paint your washers two different colors. We did maroon and white to continue with the Texas A&M theme.

8. After the spray paint has dried,  lay outdoor carpet right side down on the ground.

9. Use Tacky Glue (or any kind of glue you have on hand) to coat the top of the boards.

10. Set the boards on the carpet with the glue side down and dry for a couple of minutes. Now use your knife to cut out the carpet. Place the boards-carpet side down- and let the glue dry overnight.  You can put heavy objects to apply pressure but we did not do this and the glue dried perfectly!

11. After the glue has dried cut the circle out of your carpet.

12. Play washers!


***UPDATE: We have had these boards for 6 months now and they have seen a lot of play. They still look nice and the turf is holding up great! Only con is that they are quite heavy. I'm sure you could use lighter wood. We also added handles to the sides to make them easier to carry. We took them to the beach and found that wasn't the best idea as the washers disappear in the sand easily.***

Here are the rules we play with:

Check out my teacher blog!

I've been very busy with my job as an Algebra 1 Teacher so I haven't been doing many projects.

I have started keeping up with my teacher blog though. So if you're interested in reading about teacher stuff, Algebra 1 stuff, or just random school stuff check it out!

Bananasplusnutsequalsapples.blogspot.com

Classroom Set-up 2014-2015

When I started blogging, I was only doing teaching blogs. I soon had a problem that I was doing all of these DIY projects that I wanted to share with the world (even if no one actually reads these), but those posts didn't quite fit into my other blog so I just quit writing all together. Today, in honor of me getting a new job and planning how I want to set up my new class, I am re-posting a post I shared on my other blog.

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So in the 3 years I have been teaching, I have now had 3 different classrooms. I've gotten good at the moving thing. It also helps cut down on letting things accumulate as I either have to move it or trash it.

I have been blessed with unusually large classrooms for the last two years and while last year it was a struggle getting my students to stay on the correct side, this year most of my students are on the computers all period so it's not so bad.

I know I always go searching for ideas of classroom layouts and decorations so I thought I would share what I've done in this new classroom.

View from my desk of my classroom.

I made the pennant banner over the summer with some leftover fabric I've had for years. It took forever to make but definitely adds a little touch of "home" to my classroom.

I have 3 doors to my classroom. The building used to be a hospital and when they took out walls to patient rooms to make our classrooms they didn't take out the doors. So having extra doors to the class are a temptation to my students so I've had to block the 2 we don't use. This one became my student information center. I have the class rules posted, the lunch menu, throughout the year this is where I post flyers about things happening in school. Our doors are made of wood so I just staple all of these things up. On the table I have white boards, markers, pencils, and pens. As well as one of the pencil sharpeners and some scratch paper and formula charts in the trays.

I laminated some of the things my students have given my throughout the year and put others on this maroon bulletin board my mom made me. My husband made me that wonderful name plate for Christmas. I am amazed by his talents! My students also can't believe he actually made it, they think he lied to me and bought it off the internet. Haha!

As you can see the pennant banner goes all the way down the length of the room. This is the area behind my desk. I was lucky enough to have this metal closet as well as a coat closet in my new room! My storage nightmare from last year was fixed! I got the posters here from Sarah at Math Equals Love. (If you haven't read her blog you should! There are a lot of good things on it!)

This is my supply bookshelf. All the markers, scissors, glue, and textbooks can be found here. We don't use them as much this year as last but the students know where to go to get supplies. I also posted the 4 questions from Capturing Kids Hearts.

My desk area. I use the table to have small group pull out sessions during my computer class. On the other side of my desk is the table with 5 crates where my students leave their notebooks and folders. If they take them home, they'll be left on the bus, forgotten, taken to the park and left, so on and so forth. Since our school doesn't allow backpacks for safety reasons, we find it easier just to have the students store their work in class.

I have 15 computers in my classroom. Some may think this as a blessing, but the majority of our curriculum is online for credit recovery. However, I have more than 15 students scheduled in most classes and on any given day I might have 1-3 computers not working properly. I also only "direct teach" 1 block of true freshmen who have never been in high school but age wise are still behind (most of them were held back at some point in their school career and were too old to repeat 8th grade). 

Here are some problem solving strategies that I got from Sarah as well. 

I have 3 whiteboards in my giant classroom, but I only have power on two walls which happens to be the two that 2 of the whiteboards are on. That being said, I have to block my whiteboards with computers. I'm not losing much because the teacher before me had used them as bulletin boards so there is tape residue all over them making them impossible to write on anyways. I have turned this whiteboard into my word wall. I typed up and printed all the words that were common to Algebra, Math Models, and Geometry and will review one each day in each class and then put it on the board.

