Art Organization: Take 1!

It's that time of year again.  School is here!  I find myself at first dreading it...dreading all the preparation, but then I walk into my classroom and then all the ideas start flowing! I begin getting more and more excited about what I can prepare and more and more excited about the students I'll have.

Then there's my list of things that I want to do before school starts.  Of course I have my summer list that I created,  and have worked on...a little.  But, it never fails, (in my 2 going on 3 whole years now) as I'm working I come up with many other projects to do as well.  Funny how those get done faster :)

Anyways, here is the 1st of my last minute, but I think the best projects:

These jars are going to hold different clay tools. 

Here is where they are now...I took the picture after I took them all out, but you can imagine all  the tools on the right just randomly placed in that drawer. You can see I started to organize them with the white holder, but never finished. That's what happens when school starts :) 

So I took them all out, washed them, which was much needed...going to work on teaching that better this year...& then let them dry. 

Here they are in their new spot labeled and all. Now I 1st just took scrap paper and wrapped them connecting them with tape.  But then I thought about how somewhat wet tools will be going back into them and realized my paper would not last.  Granted it's extra scrap paper that needed to be used, but I didn't really want to redo this every summer...I mean I'll have other new projects to work on :) So 1st I added the Avery label on the paper while it was still on the jar:

Then, I took the tape off, removed the paper and ran all of them through my cold laminator.  That way, hopefully, if it gets wet, it'll last a little longer.  But I made sure to stick the label on first, b/c I didn't want to replace that each time so I laminated them both together! :) 

Then I re-attached them.  You can see after I went back to school, I needed to make more anyway.  Hopefully, this will keep the tools neat & tidy, and able to air dry!

Main Bath!

So after a year of working on the house, it was our main bath's turn...FINALLY! We needed to replace the shower, which was all we wanted to do...+ paint :)  Luckily, we didn't have too much that needed to be added to that.  We did replace the floor, but Tom & Lynne came to visit & Matt & Tom spent the day on the floor while Lynne & I did some shopping.  Wish I had photos of that, but I don't.  So really, it was the shower, floor, & painting.


Here is what the bathroom looked like before:

The problem was the shower door...so instead of replacing the frame we decided to replace the whole shower.  

With adding a wall, we needed to move the toilet over just a few inches.  The cats really enjoyed exploring the old hole.  

And of course with a new wall comes repainting.  We already wanted to repaint the bathroom, so we just waited until after we remolded the shower.  

Here is the final product...Love it! 

Well we still need to paint the ceiling, but that's it :)

Here's a closer look @ the shower behind the wall.