Countdown to the last day of school

We are in the final stretch of school and have been draggin' butt with grades, tests, and long writing assignments.  I decided that we need a little pick-me-up to get us through the final days of school.

Check out what the kids saw on Tuesday morning as they walked into our class...

Their eyes nearly popped out and nobody could close their mouth.  It was hilarious to watch everyone round the corner and stop halfway in the door.

I have 22 balloons hanging from the ceiling for each child in my class.  Each balloon has a small strip of paper with a quick but very fun activity for the kids to do that day.  We count down the days by popping one balloon a day and doing the activity inside.  The balloon is popped by the child whose name is written on the crepe paper streamer taped to the balloon.  Some of the activities I have are "Play hot potato" or "Shaving cream creations".  They all take less than 15 minutes but the kids get super excited each day to see what they get to do.  It's a blast!

This week was also Teacher Appreciation week.  My kids and parents were amazing!  I feel so spoiled and very much appreciated.  I don't think I could have dreamed up a better group of kids to have during this time in my life.  They are so special and loving which is a good thing because this momma is starting to really look forward to relaxing by the pool all summer!

Pin It Now!

Baby Book

I received our little girl's baby book in the mail yesterday and I couldn't be happier with it.  I searched high and low for the perfect book and finally turned to Etsy.  There, I found the store of Edna Mae and fell in love with her designs.  She handmakes her covers and designs her pages on heavy card stock of the best quality.  What I like about her books is that they are customizable and easy to arrange however I want because of the three-hole design.  She has even more options on her webpage, www.ModernBabyBooks.com.

 I decided on the gray cover and Whimsy Pink pages.

 The colors are perfect for a little girl!

 I love this page for marking down the milestones.

So many pages for writing down memories.  What you can't see are the pale blue gridlines on each page, handy for staying straight and steady! 

 I placed this in the book already.  I can hardly wait to fly back up to Michigan!

I am going to share a little more about how extremely spoiled I was by my room moms this year.  These blankets were part of the diaper cake that I received.  I was shocked and amazed to see that these are not just any blankets, they are hand stitched and embroidered blankets!  I could hardly believe it when I started undoing that beautiful present; both Estevan and I were blown away by the love and dedication it took to make these. 

Unbelievable details.  I will treasure these!

Pin It Now!

Flowers in bloom

I'm very slowly getting back into gardening in our new house.  It's a big job and it often overwhelms me to think about where to start.  There are so many places where I can plant flowers that it's just too much to handle.  I seriously need to narrow my focus.  I snagged some $2 plants from Lowe's at the end of last season after we had finished up the hardscape around the pool.  So far, only 6 plants but it was a start.

This agapanthus is just beginning to flower.  I'm not really sure what all the plants will end up looking like because this is the only one with many small flowers; the others are sprouting tall buds.  I love how this plant resembles the allium plants that I adored in Lansing.

I am amazed that we built this hardscape ourselves.  We had all the stone already in the yard, we just moved it to this new location to help build up the backside of the pool decking.  It was a tough job but it was so worth the effort.  The company that we hired to lay sod asked us who we hired to do that job, they told us that their company would have charged us $3,000 to do all that.  Jackpot!

We have big plans for this area behind the water feature.  It's just weed infested mulch right now but soon we will have small palms and bird of paradise flowers.  Very tropical!  Again, we had those stones lying around.  It took us about an hour of silent work time to figure out an arrangement and lay them all together.  Estevan and I work very well as a team, it's funny that we often don't even have to talk when we have one goal in mind.

We just need to figure out what to plant here.  We arranged  the stones and laid down mulch but so far, no plans.  It's fairly shaded back here and so far we only have some pink crepe myrtles and one ligustrum.  I'm thinking that we need a thicker layer of mulch to cut down on the amount of weeds popping through.  But at least we only spent $500 on mulch for both the front and back yards, labor included.  I'm sure that as the years go by it will continue to get thicker and more weed proof.

That's it for now!  Hopefully, there will be more to come soon. Pin It Now!

I have an announcement...

I'm having a baby!  My husband and I are expecting a little baby girl in August, we are thrilled!  We've been very busy lately getting the house ready and painting the nursery.  I promise to post pics of the nursery once it's finished; there's only one coat of paint so far and a simple day bed.  For now, here is a picture of the cute little girl, herself.

Have I told you yet how sweet my class is this year?  Well, they are the kindest and most loving kids I have ever met.  What makes it even better is that their parents are equally as sweet.  Three of my room moms surprised me today with a gorgeous diaper cake.

I started tearing up when they walked in, I was so surprised!  What is even sweeter is that it was made by the mom who is moving away.  Her daughter is the most precious little girl, I will miss her dearly.  This mom spent weeks making this gift while also preparing to move across the country. How thoughtful is that?!  I later heard from our secretary that this wonderful woman made the blankets herself because she "couldn't find the right color combinations in the store."  She literally hand stitched some and sewed all the rest.  Incredible!  Check out the details that she added...

I didn't even remember telling her the colors of our nursery, she was so slick.  She nailed the color scheme that we have chosen.  Dead on.

