It is forever going to feel weird to me that kids go back to school at the beginning of August here in the south.

I grew up in Southern California, where the school year ends in mid to late June, and school starts back up right after Labor Day.

I’m not smoking something, right?

That’s the general school calendar in soCal, right?

Here in the Savannah area, kids get outta school before the end of May. And last Thursday, on August 4… Phil hopped on the school bus and headed to his first day of Kindergarten.

My favorite school supply growing up

Back to school always makes me think school supplies, and as I worked on this piece I played with drawing a bunch of different must haves. Scanning everything in, I still wasn’t really sure where I wanted to head with the layout or the colors… Then I remembered my own favorite school supply growing up, the standard gold pee chee folder with the athletes on it.

Every single kid loved those folders when I was younger because they were super fun to draw ridiculous stuff on. Make the tennis player a unicorn, make the football player triumphantly carry a hoagie into the end zone. The more ridiculous, the better.
If you click here, there’s a bunch of hilarious examples I found on Google Images.

That color scheme, the dusty gold with faded burgundy, it just says back to school to me in a really nostalgic happy way.

Transitioning back into school has been weird.

I’ll be honest, this summer was the best summer I’ve had in ages. I had finished up the last of my web design projects before Phil got out of school in May, and once he was on break I changed my work schedule to have the daytime hours off. The plan was I’d pull night shifts through the summer so my projects still got done. It wasn’t easy – I’m definitely not a fan of working from 8pm til 2am and getting up with the kids at 6am. And I tip my hat to every single shift worker out there who does this on a regular basis and is still somehow coherent when out in society.

But night shift for the summer was so worth it.

Our family made a list of all of the summer adventures we wanted to have on the first day of vacation. And because I changed up my work schedule for the summer, we got to do almost all of them. It got a little tough towards the end to juggle client projects, but everything’s been finished on time which is always a big priority for me.

And my rambunctious five year old didn’t have to spend his summer vacation sequestered in the studio with mom every day.

And now we’re back.

The work schedule’s back to a manageable Monday through Friday 8am to 3pm, and I’m working on getting both Joy and I back to being used to spending our days working together. Phil’s adjusting to being back in school well – there’s always trepidation on the first day because what if you get lost, what if you don’t know anyone in your class, what if what if what if.

His classroom is right next door to last year’s preschool classroom and Mrs. Douberly; his buddy Liam sits at his table in his kindergarten class. The boy is totally good with being back at school.

And I’m super excited to see all the cool stuff he draws on his own folder this year.