Wedding Photo Backdrop

4 days before my wedding I was browsing Pinterest and came across this idea....the even crazier part was that I seriously wanted to do it. :)

via

My family was coming into town the next day and I knew this would be hard, but I sent Seymore to Home Depot for two pieces of plywood. The next day we painted them with chalkboard paint. The can says to wait 3 days before chalking, but since I didn't have 3 days, I waited one day. :)  I made a transparency of the above picture and borrowed an overhead projector. 

                                    

I traced as much as I could and then freestyled the rest.  I was thinking it would take hours to finish, but surprisingly it took about an hour to trace and then add my own touch to it. 

                       

I am so happy I decided to add this last minute project to the list because it was so much fun and made for some great pictures! And the best part is we did it for under $40! 

What you need:

Two 4' x 8' pieces of plywood

Chalkboard paint (the can, not spray paint)

Chalk

                                     

Wedding Welcome Bags

My mom jokes that she always knew I would have a destination wedding...funny that the destination wedding was for everyone else, not me. :) My best friend reminded me that I needed to have Welcome Bags for our guests at the hotels we had blocks of rooms reserved. So...I got to work. 

Powerpoint is my new best friend. So many fun things you can do in this program and its so easy to manipulate! I started with packages of brown bags from Michael's (and used my 40% off coupon each time) The monogram was made for free online here at markandgraham.com. I used it all over and I loved it. Lots of different fonts and card stock, add some snacks and water...and you get all this! And for fun, I spray painted clothespins :) The hotel manager said its the cutest she's seen. My guests seem to really enjoy them too! It was the least I could do for them since they traveled to see us get married! 

                                     

It's All In The Details...

It's been a crazy 2014 so far! It seems as though lately, I've been more about the wedding details than the school details. I found out really quick how expensive a wedding can be. :) I knew in the beginning I wanted my touch on as much of this as possible. I wanted to make and create as much as possible without it seeming like a "homemade" wedding.  With some fun fonts and Powerpoint a lot of great creations were made. Just wanted to share some details of the wedding process that were handmade by yours truly with the hopes that it sparks your inner creative too...because REALLY, none of this was hard. :)

We bought little bottles of whiskey and hot glued these little hand made notes to the front of them for the boys. I had signs made for all my girls too but couldn't keep the secret long enough to get it to them. Pretty sure I asked everyone over text message before I bought the wine bottles. I owe you guys a bottle of wine! :) This was just a chalkboard background with a frame and various fonts...made in Powerpoint.

These were the menus for the Rehearsal Dinner. The restaurant we chose had a set menu and usually just printed a Word document (probably in Arial font) to lay on the tables. Instead, I created these in Powerpoint and printed front and back on card stock. 

Same story for my Bridal Breakfast my Aunt did for me. My invitations had already been ordered, so I just used the design and recreated their menu. She had them printed on a shimmery card stock and they looked great! 

My invitations were one of my first tasks. I seriously thought it would be the death of me!! :) Designing maps, getting everything perfectly sized in Powerpoint, saved as a PDF without everything shifting or resizing...man! They turned out amazing though! I loved them. There were printed on Kraft Card Stock and bound together by a strip of light blue card stock.

The envelopes were also the same Kraft "paper bag" color. (I used two different cameras on these pictures so the coloring is off) I used Powerpoint and some very fun fonts to create each guests personalized envelope. I guess I fell in love with fonts that were very similar to my handwriting because SO many people thought I did these by hand. Ha! #trickedya :)

My program fans were one of my favorite things. I saw this idea at a Bridal Show and knew I wanted to do them...just not for $6.50 a piece!!! I designed the program (in Powerpoint) and had them printed on Kraft card stock. My family had a big party and made the fans for me! Cut the burlap, painted dots, glued fan sticks, glued paper to the burlap and hot glued bows. This was a huge task but they didn't disappoint. I am in love with how they turned out!!! 

This wasn't exactly free....but I did design it for free. :) Love how they turned out

We had a fun Candy Bar where guests could fill these bags with as much candy as they wanted. These were just brown paper bags stamped with our monogram. 

