New Year's Sale

To kick off 2013 I am having a sale in my TPT store. Everything is 20% off! Click on the image below to be taken to my store.

Happy New Year!!

New Year's Resolution Linky

Oh my goodness- I feel like I dropped off the face of the blogging earth there for awhile!! The entire month of December absolutely C-R-A-Z-Y! Every single day there was one thing after another to do. If I wasn't staying at school late preparing for lessons/parties/Christmas programs I was rushing off to some sort of wedding appointment- flowers, DJ, cake tastings (ok-- I could actually go to a cake tasting every day of the week and not be sick of it). My desk at school was a disaster and my apartment was even worse- whew! 

I am finally getting back into the swing of things and I am looking forward to 2013... it is gonna be a great year ya'll!! I am soooo looking forward to becoming a Mrs. AND having my Master's Degree.

I saw this adorable linky party from Jen at the Teacher's Cauldron and thought it would be the perfect fun way for me to get back into the mood for school. 

First lets start with blogging resolutions, because those are shorter :) I really am hoping to COMPLETE at least 8 posts a month... thats only 2 per week.. totally doable right?? I am also hoping to comment on all of these blogs I stalk frequently look at ;)  I know how happy I get when I get a sweet comment on my blog, so why not make other people smile with a sweet comment? It only takes two minutes of my time and if it makes somebody else happy, then it is totally worth it.

Personal resolutions

Well with my wedding being 195 days, 1 hour, 8 minutes and 10 seconds away (but who's counting??) I am hoping to force myself, yes FORCE myself, to go to yoga at least 3-4 times a week. My fiance and I are both trying to get into better shape so we came up with an idea... the workout jar!

I originally saw this idea on Pinterest and then we modified it to make it a little more competitive, and therefore motivating. 

1. My fiance and I are each going to take out $75 cash in singles (hold the strip club jokes please!) starting January 1st and decorate our own Mason jar. Let's be honest... when I say "decorate" for him, I mean write his name on it in Sharpie. 

2. Then, each time we work out for at least 45 minutes, we get to put $1 in our jar. 

3. By the time we get to our pre-determined date, the person who has the most money in their jar gets to keep the money in BOTH jars and go spend it on something they wouldn't normally spend it on.

This will hopefully work really well for us because we are both super competitive, in a good way. This will motivate us to want to work out more, so we get to put another dollar in that jar. I will let you know how it goes!

My other personal resolution is to keep my head above water for the next 17 weeks before my graduation. It sounds like a long time, but I have a lot of work to do and I know it will go by SUPER fast. Hopefully by being organized and tackling things off my grad school to-do list one week at a time I will be able to do it all without going crazy.

Now it is your turn to go link up!!

Silence

12 in 12 Linky Party

My Christmas craziness is finally starting to settle down a little-whew! We had our class Christmas party today and Christmas break is finally within my grasp!! Only a few more days until freedom :) I stumbled across this Linky Party on just about everyone under the sun's blog this week and had to do one. What a fun idea, right?! Here goes...

12. Favorite Movie: Dark Knight Rises- I swear my fiance talked about this movie nonstop for the entire week before it came out... and of course we just HAD to go see it at midnight that night :) It ended up being a really good movie though- with a great twist at the end! I won't give it away in case you haven't seen it yet :)

 

11. Favorite TV Show: Bachelorette-- oh my gosh, no doubts about this one! I still have friends who run into Emily Maynard in Charlotte out at the grocery store or the mall or Target and I haven't seen her yet. I swear I am like the only one who hasn't seen her!

10. Favorite Restaurant- Cowfish Sushi and Burger Bar. This place is close enough for me to walk to and has a great selection of sushi and cheeseburgers (and a little bit of a mix between the two) as well as some great drink specials :) I LOVE their key lime pie martini!

9. Favorite New Thing You Tried- Hot yoga!! I have loved yoga for years but finally tried hot yoga for the first time at the end of the summer and just completely fell in love. Now I can't go back to regular yoga.

