Summer Projects

Hey guys! I don't know about you, but I am a SUPER-DUPER visual person.  I'm going to spare you the loooooong post tonight and instead just put up a few pictures from things I have been working on since I last updated. Enjoy, besties!

The colors I used to paint my shelves of my new, beautiful, colorful shelving unit.
 I told my uncle what I wanted and he created my Duh-REAM cubbies. I'm obsessed.
Good Gracious. I don't know if anyone else watches Big Brother, but the "after dark" part is on right now and Brendan and Rachel are on the LAST of the nerve. If I have to hear him tell her he loves her ONE more time. He is being very "Guard and Protect your Heart"-ish right now. Vomit.

Just painting away...
Ok, one more rant. I KNOWWW you watched Teen Mom last night. I just have ONE question. Did Amber tell her realtor she wanted a house that was, "Two bedroom, spacious, secluded, nice neighborhood." Um, I'm sorry, did you say an eight by eight cement block with vertical bars in the front? She is ALSO on the last of the nerve. Looove Tyler and Catelynn...bless their little hearts.

All of the boards painted and stacked. Ready for my uncle to work his Emm-Ay-Jee-Eye-See!

The beautiful cubbies. OBSESSED.

The next thing that I'm super excited to add to my classroom this year is a rocking chair that just makes me happy looking at it. Last year when I got my job, I thought I wanted a rocking chair, but I didn't want an old brown, boring one, so I spray painted it yellow. I'm horrible at spray painting and it ended up looking NOT SO cuteashell. It never made it to my classroom. There just wasn't a space that I liked it in, and I really just didn't like the way it turned out period. So, my parents' basement got a gift for a year! After I painted my shelves I still had paint left over and I thought what the heck, let's go try something on that rocking chair. This is the finished product...Pictures with it IN my classroom are soon to follow.

Reminds me a little bit of "A Bad Case of Stripes," except with polka dots.
Anyone? Anyone? Beuller? Am I weird or does anyone else see it?


Finally, I will leave you with the first things I saw when I walked into my classroom bright and early Monday morning.

EVERYTHING in the middle of the room and on the coatrack. That thing is strong! And tangled computer wires. Does that give anyone else a headache just looking at it?

I've been in my room all week and I have made some definite progress. I will post before and after pictures soon! I had desks last year and this year I got tables. Thank you baby Jesus for helping me make the hard decision to switch to tables. With desks, I never would have needed my new, beautiful, colorful, makes-me-happy-looking-at-them, cubbies. Have fun working in your rooms, everyone! I love looking at everyone's pictures!! As you will see in my next post, there are little pieces of  A LOT of you in my little old classroom in O'Fallon, Missouri!

--StacEy

Florida Vacation

June 20^th? For real? It’s been THAT long since I updated last? Time flies when you’re having fun…and when it’s summer! So, let’s backtrack a bit, shall we?  We shall. Stacy and I, along with three other teacher friends went on a vacation to Florida at the end of June through the first couple days of July.  We took Stacy’s husband’s beast of a vehicle because it had a truck bed which obviously equals unlimited luggage space. Holla!  We were set to leave Stacy’s house at 4am on Sunday and drive our sixteen hour drive to arrive in Lakeland, Florida around 11ish, including stops and a one-hour time change. Nicole picked the three of us girls up so only one car would be parked at Stacy’s all week while we were gone. Ya know how I said the truck had unlimited luggage space? Yea, well, cars don’t.  We had to get four girls’ week-long-Florida- trip-luggage into her CAR. When we got to Casandra’s house the car was pretty much packed, but Renee and Casandra were determined to fit it all in. As Nicole and I sat in the car(four people trying to help would just be too much---READ—it was 3:45am and we were tired.) But, hey, Nicole was nice enough to push her trunk button! J  Renee and Casandra lifted her luggage and pushed and pushed and pushed and shoved and shoved and shoved and the car rocked and rocked and rocked back and forth, back and forth, and Nicole says, “If the car’s a rockin’,...we all should have packed lighter!”  HA. We got to Stacy’s and unloaded our luggage into the beast and got on our way, with the help of Mrs. GPS.  This was the first Mrs. GPS that didn’t annoy me, by the way. She wasn’t obnoxious. She only spoke(not yelled) when she needed to. She was a pleasant GPS. She didn’t say “recalculating” hardly at all the entire trip. She was just great. She’s welcome to be the sixth bitch on a road trip anytime. Anyway, we got to our destination, which was Stacy’s parent’s house mansion. First thing that popped into my head when I walked in was, “Are we filming an episode of cribs while we’re here?” So, naturally, we did, with my handy dandy flip cam---which are on sale for 77 buckaroos at Walmart right now. GO.GET.ONE.  (I would take videos of my kids reading a familiar book as a class, doing the Tooty Ta, Stacy used hers for her kids to do book reviews, and THEN all you do is plug it right into your computer and up it goes onto your SMARTboard for your kiddiddles’ viewing pleasure. They’re FAB. )