These were our thank you notes we left on the tables. It was a piece of card stock folded in half. I used tons of different fonts and used a Thank You example I found on Pinterest. But again, as the theme is going...just opened Powerpoint and created away. :)

And last but not least...one of my favorite gifts. One of my flower girls also became my step daughter on our wedding day. I wanted her to have something special and for her to know how much she means to me. This was created in Powerpoint, printed on card stock, matted on another piece of card stock...then hole punched for the necklace to be laced through. 

I hope this inspires you to get out your computer, download some cool fonts and start creating!

Guest Post at All Things Upper Elementary

Head on over to All Things Upper Elementary for my guest post appearance on their blog.  I even included a FREEBIE just for ATUP readers!

Love Tattoo

A place I swore I'd never go again...

But for this, it was worth it.

Love cannot be erased, it cannot be broken...it's inscribed on a wrist heart that will remain forever :)

I am so in love with our love tattoos. 

LOVE.

Jamestown 1607

Have I mentioned how much I am LOVING teaching US History?!? My two Social Studies classes are my favorite part of the day. I think half of it is just that is something new but the other half is that I am having SO much fun learning all this too. {yes, I'm a victim of coaches SS teachers} I wanted to share what we've been doing...

We've been learning all about Jamestown this week. My number one goal was to make history so exciting to my kids... and I knew the only way to achieve that is to teach it with so much passion they didn't have any choice but to be hooked. This isn't too hard because I am so into it myself! :)  

After learning all about John Smith, John Rolfe, Pocahontas, Powhatan and all the events that took place, I let my little journalists go and create a newspaper, entitled "Jamestown 1607 News" They had to take everything we'd learned and put it into four articles: Breaking News, What's New, Someone You Should Know and Classifieds. 

I let them research facts and questions around the room. I am so thankful we have access to classroom computers, iPads and NOW....

A set of Chrome books!!! We just got a whole cart of them! The cart is the perfect height for my kids so I just set four of them up as a research station. I had kids researching the day John Rolfe and Pocahontas got married, details of the Spanish tobacco seeds, The House of Burgesses, etc.

I measure the success of a lesson by how engaged my kids are and how much they can tell me about what we've learned...and I would say {minus the one girl who spent her class time searching for Justin Bieber pictures} this was successful!

And I'll leave you with one last thing. Our Student Council came up with a Thankful Tree this year. We've had the whole school write what they were thankful for on a hand and cut it out...I think it's turned out pretty cute! 

Tracking Student Data: Reflection

Students tracking their own data is AWESOME!!! In this post, I went into detail on how my students graphed their data from our first district Curriculum Assessment. I want to say that these Data Binders aren't particular to this certain assessment. They can be used with any test or assessment, in any subject or in any state. (Doesn't have to be CCCS, but will work with it too) In case you missed my last, late breaking news, announcement....I placed a smaller {generic grade/subject} bundle in my store with everything you need to start the Data Binders in your classroom. Those can be found here. 

You will see the one below is customized to the TEKS and is also apart of my 5th Grade Math Tracking Student Data Bundle. 

Ok. Let's get started! After we have graphed all of our data, we went back and had a time of reflection. We talked about this first and then went to the paper. I had to go into detail with good examples and bad examples of what I wanted. I wanted them to think more about a mathematical reflection...something they weren't understand and need to work on, not just "I rushed" or "I didn't read the question."

I wanted them to see when they came back to this a reflection on a certain objective...not just a testing mistake. Some of them we're very proud of their work (and didn't miss many) and wanted to tell me everything they were good at. :) 

They had to flip back through their graphing to come up with these reflections and even went back through some test questions to get a better understanding.

This part was the hardest of the three for my kids. It really forces them to stop and think WHY did I miss this...what was I not understanding. I had to model, model, model and give tons of "Is this a good example or a bad example" examples....but we finally got it!

After the graphing...and then the reflecting, comes the GOALS. Check back for my next post about creating specific, measurable and attainable goals for your students.