Our Shiner Adventure - We'll Be Bock

As promised, here is the story of our trip to Shiner! For my boyfriend's birthday, I took him to Shiner, Texas. If you're a Texan, you know that this teeny tiny town has a brewery of one of the best beers in Texas (not that I'm a beer drinker).

When you go, you get four wooden tokens after show them your ID at the bar - and each token is worth a FREE sample! That's right, you get four Shiner samples for free! The little cup in the picture is us with our first sample. I only ended up using two of my tokens. As I said, I'm not a beer drinker, and Brandon had to finish both of my samples.

Free Beer!

The tour of the brewery is also free! It was really neat to get to see them bottling, putting tops on, and labeling hundreds of bottles of Shiner Bock. I put some of the pictures I took below!

After we toured the brewery and bought a few souvenirs, we headed to a little place I had heard of called Antiques, Art, and Beer. They have over 150 beers and 150 wines!

#ArtisticPicture

We went to a few other places in Shiner, including a gas station with Shiner on tap, and a cute little candy shop. After driving to neighboring towns to look around, we decided to head back to our hotel in Flatonia, Texas.

Y'all. This place was wonderful. Back in June when I was trying to book a Bed & Breakfast, I was sad that the "famous" one in Shiner was all booked due to a wedding. But it ended up alright, because I found one in a town 20 minutes away, with the best room at the same price. And I'm so glad I did.

We ended up staying at the Olle Hotel. We stayed in the Tauch Room, which for a very reasonable price got us a room with a large bed, it's own bathroom, and was in fact the only room in the hallway. It was right at the front of the historic hotel, on the second floor. It was beautiful, and I wish I had taken pictures of the room itself. In the picture below, our room was actually the two windows on the right! The whole hotel is a historic marker, over 100 years old. They have the history of the hotel available in the lobby.

The Olle Hotel

The landlord was very, very welcoming. She provided us with maps of the county for us to keep, a map of the town, in which she circled all of the places to eat (there were three). She also lent us a map of the beautiful Czech painted churches in the area, which ended up being a life saver!

We took a nap, and then ate dinner at one of two local restaurants, Robert's Steak House. Oh. My. Goodness. Such a delicious burger. Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel and drank some wine on one of the back balconies in the hotel, and then went to sleep.

The next day, after sleeping in (no pets to wake us up, HOORAY!), we went downstairs to a homemade breakfast. It was a DELICIOUS sausage casserole made by our landlord. We only ate a little because we wanted to go to a nearby Czech bakery. We walked there from the hotel and ended up being a little disappointed. There were no cream cheese kolaches! I ended up with a peach one that was pretty tasty though.

After this, we decided to go ahead and do our tour of the painted churches. It was really fun, because we did it old style. No phone navigating, just maps. We only got lost once! The Texas country side is just beautiful, y'all. Go get lost in it! 

I didn't actually take any pictures of the five churches we saw that day. It's hard to convey in a picture what you need to see yourself. The pictures below are actually from the day before, from a church up in Shiner. 

Painted church in Shiner, TX

The alter

Stained Glass Window

Monument Outside

Too beautiful for words. The architecture in the church is all wood, but they modeled it and painted it to look like the stone/marble churches back in "the motherland." My boyfriend was in awe, and so was I. The one picture I did take was of this GINORMOUS spider outside of the SMALLEST church we went to. I was terrified, and I'm not even afraid of spiders. It was bigger than my hand!!

Black and Yellow GARDEN Spider

On the way back we saw a farm FULL of these little guys... anyone know what they are??

Dikdiks?

After the churches, I convinced Brandon to go to a local winery called Morovia. For only $5 each, we got a sample of THREE wines. And every sample after that would have been $1. AND they provided free cheese, meats, etc. to go with our wine. 

Wine and snacks!

All in all, it was a wonderful, wonderful trip. The hotel was charming, as well as the town, and it was only an hour and ten minutes away from home! We will definitely be going back. Or as my boyfriend put it, "We'll be BOCK." (Shiner joke...)

One of the cute feral cats around the hotel! So sweet :)

Until next time... Mischief Managed.

Lean, Mean, Cutting Machine!

Phew! I've been SUPER busy since my last post. My boyfriend and I went to Shiner, Texas (another post on that in a few days). I've also been bust printing, laminating, and cutting things for my classroom.