 Anyway, Florida in a nutshell with a few ramblings here and there.

Here we go:

 Day 1 (Monday): Wake up, breakfast, get in pool for 15 minutes until our nemesis for the week came, RAIN.  We decided it was going to rain all day so Stacy’s mom went and picked up Subway for us and we ate lunch in the lanai and then relaxed a bit and got ready for dinner and a movie. We went to a Mexican restaurant and to see Hangover 2. We took advantage of some of the cardboard cutout posters that were in the lobby of the theatre and proceeded to send them to our principal. She laughed and was thankful that only Stacy was in the picture and not all of us. Ha Ha

Day 2 (Tuesday): Again, our nemesis showed up all day. We went to downtown Lakeland for a little shopping, but we only went into a couple of shops because the rest of the downtown area was restaurants and businesses. I don’t think anyone bought anything, as they were over priced(IMO)  knick knack type of items.  Then we went to a huge teacher store. I think we all left with a bag or two of goodies! Success! Then we headed to Target and Publix, the grocery store. Stacy’s brilliant idea was to do a “Let’s Make a Meal” themed dinner. Before we left for the day we wrote “appetizer, bread, side dish, dessert, and salad” on five different pieces of paper.

For some reason the "dessert" paper is missing.

 (Stacy’s dad handled the main dish, which was delicious chicken!) Then we each had to pick a paper and it was our job to find a recipe online before we went out for the day and when we got to the grocery store we teamed up and got the ingredients each of us needed and then went home to prepare. Oh yea, Britney Spears was at Publix, no big deal.  We turned the aisle and I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye and BAM! There she was!  I quickly grabbed Stacy’s arm/cart and drug her a few aisles down so she could be my witness.  There she was! Seventy-five year old Britney Spears!!  This woman was DECKED.OUT.  Ohmygraciousgoodness...75 years old, and I’m being generous, 5-inch white stripper heels, dark, holy, skinny jeans, a white ruffled sleeveless top, long, bleach blonde hair, and SUNGLASSES....inside. Work it, girl! By girl, I mean grandma. Anyway, she was a sight. Obviously, we tried following her, but didn’t want to seem suspicious. But, we HAD to get a better look!! It was like a bad accident, ya know, the kind you just can’t look away from? Stacy and I both tried snapping pictures of her with our cell phones, but neither turned out. We couldn’t be TOO obvious. To top it off, we saw her later with her man.  Totally thought she would be cougaring it up, but nope, not Brit Brit. She was with an old man wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. He looked like a good ‘ole farmer boy. Precious, right?  I guess you really can feel fabulous at any age! Go Grandma, It’s your birfday! Enough about Grandma Barbie, back to the house we went.  I’ll include some pictures of our cooking extravaganza. It all turned out great and it was a lot of fun! I can’t wait to do it with my girl friends at home! So fun!

