Five for Friday

I have linked up with Kacey from Doodle Bugs Teaching for another week of Five for Friday. I am not quite sure where the week went, but regardless, here we go..

 The Winner Wednesday linky-party will be held this coming Wednesday, June 3^rd. I am really excited to do this again! There were some amazing products discussed last month and I cannot wait to see what is in store for the month of June. If you would like to participate please check out my post from last month for all of the details. Click {here}.

 I have been working hard to get my NO PREP Kindergarten Summer Review and NO PREP First Grade Summer Review finished. The kindergarten packet is complete and uploaded {here} and the first grade review will be uploaded hopefully today or Saturday at the latest. I just have a few pages for Language Arts pages to finish. I know it is a little late as some of you are already finished with school, but hopefully a few people can still use them. If not, they will be nice and ready for you next year. I really wanted to include a little bit of everything in these review packets. The majority of the pages are language arts and math, but there are also several science and social studies worksheets. 

Here is the kindergarten packet all ready to go.

 Here are some of the worksheets from the packet. I chose one from language arts, math, science, and social studies. 

You can see more of this product by looking at the preview on my TpT store. 

 I have spent a chunk of the week going through my Pinterest and trying to organize it. Holy cow! That is a task in itself. I could literally spend days upon days simply doing only that. My Pinterest account was a hot mess, but is finally starting to look better. I am hoping to make some board covers in the next week or two and then start adding to my boards. At least there is some order to it now. I just started my trial with Tailwind for pinning. I cannot wait to put some time into this and get started using it. I have heard great things about it. How do you organize all of your pins?

 I recently found an awesome website called LunaPic and I pretty much use it every single day. You can do so much with this website and it is all free! If you ever have a picture that needs editing, adjusting, and/or special effects, then this would be great for you to check out. Click {here} to go directly to their website. 

It is still raining in Texas. It is getting out of hand. The lakes have been at least ten feet under for years and now they are at their maximum. We got a crazy storm two nights ago and had a raging river in the greenbelt behind out house in thirty minutes time. We have lived in this house for almost five years now and have never seen anything like it. In the past four weeks it has only not rained once. That. Is. Nuts. Texas weather is crazy. It looks like next week we will finally get a break, which is great because my daughter is going stir crazy being stuck inside. Toddlers need space to run wild, apparently. Who knew?! 

Well, that is all for my week. I hope to see you back on Wednesday for Winner Wednesday. Have a great weekend!

Five for Friday

I have linked up with the fabulous Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five for Friday. Last week was crazy and I did not get to link up, which made me so sad because this has become a great blogging habit for me. 

 I have been updating (scratch redoing) items like crazy the past couple of weeks. I started with my best seller and I am slowly working my way down. Pretty much any extra time has been spent doing that. Here are some of the products that I have updated lately. You can click on the pictures to see more of the product at my store page.

 I submitted my application to have my store name trademarked this week. I am pretty excited about it. Since this is something that I envision doing long term, I wanted to make it finalized before someone else might have taken it. I used trademarkplus.com. If you are ever interested in doing it please let me know and I can send you the coupon that I used. It should take up to three months so hopefully I will hear something in the not so distant future.

 Today is the deadline to RSVP for the DFW Mini Meet-Up on May 30, 2015. It is tentatively scheduled to be hosted at Mia Dia in Grapevine, but due to the overwhelming response that will be changing to a different Grapevine restaurant that can accommodate this size without charging an arm and a leg. We have some great giveaways planned and I cannot wait to meet everyone. If you have not RSVPd click {here} to do so before the end of the night.

I finished the Whole 30 this week and I am beyond proud to have accomplished it. I decided to do the Whole 30 because I have an autoimmune disease and doctors have been telling me for years that I would feel SO much better if I would just be gluten free. I told them they were crazy and that there was no way that was even possible. I have bought several gluten free and Paleo cookbooks over the last year or two and have really enjoyed the food, but also would really enjoy pizza and bread from time to time too. I thought if I did Whole 30, it would give me a decent amount of time to commit (it seemed doable having a fixed time frame) and see if it made a significant difference and it did. I feel so much better. I think that I might do one more round before TpT Vegas and then I envision continuing eating closely to Whole 30 indefinitely. I will eat rice, but try and be gluten free. I will not be 100%, because sometimes it just doesn’t make sense. My plan is to allow a ‘cheat meal’ every week. I know that sometimes it will be more, but I think it is healthy to put at least one meal a week in there to enjoy anything I feel like. To celebrate being done I enjoyed a large glass of wine and sushi. 