After registering for both the New Teacher Academy and my new school district's regular professional development, I realized I had this week and the week after next left in my summer... yikes! I've pretty much given up on getting access to my classroom anytime in the next few weeks. So, to keep my anxiety at bay, I decided to go ahead and start on the classroom decorations. I bought some black fadeless paper and some aqua, yellow, and pink polka-dot borders to layer up. This year I'm going with a black chalkboard and neon theme. I saw this post on Your Life: Embellished and how she layered her borders and just knew I had to do the same. Later I ended up going all the way to Lakeshore and got yellow chevron border to try this with! If it looks cute, I will buy more colors of chevron border.

Anyways, I digress. I spent $75 at OfficeMax on printing things from Kinder Craze (would have been $120 if my new school district didn't have an account with OfficeMax, allowing me to get a HUGE discount). The following day, I had to clean my old apartment out anyways, so I stopped at Lakeshore first and spent a while laminating the things myself. OfficeMax charges $4.50 per foot for lamination, Kinkos/FedEx charges $15 per foot, and Teacher Heaven charges $.80. Teacher Heaven is closer, but Lakeshore is like half of the price, and is by my old apartment. It was perfect, and I saved a lot of money by waiting in the line and laminating SIXTY FEET of printed things from Kinder Craze. I know, I'm OBSESSED. 

As I was laminating, the guy working and the older teacher on the laminator next to me joked about who on earth was going to help me cut the lamination. The answer was no one. Oh well. After paying for my lamination and chevron border, I headed to my old apartment to give it one last cleaning before we turn in the keys in a few days. 

All Clean!

Anyways. The following pictures are of some of the things I cut out. 

Name Plates

Calendar Headings

Color Words

Rainbow Number Line!!

Domino Numbers and Subatizing Dots

Shape cards

By the end of the first night, my thumb went numb from the scissors. I knew something had to be done (PS. No, I did NOT cut all of those in one night!). 

The aforementioned older teacher at Lakeshore mentioned that at Michael's they sell mini paper cutters, but they call them trimmers. So when I had to go to Walmart a couple days later, I thought to check their craft section, and sure enough, they had this little guy for 20 bucks. 

Honestly? You get what you pay for. I had looked into the ones from Michaels, and they were twice as expensive, but probably better quality. After a few uses, Mr. X started making this AWFUL squeaking noise that woke up both animals in the apartment. So I gave up on using it to cut any of the big stuff. However, when I got to the calendar numbers...this little guy was my best friend. In the Kinder Craze calendar numbers, there are numbers for each month, plus two themes for October, November, AND December. Plus, instead of just going 1-31, each month goes to 34 (what??) and then has two extras for months that have the 24/30 or whatever overlapping on the calendar flip chart. thats 36 pieces per month, for not just twelve but FIFTEEN months. That's 540 calendar numbers. Yeah. So my cheap little cutter came in handy once I got used to using it!

I put each in a labeled ziploc for now. I plan on doing something like this post on Rowdy in Room 300. But for now, with no classroom, these will do nicely. 

Everything printed, cut, and laminated.

Next stop? After I have a classroom, I will still need to do the same thing with my teacher planner and, more importantly, my library (Ahhh it's set up for kinder, not second grade!).

Other things I've been up to? Making my own coordinating behavior chart, peeling off and redesigning and sticking on labels for my teacher toolbox, and making a teacher planner. I started to make my own, but after I finished the cover page and calendars, I didn't really know where to go from there. Maybe next year! So purchased this one from A Modern Teacher. I don't know all of the info yet, so I can't have it printed, but I'm so excited to use the Rainbow Chalkboard design!!

Neon/Chalkboard Clip Chart

****Edit 8/4/15 - WOW! A lot of people are interested in using this clip chart! I never expected it to get so popular! Click on the link above to be brought to the clip chart in my TPT store!

****Edit 7/15/16 - I've uploaded another version of this clip chart, this time with a major facelift!

Click here to purchase!

As you can see, it's more colorful and has cute little pictures on there to help my ESL kiddos who are new to the class understand a bit more of what it means to move down. I also included THREE different "wall of fame" options, PLUS a weekly behavior sheet that is bilingual! Enjoy!

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Cover of my new Teacher Planner!

My teacher toolbox from last year with updated labels :)

As I said, I've been very busy. I've moved into planning for my first week, without knowing any of the curriculum my new school will use...if anyone has any tips to offer for the first few weeks of second grade, I'd love to hear them!

Until next time, Mischief Managed.

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Let's Get This Party Started!