Day 3(Wednesday): The sun BEST be out today, right?!? Wrong answer.  Again, rain—why must you be so annoying? My only goal for Florida was to get a tan!! Wah! I can’t hate on the rain too much though, because, you guys, you guys, you guys, we drove to Orlando and went to...drum roll please...IfreakingKEA. IKEA. IKEA. IKEA. Or, shall I call it, “Heaven on Earth.” They should really consider changing their name. I’ve never been, so I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve heard people talk about how great it is, but OMGah, this place was awwwww-some! Let’s just say, I walked out with a cuteashell area rug, three, yes THREE end tables,(one I will be using in my classroom putting shower board on the top for a word work station) a wine rack, cutting boards, knives, and a bunch of other little miscellaneous items for $85.00. HOLLAAAA!!!  Thank goodness for that unlimited luggage rule. After leaving heaven we went to an outlet mall in Orlando and I was this close to buying my very first Coach purse. But, I didn’t. I bought a bunch of other stuff though, including a really cute pair of blue Nike shoes at the Nike outlet, some scarves, perfume, and who knows what else. Confession: I have a problem. I’m a hardcore impulsive shopper. I will go spend a couple hundred bucks somewhere and when I get home, I won’t even be able to tell you what I bought.  So, I’m not sure if it’s an impulsive shopping problem or a memory problem, but either way, I have a huge problem.  After our Glorious-Day-O’-Shopping, we hit up a Redbox, because you know, Dolla make ya holla! We got a couple of chick flicks and headed back to the house. We watched Love and Other Drugs and ummm….well, if you didn’t have a crush on Jake Gyllenhaal before watching that movie, then you will after watching the movie. I couldn’t stop saying, “He is sooo hot!” throughout the whole movie. Between watching Adam Levine on The Voice and Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie all in one night, I was a happy girl! Those are some guys that are easy on the eyes! I rhymed there. Did you notice that? I should be a poet.

I love my blue shoes, I love my blue shoes! (Pete the Cat)

Too much pretty for one picture.

Yes, please.

Day 4 (Thursday): SUN!!!!!!!!!!! Not. At this point, I’m thinking I’m getting punk’d. Did we drive 16 hours to Florida to get rained on everyday and NOT come home with a tan? I told the girls I would be hitting up a tanning booth before I saw anyone from back home if the sun didn’t come out. To make matters worse, we’re all receiving those loving texts from our friends and family, “98 and sunny here!” Hardy har har.  Joke’s on us! Thursday we just lounged around the house, had Chinese for lunch, watched another movie and then got ready later and went to a little sports bar for dinner. When we got home we decided we would watch, “Just Go With It” with Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler. WORST.MOVIE.EVER.  Seriously, Aniston, Sandler, Dave Mathews, Nicole Kidman, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Our mouths were left open after every line with how ridiculous it was. Again, thought I was getting punk’d. This was another Redbox movie, and this time, Dolla does NOT make me holla, makes me want to scream!

Redbox FAIL...get it? "Fail" inside a redbox, which is exactly what that movie was!

Day 5(Friday—Our LAST day) SUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For real this time!! We finally got to lay out at the pool for five straight hours! We all got a nice tan and had some great conversation. Would you rather questions, Non-negotiable characteristics in significant others for the single ladies(All the single ladies! Put ya hands up!) Now it’s in your head! Haha. Bet your brain is saying, “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh) what do you love most about your husband for the married ladies, how did you get proposed to, etc. etc. Fun times!  After our pool day, we got ready and went to dinner, came home, filmed our episode of Cribs and packed our stuff to get ready to leave bright and early the next morning.

It was a GREAT trip with GREAT company and I’m so happy that I work with ladies who all get along so well. Stacy’s mom kept saying, “It’s so nice to see a group of ladies who get along like you all do!”  It’s true. I’m very blessed to work with these ladies! LOVE.THEM.

So, that was just Florida and that would bring us to the happenings until July 2^nd. July 3^rd was my aunt’s birthday party that I mentioned in a previous post. The party went really well, except as soon as the Luau-themed party started(and was all supposed to be outdoors), hey guess what? I bet you’ll never guess. RAIN!!! So, my HUGE family piled into my grandparent’s tiny house, but it all worked out great and everyone had a good time.  Fourth of July-Spent the day with my family and went and saw fireworks with a bunch of my cousins. The next entry I post will be all about the school projects I’ve been doing this week after finding AWESOME ideas from pinterest and of course, blogs! If you’re still reading this, you’re a trooper and thank you for reading this much! Ha!  Since it’s Friday, I leave you with this..Enjoy!