The little blue square is my graduate board. When a student finishes all of their classwork and are test complete they will get a special star on the graduate board. It's pretty common for Math Models to be their last class they need to graduate so my hope is that this will motivate others to finish and graduate as well!

My awesome magnetic graph board! I put my objectives up there and teach off of here. 

I used the calendar numbers from the teacher store and stapled them to a shoe caddy to make my calculator station. I have since assigned each student a number and they take their calculator when they enter class and we don't leave until each one is put away. I have also started storing a pencil in each pocket. This seems to have the least pencils go missing. I might only have to refill 5 a week now instead of like 20 a week.

During PD before school started, the principals told us we had to keep our doors locked and closed at all times so I put these posters on the back. Each time a student opens the door, my hope it that they'll think of something positive.I also took this from Sarah. Each week we go over how we can take one of these negative thoughts (in gray) and think more positively (the corresponding poster in color). 

Having the schedule in a pocket chart is helpful because on Wednesday's we have a different schedule to include a 20 minute Activity Period between 4th and 5th. I have a student just switch out the times 1st period on Wednesday.

This is the view of my class from the door. As you can see I have 4 circle tables that I used for my direct instruction time, but they didn't end up lasting long. It was really hard to keep already really unmotivated and distracted kids on task when they could easily look at each other and be readily tempted to talk to each other. I found a teacher who had too many desks in her classroom and traded out by tables for desks.

The outside of my classroom door.

The outside of one of my other 2 doors. I liked this quote because many times my students have bad days and I wanted them to realize that everyday is a new day...no matter what!!

This has since been written on and ripped down by some students passing in the hall :(

Our students get course completions with every half credit they finish and so when this happens I write their name on a star and staple it on this board in the hall. It is November and I have 8 stars now, some with more than 1 course.

We are required to post our class schedule outside our rooms. I decided to print them big and make a bulletin board out of it. I bought a twin size flat sheet at Walmart for like $4.50, folded it in half, and stapled it on the wall. It's at eye level up to the ceiling and surprisingly the border and  hasn't been torn down!

This isn't my creation but one of my fellow math teachers decorated the outside of one of her doors. Her and her friend actually wrote this out by hand!

Thanks for reading!

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I hope you found this post inspiring in decorating your high school classroom. As you can see, I use bright colors and my students don't seem to mind it! 

Check back for updates on my new classroom!

~Lauren

DIY: Desk to Coffee Bar

DIY: Desk to Coffee Bar

So when Andrew moved into his old duplex, the previous owners left him this lovely 
piece of furniture. They used it as an island in their kitchen. 

When we moved into our duplex together, we simply had too many kitchen appliances (thanks to our many generous friends who got us cool things for our wedding!). We have a pretty good sized kitchen for a duplex, but we couldn't fit everything on our counters and still have space to cook. I remembered that this desk was sitting at Andrew's old place and was most likely headed to the dump. It sat in our house in it's original glory for about 2 months and then I decided that it needed to be painted.

I did some research on the internet and I found that chalk paint is really awesome to paint old furniture with. It doesn't require sanding or priming (unless you only want to use one coat of your chalk paint) and it looks good!

I found some recipes to make your own chalk paint, but I knew that I only needed a little so I bought some already made from The Home Depot. I used some old brushes that I already had and bought a plastic tarp for $2.

Chalk Paint   I got the 8 oz jar of Serene for $8.50 and used about half of the jar.

Creme Wax I got the 8 oz jar for $12 and only used about 1/4 of the jar.

The finish on the top had been sanded off at some point and I noticed that when I started painting with the chalk paint that the brown was showing through. I could have done two coats, but I'm cheap and remembered that the tenants before us left two bottles of cream spray paint. So Andrew helped be carry it outside and I used a bottle of spray paint to prime the desk.

 It was pretty warm out that day so this dried in 15 minutes and we carried it back inside to be painted.

It is hard to tell in our awful lighting that we have in the house, but it came out a nice light blue :)

 It only took about 15 minutes for the paint to be dry enough to put the wax on. Honestly, by the time I was done painting, the first side I painted was dry. This stuff dries quick and doesn't smell very strong AT ALL! I did all of the painting in my dining room.

The waxing was fairly easy. I used a microfiber towel and just rubbed it all over the desk.

 Here is the almost, final product! The knobs that were on the desk were just awful (I'm sad I didn't take a picture of them) so I ordered some glass knobs from Amazon and two days later we have this...

... a place to hold our Keurig, bread maker, and bread box! The drawers come in handy to store all of our coffee, soda mixes for our Soda Stream, and candy! 

Not bad for $20 and about an hour and a half of time :)