8. Favorite Gift You Got- my engagement ring :) Does that count as a gift??

7. Favorite Thing I Pinned- Sight words on cookie sheets. This has come in handy this year! My kids love to use the letter magnets on the cookie sheets and I love watching them practice their sight words

 

Although this one seems pretty appropriate right about now:

6. Favorite Blog Post- I loved doing the Teacher Week blog posts through Blog Hoppin'. Those were so much fun!

5. Best Accomplishment- keeping up a 4.0 in grad school while teaching, tutoring after school AND planning a wedding. I am one busy girl!

4. Favorite Picture- This one is a current one of my little baby Tucker dressed up as Santa Claus. He makes me so happy :)

3. Favorite Memory- Getting engaged!! I have so many great memories from 2012 though, this pick had quite a bit of competition! I was very lucky to have such a great year this year :)

2. Goal for 2013- Graduate with my Master's Degree and GET MARRIED!! Oh, and to do both without going crazy!

1. One Little Word- HAPPINESS

It is so important that we all feel even just a little bit of this everyday, even on the days when you are sick of paperwork, conferences, e-mails, etc. We all have so much to be grateful for and should look at the things that make us happy a little more often

Have a great night ya'll!

Monday Made It... On Wednesday?!

I was all excited that I had another Monday Made It to post but somehow this week has completely gotten away from me. Here we are and it is already Wednesday- I am certainly NOT complaining!!! Is anyone else's week going this fast?? We have been so busy making all of our Christmas crafts and hunting down our gingerbread man (who ran out of the oven by the way, gingerbread men tend to do that apparently :) ). Here are a few pictures of the many things I have made either at home or in class this with my kiddos this week:

 Earlier this week I had to make cookies for my end of the semester grad school party. I saw these adorable cookies last year on Pinterest and took the lazy way out put my own little twist on them-- pre-made dough instead of making it from scratch! These are peanut butter cookies with chocolate covered pretzels as antlers and M&Ms as eyes and a nose. Just pop them in the oven to bake, take them out, decorate while they are still hot and voila- reindeer cookies!

Last week with our prayer partners we made these mangers to kick off our study of Advent and our excitement for Christmas:

They ended up on our bulletin board in the hall with some of the lyrics from "Away in a Manger". When it gets closer to Christmas we will make little Baby Jesus crafts to tuck into our mangers... so cute!

We also made these Christmas trees as one of our centers this week. I had all of the pieces set out on my kidney table and they had to follow step by step directions to complete it. All of you kindergarten teachers know how difficult following directions can be sometimes!! It was very challenging for some of my little ones to determine which piece was the longest just by looking at them. They had to set them all next to each other to figure it out. They built their trees from the bottom up, cut out their star, and then decorated with "snow" (white paint) using a Q-tip. As you can see we had some with just a few snowflakes and then some who made an all out blizzard!

Two more things that we are doing in class to celebrate Advent/Christmas are our chocolate Advent calendar and our countdown to Christmas chain. Every day we pick out our next chocolate and talk about the shape of the chocolate and what that symbol represents and we cut one more ring off our countdown to Christmas chain. Needless to say, we are super excited about Christmas in K2!

I hope you all have a great rest of the week!!

Holiday Chevron Papers

So yesterday when I was filling out this month's Currently with Farley from "Oh Boy Fourth Grade" I decided that I needed to learn how to start creating my own background papers. I figured it couldn't be that hard, and I was right! I think I am addicted now :) Making new papers is an easy way to put off working on my final exam for grad school this semester!! 'Tis the season to procrastinate, right? Or is that just me?? 

While putting off my gigantic paper that is due in 28 hours, I uploaded some new holiday themed papers to TPT. So if anyone else is in the mood to procrastinate and make some new holiday themed activities for their lessons this week, click HERE and download my background papers.

Have a great rest of your Sunday :)

Currently December

Yay!! It is finally December! Don't you just love this time of year?? I love blaring my Christmas music in the car and in my apartment while I do chores :) If you haven't already, link up with Farley from Oh Boy Fourth Grade!!