Classroom Christmas Tour, 2025

 Hello! This is a really random post to share in January, but here is a quick tour of my classroom decorated for Christmas last year. 

Maybe it can provide some future inspiration for Christmas 2026. The lights came from both thrift stores and Amazon (specifically the star LED lights came from Amazon). The brown ribbon was bought in a huge bulk roll from Amazon. It was around $10, decorated my whole bedroom, classroom, was used to embellish gifts, used for hair bows, and I still have tons left! The bells came from Dollar Tree but I painted them to look vintage. The garlands and pine cones came from thrift stores. I probably paid a total of $5 or less for them. I did run out of those and buy one strand from Walmart, which is unreasonably expensive, as it turns out. The other decorations I had on hand from thrift stores or they were given to me as gifts in years past.  

I hope you enjoyed! Thank you for visiting! 

Blessings,

Lauryn 

Nostalgic "Cabbage Patch Kids" Birthday Party

 Hello, Happy New Year (and Merry Christmas and Happy Thanksgiving, all of the other holidays that have passed since my last post, etc.)! I have so many events, classroom activities, gift ideas and projects to share. 

Today I would like to share a birthday from back in August that was Cabbage Patch Doll-themed for my mother, who grew up loving Cabbage Patch Kids (though I personally find the concept weird and creepy). It was intended to be a fun, nostalgic theme but also tailored for an adult, so I went with a muted sea green, white, and tannish-pink color palette. I drew or painted the logo on a poster, changing the letters to "Happy Birthday", used an old pumpkin dish upside down to kind of look like a cabbage (hopefully), bought matching flower dish sponges and party blowers as party favors, and a matching Ingles bouquet as the table centerpiece. I printed out vintage Cabbage Patch Kids templates for the party blower packaging. I bought the cookies, drew faces on them, and wrapped cabbage around them to create Cabbage Patch cookies (okay, admittedly not the most appetizing idea but visually the closest thing I could make to the logo). I also drew/painted a Cabbage Patch Kid poster and used a doll we already owned. I hope you enjoy!

Thank you for visiting!

-Lauryn 

Car Art Class Drawing Project

Hey, everyone! I am super excited to share a new art project I tried towards the end of the semester in honor of Father's Day for parents or art teachers who may be interested in having their children do this project. I found that my students really enjoyed it, and they did an amazing job. I am so proud of their hard, beautiful work! I only have photos of some of the artworks, but I was really impressed. These were made by my kindergarten-fourth graders. 

I used a car calendar from the dollar store and had them vote on a class favorite. The calendar had vintage and sports cars. I gave them two options: they could design their own car with no help (maybe even their Dad's or his favorite kind), or they could follow along with a step-by-step I did on the board. I don't usually do step-by-step art tutorials because I like their artwork to be creative and original, but those who did follow along colored their cars different colors and designed them how they wanted. Plus, this tutorial helped them break a detailed image into shapes and lines, as well as showed how to draw something three-dimensional. The backgrounds were made in advance by marbling the paper in shaving cream and food dyes. Terms I taught during this project were warm versus cool colors and proportion.  

I hope to share more art projects soon. I hope this art project/Father's Day gift idea useful! 

-Lauryn 

Fairytale/Book-Themed Art Classroom Tour

 Hey guys, today I have a few photos to share of my easy fairytale book-aesthetic art classroom with an overview of how I made some of the decorations in case you want to make some, too. 

In the bathroom I hung a moss mirror, which I made by simply pulling moss out of our yard and hot-gluing it on. Surprisingly, it stayed green all semester. I used brown Dollar Tree packaging paper to cut out some of the banner and quote shapes, then drew on them with brown markers. The banner was made from old books and fabric strips I cut and tied into tassels (I had the fabric on hand). 

Behind my desk I hung up all of the papers and cards students gave me throughout the semester. On the opposite side by the white board, I created a "quote wall" where I hung up the wise words my students said. My students seemed to really enjoy contributing to the quote wall. I am definitely going to continue that next year. I was given vines for my birthday, so I pinned those around my whiteboard and stuck up golden cardboard stars I made for past events a long time. I have collected lots of fake plants over the years from gifts, sales, and such which I used in both the classroom and bathroom. The banner above my desk was made from thrift store yarn turned into tassels (you just wrap it around a book or something, tie the top and trim the bottom) and wooden Dollar Tree blocks I hot-glued between each tassel. I got pumpkins for later in the fall from a local store that sells new items for cheap, so they were like 10 cents each. I bought the string lights and lamp last year from Walmart and thrift stores. I originally decorated the window but ended up taking it all down. The sign on the door was a moss wreath from a thrift store I tied yellow fabric to. I cut out butterflies from an old book and hot glued them on, along with another brown paper banner. I did not make the bulletin board décor, a super creative and talented colleague designed and made that with a Cricut machine. 

I hope to share my Christmas décor soon (and yes, I already decorated on November 1st as is my routine). Thank you for stopping by! 

-Lauryn