Homemade Cat Play Mat

I got a new sewing machine a couple of weeks ago and I have loved it. I came up with the idea for this great new cat toy. My cats love pouncing on anything that moves underneath a blanket, so I thought they might enjoy this little mat. I know that you probably aren't a crazy, overindulgent cat mom like myself, but I will tell you how to make this thing anyway. It only took me like 5 minutes and I just used scrap material and old cat toys, so it was practically free.

To make this toy, I got two pretty large pieces of fabric that were about the same size. Then I cut a little slit about two inches long near one corner.

Next I tucked a catnip mouse under one of the slits and used a zig zag stitch to sew over its little tail a few times. The idea is that the cats can barely see the mouse and can have fun digging around for it through the slit, but it won't come out.

I flipped the fabric over and did the same thing on the other side with a little fish toy. This toy has an elastic string attached to it and I thought it might be fun for the cats to pull on.

Next, I sewed two wiggly parallel lines down the fabric to make a kind of track. I placed a jingle ball in there and then sewed up all the sides. The cats can pounce on the ball and move it around, but they can't actually get to it.

So that's it. Pretty simple. And ugly, unfortunately. Next time I'll probably purchase some more attractive fabric. Here's a picture of little Brother playing with his new toy.

Thanksgiving Table Setting

This year I volunteered to design the tablescape for our Thanksgiving dinner at my parent's house. I had been watching that show "Wedded to Perfection" on Netflix and absolutely fell in LOVE with all the incredible designs they created on that show.

We had 12 people coming to dinner. My brother Matt invited his roommate and a friend from India and two friends from China who would be celebrating their first Thanksgiving. I focused on warm colors and natural materials. Here's some pictures of the table:

I started with a plain ivory tablecloth and used these awesome gold chargers and warm yellow napkins from Walmart, then added a rich, red ribbon for just a bit of color.

For place cards, I set out a pear at each plate and tied a little gold ribbon on the stem. I found some fabulous vintage ads at a scrapbook store and selected a different one for each person that I thought represented their personality a little. I mounted the ads on golden yellow cardstock and handwrote names on them.

For the table centerpieces, I tried to use a lot of harvest-themed pieces. I made flower vases out of pumpkins and gourds. Unique gourds were also placed on top of large candlesticks and pedastals. I collected a variety of candlesticks, but used the same ribbon to tie the design together. I also filled small mason jars with layers of colored beans and corn and lentils and placed a tea light in the top.

My mom prepared the meal and it was amazing. Overall, it was an excellent Thanksgiving dinner!

Autumn Applique Dish Towel

So one of my friends gave me this awesome book full of applique projects and I have finally gotten around to completing one of them. This is a fall dish towel. Applique took a long time for me to learn, but I'm getting better at it and my machine is just so easy to use. All it takes to make this project is a few fat quarters in some different fall colors and some off-white cotton.

First, I cut the off-white cotton fabric a little larger than one of my dishtowels. Then I hemmed the sides.

Next, I went online and searched for line drawings of fall leaves. I cut and pasted them into a word document and resized them to fit my project. I printed out a bunch of different shapes and sizes.

Then I cut out the paper leaves, traced them on my printed fall fabrics, and cut them out of fabric.

Next I placed a leaf on a brown square and appliqued it on. There are lots of different methods for doing applique on a machine. My machine came with a foot that works well for applique. I just lower the feed dog and I can move the fabric freely beneath the needle. I don't have quite a steady enough hand for this yet, so I just used my standard foot and did a lot of stopping and turning the fabric so that my fabric didn't start getting all bunchy.

Next, I appliqued the brown square onto the dishtowel and added another leaf for good measure.

To make the ruffle, I folded a strip of printed fabric about 3 inches wide in half the "hot dog" way with the right side out. I ironed it so it would stay flat. Then I sewed a long running stitch across the open end (not the folded end). I pulled the bobbin thread to gather it.

I pinned the ruffle onto the bottom of the dishtowel and just sewed it on. I liked the fraying of the fabric here--it seemed to give it that folksy-homemade-rustic-autumn look that I was looking for.

I'm not a babysitter

So, I'm listening to the New Moon soundtrack, which I have to say I'm pretty obsessed with because it is pretty fabulous.

On a completely unrelated note, whenever Taylor tells anyone that he is going to be a doctor, everyone immediately makes some comment about how he must be so smart and such a hard worker, which is totally true; Taylor is all those things. But when I tell people I am a special ed teacher, I get a completely different reaction. Mostly it's people telling me that they could never, ever do my job. Not because it's so difficult, but because it would be super boring to push kids in wheelchairs around all day (Seriously, someone actually thought that was what I did. Needless to say, she was shocked to find out that people could actually get a masters degree in that.)

But I realize that when we were kids "special ed" was a VERY different thing for most of us than it is today. And it is very different even today between schools and states. So let me clear up some possible misconceptions:

I work with kids who need extra help in school. These kids are in their classrooms most of the day, and they come to my room for a hour or so a day and I teach them in small groups.

But my job is awesome because it's not like just teaching the same lesson every day to every student. These are kids who really need extra help. So I do a lot of testing to find out exactly what skills are missing and then I decide what to teach. Everything that I do is based on data that I collect. Of course, I can't just go to the teacher store and grab one of those cutesy books and give them a worksheet. Everything that I do has to be research based and created for individual students. And so I'm reading a lot of books and research articles and talking to specialists all the time. I lead our teachers in meetings where we talk about students who are not making progress and we dig through research and we debate about which intervention we should try next. And then we collect data every day that tells us if our students are improving or not and keep making changes and trying new things until we find something that works.

And these are the kids who have a hard time with learning, so we have to be pretty creative with finding solutions that will actually work. There's a lot of disappointment, but that makes it even more exciting when we finally see some sixth grader who is reading on a first grade level move from reading 6 words per minute to 30. The kids that I work with are really amazing. I can't imagine going to school day after day and not being able to do most of the work that my friends can all do without any problems. But they keep working (sometimes it takes some interesting motivation strategies to get them to work) and they are really great kids.

I really love my job. I never know what to expect when I come to work and my kids are always surprising me. Some days I am running from class to class rescuing teachers from my students who decided to bite, kick, or scream the f word over and over instead of doing their assignments. And some days I'm making phone calls at 6pm to help kids with their math homework. And some days I'm hitting my head against the wall because seriously, the word is "take" not "tacky" and I know I've only told you this a hundred times, but you should know it by now. But most days I'm just looking at data and researching new ideas and trying to come up with solutions and teaching and teaching and teaching and remembering to celebrate the times when a student looks up at me with a big smile and says, "Hey, look, Mrs. Turner! I did it!" Because that's what my job is all about.