Every new beginning come from some other beginning's end...

So here it is, the end of summer...or the beginning of a new year, depending on which way you look at it.  Where I will sorely miss sleeping in and staying up late, and having a house that is mostly clean, most of the time, I am also excited to get started on what I know will be a great year!

In preparation for the beginning of summer, I have been doing two things: 1. finishing up the summer "spring" cleaning  2. completing any and all craft projects that I began earlier in the summer.

In June, my daughter Callista and I went to an awesome craft supply warehouse to look around.  It is this AWESOME place in Gainesville called Repurpose Project, where people donate unwanted craft supplies  and other various things that could be used to create ...well, anything you can imagine. For the June Art Walk, they had a contest for creating something out of bottle caps. We ended up getting crafty and I won the adult category.

Here's my bottle cap tree.

 All of my friends keep telling me I should use it in my classroom, but I kind of like it in my room at home where I can enjoy it every day.

The whole reason Callista and I went to Repurpose Project in the first place was we needed canvases for our crayon art.  So the following week, using some leftover crayons from my classroom, we tried one of the many projects I found on Pintrest.

This is going in my living room! I am super pleased with how it turned out.

While I was doing the heavy duty cleaning this weekend, I discovered that our 4th of July wreath that my daughter and my mom made was getting icky and moldy thanks to our super humid Florida weather, so when I went back to Repurpose to drop off some unwanted craft supplies, I decided to brainstorm ideas for a new wreath. While I was there I found some cocktail umbrellas, so when I got home, I made this:

I LOVE how it turned out!  I'm trying to figure out what I can spray it with to protect the paper umbrellas from the outdoor humidity.

What do you like to do over the summer? Do you, like me, feel that summer is never long enough, no matter how much you are looking forward to the new year? 

Tomorrow I'm back in the classroom, and a new year will begin.