Monday Meet Me

Happy Monday friends! It's the start of another week of summer. I can't believe how fast the summer weeks go! Today I'm linking up with The Teaching Tribune to share a little about ME! Get excited about it! Woo-hoo!!!

So first up, a few random facts about me:

 
1) I am kid number 5. I have two older sisters, two older brothers and two younger brothers. There is a twenty year age difference between the oldest and youngest of us.

2) In fact, my husband and I even designed our wedding around an 80’s cartoon theme! I created various illustrations for the wedding invitations and other items and I loved it because the theme was totally US. Even our cake toppers were Leonardo (TMNT) and Red Fraggle (Fraggle Rock). Refer to the photo below if you are unsure of who these characters are.

Here's a look at the invitations we sent out (website, date and place have been removed; hence the big blank spaces). I really love how non-traditional they came out even in terms of the wording. Truthfully, I don't think formal text would have worked with cartoons anyway. Haha!

3) Prior to finally getting my license, I had over 5 driver's permits (over a period of 10 years) and even took the MD Driver's Ed course TWICE but I never got around to actually taking the driver's license test. Part of the reason was because I went to college in Washington D.C. and it's just pointless to drive and deal with parking in D.C. After college, I ended up with jobs that were fairly close to my house so I just got used to using public transportation. When I switched careers and became a teacher though, it made it a little more challenging to get around without driving. Good thing my super supportive husband was willing and able to help me finally get it done!!

Alright, I'm off to bed!

~Theresa

Five For Friday

Hey guys and gals! I'm back and today I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five for Friday Linky Party.

Here's a look at five things that I've been up to recently:

1. Pencil Sharpening! No, seriously! My old pencil sharpener bit the dust a few weeks ago and I liked it SO much that I knew I wanted to get the same one to replace it. So last night I re-ordered it from Staples using a $30 coupon and my Rewards bucks (combined, they made it FREE!) and it arrived at my doorstep early this afternoon. Talk about fast delivery! When it arrived, I opened it up and put it right to work. (I had also ordered new pencils but those won't be arriving until next week so I settled for sharpening some of my leftovers from this past year.) Upon using it, I was reminded instantly why I LOVE this sharpener. Number one, it can sharpen a variety of different pencil sizes. What's more is that it's really fast and I like that it has an auto-stop to let you know when the pencils are ready. Not only is this time-efficient but it also minimizes any potential chance of wasting lead while the pencil is inside the sharpener. Yay!

Regarding the pencils I ordered: Can I just say that I absolutely LOVE these jumbo Try Rex pencils?! My former school required us to use them and I am SO glad that they did. They are triangular so they help my little first graders to develop a proper pencil grip (and they also don't roll onto the floor as easily as the standard yellow #2's) but best of all, they rarely need sharpening because their lead lasts FOREVER. I can honestly go weeks without sharpening and when I do sharpen them, it's rarely because a pencil tip has broken. Sometimes they just get a little dull and need some freshening up. They are truly the best! I like to invest in a few dozen packs at the beginning of the year and they legit last me all school year long! If you struggle with incessant pencil-sharpening-agonies in your classroom, I seriously cannot recommend these enough.

 2. Orange is the New Black. Anyone who knows me knows that I am obsessed with television shows about prison, jail, crime, etc... I have no idea why this subject fascinates me, but for whatever reason, it does; and happily there are many shows around to appease my interests. Like many of you have already admitted on your blogs, I too waited desperately for season 2 of Orange Is the New Black to be released on Netflix. Once it did, I literally binge-watched the entire season in less than 48 hours. It is just THAT good. I'll admit that since I watched it so quickly, I'm a little sad that there are now no more episodes to watch until season 3 comes out. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the second season immensely and will just have to wait impatiently until another season becomes available. So what does all this have to do with my Friday? Well, for my birthday this past year, my sister bought me the novel that the show is based upon. I don't often have time for much pleasure reading during the school year (plus I really wanted to take the time to truly enjoy this book) so I decided to hold off on reading this one until the summer. So as of this week, I have finally begun reading the book. So far, I can tell that it IS different from the show (not surprisingly), but it is still very GOOD! I won't give anything away, but I think I like the text just as much as the show.

 3. Developing new art for my teaching products! I've begun working on some new art sets that I will be using in some new products really soon! This photo gives a sneak peak at some of the sketches in the works. From the photo you may be able to tell that a dog set and monster set are currently in production. I have a few other ones too but I'm not going to share all of them with you just yet. I will say that I'm super excited about them though!!! :) Be sure to stay tuned to see what happens with these guys!

