Five For Friday & I'm Still Alive...Again!

Oh man oh man.  I know I wrote that blog post entitled "I'm Still Alive" about 2 months ago, letting everyone know I'm still here and blogging...hmm.  I guess that didn't work out to well.  This time, I am really trying to get back on the blogging scene though.  I swear!  Christmastime just became very busy, even for me, Miss I-Only-Sub-Now. :-) 

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with where to start with this blog post, because a lot has happened in the past 2 months since I last wrote, so I thought I'd link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five For Friday linky (Sam hates that word...linky). This way it's okay to be totally random.  Plus I've secretly always wanted to join this link-up!

 

Last week, our family celebrated Sam's 29th birthday.  I can't believe he's 29!  God, he's SO OLD!  (I'm only saying that because I turned the same age 16 days before him).  To celebrate, we went to one of my favorite restaurants, Agave, with a large group of friends and his co-workers for some Mexican.  We had such a fabulous time!  I also made him Funfetti cupcakes, of course, because those are our fave!  This time, I tried something a bit new...

As you can see, they were stuffed with Oreos, and there was really no science behind it.  Just plop them right on top of some batter, and cover them over with more! MMMmmm!

Here is the birthday boy, himself! :-)

Saturday morning we received an unexpected snowstorm!  We ended up with about 7 inches. Poor Dudley has been so cooped up lately due to cold weather & icy conditions, so we decided to take a walk during the storm.  We went right over to Dudley's favorite place, large fields owned by a private school, where he could run around to his little heart's content. We were SOAKED by the time we arrived home.

I came down with the flu on Monday, which doesn't make for a very interesting week to share with you.  It was AWFUL, but really only for 1 day.  My fever climbed throughout the day and topped off over 103.  Sleeping wasn't fun at all, but luckily the next couple days I was only feeling a little off.  Definitely a far cry from my 10 day fever with mono last year, and for that I am THANKFUL!  Even so, just being trapped in the house for the past few days has already made me develop a case of the winter blues. 

I did get a chance to book a few more hotel...okay, motels, for our cross-country road trip that is coming up very soon!  Yup, we have a START date for our trip to San Diego...finally!  After we received the start date, I was able to start to break down our road trip day by day, and then start the motel reservation process.  Right now I only have one more to book for the way out there. We still aren't sure where we will be living once we arrive, but it could possibly be in La Jolla.  More exciting news on this subject- Mom is coming to visit us in March, and G & L, our family/friends, will be house-sitting and STAYING at our house while we are gone!  Hoooray!

www.roadtripusa.com

We'll be taking # 6 to Atlanta and then heading to San Diego via #10.  Can't wait!

I recently uploaded a couple new products to TpT.  One has a Valentine's Day theme, which I will share later, and the other is very chilly...

The Blustery Blizzard focuses on nouns, verbs, and adjectives, but since many find grammar to be a bit dull, it is very HANDS-ON.  There's only so many grammar worksheets and workbook pages a child can take!

Partner up your kiddos and provide them each their own mat and set of WINTERY-themed word cards! Next, your students will take turns rolling a 6-sided die and use the key on the activity's instructions to understand the meaning of each number they roll. Some numbers will prompt them to choose a word card with a certain part of speech (NOUN, VERB, or ADJECTIVE), which they must place on the correct section of their sorting mat. Other numbers will prompt students to remove a word card from their mat or skip a turn. If they roll a 5, WILD, they're able to choose any word card to add to their sorting mat!  The object of the game is to be the first student to have all of his/her cards sorted correctly.

 I would love for you to take a look at my grammar activity at my TpT store here, and I hope some of you will find it useful in your classroom!

Well friends, that just about finishes up my "Five For Friday"! Cheers to the weekend!

XO <3, C

Gobble Gobble!

Okay, okay, we may not have even celebrated Halloween yet, but just like all the retail stores out there, I'd like to hop on the Thanksgiving bandwagon!  November 1st is only a week away, which means I need to start planning my Thanksgiving dinner.  This year is a special one, and should be interesting, because for the first time yet, I'll be hosting a family get-together and serving a FEAST!  ...Scary!  So far I know my mom is going to bring gravy, mashed potatoes, her delicious sweet potato casserole with the brown sugar crunchy topping (my FAVORITE!), and Swedish apple pie.  YUM!  Sam and I will take care of the turkey, and Sam is hoping his mom will make her pumpkin pie, but ...well, the rest has yet to be decided.  I'm starting to get some great ideas from good ol' Pinterest!

