Holiday Gift Giveaway: Twilight ECLIPSE DVD

Holiday Gift Giveaway: Twilight ECLIPSE DVD

This is the movie of the holiday season!! Twilight Eclipse will hit stores on December 4th, 2010 and you can win it here!!

Just go to Country Girl, City Life's blog and enter to win!!

Girls on the Run

In September a friend and co-worker of mine decided to coach a Girls on the Run team at our school.

"Girls on the Run® is a non-profit prevention program that encourages preteen girls to develop self-respect and healthy lifestyles through running. Our curricula address all aspects of girls' development - their physical, emotional, mental, social and spiritual well-being. "

*Taken from the Girls on the Run website*

It's an amazing mentoring program that incorporates running. I loved the idea when my co-worker asked me about it and we set out to start the club at our school. We were allowed to have 8 girls for our first season. We decided to start with the 5th grade girls that would soon be moving on to Middle School.

We met twice a week for 90 minutes and learned valuable lessons about how to love and respect ourselves. At the same time, we trained for a 5k race (3.1 miles).

This past Saturday was our race! It was the first race for 7 of our girls! What an exciting day it was! We ran the Jingle Bell 5k race at Old Dominion University.

EVERY girl finished! I am SO proud of what these girls have accomplished and am looking
forward to our Spring season!

Our team signs!

The team BEFORE the race

Our team AFTER the race
The girls with their finisher medals

Creative Scraps Challenge Week 4

Hello there! I decided I wanted to try taking part in a card challenge this week! I've been stalking blogs for months and have never attempted to enter any of the challenges. Anyway, I didn't have much time (or creativity) this week, but here's what I came up with...

This card was created for the Creative Scraps Challenge at Scrappin 5 Little Cupcakes. The challenge was to create a card using the colors blue, black, and ONE other color. We were supposed to use the Cricut cartridge Life's A Beach, but I don't have that one. I used my Everyday Paper Dolls cartridge. I chose to add yellow to my blue and black since there are a lot of "blue and gold" schools out there. My stamp is from Stampin Up! Warmest Regards. It's not my best work, but for the lack of time and creativity I think it will work!
Thanks for looking!

*Squeeeeeal*

Say hello to my little friend......

**AMAZING**

My first project :)

Dan said I should make a LARGE snowman... so I did :)

How to Build a Jungle Tree!

Hello blogging world! It's been awhile and I'm sorry for that. Life isn't all that interesting when you don't have kids to talk about :p Now that school has started though I have 22 of them to talk about!

Before getting into the year I HAD to make my classroom look amazing. I love walking into a fun, creative, welcoming classroom each morning and wanted the kids to feel the same way. The school's theme for the year is SAFARI. I decided to go with "Jungle Safari" because there was a lot more "out there" for Jungle. The first thing that popped into my head for decorations was: A TREE! I wanted an awesome tree in the reading corner. In my head I planned this tree for months. How tall would it be? What would I make it out of? What should I hang on it? Will the kids like it? Will my room stand out from everyone elses? (I like to be different.... I wanted my room to be the "cool room" this year!)

So, the night before school started for teachers (I know, I successfully put the project off ALL summer!), my husband and I went to Lowes. We spend about an hour looking at materials and setting up a game plan. We came home and got working!My husband is fond of his garage and his tools. This project gave him the perfect excuse to use both.

Here is how we made the tree (along with pictures!)

Materials:
1 2x4
3/4 inch plywood (or any plywood would work)
screws!
1 PVC pipe (as tall as you'd like the tree)
4 10 foot skinny pvc pipes (in the plumbing aisle)
Butcher paper to decorate with!

The first step: making a wooden tree stand so that the tree would not fall over!

Dan got to buy a new tool for this so he was excited.

Next step: Putting the "frame" together!

Stick small pvc pipes into larger pipe. Stick into stand!

It's starting to look like a tree! The next step was the hardest (for me at least!) Decorating!!
I used brown and green butcher paper and about 6 hours to complete my tree.

Trunk is covered!

Branches!

Next, I needed leaves! I added huge leaves first. It definitely didn't look right so I added a bunch of smaller leaves. I also added a blow up monkey and some cut out bananas and coconuts.

I still wasn't happy with it.The branches were too droopy and there weren't enough leaves. So, I continued working!

