A look at what I have been doing for the last 2 months...

I have been spending the last two months working on my sister's Christmas present. She is one of those people who can be hard to buy for because if she wants something, she just goes and buys it. One day I was online looking at pictures of nothing important when a came across a picture of a video game character made from Perler beads. These are the beads that you put on the pegboards and iron them to fuse them together. My sister loves video games, and I thought, how cool would it be to make a video game Christmas tree for her. So I started researching, and was amazed by how popular the Perler beads were in the gaming and geek community! I found hundreds of pictures of video game related items, some of which were just a few inches tall to some that are six feet tall! I picked out some great pictures, and started creating. Two months and 100 items later, I am done. I gave my sister her tree and wall decorations early, since it wouldn't fit under the tree at my parents' house. I set up the tree in her library/video game room while she was at work, and waited until she came home. She was so excited, she squeed like a little girl! The picture of her and the tree is the only picture I have of her that is clear, she was bouncing around a lot!

Funny Story Time!!!!!

A student said the funniest thing in my classroom the other day. I had fourth graders in my room at the time, and we were discussing how an artist could draw a self-portrait without drawing a picture of themselves, but by drawing symbols that represent them. I was giving some examples of symbols (such as signs on bathroom doors, etc.) and when I was confident that they had an understanding of symbols, I drew five symbols on the board that represented me. I drew a cat, a book, a music note, a crayon, and a video game controller. I asked the children what they could figure out about me from these symbols. One student said that I liked cats, another said I liked to read, I liked to listen to music, and I like to draw. But the one that just about made me pee myself was when I pointed to the video game controller and asked what it said about me, and a boy without thinking or raising his hand, yelled out "You're my kind of woman!" Now, this is a child that never talks, this seriously was the first time I had heard anything other than "here" when I took attendance. The class started laughing, the look on the boy's face as he realized what he said, and I lost it. I had to stand outside my door for a minute to compose myself. I love moments like this!