I emailed Oriental Trading a few weeks ago about being a part of their blogger program. They give $75 worth of products to people that will blog about the items. I decided that I was going to set up a tot school in our upstairs playroom and what better way to get that started than with the help of all of Oriental Trading’s amazing education products. I will probably not have it all complete for another month or so, but I am so excited about it that I had to share now. 

That is all I have for this week. Head back over to Kacey's page to check out what all the other amazing bloggers have been up to this week. I hope you have a great weekend!

Five for Friday

  

  I have been busy updating products in my store. I am currently working on my top seller ‘Food Chains’ which was in desperate need of a makeover. I am also adding several activities to it. I am hoping to have it finished and uploaded sometime this weekend. Here is a sneak peek.

 

  This summer at the TpT conference I will be co-hosting a Full Time on TpT Vegas Meet-Up. My sweet friend, Sara, and I have been working hard to get donations for this event for the swag bag and giveaways and we have some really cool stuff so far. If you (or someone you know) would love to donate please contact me. Also, if you are full time on TpT and would like to join us for this event, you can RSVP by June 19th {here}.

 This week was the first Winner Wednesday linky party and I think it went really well. I had some amazing bloggers link up and had several people that tried to win my showcased product. If you would like to participate in the next Winner Wednesday, it will take place on June 3^rd. Click {here} to get all of the information that you will need. I will mention it again the week prior just in case you forget.

 

  I am over halfway done with my first full round of Whole 30. After today, I will only have eleven days left. That means eleven more days until I can have wine and sushi. Woohoo! I have really enjoyed doing this and I am happy I finally committed to a full 30 days. If you have even thought about doing it, I definitely recommend it.

 

  My husband has been getting his MBA the past two and a half years and he had his last official class on Tuesday night. He left for China for twelve nights for his final school credits and then he will be done FOREVER!!!! He has worked SO hard on this and I am so proud of everything that he has done. I am also looking forward to having him back home with no classes to go to or homework/studies to complete after work and on the weekends.

Another big thank you to Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for hosting this awesome linky every single week. You should head {here} to check out all the other amazing bloggers that have linked up.

 

Five for Friday

Oh my goodness y’all. This week was rough. Everyone in the Hamilton house has been sick, except for me (thanks to all of the germs I accumulated over my years of teaching).  I am shocked and proud that I never popped open a bottle of wine or got into some dark chocolate. I stayed on track with Whole 30 through it all AND we all survived. Double score!

I am going to start blogging more consistently. One of the ways that I am going to do this is by having “Winner Wednesday”. The first Wednesday of every month, I will blog an in-depth description about one of my products and how you can use it in the classroom. The best part of this post is that there will be a giveaway where one lucky person can win it for FREE. This will happen every. Single. Week. How cool is that? Follow me on BLOGLOVIN so you can get in on the action. Any suggestions for which product I do first

 I made some big milestones this week and I am so excited and honored. I reached 1,000 followers on Instagram, 300 followers on Teachers Pay Teachers, and 500 likes on Facebook. Y’all, this is amazing and I cannot thank each of you enough. I know I have mentioned it before, but the Instagram, TpT, and blogging community it something special. There are more positive vibes, encouragement, and collaboration than I ever experienced in the four years I taught kindergarten and first grade. I am so glad that I took a leap and got back into TpT and started Instagram and Facebook three months ago. It has been an awesome three months. I am thinking up something special to do once all the giveaways and blog hops for Teacher Appreciation Week are over.

 

 

I added a couple of new products to my store this week: Sight Word Play Doh Mats and Sight Word Practice Mats for all Dolch Words and the First 100 Fry Words. Click {here} for Dolch Words and {here} for Fry Words. I am slowly, but surely getting products updated, while also adding new ones. These two products are in my Popcorn Words bundle. I am going to sell some of the items individually in my store so that way you have a few options. If you purchase one of the single items and decide to buy the bundle, email me your order numbers and you can have anything in my store at lesser or equal value to the single item product. All updated and new products are 50% off for the first 48 hours. You can follow my store so you can be updated on when I post new items.