I used fishing line to tie the branches to the ceiling. I also added lots of leaves. I used pipe cleaners on the leaves to get some of them to stick up.

The rest of my room looks something like this:

Looking in through the door.

To the right. My Guided Reading table and "Good Work Board"

Attendance and Behavior


My desk area. Sloppy... I know! School hadn't started yet :)


"Front" of room.


Math and Centers Board


Sign outside my door


The beautiful quilt my mother-in-law and sister-in-law
helped me make out of my students work! (Outside my door)

That is it for now! I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and my classroom tour! More to come at a later date!

3 Years and More to Come

I'm a little late on this post (almost a month actually), but I figured it's better late than never!

Dan and I celebrated our 3 year wedding anniversary on May 19th. After work we went to the Japanese Hibachi to celebrate with delicious food! We came home and enjoyed an amazing cookie cake that Dan had ordered.

*we aren't sure why they put 'Be Mine' on the heart*

I can't believe it's been 3 years! As corny as it may sound, I love my husband more and more each day. I keep finding little things about him that make me fall in love all over.

Here's to many more years babe!

*us after dinner*

Spring Break with (Part of) the Family!

My goal for the next week is to post a few blogs that I've been meaning to post for a LONG time. Please forgive my LONG overdue rantings and pictures.
To start off the blogging week I wanted to write about my Spring Break here in Virginia Beach. My mom came down for the week because she hadn't been here in over a year. I wanted to show her all of the house updates and I missed our mother/daughter bonding time. She came down the Tuesday of vacation sick as a dog. The doctor had just diagnosed her with severe bronchitis. I felt awful for her, but was SO glad she was there. We goofed off and spent a few days together before my brother, his girlfriend at the time, and his daughter came to join us. I hadn't seen my niece since Christmas and is was awesome to see her again. Children grow up SO fast! I couldn't believe how big she had gotten! She's talking and walking and has all kinds of personality!
It rained one day so we decided to take a trip to the Virginia Aquarium. What a great time that was! Elizabeth absolutely loved all of the sea life and it was a lot of fun watching her interact with the different exhibits! Enjoy some of the pictures I took!

Lizzie wasn't afraid of anything! She cried when we had to leave the petting area!Turtles!HAMS :)My brother is a nerd!

Hope you enjoyed our trip to the aquarium! I hope to be back soon with more adventures!

Blogging is Hard to Do

I haven't blogged in a long time and I'm sorry to those of you who actually read this. It's been a busy year and blogging hasn't been on the top of my priority list.

I am no longer a Navy Wife. I guess I should start a new blog, but I think I'm too lazy for that sort of thing. My husband got out of the Navy in September. He is now a full time student at ODU. He should be finishing up his Civil Engineering degree next Spring. He's working REALLY hard to finish up.

I have been teaching. Teaching, teaching, teaching. I started a program at school called Read 180 this year. A lot of work and time, but the kids really loved it and grew a lot in their reading.

More to come at a later date.

Blog Candy!!!!

WOW! Check out Debbie's Birthday Blog Candy here! She is offering an amazing collection of rafting supplies to 1 lucky winner! Head on over to her blog to enter!

Hurry! You have until May 26th to enter!

New Moon Blog Candy

Twilight fan????

Want to win a paperback copy of New Moon along with the DVD???

Go to Country Girl, City Life's blog and enter!

I have :)

AWESOME Blog Candy Alert!

So I want to win this blog candy! I bet you will too!

To celebrate her Ippity Adventure, Vicki is offering up a SWEET Blog Candy Package with a potential to up the Booty!!!! One lucky winner will get all the loot, including Sweet Thoughts of Spring from Ippity Stamps, The latest SU border punch from the SAB Catalogue (the punch shown here is just for depiction purposes, the SU punch is set to arrive in the next day or so). Additional Stamps from Hanna Stamps, Stamping Bella. MFT, Clear Stamps are in this initial prize package along with Journals and Stickers from Making Memories, Rub ons from Crate Paper, a Cuttlebug embossing folder, some cards from Rob & Bob Studio, Stickers by Jolee and some assorted Ribbon.

Now, how can you win? Enter a comment on this post and if you are not a follower, please add yourself in. Entering a comment and becoming a follower on her IPPITY BLOG will give you another chance to win.

NOW GO!!!!!!!!!!!