some finishing touches.

*edited to add {slightly} better pictures, just for cb's eemo. love you, sis. ;)

before choi boy came home, i started a project that was to become some of the wall art in cb's room. i purposely started it prior to leaving for korea knowing that i'd need a head start in order to have it completed within some sort of reasonable time frame.

aaaaaand, four months later, i just finished. :)

wanna see?



i wanted something that tied in with choi boy's loosely alphabet themed room. one of my favorite activities to do when building a literate environment in my classroom is to make a classroom alphabet with my students. choosing a personal, meaningful word association for each letter makes the alphabet something the children can connect with and have ownership over. using that idea, i made six canvases, one for each letter from A to F, to represent important parts of choi boy's journey and story.





here are some close ups of each canvas:

A for airplane, with a picture of the pretty blue plane we rode home as new family of three.


B for baby B (cb's korean/middle name), with cb's referral picture, taken in the famous red chair.


C for C (cb's first name). this is probably my absolute favorite picture of cb. thanks again to jojo and gabe for the hat! :)


D for dog, with a picture of piper, cb's furry big sister.


E for everyone, with a collage of everyone on both sides of our immediate family (or are they extended family now and the three of us are just immediate family? i get so confused by that!)

and

F for family, with one of our first family pictures. :)

it's far from perfect. i wish i had taken the time to actually center the letters and words. i also should have used a thinner paint marker to write the words. the modge podge is really gloppy and not smooth, as you can probably tell (i have *never* been able to use modge podge well!!). and the canvases are definitely not hanging as straight as they could be and i'm thinking they should also be a little lower. but, it'll do. at this point, i'm just glad they're done and up!

i also have an ABC book in the works that will follow a similar theme and i hope it will serve as a first lifebook of sorts. and, um, i still have the actual lifebook in the works, too. hopefully, they'll be done before choi boy enters kindergarten. or graduates high school. ;)

and what did little cb think of his new decor?


he enjoyed checking out the pictures...

and, as i hoped,

he loved picking out and saying the names of the people (and animals!) he recognized. :)

i have a few more things i'd like to get up on the walls of cb's room...but, i'm giving myself to the end of summer vacation.

baby steps! ;)