Pin It Now!

Teachers Pay Teachers

I have recently started making my own units to sell on www.TeachersPayTeachers.com.  If you are a teacher and have never heard of this website you need to go to it right now!  Teachers Pay Teachers is the best thing to happen to my teaching career; it is full of beautiful units made by teachers and sold to teachers.  What I love the most is that sellers are just normal teachers and are easily reached if anything needs to be tweaked in their units.  No more white out and crooked copies!  

Go check it out and, while you're there, please go to my store too.  Look at what I have so far, become a 'follower' of my store and you'll also receive notifications when I post new items for sale or freebies.  

Falling for Numbers

A Handful of Love [FREE]

Turkey, Turkey punctuation book [FREE]

Pin It Now!

My Kindergarten Classroom 2012

I am officially in school mode and busy nearly every day with making things for my kindergarten classroom.  As much as I love to blog during the summer, I love to make my classroom the best it can be during the school year.  It's crazy how much my focus shifts as soon as school starts!  This poor blog just seems to fall by the wayside.

Here are a few of the amazing things that I have done with my classroom this year.  Seriously, I couldn't be happier with the results of all my effort.

 I redid all of my walls and added new places for work to be displayed. I still LOVE my eInstruction clicker storage next to my word wall, it's a shoe organizer cut in half for the little darlings to grab their own clicker.

 We all got new whiteboards over the summer.  Yay for magnetic space!  You can also see the coloring books that I give to every student, they are amazing for the few minutes that students need to do something at their seats while others are finishing up work.  Those coloring books will last all year, boom!

 This is my calendar area and reading/word study center area.  More details about that iHelp chart and birthday bags further down.

This is what you see as you enter my classroom, math center work table from Ikea, and my favorite piece of furniture which is my rolling file organizer from The Container Store.  

Can you spot our "Tattle Telephone" on the light colored cabinet by my desk?  It cracks me up!  One day a boy was about to tell me a tattle and I told him, "Is it important for me to hear right now, or can you leave me a message?" He then scratched his chin, picked up the phone and mumbled to himself, "How should I put this..." and proceeded with his tattle.  I just about fell off my chair I was laughing so hard.  Of course it's just an old phone that I screwed onto the cabinet but it works like a charm!

 I stapled these white paper bags to the wall and filled them with tissue paper.  I then wrote the students' birthdays on the cupcakes and put a birthday pencil in the bag for them.  Easy way to see the birthdays coming up and ensure that I have their gift ready.

  I LOVE this job chart!  The "apps" are made from library card pockets (free from the librarian) with clip art pictures of the jobs.  I then print off small pictures of each student and glue those onto popsicle sticks.  I place the popsicle sticks in the pockets and, viola, everyone knows their job.

This is the cutest way to keep track of table rewards and I am constantly getting compliments on it.  Every time I catch the students all working together, or all following the directions, they get a monkey.  They get to choose a prize from the prize box when they get 10 monkeys dangling above their table.

 This is yet another change that I made this year and it is working so much better!  I switched out stapling student work all year to clipping it on the clothesline.  The clothes line is the only part that is stapled into the boards, genius!

 This is my favorite center.  I typed the sight words into Google Docs and saved them as JPEG, dragged the JPEG files onto a USB drive and hooked it into my digital picture frame.  The sight words appear for about 10 seconds and the students write them down.  

Our classroom gnome, Gnorman (hehehehe), is still an active member of our room.  He left this note and a bag with Mr. Potato Head inside.  Mr. Potato head taught us about listening ears, watching eyes, quiet mouth, puzzle hands, and thinking cap.  

Pin It Now!

Making it right

Grass was delivered to our house 2 days ago, and not just a little grass, a whole 8 pallets of lush, green sod.  I was very impressed with the quality of sod delivered; not at all what I was expecting to see and I'm immensely pleased with it.

Pretty.

Instant gratification, man.  We will be watering it like crazy for 2 weeks and then sitting back to enjoy the yard we always envisioned.  This is exactly what we saw when we looked at this yard for the first time, through all the overgrown bushes and ivy, the dilapidated fences, in spite of the maze of unused flower beds and miles of stones.  This is finally the yard that we bought and dreamed of. 

Well, almost....  Hence the title of this post.

 The decking company is back out here, today.  They are power washing and redoing the top layer of the deck around the pool.  You see, the finish coat on the deck started to flake away so we called them back out to take a peek.  They decided to patch up the spots that were flaking away.  Patch.  That word alone should have told us that we were not going to be happy with the finished product.  At the end of the day, it looked like I had gone through and smeared dark concrete on top.  "Oh that should lighten up and blend right in," they told me.  Yeah right!  I'll let you know how I feel when they are done making it right today, I have my fingers crossed.

Now, for the next "Making it right" project.

This is a picture that I took a few days ago of the dry stacked retaining wall around the edge of the spa. It doesn't quite look like this anymore.  The dirt has started to wash through the gaps in the rocks and now it's just a heap of a mess with the new grass at the bottom.  Projects don't always turn out the way you hope they will but that's what learning is for.  I'm going to try to fix the problem by digging out the dirt right behind the stones and then laying in gravel to help retain it while still allowing water to flow through.  Sounds like a good plan, right?  This would have been a lot easier to do before we heaped the dirt back in, but oh well, you live and learn.  We shall see if this works. Pin It Now!

