Permission to Pin

We click “accept terms” without ever reading them. I know I do, don’t you? We’ll join a new page, social site, etc. and click on accept because reading all the legal jargon is, well, boring and takes up too much time.

This subject was brought to my attention by a blogger I follow. In the terms on Pinterest, we have agreed that the pictures we pin are ours legally and that we give Pinterest rights to use those images in any fashion.

All I can say is that I’m glad teachers (and crafters) are all about sharing their ideas. I follow so many blogs and see so many good ideas that I want to share with my fellow teachers on Pinterest. Although I may not used them in my music classroom, I have friends in “regular” classrooms that are always looking for new ways to do thing that may be interesting in something I find.

If, in my pinning, I have pinned something of yours that you don’t want to share, please contact me and I will remove it.

Otherwise, if there is something you see on my blog that you’d like to pin, permission granted.

 

Busy, busy, busy and loving it!

I have been very busy since right around Thanksgiving and am finally slowing down. This Christmas I am making all the gifts and am loving it. I am really proud of how my latest project has turned out so far although it's not quite finished. My daughter and son-in-law are trying their hands at container gardening (until they get a place that's really theirs to plant a patch of earth) and for his gift I am making garden stakes. I looked up how-to's online and finally came up with an idea that's my own. (My daughter did give some input.)

First, I downloaded several fonts. 
My son-in-law has a blog named "Quest for the Hobbit Life", about their gardening pursuits so the fonts I searched for had to do with Hobbits and I found plenty. The one I chose is called Hobbiton Brushhand from this site.

After deciding on the font, I printed out the veggie names in a 3x5 format because I thought I'd do the stakes with the cards laminated and stapled to the top of the sticks. (Sticks are paint stirrers I got free at my local hardware store.) After consulting my daughter, we decided to directly print the names on the sticks. This took a little ingenuity on my part, trying to figure out how to get the font I chose onto the stick.



 



I used a black template pencil and rubbed the back of the paper with the veggie name on it.

Then with a mechanical pencil (sans lead) I traced the letters onto the stick. The sticks are made of a soft wood and took the tracing very well.

Next, I used a calligraphy pen to trace over the indentations the tracing left. And voila!

I then got my handy-dandy exact-o knife and whittled a point on the opposite end.













I plan on using a polyurethane coat over it all because, even though my calligraphy pen says "waterproof", I need to make sure these will weather well.


Other crafty things I've been working on are coasters made from leftover 4x4 tiles and photos or scrapbook paper.

One set I did for a friend. They could never find coasters with a V on them.

 Made 4x4 template in Word and typed in the letters and or clip-art then printed on scrapbook paper. 

L O V E 

 In process, (now finished) with photos I had taken of some lovely country scenery. Painted the edges of the tiles to match coloring. Used paint samples ($1) from Home Depot.

One of these days

A friend of mine just got back from Africa. He spent some time in Nairobi, Kenya and possibly some other locale I can't recall at this time. He posted pictures on Facebook. As I looked at those photos of the beautiful, smooth, black faces, I cried. I truly believe that the African people are the beautiful people of the earth. Yes, I cried. For several years now, in the back of my mind, down deep in my soul, I've yearned to go to Africa. But, I also am aware that I don't do heat! Heat and I DO NOT get along at all. How am I supposed to go to the deep, dark jungles of Africa when I'm "allergic" to heat? Another friend had gone last summer and again this summer and I noticed something in the pictures she posted: they're wearing jackets! Jackets! Do you mean to tell me that I could go to Africa in the summertime and bring a jacket and be comfortable? I'm crying again just thinking about it. Now to figure out how to get me from here to there.