Princesses, Poultry, and Puppies: Back to School!!

It's that time of year again...time for SCHOOL!!!! I don't know about you, but I'm SO EXCITED!!! (Hence the all caps and excessive punctuation. Not yelling, just PUMPED!!!) For the past few weeks, I've been getting ready for my new 1st graders: cleaning and straightening and painting and organizing and planning and pinning. Whew. I was very blessed last year to walk into an organized and "student-ready" classroom, and for that I'm very thankful. But being a first year teacher, I had no idea what to do with half of the stuff in my room and no time to figure it out! It was nice to have the time to sort through and organize things in a way that works best for me and my students. I went back and forth on the painting thing, but my girl Staci got her room looking all cute, so I couldn't just leave my walls that dusty, dingy blah yellow. It was a lot of work, but I'm so glad I painted!! It looks so much cleaner and brighter and fresher and 1st grade-ier! I hope my kiddos will like it! Here are a some pics of the room redo:

Before:

I love yellow, but this was just past due for a facelift.

You could see all the dust and dings and scrapes and gunk.

SO much stuff on those back shelves, old books, manuals, papers that came over on the the Mayflower. Time to clean out and get things straight!

During:

I made an even bigger mess while painting, but it was SO worth it!

I even had a little help one day! My man is a natural artist. ;)

After:

I don't think I'll ever be completely done, there's still so many things I want to do! And of course we'll add to the "decor" throughout the year with student work, anchor charts, etc. But overall, I'm really pleased with how it turned out. It finally feels like My room!