Back to School Sale

In an attempt to get back into the swing of things for the school year, head on over to Teachers Pay Teachers to check out the awesome Back to School Sale!!  We have all our stuff on sale 20% off and with the checkout coupon you can save up to 28%!  We are so excited to fill our carts with stuff from our favorite sellers!

Thanks to Michelle at The 3am Teacher for the graphic!

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Getting Crafty!

Hello out there!  
Wow, what a summer!  I feel so badly about the lack of blogging on my part.  Heather blogged about her reasons for not blogging earlier this week so I figured it was my turn.

My parents and my husband had an amazing opportunity this summer to spend 3 weeks in Tanzania, Africa.  They helped with water filtration systems, gardening, and soccer camps.  They ended the trip by climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro!!!  It was an amazing experience for them and I am so thankful they had the opportunity to participate in such a worthwhile cause.  Here is a picture of the hubs while in Africa:

While they were on this amazing adventure, I was at home on the other side of the mission trip.  The side not talked about as much...The ones left behind.  It was a wonderful three weeks of single parenthood.  To any of you single parents out there, I admire what you do on a day to day basis.  I truly appreciated my husband more after those three weeks apart!  I spent those weeks in Ohio with my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and cousins.  The time with family was priceless and so enjoyable.  But in all actuality, let's be serious...I needed reinforcements.   

Once my husband returned home, it was GAME ON!  We packed as much as possible into the rest of our summer.  We made a trip to the beach, went to Indiana to visit my brother and his wife and attend a wedding.  Then we went to Tennessee to visit my husband's family.  All in all, we have only been home 2 weeks this summer!  It has been magical and wonderful and I wouldn't trade any of it!  So as you can probably imagine, blogging wasn't even on my radar screen.  In fact, for the first time ever, I haven't even thought about anything school related this summer.  It was a weird feeling.  But I liked it!!

Now that we are home and I return to school on Monday, school has been on my mind!  All of my children will finally be in school this year.  I have been joking that in my whole teaching career I have been a K-2 teacher.  Now I will be a K-2 parent too.  Literally!  I will have my son in 2nd, middle daughter in 1st, and baby girl in Kindergarten!  WHOA!  This also means that these three precious ones will be with me at school.  UGH!  I love my children and I do believe it is amazing that I get to have them with me at school to love on and spy on.  But before and after school, COME ON!  It's like I trade my teacher's hat in for a referee's!  I can hardly get anything done.  

For this reason, I have been attempting to get as much of my stuff done BEFORE my first day back.  That way I can get in, get out, and no one gets hurt.  So I started getting a little crafty.  

Have you seen the pin going around Pinterest with the bookshelves at the end of each table group?  It originated from Dandelions and Dragonflies.  I fell in love with this idea and decided to bite the bullet and do it myself.  Then I found on her blog that she did this adorable fabric on her bookshelves.  I decided that I had to do this too!  So I got some adorable fabric that will be on all of my bookshelves and then also some curtains.  

   Last but not least, I decided to make some bookmarks for my notebooks at school.  I tried this last year and it was very helpful.  I originally saw the pin here.  I have a rockstar theme in my classroom so I ordered some cute rockstar ribbon and went to town.  

1.  I cut the ribbon to the length that I wanted.  Then I folded it at the end in half.  

2.  Next I use my scissors to cut on an angle.

3.  Then the bottom of each of the ribbons looks like this:

4.  Last I use a lighter to melt the ends of the ribbon.  Don't get too close or you'll light it on fire.  Get just close enough to watch the edge melt.  By doing this you ensure that your ribbon won't fray.

5.  All done!  The girls get the pink rock star ribbon in their notebooks. The boys get black and white zebra print in theirs.  

 Well, I better stop since this blog has gotten quite long.  I hope everyone is well and enjoying back to school time!  Stay tuned because I assure you that we will be blogging more frequently this school year!

Happy Crafting!

MIssing In Blog Action! Catching up...

So about that summer we didn't blog at all....

You may or may not have noticed Juli and I didn't blog this summer. It wasn't planned or discussed at all. I imagine it has something to do with our families. Juli has 3 kids and I have 2. We had talked about all the great things we were going to make this summer for TPT and all the awesome blog topics we had. Then summer actually started. I think I speak for us both when I say we just needed to spend all of our time focused on our families.  All you fellow teacher moms can relate - we spend all year frantically putting as much as possible into our classroom while trying to be Super Mom at home. The slow pace of summer allowed me to be completely immersed into my children's world. I decided mid summer to stay there and enjoy the small window of time I get to be with these amazing little people I brought into this world.  Now that summer is coming to a close I am stopping by to catch up.  Hopefully with regular blog posts now that school will be starting.  I thought I would use this post to show what an amazing summer I have had with the 4 men in my life.  DISCLAIMER: no educational value what so ever in this post - just a peek into my life these days.  I personally love when the bloggers I follow show their lives outside the classroom. My apologies to any readers that don't.

Man #1 - my husband

Isn't he handsome?  He is driving the new boat my father in law purchased. Much of our time is now spent on the lake cruising up and down in this thing. I refer to it as a floating play pen because my boys can play and I don't have to worry about them wondering off.  It is a lazy mother's dream!

We are having Juli and family over at the end of the month so maybe we will have fun pictures to share.

Man #2 and #3 - my sons

They are so much fun! And work! And by work I mean mind numbing, endless demands, mess making tornadoes! But I wouldn't trade a single second.  Our best friends have two boys as well so we had a lot of fun with them. Here are some of my favorite moments with them:

Man #4 - my puppy

Turns out Banjo is quite the little lake dog!  He has his own little life vest and jumps right in.  He is still in puppy stage, which has exhausting and expensive.  His latest adventure was eating my underwear. Yep! You read that correctly...he ate my underwear. That was our ticket of fun to the ER vet.  The staff loved it. Anything I can do to bring a little fun to a vet office I guess.

How often do you get discharge papers like this?  The vet asked if I would like my underwear back! With a straight face! I thanked her for offering but decided to leave that pair with them. I prefer my undergarments predigested.  I don't think that makes me a diva or anything.

So that's my summer. We have one week left and then it's teacher workdays. Sigh. I have enjoyed seeing everyone's classroom set ups. Juli and I will have to do a post with our classroom pics once we get our rooms put together.  Thanks for stopping by!