Five Dollar Fashion Find

I have found a love of shopping for clothes much later in life than most people.  Not sure why, but I'm living it up now.  That being said, I am always on the hunt for a good deal.  I HATE to pay full price for anything.  If I can find a fashionable piece for 5 bucks or less, I am all over that...in multiple colors if possible.

The Target clearance rack is by far my favorite place.  They put new stuff on their all the time, and you can often find really cute stuff for decent prices.  Here is a lovely little blouse I found for $5.98.  I know, that's more like 6 bucks, but the first number on the tag was a 5 and that's just right for me.  It's perfect for a summer night out with the girls, and has the sexy lace back.  I paired it with some shorts from old navy and basic black flip flops cause I'm laid back like that.

I have a few more great things I've found recently for 5 bucks or under, so check back to see more of my bargain shopping fashion.

Teacher Week '13

In effort to join the teacher blogging community I'm going to participate in the Blog Hoppin' teacher week link up.  I didn't realize this was going on, so I'll join a day late and do two days in one.

Monday was Meet the Teacher:
This is the start of my 10th year teaching.  I can't believe it will be a decade already.  I am a 7-12 certified math teacher but I've been teaching 8th grade for the past 8 years.  I am not a traditional math teacher in the sense that I don't do chapter one, section by section, then give the chapter test.  I like to give my students big problems that they need lots of skills to solve.  I prefer more of my class time to be spent with students solving math problems, rather than me talking.  I like to try new things each year because it keeps things interesting for me and the students.  I LOVE teaching 8th graders.  It sound weird I know, but it really is the best.

Tuesday is Classroom Tour:
This summer I actually got to paint my room. The walls are a little sparse here because I'm waiting on an order of all new wall posters.  These pics aren't the greatest, but my classroom is always shifting as I adapt it to what I'm doing.  I flex back and forth between groups and rows, depending on the time of year and unit.  Students never sit by themselves, there are always at least two desks together.

The back of the room is where I hang the learning targets for each unit.  Students can go at anytime to get extra practice work for any learning target that they are struggling with.  I also adding a little reading nook for our homeroom and study hall times when kids like to sit and read.  On the ceiling you can see some student created ceiling tiles which is a great project students do each year.

I just got this kidney bean table, so I placed it with a dry erase board (not hung yet) and graph chart so I can do small group lessons.

I relocated my computers this year so they are all in a bank.  The new blue wall color will hopefully be calming. I have a shoe organizer to hang my calculators in because the pocket charts you can get at the teacher stores are just too flimsy and don't hold up for longer than a year.

I am super excited to get the rest of the stuff on my walls.  Maybe I'll post a finished look next week once the year starts.

Harper's Room...Before and After

Well, after a whirlwind summer, we are finally settling in to our new house.  I am in love.  The wood floors, the millions of windows, the island in the kitchen.  It's all fabulous.

The house really was move in ready, so first on our to-do list was Harper's room.  We passed on all her nursery furniture to my sister who will hopefully be giving me a niece or nephew sometime in the next year or so.  We wanted to let Harper help pick what would go in her new "big girl" room.  We got some paint swatches and let her pick the color, ordered new furniture, found bedding clearance on Target.com and even completed a DIY project I found on Pinterest.  So here is the before and after:

BEFORE

AFTER

Should have turned my flash on.  The room looks pink here.  Also, we need new curtains.

The inspiration came from a pin about gutter shelves.  When I went to buy the gutters, they seemed large and flimsy.  We looked around and found this framing material with a j-channel in it instead.  It worked perfectly.

We still need to get more stuff to hang on her walls.  Joe is going to paint a mural on the wall by her bed, so that will be really cute once he gets a chance to work on it.  It was so fun helping Harper move in to a big girl room.  She loves her little reading corner.  Hopefully we can work on the downstairs decor soon.

Summer Randomness

What would you do if you had a week a beautiful summer weather?

Take your friend for a walk, making sure to dress as fancy as possible

Check out the water at the Hoover Reservoir

Buy new bedroom furniture

Pet a flamingo!

Hard core car nap

Eat fried stuff at the fair

First Roller Coaster Ride

Drive by your brand new house whenever possible

Best Week of Summer Ever!

Expanding a little

I've been wanting to start blogging about my job as a math teacher.  There is a huge community of educators blogging about what they are doing in their classrooms, giving each other ideas and support, and just generally sharing the experiences of teaching.  I really want to jump in to that.  I thought for a minute about starting a separate blog, but the few of you who actually read this know that I'm not the best at keeping up with this one blog, let alone another one.  So I'm going to just go ahead and expand the content of what I blog here.  If you are a follower, I hope that these posts don't bore you, in fact I often love the input of people outside of education.  I hope that any new followers from the teaching world don't find my life posts to weird.

As a first jump into the world of blogging about teaching I wanted to share a letter one of my students wrote to me this year.  When I received this I was absolutely moved.  I have a folder of memories I keep to look back on and remind me of all the wonderful things about teaching.  This will be one I pull out often.

My Current Life

Vagabond - [vag-uh-bond] - adjective - wandering from place to place without any settled home; nomadic - noun - a person, usually without a permanent home, who wanders from place to place

Thank you dictionary.com foe so succinctly defining my life right now.  

We sold our first home.

We had it on the market for three weeks.  Pretty impressive.

We hadn't found a new house yet, but we couldn't pass up the hot market.  So we had planned on renting an apartment for a little while.  It was going to be kind of sucky, but we were willing to suffer through it just to get the perfect house.

Well last Monday, it popped up on MLS.  I called the realtor and she got us in to see it that morning.  After a 1 and a half hour visit, we knew it was for us.  We put in an offer that day and it was accepted that night.  We were super excited.  The sellers don't actually live there, so we are pushing for a quick closing.  We canceled our apartment, but that left us with no where to live.

This week, we are house sitting for some friends who are on their annual vacation to Myrtle Beach.

Next week we will crash with some friends.

If we annoy them too much before closing, we will head to an extended stay motel.

We're not exactly homeless, but for the next couple of weeks, we are definitely vagabonds!

Friday Confessions....

Joining with Ems to get some things of my chest:

I told myself that this summer while Harper was napping I would do some yoga or strength training workouts.  Instead I've been binge watching Felicity on Netflix.

I totally don't get the situation with the closing of Google reader.  I just read my blogs on my Blogger dashboard, so I never used Google reader.  Now everyone is switching to Bloglovin.  I signed up for an account, but I still don't understand about how people say their blog can be "found on Bloglovin."  Do I need to somehow put my blog on there, or is my account enough?  I'm kind of dumb with these things.

We spent the past couple of weeks packing for our impending move.  I've packed almost all the boxes.  I had my husband pack up the boxes of his tools and miscellaneous basement stuff.  It drove me nuts watching him pack.  My OCD just wanted me to jump in and rearrange things.  But the whole point is I didn't want to pack that stuff.  So I left the room.  I didn't want to nag him about doing something that he was doing perfectly fine.  Sometimes I hate being so controlling.

We're paying people to move all our stuff and as I type this, two very nice men are moving all my stuff while I've surfed the web, did a little research for work, and all in all did not break a sweat.  BEST.MONEY.EVER.

I didn't know Robin Thick was white until I watched his "Blurred Lines" video.  Well, he is one FINE looking white guy.  Three hottest guys in a video ever, never mind all the naked women.