Bye Bye Ugly Bathroom

Remember the early to mid-eighties when faux wood laminate was the happenin' thing? It's hard to believe there was a time when people paid top dollar for such hideousness. Yet, I have the evidence to prove that it did indeed happen...

Ok, you can look away now. Don't burn your retinas staring at it for too long. That, my friends, is my kitchen. Bad, isn't it?  Go ahead... look at it again. Just take a gander at the back splash or the lovely wood "valance" or the stunning wood accent stripes adorning each cabinet door. Oh wait, that's not wood. Silly me! I almost fooled myself.

Think that's bad? You should've seen my bathroom. The ENTIRE vanity, doors and all, were that awful faux wood laminate. And to tie it all together were large square wood knobs. Honestly, I wish I would've taken a picture but I was trying to pretend it didn't exist. 

So what does one do when their entire home is covered in the worse laminate on earth? Cabinet Transformations! Without going into all the details, let me tell you that this stuff is the best product on earth. In one weekend, without any sanding, I turned my bathroom into this...

 

The cabinets are a dark espresso with brushed nickel hardware and I painted the walls a very pale gray. It's quite lovely in person and makes me oh-so-happy! I've started on the kitchen which will be an even more dramatic change because it's such a large space. It will probably take me all summer though because I have TWENTY EIGHT cabinets!

Summertime... and the livin' is easy.

I'm two weeks into summer and I've already slipped into planning for fall. What is wrong with me?!! My partner teacher and I got the go-ahead to take down our wall and full co-teach which I am very excited about. We already mix the kids up all day long, so this will really be a bonus for us.  The downside was that we had to move to a new building on the last day of school but even that isn't so bad because.... WE ARE GETTING NEW CARPET!!!  Ok, it's just really sad to be that excited about carpet. But we're also getting new paint. We'll have the best room in the school!

So, it's been kind of irresistible to start a little planning... like floor plans and decor and fun stuff like that. We've decided to do black bulletin boards with bright accents. So, I made these matching labels to put on our hand sanitizer:

(adorable frame graphics provided by Ashley Hughes)

Last year we used little plastic fish as our "bathroom buddies" which the kids placed on their desk when using the bathroom. That way we knew where they were and other students knew the bathroom was occupied. However, I quickly became afraid of touching the fish because I'm positive they were totally infested with billions of germs. So this year, we are putting these labels on bottles of hand sanitizer which students will use as bathroom passes. When they return to their desks, they'll just take a squirt before putting the bottle away. Not my original idea, but brilliant nonetheless!

So besides all this planning, my summer has consisted of making over my bathroom. I will post pictures of the results tomorrow. Be sure to come back and look because it's quite stunning, if  I do say so myself!

Need Some Clip Art?

Yeah, I know... I've been neglecting my blog. I do feel slightly guilty about it. I mean I really intended to keep up better than this! But I have some legitimate reasons. Mostly family drama and I don't mean the entertaining kind that everyone eventually laughs about. Posting the details online isn't really appropriate, so I hope you all will just accept my excuse without further explanation.

Now, the fun stuff! If you sell on TpT or Teachers' Notebook or just like to make your own stuff, you absolutely MUST check out this giveaway. You can win a ton of awesome clip art and fonts!  And I really mean a ton of it, good stuff, no great stuff! (Wow, that was a terribly grammatically incorrect non-sentence.) Honestly, I'm hoping to win myself but you should enter too. I don't mind the competition LOL.

 

I promise to get back to blogging on a more regular basis soon. Today was the last day of school (woo-hoo!!!) and as soon as I recover, I'll be back in business. Happy end of the year!