7/15/2014 2 Comments Back to school, back to school...We survived! We made it!!! Yes, we are back at lessons, and we made it through the first day without too much drama. And we got through it all before 3 pm! Now, getting to our first day of school was much more of an adventure. You see, if you've been following the blog, you've likely seen my recent post about counting down the days until today. I've been working hard on trying to have a schoolroom/office/craft room this year, instead of doing lessons at the breakfast table and storing everything in the laundry room. That was only going to get harder as more little ones were added to the routine! Thankfully, with our house's generous bedroom sizes, the largest of the extra rooms (then a nursery) will accommodate all of that! So, chaos went into effect, and file cabinets were emptied (we're having to change from 2 cabinet sizes to 1 combined cabinet... still in the works), closets were rearranged, the munchkins got new, larger shelves with storage boxes atop in order to move books around in the house and have more storage space, more got dumped into the previous study... and so it went, figuring out what could stay or what could go furniture-wise, and rearranging as we could to prepare for moving the bigger stuff. Then a couple of weeks ago, I was finally ready. The loveseat was removed from the nursery, and the Principal's desk went in. Next went one bookshelf into the new combined room, after I had dismantled the crib and put it aside. Then I had to attack the previous study big-time and rid it of all of those mountains of STUFF (I'll spare you pictures - it was scary). Thankfully, I found a way to get rid of the massive bulk of it, filled up the last two of the storage boxes atop the munchkins' shelves, and somewhat sorted what was left. I need filing cabinets quite badly right now. =) Eventually, the two bookshelves that were to go in the new combined room were both in place! The second was able to join the first once I had cleared out the majority of the old study. This was all by about mid-week LAST WEEK. Have you noticed anything missing in all this? Oh, that's right. We still didn't have desks for the munchkins, and I was supposed to start TWO on lessons today! Not that I'm a procrastinator or anything.... but Friday brought the purchase of lumber and the subsequent cutting to size. I was quite proud to say that by the end of the day, the two cabinets and two extra shelves were done, and all on my own, too! I'm rather shocked the Principal just let me loose with the power tools. Again. ;) The weekend went rather haywire after that, so Monday was the day to deck them out and get ready for Tuesday! Thank goodness I had completed the first 6 weeks of lesson plans last week! The Principal jumped in on his day off, and we got to work. Desktops: check. Legs: check. Everything sanded... ACHOO!... check. =) Finally, full assembly ready... and, after a failed attempt at my original idea, we settled on the Principal's idea, and everything was installed in the cabinets! We had DESKS!!!!!!! There seemed only one thing I'd forgotten. Oh, that's right. I didn't get anything to back them with. Yep. I'm brilliant like that. (Forgive the absence of legs on Monkey's desk at this moment - apparently I forgot to take a picture once they were put on and before the backs were on! (Monkey had to make a cameo appearance here.) Principal to the rescue, though! Once everything was ready for backing, he took off for the store and backings while I finished sanding the corners smooth and hoping to ensure no splinters for little fingers. A short while later, the desks were hauled into their positions, anchored to the wall, and Principal went to personalizing the spaces while I loaded them up with the supplies! Munchkins were just about to burst from excitement over finally having their own spaces!! Poor Scoot will just have to wait a little while for hers. The rest of the room just isn't ready yet!!! No, the shelves did not remain that bare. There is more now loaded. That was just the initial influx of books for today. The shelf underneath Dude's desktop now stores his previous years' work. Monkey's work from last year is in the top shelf area. When her desk moves up, her old work will move down! Yes, they have school supplies. Here they are in this picture: I'm using cups to hold pencils, markers, colored pencils, and dry erase markers. I found neat little crayon holders at Walmart for their crayons, and their scissors, glue sticks, and pencil sharpeners are just having to sit out for now. The dry erase boards were actually bought for our trip we recently took, in the event I needed more entertainment for munchkins on a long drive. They were never used, and now they've been turned over to school usage! While I can't take credit for the bookshelf/desk idea, I did have to make my own design for these. A good friend sent me a picture of bookshelves made into desks. I looked. And looked. And looked. I could NOT find desks of the right height AND width AND number of shelves in order to successfully convert them to what I wanted. So, I looked around some more, ran across a blog post of Ikea shelf hacks, and took my own spin to that to create the bookshelves I was looking for! I'm quite happy with how they turned out! =)
In the end, today the munchkins got to do lessons in their own space, with their new school supplies, and I do believe this year should flow much better than last year with more organization and less fighting over combined table space. =)
2 Comments
Steph Stephenson
7/15/2014 03:45:25 pm
Quite impressive! Is there anything that you can't do? :)
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Carmen
7/15/2014 05:44:46 pm
Oh, trust me! There's PLENTY I can't do!! But I don't broadcast those things too much. ;)
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Mother of Dude, Monkey, and Scoot... and a new one on the way!I think that about sums it up! :) Before shopping online, be sure to sign up for ebates and earn money back at many, many online stores!
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