National Park Loving...

In honor of National Park Week, I decided to create a blog about one of my passions! FYI, ALL National Parks have FREE admission Monday through Friday this week! Take advantage of a HUGE price break and get out to explore the country! I'll keep the blog simple so you can enjoy some of the neat things I've been blessed to see in our country, and hopefully you find the same beauty and inspiration that I have.

The following pictures are from four parks that I have visited in the digital camera age (I fail at scanning older photos...). Featured are: Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Teddy Roosevelt, and Haleakala.

National parks are protectors of wild animals.  

They are also home to impressive, beautiful, and unique plant life.  

You can find breath taking views and scenic wonder.

Surprising history in the form of buildings and architecture.

Grand examples of how nature is full of mystery.

And I'm pretty sure the north gate at Yellowstone explains National Parks perfectly, "For the benefit and enjoyment of the people." Visit them, love them, preserve them. 

Are We Nuts?

As we continue to celebrate our fearless Classified Staffers, each grade level breaks up the week and gives them mini treats every day! The 4th/5th grade teachers are in charge of Wednesday, so we have been prepping our present! 

I used a rubber band to hold the mini stamps together in order to make my stamping much quicker. Step one was to place the word "NUTS" on the tags in a bright orange color.

I then hand penned the remaining words in a bright blue ink, "We are NUTS about you!" The perfect saying to go with our gift! 

Using baker's twine, the tags were attached to the trail mix bags.

A huge shout out and thank you to my teaching partner, Rory, for tying so many little ribbons for the sake of my crazy craftiness! He was very patient, only about 36 bows... :) Thank you RORY! For tying bows and enduring me! 

Final product, boxes of nuts for the people that put up with us nutty teachers!

Pack a Little Picnic (Part Two)

Of course if I show you invitations, I have to show the party decor! This is more of a photo journal sort of post, limited description, but fun ideas! Of course, you know from the invites that the potluck luncheon was picnic themed so we used fun, vintage decor! 

At our lemonade stand, we used old wooden crates and canning jars for glassware. 

Paper products and utensils were stored in various glass jars, and then in a vintage wire basket.

Each table (the buffets and lemonade stand too!) was covered with plastic picnic table cloth as seen in basically every photo! The colored daisies were put in larger versions of the utensil jars. 

And no picnic is complete without ANTS! Ours were friendly, plastic, and snagged from our math manipulatives for a fun effect!

I was super excited that McKenzie (decorating partner in crime!) embraced my harebrained idea to use the bench in our decor. It was really only thought of because it was still in my car from the Vintage Hardware Fire Sale we shopped the day previous. We decided it would be perfect to hold our drink bucket.  This photo was taken before the bucket was loaded with ice and bottles.  

The room as a whole, the tops of the library shelves served as our buffet line, so they were decorated with paper flowers and picnic baskets too! If you look closely, you can see the butterflies that the wonderful Mary Ann hung from the lights! The perfect topper to our picnic party! 

Thank you so much to McKenzie and Mary Ann for teaming up with me to decorate on Sunday, you are both so clever and crafty! 

Thank you to all of our certified staff for providing all of the food! And for your help setting out food in the morning and clean up after! And for giving our classified good break time by covering their obligations for them.

AND BIGGEST THANKS TO OUR CLASSIFIED HEROES! You are truly the foundation of our school and programs. I know I'd be lost without you! 

PS: Lynne B. the bar has been set! ;) 

Pack a Little Picnic (Part One)

Welcome to a blogging mini series! This one will only be a couple posts long, featuring a picnic that the certified teachers hosted for our school's phenomenal classified staff members! These people are literally the heart and soul of a school, bus drivers, secretaries, custodial staff, kitchen staff, classroom assistants, recess aids, librarians, all the people that keep a school running in tip-top shape! Teachers would, in all honesty, be significantly crazier than we already are if these people were not part of a school. Classified Appreciation Week is March 4-8 this year and the teachers pulled together to host a beautiful lunch! 

