Currently: March 2015

I am so excited to be linking up with Farley for my first Currently! ...and even more excited that I am actually sticking to my weekly blogging goal so far :)

Listening

I'll be the first to admit that I am horrible at laundry. Our dryer has this handy little "wrinkle prevent" option that makes it restart every so often so the clothes don't get wrinkled but really I use it as a snooze button. When the dryer first beeps, I don't have to hurry up and take it out so I don't forget (which happens constantly with the washer) because the sound of it restarting a few times lets me leisurely take my time to empty it :)

Loving

I am LOVING all of the clip art I bought during the big TpT sale!! 

I spent way too much but I'm excited to have new things to create with that I really needed.

I also discovered some new clip art artists which is always fun!

Here is a picture of one of my furchildren helping me shop during the sale :)

Thinking

Definitely been dreaming of a beach vacation recently!

I LOVE the beach. I love the breeze, I love the smells, I love walking in sand, I love playing in the water, I love just sitting and enjoying the views. I would love to live near a beach, I think I'd go every day!

I just realized it's been over a year since the last time I was at a beach and that is far, far too long.

This is a picture I took a little over a year ago while we were on a cruise.

This is Shoal Bay East on the gorgeous island of Anguilla.

The cruise port was technically St. Maarten but we took a ferry to Anguilla :)

Any other cruisers out there??

Wanting

I would LOVE to be able to snap my fingers and have all of my math units and phonics packs done! I love creating, don't get me wrong but ohhhh how amazing it would feel to have them all done!

If you haven't seen them, I have a big pack of First Grade Math Units 1-9 that are super big units that have 3 differentiated levels of worksheets for each math concept in them as well as centers, cut and pastes, etc. for each and every math concept. I absolutely love them but since they're so big and so heavily differentiated, they take f.o.r.e.v.e.r. to make. 

So what did I do?

....Promise the world 9 more units, of course!

But really, I received so many amazing emails from teachers about how much the units were helping their students and making a big difference in their math achievement (cue the onion cutting, I'm a big baby) that I just felt like I had to keep creating them. When I first mapped them out, I had originally planned out 18 units like I'm doing but I had no idea how they'd be received and never thought I'd have so many people contacting me. I thought I'd be able to just slowly put them together and take my time. Ha! I get soo many (wonderful) people requesting which concept the next unit will be that now I feel some intense pressure to get those babies out there! But it's a good thing :) It keeps me motivated and creating! 

So right now I am working on the First Grade Math Units 10-18 Bundle which currently has Unit 12 (Adding 3 Numbers), Unit 15 (Telling Time), and Unit 17 (Geometry) in it so far!

If you have any interest in seeing what my math units are like, I wrote blog posts about a couple of them:

Blog post about Unit 9 - Place Value

Blog post about Unit 12 - Adding 3 Numbers

Blog post about Unit 15 - Telling Time

EDIT: All 18 first grade math units have now been made and I have more math blog posts than these that show them in action! :)

Did I mention that I also have somewhat of the equivalent for literacy?

EEK!

Meet my Phonics No Prep Massive Mega Bundle!

Except this bundle, I did something a little crazy. I started it out at 20% off the price of all of the packs included (which was only 1 pack ago).. but that's off of only the packs that are included so far. I plan on adding a lot more packs. As many as TpT's file size limit will allow! :) And you're only paying for the ones that are currently in it AND getting them at 20% off at that, so it's basically a ridiculously smokin' deal if you get the bundle early. I kept going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to do it but I have so many amazing people that get these packs every time I post a new one and I wanted to be able to reward them. So basically, the earlier you get it, the more free packs you get :) 

EDIT: This bundle is now complete! & I even have a Phonics No Prep Bundle Part 2 now!

 Phonics No Prep Massive Mega Bundle

Ack, I ramble! Basically I was just trying to say...

holy moley I have a lot to do!

Needing

To keep up this blogging momentum I've finally started! I've had my TpT store for almost 2 years now and have always wanted to be a blogger like all of my teacher heroes (yes, I have teacher heroes) but I haven't been doing that great of a job. Once I decide to write a blog post, it ends up being like 4 pages of typed up ideas and then the idea of actually sitting down to write it seems so daunting that I don't. Hence why the blog posts I do write are soo long. This happens with my products too! I just can't ever do anything halfheartedly. Grumble grumble. :) Like I said in my last post, I need some blogging friends to yell at me when I start slacking. Anyone want to be my bloggy friend? :)  

Spring Break Plans 

House projects! We bought a house about 6 months ago and have been having a lot of fun fixing it up and decorating. It's so nice to finally be in a house. I did apartment living for sooo long and always said, "Someday when I have a house..." for all of the things I wanted to do so it's been great getting to do those things. Having a house is a lot of work though! Mr. Giraffe and I decided to be Cheapy McCheapertons and landscape our yard ourselves instead of paying someone else to do it like everyone else (i.e. intelligent people). Mr. Giraffe actually did an amazing job of putting grass in our backyard though. It was all dirt and small patches of rough, dead grass when we moved in and now it's pretty, green grass. So now we decided to fix up the rock areas and shovel rocks. Yes, shovel rocks. Can I just say that there are so, so, so many rocks?! But I am committed. I even went to the hardware store and bought my own shovel and leather working gloves. :)

Look at some of the pile we did the first day!

And that was actually just the picture I snapped while we were doing it the first day! It's been days and days of this shovel-rocks-after-dinner party so the pile is HUGE. We gave up on the tarp a long time ago... and the flamingos (Mr. Giraffe's parents flamingo'd our house awhile back so that's where those came from.) keep going higher and higher. I'm excited to get some projects done once all the rocks are out of the way but I am not looking forward to putting them all back! :) It's been fun working outside with the Mr. though. I spend too much of my "down time" working on the computer so it's great to get outside and do a little work.

Well that was fun! I typed too much as I suspected I would. Thanks again to Farley for hosting this link up! I'm excited to read others' Currently posts. I'd love to hear from you in the comments! Have a great week, all!  

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