Lemony Green Beans- GB tossed with olive oil, lemon juice & rind, onions, and basil

Glazed Butternut Squash- Cooked in apple cider! Mmmm!

Cornbread Stuffing

 Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Marshmallow Buttercream Frosting- I know, RIDICULOUS!

White Autumn Spice Sangria

Everything looks TOO GOOD!

I also have been starting to get my act together with Thanksgiving TpT projects/activities. I just finished my first one, called Invite a Pilgrim to Thanksgiving Dinner, which is a creative and persuasive writing project meant for 3rd-6th graders. 

The basic premise of the project is students need to write a persuasive letter inviting a Plimoth Plantation Pilgrim who has time-traveled to the present to their family's Thanksgiving Dinner.  To do this, kiddos need to research The First Thanksgiving.

They will record their findings on the graphic organizer above.  Next, they will fill out a similar GO on their own family's Thanksgiving traditions, and then use a Venn diagram to compare their traditions to The First Thanksgiving.  

After a lot of preliminary work, students will examine and discuss the above example persuasive letter, and eventually write their own.  They will focus on the friendly letter format, writing an introduction to a letter/invitation, using persuasive language, comparing/contrasting, and writing a conclusion. They will be writing across many genres all the while letting their creative juices flow!

This product comes with teacher directions, objective/goal posters written in student-friendly language, vocabulary posters, a scoring rubric, an editing/revising checklist, and final draft paper. 

For the culminating activity, students will create a paper plate turkey invitation to go along with their persuasive letter. Don't you love him?!

Check out my Invite a Pilgrim to Thanksgiving Dinner Project and Craftivity here at TpT!  I hope you enjoy it!

Best Wishes for the week ahead!

XO <3, C

A Good Day

Hey there!

All-in-all today was a good day.  Nothing spectacular, just good.  I woke up early to drive Sam to work today since his car has been in the shop.  (Weeks ago, someone actually hit his car while it was parked in a parking lot at the shipyard where he works.  There was no note left behind, and the shipyard police were never able to figure out who hit Sam's car despite surveillance footage.  Personally I feel like they didn't work hard enough to scan all of the video footage, but maybe that's just me.  We are down $1,000 for the deductible which is painful after funding a wedding!)

Back to today...despite the dread of waking  up at 6:20 in the morning to chauffeur Sam, it was great to be up and ready to go at a more  reasonable hour of the day!  Unfortunately, that also meant taking a long nap later on in the morning.  Oh well.  You win some, you lose some!  

Afterwards, I spent the day puttering around, picking Sam up from work, running errands, and making dinner.  As I said before, this is nothing spectacular, but I almost felt a bit "busy", which is something I miss.  That slight busy feeling made today a good day.

Just a couple specific details I'd like to mention before I sign-off for tonight.

#1 Bath and Body Works has a great sale on hand-soaps right now- 5/$15 or 7/$20.  I chose to do the 7/$20 and used a 20% off coupon and ended up spending only $16!!! I just had to mention this because this deal put me in a really good mood, ha! :)

#2 More importantly, I tried a new Pinterest recipe tonight, Thai Style Peanut Pasta.  Both Sam and I loved it. This is the first "real" meal I've cooked for Sam as a "wife".  That is really sad considering we've been married for a month and a half already!  I'm letting you in on a little secret...in this relationship, the guy does most of the cooking! I'm really trying to work on  that.  

When you check out the recipe at Apron Strings, you will see one of the ingredients is tamarind paste.  I was unable to find this at my local grocery store, so after some research, I decided to use a tablespoon of rice vinegar and a tablespoon or so of brown sugar as a substitute.  I'm not exactly sure how the dish should have tasted with tamarind paste, but it was pretty delish with my alterations!  It definitely has a kick to it, probably from all of the ginger and the crushed red pepper.  Here is a photo of the pre-cooked meal from Apron Strings.  Yum!

#3 I am currently working on another TPT product.  For some reason, this one has been taking me a while.  I really would like to have it finis by the weekend! Here is a photo I took that will be incorporated into the lesson plans/activities...

 Any guesses on what I am planning? I'll give you a hint.  In one some of the activities, puzzle pieces are being compared to details in a text.  To see the "whole picture" you need to put the details or puzzle pieces together....I'm creating a product on MAIN idea!  It is always such a challenge for kiddos to formulate a detailed and cohesive sentence that accurately describes ALL of the main idea.  I'm excited to finish this up!  More details to come later.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

XO <3, C