Have a great weekend!!!
-StacEy

Besties, T.D.F. and Treats

Hi friends!

We are friends, right? I mean, I spend more time with stalking you guys (Honesty is the best policy) than my real-life friends, so we may as well call each other besties! Heeeey Besties!! Ok, here is the memory pail ticket. The “binder clip” clip art (without the quotation marks it would have looked like this: binder clip clip art---couldn’t handle the double clip, sorry) is from www.Justsoscrappytoo.com. Also, I’m not finished with the yellow pail yet, and I honestly don’t know when I will be. HA!  I’m too occupied with www.pinterest.com.  Thanks, Cara! (That was somewhat sarcastic, but mostly sincere.) Speaking of, one of the little pins that I had to “repin” was a rainbow popsicle slushy thingamabobber. (If this is Greek to you, go to that website and explore!!! I mean, that is, if you have a couple extra minutes an extra three-ish hours on your hands.) My aunt’s sixtieth birthday party is at the beginning of July and we are having a family bash. I found TDF treats to make and I had to try to make a small one today. Oh, you don’t know what TDF means? It means To-Die-For. Learn it. Love it. USE IT. When you’re shopping this weekend, turn to your real life bestie and say, “Hey girl! These shoes are T.D.F.!” Then when she looks at you with a confused look and says, “TDF?”  Say, “Ugh, you don’t even speak my language anymore. My bloggy bestie knows me so much better!”  Ok, really, don’t do that. But, I dare you to go shopping with someone and try NOT to have this situation happen in your head. DAREsies! Below will be the picture of the memory pail ticket, the link to the memory pail ticket(except, I just realized I don't know how to do that yet,so whenever I figure it out, it will be up!), and the picture of my TDF slushy treat. Enjoy, besties!

-StacEEEEy

How cute is this treat? It's just popsicles!! Will be
so good for the kadiddles at my aunt's b-day party!

Had to dig in!

The moment may be temporary, but the memory is forever.

Blame Cara Carroll...

