Cardboard Caddies

Ikea has these cardboard caddies that they keep in the wrapping area. It's meant to help hold plates or glasses. Well being a teacher, I saw the potential immediately! I grabbed some to use in my classroom. One idea I had was to put one in my listening center. I could easily fit multiple copies of a book, along with the audio cassette or CD on one side. So this way, I can have two books available and organized at the center. To make it a little cuter, I decoupaged it with some scrapbook paper.

Tada!

Before

After

Here's one that my friend and former co-worker, Sarah, made.

Side One

Side Two

The Crate Bench

Hello again! So one of the wonderful ideas I found from Pinterest was the crate bench. I've seen the stool idea where you just use one of the milk crates and place a cushion on top of the opening. It's a cute idea, but I fell in love with the bench idea. For my inspiration, check out this blog: Crate Bench

So I decided that it would be one of my first projects. I went out looking for supplies. It took a lot of searching to try and find the best deals. I found my milk crates at Target for $3 each. I got my batting from JoAnns for less than $4 (using a coupon). I found a vinyl tablecloth from Walmart for just $2! I decided to go with vinyl instead of cloth because it cleans easier and my school serves really low income families where lice tends to be an issue. I already had the plywood and just had to get my husband to cut it to size for me. 

So here's some pictures from my crate bench journey:

Checking to see if the wood fit properly.

Cutting out the vinyl tablecloth.

Fitting the batting.

Finished product!

I was happy with the end result. If you are wondering how I connected everything together, I stapled (with a staple gun) the tablecloth with the batting in between to my plywood. Then I used zip ties to connect the crates and the plywood to the crates. Just staple gun the zipties to the bottom of the plywood.

I almost gave up on this project because when I went to buy the crates, I tried sitting on them to see how sturdy they were. They were not sturdy. My husband encouraged me to still try the project anyway. I am very excited to report that the bench is very sturdy. Both my husband and I sat on it at the same time and it didn't give at all.

I got the baskets from Target for just $2.50 each from the dollar section and plan to put books in them. So for just $28 I was able to have this bench for my classroom library! I also had a lot of extra tablecloth left so I was thinking of making some pillows to match :)

New Blogger

Hello! I am a relatively new teacher (this coming year will be my third), and this summer I had time to finally look through Pinterest and saw a lot of great and fun ideas for my classroom. I am so excited to make all these crafty projects and I wanted a way to share the results. I thought it'd be fun to give the blog a try. We'll see if it becomes anything more than a place to share pictures of my fun projects :)