Sephora Giveaway & New Bundle!

No, it's not Black Friday and you haven't even stuffed your turkey yet but we are kicking off the holiday season early with a few other blogger friends by giving away a $160 Sephora gift card to ONE lucky reader!!

Maria/Victoria/Jennifer/Nicki/Lisa/Crystelle/Brooke

a Rafflecopter giveaway Winner will be chosen at random on December 1, 2014.

Thank you Victoria for organizing the freebie and being such a sweet & supportive blogger-friend!

Today marks my 3rd bloggiversary! 

To say I'm thankful for everything I've learned sharing and learning from the blogging world would be a HUGE understatement! I remember starting this blog to accompany my store...thinking maybe I would pop up an action shot of a favorite product and activity. Possibly pose a teaching question and/or share a solution to a common teaching problem.

I NEVER could have predicted how much this blog has grown into a community of support and FUN. I went from awkwardly sharing a tiny tidbit to mostly oversharing each and every thing that happens during the week!

THANK YOU to everyone who visits, reads, and encourages!

♥ ♥ ♥ 

I had a busy weekend of procrastinating on my lesson plans...I'm continuing on this 5+ year project of organizing my dropbox. I started tackling my clipart, specifically the black & white clipart I use for creating phonics products.

Here's what I'm trying out:

I made a PPT slide for each phonics sound/spelling. Next, I cut and paste the preferred clipart image I use. On the left, I inserted a textbox of the image name (I also have a list of artists with hyperlinks to credit). I realize this is showing off my extreme-Type-A tendencies, but I'm totally okay with that :)

After spending some quality time with my 16,000+ dropbox files, I realized that I really need a better organization plan. This is what happened when I typed in "Thanksgiving"

And who knows how many more Thanksgiving files I have that are either labeled "Turkey" or worse..."01234..." Can anyone relate or are you much more on top of things than me?

I really need to simplify. I need to take a break on downloading all the incredible freebies I see daily and just focus on what I can actually accomplish with a rowdy enthusiastic group of first graders during 180 days of school. 

My dream would be to have everything in one place. I could just type in "December Teaching" and one huge file would appear with everything organized and ready-to-go. 

I'm slowly starting the process. Yesterday, I took a hard look at my December calendar and realized I have only 15 teaching days. During those days, I will also be administering NWEA, attending a couple IEP meetings, and starting a new Power Hour (Guided Reading) group. I should also probably acknowledge that there's a holiday coming up ;)

I won't even tell you what my search for "Christmas" yielded in my Dropbox. I could probably use a different holiday activity for the rest of my teaching career and never repeat the same one!

I took my favorite Christmas products (paid and free) and bundled them into one large file:

Positively Christmas

If you click the link above, it will take you to the product description. 

Please download the preview...

There's a clickable link to each product (including 2 freebies!)

This makes my Type A heart very happy ♥

  

I'm also linky up all week with Blog Hoppin'

Today's was very easy:

I'm incredibly thankful for Paul and all of the supportive staff that make up Teachers Pay Teachers. There's a wonderful sense of community that keep the focus where it belongs...the students. I'm thankful they run such a financially viable business that makes it easy to both find and access exactly what I need to serve my students. I can't imagine teaching without them!

Have a wonderful Monday!