So I found out some wonderful news yesterday... I finally have another teaching job! I will be teaching second grade!

After working at a charter school in downtown Houston for nearly 2 years, with my boyfriend driving over an hour to and from work in Katy, it just became too much. His commute was just too long. He couldn't move his job, but I could, in theory, move mine. So, with a heavy heart I left my old school and Kinder kiddos to find a job teaching out here. Little did I know that would be so difficult!

I applied to so many schools I lost count ages ago. Finally, my mom emailed me an opening in a nearby school district, one that I didn't realize had school so close. I decided to visit the school's website, and fell in love with its mission statement and values. So the next morning, on a whim, I decided to dress up and go to the school to leave a copy of my resume and teaching portfolio with the principal, hoping that just maybe the position was still available.

My teaching portfolio :)

I could imagine this ending in a few ways:

1. I get there and they give me the stink eye and tell me (rudely) that the position is full. This had already happened to me once, so I was reeeeally hoping it wouldn't happen again.
2. I get there and the school is closed, and there was no one there to take my resume. I would assume that they had already filled the position.
3. I get there and the position is not only still open but they would love to schedule an interview RIGHT NOW!

Fortunately, I got there and walked into scenario number 3. Not only was the position still open, but they were literally in the middle of interviews scheduled THAT DAY! I waited a few minutes and the principal came out and I was able to give her my cover letter, resume, and a black and white copy of my portfolio in person. When he secretary tried to get me to leave them and schedule an interview, the principal said, "No, no, it's ok! Can you come back in like, half an hour? Go get some coffee and come back!" I was so excited!

So after going to Starbuck's for a little while and flipping through pictures of my Kinder Babies (sorry - first graders!!), I went back to the school. It was a rockin' interview, if I say so myself. Towards the end she said "I'm going to be honest with you...I have one more interview at 2. I'm not the kind of person to spend time deliberating. If I had to pick someone right now, I would pick you, hands down." 

So I ran home and actually filled out the application for the school district (oopsie....), and sent her an email letting her know I had done so. 36 hours later she called me and offered me the job as a second grade teacher!!

Now I can FINALLY stop stressing out about having a job, and start stressing out about a classroom! 

But seriously, I haven't let myself do ANYTHING for my classroom yet because I wanted to wait until I had a job. My poor boyfriend has had to deal with having everything from my classroom in our spare room in the new apartment. Yeah... you can't even walk in there. 

So yesterday I did my first project for my classroom....making these classroom rules signs from Kinder Craze, one of my all-time favorite blogs. I used most of the same colors she did (her classroom is to die for, by the way), changing only one. First I painted primer on the frames on Monday night, and let them dry overnight.

Tuesday, yesterday, I spread out a tarp on my patio and got to spray paintin'! I didn't take very many pictures along the way, because I didn't anticipate actually starting a blog soon... oopsie! Here they are sitting out to dry, though!

Like watching paint dry...

After waiting a few hours (not sure where the patience for THAT came from...), I went and checked on them. They were all dry, and only one needed another coat (teal one in the upper right corner). I'm not sure if I didn't shake the can enough the first time or if it was just a bad can, but it did NOT turn out right at first. When I first started spraying, it was super dark instead of the bright teal color it was supposed to be. I shook it again and sprayed again, and it got a bit better. After one more coat, it looked much better, though it was kind of bubbly. I ended up taking it in before it was totally set because it started raining. All that was left to do was pop in the rules I had printed at OfficeMax!

They're DONE!

Hooray! Ignoring my brightly painted toes at the bottom, you can see that they turned out super cute! I haven't decided if I am going to leave in the rules from Kinder Craze, or make new ones that are more my own. My new school (eek, so exciting to say that!) has a set of values that could go in there too. Problem is, they are about two words each (Like "Show Respect"), which doesn't really allow for much creativity and color. Only time will tell! Overall, I am so happy with how they came out.

I hope I can share more things that I make in the next few days for my classroom this year! I'm not sure when I will get access to it yet...but hopefully it will be soon! In the meantime, I will be printing, laminating, and cutting out some of the decorations I purchased from Maria over at Kinder Craze...you'll be seeing a lot of her beautiful creations in my classroom!

Testing, Testing...

After a year or so of deliberation, I have finally decided to just start a blog! I love to create resources for my classroom, and I wanted a way to share them other than simply having them on TPT. I'm not really sure what I'm doing though... hopefully in a few months I will look back at this post in embarrassment and delete it! Until then.... here I go!