Hey y'all I'm Sandy and I'm a {gulp} 31 year old, mom to 3 kids, a wife, and this year I'll be teaching second grade again. This will be my fifth year at the same school in Texas.
I married my hubbs almost 13 years ago. He's my best friend.
I am so lucky to share my life with him and our 3 amazing kids.
We also have 3 turtles and a Beta. HA!
I feel so blessed to spend most of summer home with my babies.
The VERY best thing I got to do was play like a kid with them.
We went camping, fishing, swimming, the list goes on and on. . .
We are outdoorsy people so summer is our FAVORITE!
I got to read several books off my kindle list, tackle some DIY classroom and home projects, workout, and try out some new recipes.
Now onto the scoop. . .
These are a few of my favorite things. . . Singing. Dancing. Laughing.
If you weren't a teacher, what would you be? An author (children's literature). Still working on doing that. One day. Three words that describe you. Bright. Positive. Fun. Finish the sentence: "________________," said no teacher ever. "I wish summer was shorter," said no teacher ever! It's your birthday and you can invite anyone (dead or alive) to the party. Who are you inviting? Jimmy Fallon because he cracks me up. Adele because her voice is amazing. Rachel Ray to cook up something yummy. If someone wrote a book about your life what would the title be? She Did it Her Way You get to pick one superpower. What is it?
What is your favorite quote or saying? There's a lot of good savings and quotes out there. This one came to mind today . . .
If you had to sing one song on American Idol, what would it be? I would want to sing something soulful like All of Me by John Legend or Say Something by A Great Big World and Christina Aguilera. I love to sing!
Are you a morning person or a night owl? Both. Forget me, right? Ha. I love staying up late. I sometimes have these crazy ideas I just need to do or just weeks of insomnia. I hate wasting my day so I get up bright and early. I am super cheerful and sing EVERY. MORNING. Even after staying up late with sick, crying babies. I told ya. . . Forget me, huh?! What's your favorite resource that you've created in your TPT shop? I only have one item right now. {WOMP. WOMP.} I deleted 2 other items that I wanted to update. And I'm still pretty iffy about uploading. . . Share something we may not know about you. I don't know if you took the time to do the math, but I married my sweetheart when I was 18! Sooo young! No, I'm not letting my kids marry that early! Link up! We'd love to read about you!
I'm going to try something tonight. I want to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. . .
Ok, I want to link up with both Blog Hoppin' and 4th grade Frolics. I don't know if that's against any bloggyland rules. Shhh. . . don't tell anyone!
I'll start with Blog Hoppin's linky party for Teacher Week 2013, Monday is Meet the Teacher Monday
I'm supposed to mention 10 FUN things about me.
I will try to think of only FUN things or at least weird. Weird is fun to me. . .
1. I memorize random facts after reading or hearing them once. Kind of like photographic memory, but not exactly. I know a lot of useless information. It makes me really good at Jeopardy, but not much else. . .
2. I'm uber competitive. It's a sickness. I can not stand to lose. So much so I will refuse to play any game if I think I'll lose. At the gym I pick a person and mentally compete with that person to get through a workout. Pathetic I know. . .
3. This is pretty random, but I wonder if anyone else does this. I have to smash my sandwiches, burgers, etc. before I eat them. Seriously, I didn't even notice this until my hubbs pointed it.
4. I buy EVERYTHING in multiples of 3s. I don't know if it's an OCD thing or if I just can't stand running out of an item. I always have back up and back up for my back up.
5. I have a West Texas accent because I was born and raised in the Lubbock area. People often assume I can't speak Spanish because of my accent. I like to surprise people by interchanging between the two.
6. I don't/can't play any musical instruments, but I love to sing. I sing ALL the time. I'm not saying I'm any good at it, but I sing all day long and I love singing with my own children and my students.
7. I can imitate a lot of voices. I have a wide vocal range. Sometimes I surprise myself. I do use this "talent" with my firsties and my own babies during read-alouds and they love it.
8. I'm the middle child of a pastor so saying I was a wild child is the understatement of the year! I made really good grades, signed up for all extracurricular activities and sports despite of all my crazy adventures so MOST of my teachers were o.k. with all this cray cray.
9. I have 3 kids. I guess that seems like a pretty common fact. What makes it fun is that when I was 20 I was told (by 3 dr.s) that because of medical issues I would be unable have children. I had my daughter at 22, my older son at 24. A few days before my 26th birthday I found out I was 6 months pregnant with my third child. God is GREAT!
3 Little Miracles
10. Everywhere I go kids and babies approach me like they know me. Kids come up and talk to me and babies reach out to me to be carried. It feels nice that little ones have that trust in me just by looking at me.
I'm not too sure if those were all FUN, but hopefully you get an idea of who I am. If you'd like to know some more randomness click here.
I have to say I joined teacher bloggy world to network with other teachers. Although I've only just begun blogging myself (long time blog stalker) I am having so much FUN because of all of you.
Thank you for sharing your creativity and time and thank you for letting me share too y'all!
Onto the second item of business. . .
I made several Monday made its, but I took them to school. Today was my first day working in my classroom. I'll take pics and add them here. Gotta love the update button :)
Anyhow, I do have one I want to share.
I changed my theme this year for something a little more bright and cheery.
I made some glitter clothespins last year for my display bulletin board, but a lot of my firsties took them home at the end of the year so I had to make more. I'm sure you've seen these all over Pinterest. If you're the original pinner on this project let me know and I'll credit you here.
This is an easy project because all you need is clothespins, glitter, and mod podge. This year I'll be using the clothespins to hold up photos on another bulletin board. Im going hot glue them to the ribbon and display the photos like a timeline. I'm sure you've seen the photo timeline on Pinterest too.
**HERE IS AN IDEA** I was stapling my photos onto my bulletin boards. Instead of messing up my photos with holes I am going to paste them onto a sheet of scrapbook paper and clip them onto the bulletin board by month. At the end of the school year I'll remove sheets August through June and make a scrapbook with all of our photos. (By the way I'm give my students a CD of all our photos at the end of the year as an EOY gift.)
I purchased these leaves at our local teacher store. I hot glued them onto the clothespins. Each student's name will go on the leaf (see how I used the veins to write?) and each leaf pin will hold their work to be displayed on the bulletin board outside my door.
(missing the thumbtack on back)
I really do envy all of you who get your student lists before school starts. We get a list the first day of school and it changes that first week so much. A lot of our parents like to wait the week of to register. (The only student names I know are teacher kids who placed them in my class.)
Remember this fabric?
and this blue one??
I made curtains to cover some shelves in my classroom.
I used an iron, the fabric, tension rods, and iron on hem tape. (Choose a tape that matches your fabric type. Some are thin and used on fragile fabrics like lace some are heavy duty for thicker fabrics like canvas.)
I ironed how I wanted my fabric to look hemmed. (I folded it and ironed it.) Then I placed the hem tape and ironed again. VOILA! The trickiest part is leaving enough space when making the "pocket" the rod slides through. I am the Queen of DIY Winging It. I used the actual rod to help me place the hem tape and ironed with the rod still there. LOL I love how the colors pop. They turned out to be a little long. Nothing a little hem tape won't fix tomorrow!
Here they are all wrinkled. Good grief!
**ANOTHER IDEA** I am going to use that Downy wrinkle away spray tomorrow to see if it works instead of ironing. I'm always up for finding ways for me to do less work. I'll update here tomorrow :)
I hope you enjoyed my two linky post. Can't wait to see what y'all have going on during this week's Teacher Week. Head back over here too!
