I cannot believe two months flew by that fast! I had full intentions of getting back and blogging this summer, but that precious little girl required my time and attention! I can't believe in a week and a half I am back at school and no longer spending my days with her!
She loves to go to school and help Mommy set up her room though! Here is a picture of her helping me out!
After reading my blog, head on over to check out the other Made Its!
First up with some help from School Girl Style I am redoing my classroom with a monster theme! I used her monster cutouts to make a new door decoration for my main door. The main monster says "In our class we..." and the rest of the monsters have different things listed.
I also used one of her pom-poms to make a monster to hang on my door.
Next up, (using the monster cutouts again) I created my going home charts and my lunch count charts. I got mini clothespins and put the students numbers on them. They will clip in on the appropriate monster. For lunch count, every day they will start out on the blank one and will move their clip to either school lunch or lunch box. This allows me to also do attendance easily!
Next up, I made my BE board thanks to Tonya's Treats for Teachers. I love this board! We will choose one word a week to focus on and I will encourage my students to BE!
Last up, is my favorite! Leaving my baby girl is not going to be easy so I decided to make up a picture collage so I can look at her pictures when I am missing her like crazy!
Well that's all for now! Hope to be back blogging again soon!
Hey ya'll it has been so long since I have blogged. My world has been wild and crazy and my life was totally turned upside down. I'm finally trying to get myself back to a normal, but I can't make any promises as I am going along this crazy path.
When I last left you I had no clue how much my life was about to fall apart. I had mentioned a challenging student in my classroom, but I had no clue how challenging it would get. I don't want to go in to full detail, but let me tell you this, the second half of the year was my worst nightmare. Things went downhill quick because of his family life. That mixed with the issues he already had caused things to get REALLY bad. He even ended up being hospitalized for a week because of one of his meltdowns. I did my best to keep pushing through it all, but I wanted to give up so many times. I was emotionally, mentally, and physically drained by the end. I felt like I had done a disservice to the rest of my class and I considered giving up on my one true passion. After taking some time this summer I have realized that it was not me and that I had a lot going on in my personal life at the time that did not help. I am now recovered and ready to go back for a new year with a new perspective.
So there was all of that going on in my classroom all while my life was crazy busy as my husband and I are Jr. High track coaches. This track season was the hardest on me and I contribute a lot of it to the situations I dealt with all day and the personal life stuff (I'll be getting there in a minute). There was a lot more drama than normal and several of our athletes no longer showed me respect. There were many days I went home from practice and cried thinking that I was a terrible coach. I felt like I also was doing a disservice to my athletes this year. Hopefully next season will be better even though I know that will be a wild ride (see the section on personal life craziness coming up).
I also had the crazy idea to start selling Thirty-One in February. I do not regret that decision one bit, but it did make life a little crazier for me. I joined and less than a week later I was taking off to go on a training trip with complete strangers (the girl I joined under was the only one I kind of knew and I hadn't actually met her in person). This was totally different for me and way out of my comfort zone, but was an amazing experience. Since then I have met many amazing women and have felt totally inspired to do amazing things.
Now on to the personal life craziness. This was the thing that made me finally crack and feel like giving up entirely. On May 1st my whole world shattered. My dad had been having some health issues that he had put off getting checked for 9 months. When he finally decided to go to the doctor to get checked out the results were devastating. My father was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. It was so advanced that it was a complete blockage of his colon. My world was really thrown for a loop. You see my father is my rock, my best friend, my shoulder to lean on and all of this happened. He was also our assistant coach for track and this dramatically changed our team (granted some of it was for the better, because the drama finally stopped). Over the following few days and weeks we had to learn what the treatment plan was. The path was finally decided to treat with chemo and radiation first to try to shrink it. The problem was it would expand first and there was no room to expand with out causing issues so an ostomy had to be put in. There were several complications with that surgery and he ended up being hospitalized for a week. He had not been in a hospital overnight since he was a child. This was a very scary time. Luckily he finally recovered from it and was able to proceed with the treatment. He has now completed the treatment and is in the recovery stage waiting for surgery. He is scheduled to have the tumor removed on August 5th. We are hopeful that this surgery will go off without any complications.
Unfortunately because of all of this he was unable to attend the state track meet for our athletes in person. This was an extremely hard time for him as he had worked so hard to get one of our distance runners there. We decided to take him with us and send him pictures all weekend long of his adventures. Here is my favorite picture. He was just hanging out with me watching some races.
Through it all my dad has been a trooper and has kept his head held up high. He is truly inspiring. My dad is a distance runner. He has completed several marathons including the Boston Marathon. He is determined to be back there running once he has fully recovered and kicked cancer's butt. All of this has caused him to not be able to run like he used to, but he set out on a mission to run/walk a 5k for Colon Cancer Screening. He put together a team and set out on a mission to just finish the race. It was amazing because once he got out there running, he just couldn't stop. He ran the WHOLE 5k just a few days after finishing his chemo/radiation treatments. It was such an inspiring thing (especially since I couldn't even run the whole thing).
Here we are walking in the last of our group as a team.
Here is the team showing our spirit before the race.
Now onto my Monday Made It. This Monday Made It was actually made a little while ago, but I am just now getting around to it. After my post head on over to 4th Grade Frolics to check on some more Monday Made It's that I am sure are actually school related. I promise to show you some school related ones next time. ;)
I created this video about a month ago to announce that the hubby and I are having our first baby. This was a blessing that was much needed in our family. We are very excited about it even if the timing means the beginning of track season. We're just going to have an extra coach...lol. Our due date ended up getting changed to March 2nd after I had posted the video saying February.