A hard day's work

A big storm came through our area last and tore up the neighborhood last week.  The rain came down so fast that it flooded our pool, despite the drain, and the wind blew in at 75mph.  Last year, at about this time, we were going through a historic drought and that resulted in a devastating loss of trees.  However, the unseen danger was when root systems of old trees were severely damaged but still standing and then tried to come back this past spring.  The leaves collected rain, which made the trees heavy, and the wind blew so hard that many trees ended up looking like this in my area.

This is a picture taken from my driveway, looking right across the street.  I saw it slowly start to fall and I hightailed it to the pantry which is in the center of my house under the stairs!  Trees were swaying all around and some enormous trees were bent so far that their branches were brushing the ground.  Java and I hung out in the dark pantry until I could hear the wind subsiding.

All that rain took a toll on the fresh dirt around the pool and, with nothing to hold it in place, it swept to the corners of the yard and under the fence line.  This is what the edge of the decking looked like.

The sprinkler system was revealed in several places and the corner of the decking was completely exposed and precarious.  So this past weekend we went to work and grabbed stones that were previously used around all the many flower beds in the back yard and came up with this.

Looks better, right?  We did it all ourselves with materials on hand and probably saved a couple hundred bucks, if not more.  It still needs a little tweaking but this should hold the dirt and I'll be planting some pretty plants very soon.  Also, sod is being put down tomorrow.  Very exciting! Pin It Now!

Happy Father's Day

Dad, you were there for me when I was born.  You were there to catch me when I fell, when I walked, and when I talked.

You were there to show me adventure and nature.

You were there to show me the wonders of the world.

You were there when it really mattered.  You gave me the knowledge to help me succeed and to believe in myself.

You were there to give me away to the second man that I ever truly loved.

You were there for me and I know that you always will be.  I love you Dad.

Pin It Now!

Deep Dish Fruit Pizza

I was in charge of a coworkers birthday celebration a few months ago and couldn't decide what to make.  I knew it would have been easy to buy a cake from the store but that would be expensive and not a whole lot of fun.  She also wanted something healthy but tasty too.  I searched all over the internet for something special to make her and came across this recipe on Pioneer Woman.  The name has fruit in it, that means it's healthy.  Right?  


This recipe is seriously divine, the orange zest in the crust makes everything taste absolutely perfect and the frosting in the middle is good enough to eat with a spoon as a fruit dip.

Deep Dish Fruit Pizza
Recipe from Pioneer Woman

Ingredients
1-1/3 cup shortening (may substitute butter)
1-1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon orange zest
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
8 teaspoons whole milk
4 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 jars (13 ounces each) Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme
2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese
Assorted fruits


Directions
Preheat oven to 350 F.


In a large bowl, cream shortening (or butter), sugar, orange zest and vanilla thoroughly.  Add in eggs and beat until light and fluffy.  Add in the milk and mix.

In a medium-sized bowl, sift together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and salt), then blend this into the cream mixture.  Slightly flatten between two sheets of waxed paper and two sheet pans, then refrigerate for one hour.

Press dough into a sheet pan, use your fingers to get it even but still dimply and rounded up the edges slightly.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until cookie dough is cooked and golden brown, but not overly crisp.  Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.

Using a mixer with a whisk attachment, whip together Marshmallow Creme and cream cheese until light. Spread onto cooled "pizza" cookie, then decorate the top generously with sliced fruit.  Yum!

Pin It Now!

Chicken Salad

I have made this recipe a lot in the past few months.  I made it the first time for a luncheon that Kindergarten put on for the staff at my school; I doubled the recipe for that and we ran out about halfway through the lunches.... oops!  People liked it so much that it was requested for a baby shower and again for a wedding shower.  This is a good recipe to have in your cookbook for special occasions, summer gatherings, lunches or snacks.

Chicken Salad
Recipe slightly adapted from All Recipes


Ingredients
3 chicken breasts (1.5-2 lbs)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
4 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/2 cup thinly sliced celery (about 2 stalks)
1 cup halved red grapes
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon dried parsley flakes
2 teaspoons finely minced shallot
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce


Directions
Heat olive oil and butter in large skillet over medium high heat.  

Salt and pepper chicken breasts and cook in skillet, about 5-8 minutes per side or until firm.  

Prepare celery, grapes and shallot while chicken is cooking, set aside.  The original recipe has water chestnuts (seen here) but I did not like the texture in this salad and have since omitted it.  

Remove chicken from skillet and set aside to cool.  Add bacon to same skillet and cook until crispy.  

In large bowl, combine mayonnaise, parsley flakes, shallot, lemon, ginger and Worcestershire.  

Cut chicken into small cubes, crumble bacon and add to mayonnaise mixture.  Add grapes and celery, mix to combine and add salt to taste.  Chill and serve on croissants or toast.  Enjoy! Pin It Now!