Clean-ish Craft Room, New Wall Decor, and Snowflakes at School Tutorial!

So last weekend I had all these plans to get a couple Valentine's projects done I've been thinking about, but I couldn't do them until this mess was taken care of: 

This is the guest bed in my craft room... wouldn't know it without the arrow.

Yes, this is the aftermath of not completely cleaning after the rush of Christmas sewing and craft projects. We were out of town for most of my Christmas break and when we got back I went to school almost the very next day. Then I had no energy to clean. 

Then I got some great ideas for new projects.... I knew I needed to clean, but adding to the mess is so much more fun. 

Last weekend I had a snow day (YES! FINALLY!) and made it my goal to get the apartment cleaned and put the Christmas decorations (that were down but had been stacked up on the floor) in the closet finally. It literally took me 3 days. Ok I definitely took a break for dinner and a movie one night with Matty, I'm sure I spent ample amounts of time on facebook, and I finished the tutorial for my necklace (which took forever), but other than that, I was a cleaning and "organizing" machine. (If you know me at all, you'll know the reason the word, organizing, is in quotations. I just don't have the brain for it, I don't think.)

NOW you can see the bed! (The arrow is pointing to the first pillow I ever made. No laughing!)

My desk is clean and I have room to sew! 

And all those supplies that were strewn across my desk, bed, and floor are now tucked (tossed, stuffed, however you want to say it) into my baskets. 

Don't you love my new IKEA desk and cubby shelf set?! My precious sister,Maggie, got it for me and I am really loving it. No more rifling through boxes to find craft supplies. :) I do need more bins. I only have 8 (need 8 more), but I'm waiting on sales (thus the over-stuffing of baskets).

THEN, this past week I ran to Hobby Lobby to look for some fabric and found some LOVELY framed rustic mirrors for half price in my favorite shade of deep red! I got two and they look perfect with the book page wreath my friend, Dara, from Teach. Craft. Love made me for Christmas! 

 They all hang together on the entryway wall to my apartment. I can see them from my couch, too. Yay.

While my craft room was clean, I ran out of time to actually make anything last weekend. I did lesson plans on my clean craft desk. Boo.

Then I wanted to work on projects during the week, but the K-2 hall had a Winter Wonderland event that I was making some decorations for (with my kids, and also some large ones for the entrance to the hallway). Crafts at school are better than no crafts at all. 

Here are my large snowflakes hanging at the hallway entrance. Both blue and white paper are butcher paper. 

And these are the ones my kiddos made using this template I found here in step 6 of their instructions, taped to an already-folded (by me) paper for cutting snowflakes. The snowflakes are cut from printer paper and the blue paper is construction paper. 

All we did for both small snowflakes and large ones, was fold the paper like they say on Family Fun and then cut into it. You can use the templates like I did for your kids or cut your own. I cut my own, obviously, for the big ones I made. 

After it's cut, unfold and  use a glue stick to glue it to blue paper. Start gluing in the middle and work your way out. 

Then cut a circle around the snowflake. Trace the snowflake with Elmer's glue and then dump on the glitter. :)

You'll inevitably have this mess. Thank goodness for wonderful custodians with industrial vacuums.  (Nice carpet, right? ha)

The kids LOVED these. Sorry if I offended you with this ridiculously easy tutorial. I'm sure you could have all figured it out. I just liked them so I wanted to throw them up on the blog. :) Let it snow!

Congrats to you for getting through this forever-long post. :) :)

I have actually worked on and am in the middle of a couple things for V-Day this weekend. Hope to post soon! Do the Snow Day dance with me and it'll be posted really quick! Ha.