Well ladies, two things can happen on a sunny Saturday in the middle of June. You can be expected to be at three places at once...ahem....baby shower at 2pm, cousin’s *precious* daughter’s birthday party at 11 am, and a friend’s birthday BBQ at 2pm OR you can find yourself sitting in front of your laptop while all of the aforementioned events are taking place.  WHO. In the world. Would do that?? Not this girl.  Me. I’m so cool. You don’t have to tell me. Blame Cara Carroll. She updated her blog and one click led to another click, that led to text messages to Stacy(without an E---and the “E” stands for Excellentamazingawesomeandcool, so we all know that she’s NOT those things now. You’re welcome for letting you in on that.) Back to Cara, she just HAD to put a link to “pinterest.” Well, I’ve never heard of it, so clearly I had to click on it. OHMYGRACIOUSGOODNESS (Yes, I know most people say, “goodness gracious.”) If you ever want to spend hours looking at things you are going to be obsessed with and want to make, do, cook, buy, then GO TO THAT SITE. Thank goodness I had my handy-dandy-never ever failed me sticky notes right next to me. I just started making lists of every cuteashell thing I saw. Why did I start making lists on sticky notes you ask? Isn’t that the WHOLE point of “pinterest” to PIN things to your page to remind you that you like them,want to make them, want to do them, want to cook them, yougetmydrift?? Yea, well, let me tell you. It’s like some sort of a Vegas nightclub that has a waiting list...an actual waiting list to get in to.  I signed up, eager to start “pinning” away and I get an email saying, “We’ll put you on our waiting list to get an invite to start pinning.” REALLY? Surely I didn’t just read that right. So, now I’m just waiting  impatiently patiently for my invite to this web.........site?   I guess I’ll stick to sticky notes until then. So, one thing that I loved that Cara had pinned was a memory jar. I’ll post the picture below. You could use the idea for your family or for your classroom. Cara’s idea was to write family memories from the year and read the memories from the jar on New Year’s Eve to reminisce with the fam. She also wrote how you could use it in your classroom by writing/having the kids write memories throughout the year and then reading them on the last day of school. CUH-UTE! Sold!  Ten days into summer and I’m planning for next year’s last day. Sounds logical. Next thing you know, I’m at Michael’s looking for the perfect jar that I can decorate and make cuteashell. I walk in, like LITERALLY didn’t even get to the sensor door thingy that opens into craft heaven when I saw these cute, bright-colored, CHEAP sand pail/buckets. One dollar make you holler! Oh yea, I forgot to mention my classroom is Hawaiian slash beach themed. When I saw these sand pails, I quickly dismissed the idea of the glass jar and decided I had to make a “Memory Pail,” if you will. (And I think you will.)  Mission: Make it cute. Remember people, I mentioned in my last post that I’m not “make everything cute” by nature. I’m far from it. Let’s say if there was a scale of making everything cute, my fellow blogger Stacy (yea, the one who hasn’t blogged yet because she’s been too busy planning a family party and making EVERYTHING cuteashell.  You should see the pictures, folks. CUH to the UTE.) Anyway, if there was a scale, she’d be a 10 and I’d be a 4.5, and I’m being  very generous. What I’m really saying is, I’m going to post a picture of my Memory Pail and it’s not near as cute as what her finished product would be, but I’m still proud of it because I’m learning and growing and I’m MAKING PROGRESS!! That’s what we want from our kids, right?? J I grabbed a couple of pails and really had no idea what I wanted to do with them since I JUST found the steal of a deal. My original plan had to be thrown out the window.  I walked around looking for something to catch my eye, but ended up at the scrapbook sticker/adhesive aisle. I found some packs of stickers that would be cute and went with it! I’m also going to make slips of paper to put by the pail. I’m thinking about working this in with Daily 5- Work on Writing. I’ll post the slips I make on the next post BECAUSE I’m not done with them yet and really wanted to have a second post for our newashell  blog I’m going to post something else in a day or two. Hint: It will be the reason for sand pail #2 that I bought today. Anyway ladies, the point of this post is just to give you a fun little idea for your classroom. (And mostly so I’m not the only weird one planning something for the last day of school NEXT year.)  Think about how you could make it fit your theme...if you have one.  I’d love to hear your ideas. Also, I think it’s funny that I woke up today with plans to do drive-bys at three parties and instead got rejected put on a waiting list for a website, spent way too much time on said website, made an impromptu trip to Michaels, and had a finished product(well I still have to make the slips) of something hopefully my new kiddos will enjoy all school year! Have a great Sunday and Happy Father’s Day!!!

--StacE(xcellentamazingawesomeandcool)y OUT!



Memory Jar







Memory Pail  (This picture is taken 137 years from now.)

 


Side View



Introducing StacEy, with an E...

StacEy. Twenty-five. Zero husbands. Zero kids. First Grade Teacher. One year of experience.

LOVE.MY.JAY-OH-BEE.

