Learning something new everyday

Okay, so some of you may have noticed. I don't blog very often. Don't have a lot of time to blog or read blogs. But, this evening I decided to do some "catching up" with my blog. I clicked on a particular post that had several comments and realized that when I had changed my photo albums in Picasa to private, it also deleted them from my own blog posts. Sorry if you got to a page to see photos and found black rectangles where they should have been. It has been fixed and will remain.

Here are some of my later photos so far unpublished. These were taken at one of my favorite “stopping off” places just north of Jacksonville, TX. The place is called Love’s Lookout, a locally owned (by the city of Jacksonville, I believe) rest area. On the way north on US 69, you start seeing this wonderful vista and you really want to pull over and take some pictures when, all of a sudden, here’s the perfect place. Hope you enjoy as much as I did!

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.