A hosted luncheon is not complete without a theme inspired invitation! Being a craft nut, if you haven't figured that out already..., I volunteered to create the invitations! I started with rolled craft paper, and used a paper cutter to trim them into 4" by 5.5" rectangles.

I then used a lace edge punch, shown below, from Martha Stewart's craft line, to frame all of the edges of the craft wrap. 

I then glued the craft paper to my picnic table cloth scrapbook paper! Those were cute into 6" squares.

The final piece of the puzzle was the information for the party, of course! Using my new obsession for downloading adorable fonts, I created a fun and spunky information postcard.  The "In celebrations of YOU" is in Office's standard Rockwell.  The large "PICNIC" is Coffee Tin.

The remaining information is Strawberry Limeade. These fonts are both from free websites, so go get them!

After attaching the pieces, used a teacher's go to, glue sticks, then final product was cute and simple! But they got rave reviews! Thanks for those compliments, I'm glad you enjoyed the invites! 

L.O.V.E.

Oh my goodness! I LOVE the holiday of Love, Valentine's Day! Not that you shouldn't show, give, share love throughout the year, I just appreciate a day focused solely on love. What a great reason to give my students awesome Valentine's!

 It wouldn't be appropriate to create Valentine's projects without a plethora of pink and red supplies. Pink scissors? Check. Pink ribbon? Check. Red and white baker's twine? Check. Pink and red stamping ink (in a variety of shades)? Check. Pink and red pens? Check. Stamps and punches full of hearts? Check. I think I'm ready to start!

Using the stamp seen in the picture above, I used two ink colors in order to create more play on the tags. 

Twenty-five tags later!

As usual, I packed the gifts in brown, paper lunch sacks. What can I say, they are inexpensive. Cheap version of craft wrap, but in a more convenient, mass-gifting, sort of way. 

I used the same two ink colors from the tags to stamp the heart pairs on each bag.  One color at a time to increase speed by not having to keep rewashing the stamp. 

I also own the most perfect Valentine themed punch, the one that I purchased for the bookmark and card projects from last year! I picked it up at JoAnn Fabrics with a 50% off coupon and my 15% off teachers' discount card. 

So it only made sense that when I punch the hole for tying the bags shut, the hole should be heart shaped. 

 When I finished packing the bags with novels, pencils, and Tootsie Pops, I sealed them by folding the top down once. The heart shaped punch allowed me to thread baker's twine through the tags and bag and finish with a small bow.  

All lined up and ready for anxious little (I suppose not really that little) hands to open them and create big, beaming smiles. 

How can you not LOVE Valentine's Day? For me it is a great excuse to spoil my students (They actually outdid me in that category, my desk was out of control with wonderful treasures) and remind them in a tangible way of how much I care about them.

It's not a day to think about the love you don't have, or wish for. It's about giving and sharing love with ones who are in your life at that time. And perhaps people you loved have come and gone, which exactly why you have to embrace the day and love people while they are with you. Don't let a single day pass without telling, showing, sharing, love to someone.  Your love may make all the difference. ©

Book Nerd!

Let's get something clear... I love books. Heart them. Adore. Obsess. So needless to say, I am constantly adding to my classroom library, updating and sorting. After purchasing and sharing these books with my students, but I was struggling with books being taken and never returned. Plus many of my students haven't the foggiest idea how to locate books in an actual library.  In order to resolve both of these issues, I decided to make my classroom a little more official.  I purchased small labels and packing tape to use as my book-labeling system.  Then I printed the first three letters of the author's last name.  

Of course each book was labeled with care, and once organized by author, I ordered the titles too.  

Can you tell I'm a Gary Paulsen fan?! All of his books aren't even on the shelf yet! I only made about twenty labels for him. And used them all! 

I worked through author's who had multiple books on my shelf. This allowed me to create a bulk set of labels and organize books within authors as well.  Then I went through and pulled neighboring letters of author's names that were still undone.  I simply tucked books into place as I went from that point on.  

In the end, my shelves are beautifully organized and hopefully a bit more deterring from sticky fingers.