It was a year ago when I first met, what I call now, my twin separated at birth. I was scared to death of interviews. I nervously walked into a room with the principal of the school and three of the teammates that I would be working with if I was offered the job. She sat to my right and had a smile that put me at ease. We laughed, I cried, and I left feeling confident. A teacher I had done a lot of subbing for always told me I would just know when an interview went well and I would have a “feeling” after I left if I was going to get the job. I had A feeling, but I didn’t know if it was THE feeling . About three hours later, my phone rang and I saw that it was the District Administrative Offices. I immediately walked outside on my deck, because no matter what the news was, I was clearly going to need some fresh air.  I didn’t know if I was going to hang up the phone crying and feeling hopeless or if I needed the deck as a platform to scream to the world that I got offered my dream job! Either way, I would be prepared! At the end of my interview when the principal asked if I had any questions for her or the team members who were grilling me, I said laughingly, “Actually, Yes. When do I start?!?” Luckily, it was the right crowd, and they laughed too. Fast forward to the phone call... It was the voice of the superintendent on the other end and she said the normal hi and how are you. I answered, but my heart was skipping beats and I was sweating, obviously. She said, “Well I have the answer to your question that you asked at the end of your interview today.” I answered innocently, “What question?” She replied, “When you start. You start August 9^th.”  “SHUT UPPP!!! Are you serious?!?”  Yes, I told the superintendent to SHUT.UP.  Clearly, I’m great at first impressions. I heard laughter on the other end, followed by, “Well, you’re the first person to ever tell me to shut up, Stacey.” I apologized, listened (kind of) to the information she gave me(I was trying to figure out who to call first!), and then hung up and stared into space in disbelief, relief, and excitement. I walked inside and told my dad, and brother, who happened to be randomly stopping by, “I got the job! I’m a freaking real-life teacher!!!!”  Word travels fast when you have a big mouth and your family and friends have ones to match! My phone was blowing up for the next hour and I couldn’t have been happier to share the best news I had ever gotten in my life. I was ready to change the world! Ha ha.

        Later that day, I get a text from a random number telling me she would be my mentor and her name was Stacy.  (She spells it wrong, but it’s not her fault.) Anyway, we met at school a couple of days later and she had a cuteashell, that’s CUTE.AS.HELL, not CUTE. A. SHELL. binder made for me with my name and favorite colors and of course it was perfectly done. Confession: I have never been someone that has had a knack for doing anything cute-sy. I’ll never forget when she broke the news to me as we were sitting at the computer in the lab, “Our team is the kind of team who will spend hours looking for the right clip art for a smart notebook slide. I hope you’re like that too.” Pa-pa-pa-pardon? Did this bitch just say HOURS…..looking for clip art? I’m pretty sure I gave a neutral laugh so she wouldn’t be able to tell if I was frightened or if I was ONE OF THEM. I was NOT one of them, but she was NOT going to find that out just yet. We just met for goodness sake. I needed to win her over with my charm before I let her know that I was going to need major help in the making everything cuteashell department.

Alright, fast forward to September. At this point, I think my team is full of super human women. They have husbands. They have kids. They are way better at their job than I am. How did they find the time to do everything so perfectly??!? I was practically living at school at night and going home in time to go to bed and get up and do it all again the next day. I was barely keeping my head above water and they were soooo much better at everything! (Insert 20^th day of school breakdown somewhere around here, but we won’t talk about that. My team HAD to think I was a shitforbrains. Embarrassing! ) Back to the Stac(E)y’s. Sometime early in the year, Stacy and I realized we were going to be good friends and we shared similar and passionate views on our classrooms, correctly spelled words, music, reality tv contestants, and people in general.  The latter two being the most important, obviously. I kid, I kid. Anyway, somewhere along the way, I changed from not caring if something was copied a little bit crooked to...... one of them.  I started spending obscene amounts of time looking for the perfect font, the perfect clip art, the perfect border to put on notes sent home, the perfect everything. I wanted everything to be cuteashell. Around the middle of the year, Stacy (thank you baby Jesus)  shared top secret information with me. Ya know, the type of information that if she told me, she would have to kill me. Thank the lawd she doesn’t have the murderer bone in her body. She let me in on, as we jealously lovingly refer to them now as, “The bitches.”  The bitches are all of you. All of you bloggettes out in bloggerville who have inspired us to start our very own blog. I spent countless hours jumping from one blog to the next and pinning them to the home screen on my phone. This is when we first started saying we were separated at birth. We would call or text each other at random times during the week or the weekend and tell each other to check out something on one of your blogs and the other one had JUST got done reading it or had JUST got done printing out whatever it was. This happened NUMEROUS times and continues to happen on a regular basis, so we say we are separated at birth and this is how we came to be Stac(E)y Squared, hence the name, “Hip 2 be Squared.”