Here are a couple of pictures we have taken. I will be taking another one tonight so I will have to post it for you sometime in the next couple of days. I'm pretty sure my bump has shrunk in the past week though. I did a lot of walking while I was at Thirty-One National Conference.
I have been on break since December 20th. We were supposed to go back Monday for a teacher day and Tuesday the kiddos were supposed to come back, but we got hit with snow and bitter cold temperatures. Only about five or six teachers were able to make it in for our teacher day so we were told we could just work in our rooms. I stayed until lunch and got quite a bit done. Then Tuesday was a snow day and I had absolutely no motivation to get anything done...until about 10 PM last night. Good thing today was also a snow day because I worked on some ideas until almost midnight and then I got up this morning and continued working. I was on a roll.
I have posted four new products to my TPT store (these are the first items I have posted since before Halloween...it feels so great to be posting some new items). Since I haven't really made anything else lately I am linking up this post with Tara's Monday Made It over at 4th Grade Frolics; after checking out my products you should head on over to her blog and see what everyone else has been making this month.
Oh and one more thing, all four of my new products are free for a limited time. Head on over to grab them up before they have a price. Please, please, please leave some feedback if you take advantage of this opportunity.
I have really gotten in to making brag tags lately. I have many more to come over time. This is my first posted set. They are perfect to give students on their birthday.
Now head on over and snatch these up and don't forget to leave feedback! After that, head on over to 4th Grade Frolics for some more Monday Made Its!
I have been a little absentee as of late! That has had a lot to do with preparing for the lil bundle of joy who will be joining my family. For those of you who don't know my niece is expecting a little girl in December (though I think she may make her arrival before then)! I am so thrilled to be getting a great niece (though I would have liked to have been a Mommy before a Great Aunt...I guess that's what happens when there is only a four year age difference between my niece and I). Anyways I was in charge of her baby shower. Between school and planning the shower I have hardly had time for anything else. The baby shower was yesterday so my time is a little better now (for a few weeks at least; after that I can't make any promises because I'm sure I was be a little wrapped up in that bundle of joy).
My Monday Made Its are not really classroom related, but I just had to share some of the projects I put together for the Baby Shower (most of the shower was DIY).
The diaper baby I made (I love making these)
I took a plain zebra piggy bank and added a tutu and bow
I added this tutu to this stuffed zebra
The table centerpieces were mini diaper cakes with headbands around them and bows or flowers for Hayden; they also had a zebra pinwheel coming out of the top
Another diaper cake
Homemade Rice Krispies dipped in pink chocolate
Cupcakes decorated by niece (I helped on a few of them)
These boo-boo bunnies were made by a relative of the daddy; I made the cute sign to go with it
The Price is Right Game
Advice for the New Mommy
BINGO cards for while opening gifts
Dirty Diaper Game cards
Overall I would say the day was a success; here is a picture of all the gifts she received:
Her and Hayden were very spoiled!
Now head on over to 4th Grade Frolics to check out the rest of the Monday Made Its.
It has been busy around here lately so I haven't had much time to be creative and make things, but I do have a couple things to share. I am linking up with Tara over at 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It. I only have two things today.
#1:
Last month I participated in the SLANT box exchange (I will be participating again this month...yay). I was paired up with Tara from Teaching With TWitte. I sent her a package with a pink and green theme. One rule for the exchange is that there must be one item that is handmade. I found out that Tara liked owls and pink and green. I combined those things to make her a door hanging/wall hanging. The picture of it is courtesy of Tara (I forgot to take a pic before sending it off...like I said it has been crazy around here).
#2:
I finally got around to creating another set of clipart. I needed this set for a fall project that I plan on doing with my class. This project will also turn in to another Teachers Pay Teachers product that should be ready to be posted sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Tonight I posted this set of Pumpkin Clip Art to my TPT store. It is FREE for a limited time. Be sure to leave me some feedback if you take advantage of this free offer.
I am linking up once again with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for her last weekly Monday Made It of the summer.
#1:
Robot Pointer Holder
I took an old container that used to hold my birthday straws and covered it with robot scrapbook paper and mod podge. I then added a portion of a feather boa for a little extra cuteness. I love how it turned out.
#2:
My rocking chair makeover.
This rocking chair used to be orange and it had scuff marks all over it.
I decided it needed an update so I painted it purple!
I love it so much more now!
#3:
Boxes for supplies.
I created some boxes to hold the supplies that will be collected and kept in my storage room.
I wrapped three cardboard boxes with wrapping paper and added label signs to the front indicating what should go in the box (currently they are holding the gifts for students.
#4:
These are the gift bags I made for my new kiddos.
Each bag contains glow sticks, robot stickers, bookmark, pencil, flipflop erasers, pencil cap erasers, and a stencil.
#5:
Tags for apples for the parents. I am waiting a couple more days before buying the apples.
The sticker labels will be stuck on the apple and the apple cards will be attached to the stem with tulle.
If you like these check out my blog tomorrow because they will be featured as my freebie for the day.
Speaking for daily freebies; go check mine out and remember to leave feedback. Thanks!
Today's new product is my final version of the stars backgrounds:
