Countdown #1

I love calendars and countdowns, and lately, I have a lot to count down to! Moving to Chicago, my brother moving to Penn State for law school, my birthday, going to Chicago to look at apartments, the end of the school year.

Today I'm focusing on the end of the school year. I created a countdown of how many more days I will physically be in my physics classroom. So it has two purposes really, one is to countdown to the end of school (don't get me wrong, I love my job, but who doesn't love summer break!), and the other to remind just how many days of instruction I have left before the state exam! I really liked the way it turned out. This isn't the traditional way I set up my countdowns. Usually, I have a clothesline-like set up with all the little number cards hanging off, since my mom used the make countdowns for us like that when we were little. But I will have so many countdowns going at once, I didn't want to have 18 lines going across the house!

I found an article on scrapbooking.com about creating countdowns, and I loved the beach countdown page. It was super simple to put together, and I was able to use up a ton of scraps! Also, with the various countdowns I will have going on, I wanted to have ones that were compact and could easily be hung up along one wall.
You can find the directions I followed here: http://scrapbooking.com/cgi-bin/Phase_2/layout.pl?serial=72578

This is how mine turned out:

I got the background paper from Die Cuts With a View's Summer Stack, it says "last days of school, counting down the days, vacation, party, summer break". It isn't too visible with the papers and such on top, but I know it is there, and that makes me smile! I also cut out pieces of the title from the background paper. The green paper is from my stash, and the blue paper is actually Staples bright copy paper, I chose it because it is very light and I was hoping it wouldn't weigh the paper down too much. I am planning on backing the countdown on light weight cardboard (similar to the kind that comes on the back of legal pads) that so the weight of the countdown stack doesn't pull it off my wall.

And, I just loved that picture! I google imaged "last day of school" and this came up. I can't find the one I used, but here is a colored in version: http://hp.loudoncounty.org/

I'm hoping to get some actual layouts done soon, we are going to a Mets game this weekend, so I will definitely have some pictures to use!

Thanks for stopping by!