Five for Friday Linky 10/31

This week I am trying to get back in the blogging groove and link up to Doodle Bugs' Five for Friday Linky.

I'm not going to lie. I am not a big crafty person and when one of the ladies on my hall suggested this picture frame craft from Oriental Trading for the Halloween Party I was not jumping for joy. I also wasn't so thrilled about doing a scrapbook last year, but I have completely changed my mind about all things picture related. This craft officially made it all worth while.

While we were at the pumpkin patch, I took pictures to use in our end of the year scrapbook and this craft.  I don't think much of it and my kids usually don't think twice about it either. If anything, they want to ham it up for the camera. On the way home from our trip, one of my kids asked me why I liked taking so many pictures. I told him I was going to put them in our scrapbook. He didn't know what a scrapbook was so I explained that it had pictures of things we would do this year. Then he said, "So you keep it?" When I explained that I sent it home and it was his to keep, his face lit up. Then, he got this frame and picture to take home today. When He saw it his face lit up once again and he gave me a huge hug. I had to leave the room before I started all out bawling. These little things may not mean much to me, but you never know when a family or even a student will appreciate it. Call me a crafty wanna-be but I am now looking for other crafty stuff I can squeeze in that will be memorable for my kids.

As a new teacher I've been working hard to get enough shelves and storage for books in my classroom.  Since my amazing mother (who happens to be my inspiration for teaching) donated lots of books to my library, I don't have anywhere near enough space in my class. At the moment I have boxes and tubs stacked on boxes and tubs full of books.  Early in the week I made some room on one of my shelves in my house and unpacked some of my small group sets and my seasonal read alouds. About half of the books on the bottom shelf are Christmas books. I think I went a little Scholastic book order crazy my first year when it came to the November and December issues. I thought I didn't have enough Christmas books...problem solved. Haha. 

This week we are getting ready to wrap up our second unit in our new series. My goal is to finish up the third unit focus wall pieces so I can get them ready before I leave for my conference. Super excited about that!

Well Halloween means Halloween parties and we had a hot dog party complete with cupcakes, chips, cookies, and candy. It was super simple, but I didn't have any tongs to take the hotdogs out of the crockpot. My coworkers needed some items for their party to so we went to Wal-Mart. The above picture is what happens when we go shopping together. We spotted the colorful tongs and it was love at first sight. The lady standing about five feet away left the aisle shortly after giving us odd looks and commenting on how super excited we were...we might have been overly happy about the prettiness.  What makes this fabulous is that we all got excited and we all had to have one. Working with ladies who get my quirkiness, share it, and encourage it just makes my week ten times better.

This is completely not teaching related, but I received a new bracelet in the mail. I'm completely in love with it. A little sparkle to add to the end of my week! I hope everyone enjoys their fabulous weekend!