Anything Else Fridays {Spice Container Labels}

Our Friday this week falls on Wednesday. Or atleast, a boating adventure tomorrow gets me feeling like it's the weekend already! This week, I wanted to spice up our .. spice rack. Zing!

We've been in the market for a spice rack since we moved into our everything-is-bigger-except-the-kitchen apartment to free up some much needed cupboard space. A nice wood one was our first choice, and we scored one off Craigslist for $10!

Included were the dull generic bottles, identical, making it ridiculously hard to tell the 32 spices apart and adding 10 minutes to dinner prep time.

 

I shopped around for some new spice container labels and only found blank labels that you write on yourself. AH. Not going to ruin my new beautiful spice rack with my squigglies! I decided to make them myself. Another excuse to break out the tiny graphic designer in me. 

I like to do test prints on lined paper so I know exactly where on the paper the graphics will print. Put it in the correct way a normal lined paper would lay and see which side/corner your design comes out on. It's foolproof!

The initial plan was to use Avery labels with their printing template. Sounds easy, right? Should've been. But, the Martha Stewart version I got sadly printed out really runny - not even a step up above my squigglies. So, for the (hopefully) temporary time, I've just cut these out from printer paper and glued them on the blank labels.

Not ideal, but I invite you to imagine what they look like from really far away :) Even with that hiccup though, I feel like they add lots more personality to the kitchen. I love them! 

Let me know in the comments if you'd like the sheets I designed and in what format (Photoshop/Word/PDF). I'm going to try these with the normal, non-Martha Stewart Avery 1.5" labels soon to see if they work. Enjoy!

Wednesday! {Mrs. V revamping}

Hello to all you fantastic readers who I left for a whole month!

 My apologies. When I took on the Mrs. V role at home, I wasn't sure how it would all go. There were kinks, most of the kinks being the amount of work I was going to be able to do for the blog and the many, many days I spent/am spending out of town and away from the computer.

From now on, I'll be {teaching} once a week on Tuesdays and {basically crafting/designing} on Fridays. And I'll try my best even when I'm out of town.

Hope your summer is coming to a wonderfully fun close.

:) Mrs. V

Monday Musings {Quietube}

{Sorry about last week! We started the week off out of town, and we had to get our routines back when we came home. Thanks for being patient!}

Sometimes in class, Youtube is my biggest helper. I can generally find exciting clips of projects we are about to make or detailed video diagrams of certain concepts. But, as you know if you've ever used Youtube before, the comments are open to any kind of language and sometimes suggested videos on the side aren't appropriate for the audience. Some teachers used Quietube - so I thought I'd share. Quietube takes out all the comments and side videos and just shows you the single video playing with one ad below it. I haven't used it much, but I've been very grateful for it the few times I have! Here's an example of one video I might show in class, which happens to be a person launching a rocket made from plastic soda bottles. Pretty awesome.

Using Youtube

Using Quiettube

This does ask to put a bookmark on your internet, so disclaimer there. But once you have the bookmark, you just find a video on Youtube, push the Quietube button  on your bookmark (Similar to a 'Pin it' button) and it transfers you to the quietube site with the original video. Check out Quietube.com if you're interested. So far, I've had no trouble with it. Enjoy!

Anything Else Fridays {Finishing up}

I'm real excited (and relieved) to report the Projects Completed this week!

Other side of Pillow cover for baby girl's room. Design by cluckclucksew

Still no curtain rod, but I'd say this baby girl's room is done! Finished the race, but hasn't gotten the medal yet kind of done :)

Flip side of the pillow

This gallery wall was tricky! I had a few different arrangements that I really loved and so I put the different sizes of paper on the wall only to discover that the spotlight above gave really weird shadows! So I decided nothing could go underneath the middle one, which is going to house a cute typography of our family mission statement. So I had to go out horizontally. In the end, I made a single breakage line on both sides of the middle frame and matched up the little ones to keep the breakage line obvious through the whole thing. Yes, I made up the term breakage line. It's the new planking.

Thursday Teaching {Paper Bridges}

Project: Paper Bridges

Concept: Structures

I usually teach a unit on Bridges to my students using Dominos, followed by a project making different kinds of bridges out of popsicle sticks/balsa wood/toothpicks. If made correctly, these bridges hold some substantial weight - It's not unusual for a toothpick bridge to hold 50 lbs!

For today's experiment, we're using index cards, which won't hold quite that much weight in this configuration :)

Start with a single index card and lay it across to create your bridge. How many pennies can this bridge hold? 

When a horizontal piece is supported on either end by piers, it is a beam bridge. Ever walk across a log above a river? Beam bridge! Beam bridges rely on the stiffness of the building material.

There are three kinds of beam bridges shown here and one arch bridge.
The arch bridge was made by cutting slits on both ends of the index card and slipping those slits into the cover of the book. Try them all out and let me know how much your best bridge held!

What other bridge designs can you come up with?

Materials needed: Books, index cards, and a whole lot of pennies!

One single flat card

Lasted ~22 pennies

One folded index card

Supports a lot more weight!

Arch Bridge

Another Beam bridge

Tuesday Teaching {Tightrope Walker}

Project: Tightrope walker 

Concept: Center of Balance

I was excited to find a couple emails last week from family wanting to know the science behind some interesting phenomenons. Which inspired me to think of how much more fun this would be for your kids if they were experimenting with their very own questions. So find out your kid's questions and let me know through the 'Ask Mrs. V' button on the sidebar ---------------------->

Thanks all!

One of the questions last week was:

Why do tightrope walkers carry those long poles?

This question may or may not have been spurred on by the recent feat of Nik Wallenda crossing the Niagara Falls. I only found out about this yesterday, but after reading how many viewers this attracted, I'm sure I'm the only one to not know about this.

Source here

He crossed the Niagara Falls in less than an hour. And yes, he did carry one of those long poles. But why?

This relates to center of gravity. Remember when we made the Balancing Bird? The bird would not balance because the center of gravity was not directly over the fingertip, or balance point. We needed to adjust the 'weight' of the bird so that the center of the 'weight' was at a point directly above the fingertip. 

A tightrope walker changes his center of mass by adding a pole. 

Stand up with your feet together and have someone gently (gently, brothers! :) try to push you over. It's pretty easy, right? 

Now stand with your feet spread apart and have someone gently try to push you over. That is harder to do. Even if you were to push harder than before, you would probably not be able to push them over. 

When you are standing straight up, your center of gravity, or middle of the 'weight', is more or less your stomach. When your feet are spread apart, your center of gravity is lower than it was before. When your center of gravity is lower, you are more stable because you are closer to the balancing point.

A tightrope walker on a thin wire is not able to spread his feet apart, but they CAN lower their center of gravity by holding a drooping pole with a little weight on either end.

Find a thin sidewalk to set up your own tightrope walk and grab a broom (with the end off) to test your skills!

Also, check out this balancing experiment for your project today:

http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/balancing-forks

Monday Musings {Tech Current Event}

Project Glass. All you ever needed from your computer on your glasses, made by Google (surprise!).