 

Are you a teacher blogger and/or TpTer that lives in or around the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex? I am cohosting a mini meet-up at Mia Dia from Scratch in Grapevine on May 30th starting at 6:30 PM with Elissa Jones from Mrs. Jones Creation Station. This will be a great way to network and meet some local people before the TpT conference in Vegas this summer. Please RSVP by May 22nd if you will be able to join us by clicking {here}. Hope to see you there!

 

Texas had some CRAZY weather this week. We were under a tornado watch three different times and one of those times we had a tornado warning. My husband was of course out of town (stuff like that always happens when your husband is not at home) and the girls were already asleep. I wasn’t sure if I should get the girls yet, but I did not want to risk it since I was going solo. Molly was so confused and upset that I woke her up and that we were hanging out in the bathroom, but as soon as I called the mattress a tent, it was all fun and games. There was no tornado and everyone was fine in our surrounding areas. We need rain badly so these storms have been a huge blessing.

 

That is my week in a nutshell. Don't forget to check out all of the other teachers that have linked up for Five for Friday at Doodle Bugs Teaching. Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend.

 

 

Five for Friday

 Here we are again for another Five for Friday hosted by the fabulous Kacey from Doodle Bugs Teaching. I have said this before, but I LOVE this linky. I have been beyond horrible about finding the time to blog lately, so I can always count on this to be how I get at least one post in. I have several planned for this coming week and will try to get better beyond that too!

 This week I have been busy working on writing up a product review for the Stop, Swap, and Roll Product Swap hosted by Melissa Johnson at Jungle Learners. She is amazing for all of the work that she has put into this and I am so excited for it to kick off THIS SATURDAY! I have been teamed up with K’s Classroom Kreations. We each got to choose a product from each other’s store and will be sharing it with you. We will also have a giveaway for that product. She chose “My Science Journal and Notebook’. It will be 20% off the entire time the giveaway is running. Again, check back on my blog and K’s Classroom Creation’s blog first thing Saturday morning to see both products in detail and for a chance to win each one.

Are you a teacher turned SAHM that has a TpT store? Are you a consultant or tutor that does TpT full-time? Would you like to be either of these at some point in the near future? Join me and Mrs. Jones Creation Station for lunch at the Grand Luxe Café at the Venetian to meet some awesome TpT Authors! Click {here} to RSVP. 

Along the same lines, we started a Facebook group. It will be a place for WAHM on TpT to be able to network and connect. Our vision is that this will be a place of encouragement, advice, and support as we learn to juggle staying at home and TpT’ing. Click {here} to join. 

I am kind of embarrassed about this one, but if I did not know, I am sure someone else out there did not know either so I am going to share. I always used Primo PDF or Cute PDF to 'secure' my documents. I honestly thought since they were saved in PDF format, they would be fine, BUT that is unfortunately not the case. People can easily extract your hard work. After talking with several people, I ended up going with Adobe Pro. Most of the people I spoke to have Adobe Pro IX, however, there is a newer version called Adobe Pro DC. If you are a teacher or student you can get it for a SUPER discounted price. {Here} is where I ended up buying it from. I have been busy the last few days or so re-saving every product with a password to protect all of my hard work. 

 Have you seen this picture before? This is me to a ‘T’ and this is why I never get anything crossed off my list. I have a ridiculously long list of things I NEED to do, but in the process of checking off those things, I think of other really cool ideas and get side tracked. Maybe one day I will have my to-do list somewhat tackled. It is a good thing I LOVE doing all of this. :)

One of my best friends had her baby shower on Saturday. I was lucky enough to host this with her sister. It was so much fun to love on Melissa and celebrate the upcoming arrival of baby Luke. Here are some of the pictures from the event. 

 

I hope you enjoyed what has been going on during my week. Don't forget to message me your TpT FREEBIE URL to my Facebook so I can add your product to my page for my daily FREEBIE at 4:00 PM. Click {here} to go back to Kelsey's post and see what all the other amazing teachers are up to.