Even more fabulous finds! Yikes!

Amazon has been my very best friend for quite some time now.  And thanks to some of my recent treasures I think we may have upgraded to husband and wife.  I'm linking up (for the second time) with Fun in Room 4B for Fabulous Find Friday to share them with you!  I haven't even made one single thing with these bad boys and it's killing me.  It's also killing me that I just talked to my new principal and found out that I won't be able to get into my classroom until the first week of August!  This is super stressful b/c two days that month I will be out of town and one day is the husband's birthday.  That only leaves me two days to work in my classroom b/c  I have to start new teacher trainings the following week!!!!  Eeeeeek!  I'm always back working in my classroom by now.  I like to have everything set up and ready to go by now.  Anyway, back to my treasures...

First off is my new printer.  It really isn't any thing that great.  But, my super nice laser printer died and I've been living off a crappy $20 ink jet for too long.  It's really hard to create cute things for school with that kind of equipment.  This sucker had really good reviews and it scans and prints.  What else do I need???

I ordered this thermal laminator at the beginning of the summer.   When it arrived I realized I needed a new printer.  The things I print out with my current operation are not worthy of this laminator.  Every school I've ever worked at has had a laminator for teachers to use.  I assume my new school is the same.  However, there are some jobs that are smaller and/or need more sturdy lamination.  Plus, some days I get verrrrrry impatient and I can't wait until I get to school to laminate.  I can't wait to use it!!!!

Next, we have my new sticker maker.  I can already see how useful this puppy is going to be.  Labels for everything!!!!  I'm seriously looking forward to make everything sticky (well, everything 5 inches or less)!!!

Finally, I purchased this scanner back in May.  I plan on using it along with the classroom organizer app/program from Booksource.  I think this is going to be awesome.  My hopes are that this increases accountability (I will know exactly what books each student has) and that it will help them remember where to return the books (you can type in locations for all of your books as you inventory them).  You can also use an iphone or and ipad instead of the scanner.  However, I will not let those 5th grade paws to touch my personal ipone/ipad.  

Bookshelf #2 - Monday Made It!

I'm linking up for my second Monday Made It at 4th Grade Frolics.  I have pretty much completed my second classroom bookshelf.  You might notice in the pictures below that there are a couple of spots at the top and bottom that need a little more white paint.  I can't get to the bottom until we move this big boy out of our home office.  Plus, you can hardly even notice it.  And yes, I know I need to add one more dot at the bottom.  I can't decide what color I want.  I've been debating for a few days now.  I'm leaning towards green.  I made this one to sort of compliment my blue & green zebra bookshelf that I posted last week.  I would love to just have a turquoise, lime and zebra themed classroom.  However, I have way too many things that are all sorts of bright colors and I really can't afford to replace them.  I definitely can't justify changing it just because of the color.  So, I made this one so that it would match just about any other color that may be in my classroom.  I just threw the colored baskets in there for fun.  This bookshelf is typically full of books.  I have approximately one million and one books!  And these two bookshelves don't even come close to containing all of my books.  I usually have about 6 bookshelves in my classroom.  My new room is tiny and I gave away sooooooo much stuff at the end of this school year.  I'm really hoping these two shelves will hold most of my books.  I also have a couple of shorter shelf things that go along the white board.  I'm thinking those will need to come in here pretty soon so I can beautify them as well!  :)

I love  how  the shelves look next to my new rug!

I'm looking forward to my next project.  I need to print things out, but my really nice laser printer died on me for the last time.  I have decided to go back to inkjet.  We had so many problems with the laser printer.  I ordered a new printer from Amazon and I'm waiting until that sucker gets here before I get started.  I saw a really cute idea to help organize my chapter books.  Hopefully it will get here soon and I will be able to share my project with everyone for next week's Monday Made It!

My Fabulous Finds!

I decided to link up with Fun in Room 4B for Fabulous Find Friday!  Pretty much every one of my amazing treasures were inspired by several recent blog posts (sorry there isn't really anything new).  I tried going to Target several different days to get the awesome clear communicator boards.  My trips were a disaster because all of the bins in the dollar isle were empty. I tried multiple locations on several different days.  :(

These are the treasures I was able to get my hands on:

Because I am moving to a new school district this coming year I finally get to use Scentsy warmers in my classroom.  I immediately ordered the full size Zebra warmer for myself.  I've also scoped out some pretty awesome scores from Dollar Tree, so I went to every store within 40 mile radius to get exactly what I wanted (I surely didn't NEED any of this).  The blue and green rectangular containers might be good for books or journal storage.  I also picked up 12 of the more square baskets with the circular cut outs.  I have no idea what I will use these for.  Also, I'm a little worried where all of these baskets will go in my tiny shoebox classroom.  Those multicolored little things in that package are magnetic clips for the whiteboard.  I am queen of clipping all sorts of things to my whiteboard.  When I saw the small dust pans and mini brushes I thought they would be perfect to attach to each table group using one of those command hooks.  These will come in handy this year because my new classroom does not have carpet.  I'm super sad about this and it also leads me to my final purchase....  This super cute rug from this website that only cost me $19.99.  And when I say $19.99 I mean $19.99 exactly!  NO SHIPPING AND NO TAX!  I know, I probably should have told you to sit down before I laid that one on you.  They have larger sizes.  This one is about 3'x5' and I'm just hoping I will have that much space in my classroom...

I have a trip to Ikea planned for sometime before school starts back.  I've had my eye on a few items that I'm looking forward to sharing within the next few weeks!  :)

Classroom Bookshelf

I finally completed classroom project #2.  I have had several useful, yet hideous bookshelves in my classroom since I started teaching 5 years ago.  They were given to me by my aunt.  I was lucky enough to start teaching the year she retired.  This year I will need them more than ever.  I am very excited to be working in a new school that is much closer to my house.  However, this room is about 1/3 the size of any classroom I have ever been in.  Plus, I have always had a wall full of storage cabinets.  The classrooms at my new school only have ONE cabinet in each room.  Storage space is seriously lacking.  I had to purge about 75% of my classroom materials just to get in the room.  I am seriously worried about how everything will fit in this tiny closet classroom.  Like I said earlier the shelves I have are plain and ugly.  Revamping these shelves is at the top of my summer project list.  This first shelf is where I store the majority of my chapter books (organized by author's last name).  I decided to go ahead and paint it my favorite colors (turquoise, lime and zebra).  I had my doubts about how it would turn out, but I really like it.  The blue and green won't seem so bold once the books are in the shelves.  I just used old pain that we had in the garage.  Now to get started on my giant shelf!

This is the shelf before.  Well, after I started painting and realized I didn't take a before picture.

After

After - This gives you a better look at the zebra on the sides.

I'm linking up for Monday Made It (for my very first time).  Yay!  I'm planning on getting the next shelf completed for next Monday.  

Teacher Toolbox

I have pinned so many ideas throughout the school year that I planned on working on during the summer.  I actually completed my first project during the first week of summer.  I've been off a month since then and I still haven't completed any other projects.  I have a few weeks left and I still have big plans.  Every teacher/teaching blog has this teacher's toolbox.  All you do is go to Lowes/Home Depot and add some pretty paper and labels to create a fabulous organizer for all of your desk necessities.  This is perfect for me because I gave my teacher's desk the boot quite some time ago.  I primed mine with a plastic spray primer and spray painted it with some extra paint we had laying around the garage.  I stocked up on cute animal print scrapbook paper when it was 50% off at Michael's a while back and that's what I used for the drawers.  I just printed out the words on white paper.  Now I wish I would have used colored paper.  But would have required more money and another trip to the store.  I still love it!  BTW, school supplies are out at Wal-Mart and Target!  I am so excited.  Now I will just wait for the really good sales on spirals, glue sticks, markers, folders, pencils and erasers!!!!

Hooded Towel

So, I finished up a hooded towel a few weeks ago and I just realized that I haven't shared it!  This is actually a gift I made for one of my cousins to give to another cousin for his little girl's birthday (which was also last week). 

Here's how you can do it.  I'm actually a little embarrassed to tell you how easy it is!  All you need is a bath towel and a hand towel.  If you want to add any embellishments you can used bias tape, rickrack, fabric, etc.  All you need to do is cut the  hand towel right down the middle.  This will leave each square piece with three finished edges.  Fold the towel in half like a rectangle. (Sorry I don't have any pics of this). You are going to want to trim the  unfinished edge about an inch or two and then curve the corner.  Then sew this up.  Attach the sewn hand towel to the center of the bath towel.  You can stop here or you can add embellishments.  On the last towel I added fabric strips to the hood and some applique hearts to the towel.  I usually embroider or applique the name.  I know this may not make sense without the pictures.  Maybe I will create some diagrams to help out...

Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!  Yay!  One of my favorite days of the year.  Yesterday was my other favorite day... my birthday!  I turned 27 and boy was I glad.  For months I thought I was turning 28.  I felt like I got a year younger when I realized I was only going to be 27.  I nearly had a nervous breakdown when I turned 25 because I was half way to 50.  I am so freaked out about hitting the big 3-0!  Yikes!
But, that's not what I got on to talk about.  I wanted to share some Christmas pictures with everyone.  Here are a few of the decorations we had at our house this year:

Merry Christmas!