 4. Font Management. This has been a big issue for me this past year and as such it is something that I've had on my To-Do List for quite some time. As a former graphic design student and children's illustrative designer, I have accumulated thousands of fonts on my computer over the past ten years. No seriously. I literally have thousands of fonts and many of them are just taking up valuable space. Now I know that one extra font or two really isn't a big deal, but thousands of extra fonts really gets in the way of my productivity. Ultimately, it just means more to sort through when looking for fonts for a project and this often just slows things down. (For me it was also affecting my application loading times.) I figured that since I wasn't using many of my fonts that it was high-time for me to clean them up. Trust me, if you have a lot of fonts and you have never done this, it is a really good process. After saving all of the fonts on a backup disk (just in case), I then went through and removed all of the fonts on my computer that I know that I no longer use. This was also helpful in terms of allowing me to get a closer look at what I had and even helped me to rediscover some of the great fonts that I have been neglecting. I'll admit that it took me a while to sort through everything but I could tell it really made a difference when I went into one of my applications afterwards and noticed it running a LOT faster.
Big win for me!!!

5. Thinking about journeying to VEGAS... Well, over the last few days, my husband and I have been seriously discussing me going to Vegas for the upcoming SDE and TPT Teacher conferences. I have not registered for anything yet but I have been thinking about it a lot. Of course I'm dying to go and meet all of you fabulous bloggers out there but I also want to make sure that I am in a good place financially to be able to journey out there too. So far, we are still in the discussion process, but are leaning towards...YES! (Even if it's only for a few days and not the entire week). I'm notably jazzed at the prospects of going and will certainly keep you posted on this one. :)

Alright, that's all I have for now. Have an awesome weekend everyone!
~Theresa

Workin' on it Wednesday

Well, it's been a minute since I posted last. (Well, more like a gazillion minutes over the last 8 months.) Stress and work sort of took over this year and my poor blog aspirations clearly took a lengthy stay on the back burner. Rest assured that during my absence, however, I have remained quite busy making classroom goodies that I'm anxious to share with you all. So welcome back and let's get on with it! :)

So during my usual morning blog trolling, I stumbled across KinderGal's "Workin' on it Wednesday" linky party. Teachers are linking up to share what projects and activities they are working on now that summer is finally here!

So what am I working on these days? Well, as of 3 days ago, summer is in full swing and I truly have a MASSIVE project ahead of me. I am switching schools next year (not grade levels though) and the school I am moving to is still being built. It will be brand-spanking new come August! Not truly knowing what my new classroom will look like (including the closet/storage space I will be working with) I opted to bring EVERYTHING home with me over the summer rather than to have it moved directly to the new school. Since the new school is still under construction, my stuff would likely have been sitting in boxes in a room/warehouse until August anyway. The anxiety of not being able to access things on the chance that I desperately needed something over the summer was just NOT something I was prepared to handle. So into my husband's JEEP it all went and home it came to rest in our house. It was definitely a PROCESS packing it up and getting it all home. Now that it's here (literally taking over my entire home office), I am somewhat overwhelmed but nevertheless determined to sort through it all.

There is literally NO walkway into this room right now. You can barely see my 27in iMac on the desk way behind all of those boxes! Also bear in mind that this room does not include any of the furniture that I brought home. I have those items stashed away in the basement. (Honestly, I feel like a hoarder!! Yikes. Maybe I have too much stuff. Do you guys have this much stuff too? Please tell me you do and then maybe I won't feel so bad...) Sidenote: my friends think I might have a Sterilite addiction. They might be right...

It's a tough sight to see my office in this state but I'm really trying to remain positive. This will be a chance for me to sort through things that I need and don't need. It will also give me a chance to reorganize EVERYTHING. I'm definitely thinking of re-organizing my classroom library. I will also possibly organize materials by quarter or even by month to make certain things easier to find. Beyond my organization project, I already have a few ideas for materials I want to create for the upcoming school year along with illustrations/clip art I have been dying to get to. I have some ideas for materials I want to update and I'm also signed up for a few summer grad classes. (No surprise there)! Oh, and at some point, I am supposed to get all four of my wisdom teeth extracted. Blah... I can't say that I'm looking forward to that but it will be nice to finally cross that "errand" off my list if when it finally does get done. (I've been putting it off for over 2 years now). I must say, it's shaping up to be a pretty busy summer and I'm only 3 days into it! Hopefully, I'm able to fit some fun and relaxation in there too!

Alright, that's all for now. Time to get to work! Thanks for stopping by.

~Theresa