Weekend Warriors

Wow! Look what we did in one weekend (one day actually).

We went from this:

To this:

I think the cat likes it. I like it too. I had been so worried that it would be too hard, and too much work, and . . . well, it wasn't that bad. Pulling up the tack strip wasn't much fun, but really, it was not so bad. I'll do it again in other parts of the house without even having my arm twisted. Here's the room with things put back in it (kinda dark but you get the idea).

Oh, there are spots on the floor, it's not perfect. But I'm planning on spending some of my time this summer working on getting it looking better, and the long-term plan will be to refinish. Any input on spot removal would be welcome. I don't know what the spots are exactly (and probably don't want to know :) but they are mostly blackish looking. I'm guessing spills of some sort on the carpet. There are also obvious rust spots where some of the staples were.

Another weekend project the girls and I did together was polymer clay pens as teacher gifts for the end of the year. We did some beads too, but I only took pictures of the pens. I think they came out pretty nice. We did some simple cane-making and then cut slices and put them all over bic pens. It was a really fun, creative activity for us to do together.

They came up with their own cane designs (the only one I did is the rainbow one) and I thought they were amazingly creative. Oh, I may be a bit biased, but I think they are great.

AND, the best news of all -- I passed my teaching certification tests with flying colors!!! YAY!