July Currently and a Freebie!

I am SO excited to be linking up with Farley over at Oh boy 4th grade! I have wanted to do this link up my entire blogging career (approximately 5 weeks) so I'm glad the wait is finally over! ;)

Here is my July Currently

I have been super busy the past few days working on items for my tpt store. I made my first batch of clipart ever. Seriously, I rarely doodle and I never even thought about making digital clipart before. I just got a creative bug the other day and went with it! Here is my first set! What do you think?(Honestly! haha)

I want to give away one of my sets of clipart kids! If you would like to get a set of these kiddos for free, please leave a comment on this post saying you want to win! I will randomly choose a winner within the next 24 hours.

I have a lot more clip art items in the works including borders and more kids! I will be doing some flash freebies when my new items are ready, so please follow me on tpt and bloglovin to get some cute stuff!

Happy Tuesday!
Suzanna

Five for Friday! (June 27th)

Another Friday, another chance to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching!

It's the end of June, so that means the end of "bearable" temperatures here in Las Vegas. For any of you traveling here for the TpT conference and/or blog meet up, I would just like to apologize for our weather in advance! 

On that happy note, here is my Five for Friday!

This is a photo of my sisters car...broken down....on the side of the freeway. We aren't exactly sure what happened to poor old Jewel Rust Bucket, but since all of the oil was spewing out of the engine we aren't very optimistic! My mom and step dad live about an hour away from us, so after I took the twin to work they were already here to help.

I wasn't needed to help because of my amazing mechanical abilities, or my ability to get inside the car. Nope...I was needed because I was the only one small enough to ride in the car while it was hoisted into the trailer and then climb out the window. Anyone who knows me, knows I have a fear of ramps. I am always terrified they will either fall off or slip out from under the car.

The process of hoisting the car into the trailer took about 7 minutes. Seven minutes of me trembling as I can't see anything since I'm at a 45 degree angle being hoisted into a trailer at .5 miles per hour. My stepdad was very reassuring though...he said "Remember to keep your whits about you! If something happens, slam on the brake." I felt so much better after that! HAHA!

 I went to one of my fave places, Raising Canes with the twin and some friends for lunch! Yum!

 

 At Raising Canes our friend Carol gave us the CUTEST teacher bags! As you can see, Max is also a huge fan! 

I have been torn about which Masters program I was going to enroll in for some time. I know that I want to start immediately but I have been scared since I will be on a time crunch.  My boyfriend is going to graduate in about 2 years and, when he does, we are moving indefinitely. He wants to be a game designer and all of the jobs in that field are in San Francisco or Seattle. I was worried about not being able to finish in time, and then either having to hold up Nick's carreer or having to stay behind while I finish.

I looked up online schools because then, if I didn't finish here, I could just finish wherever we moved to. Then I saw the prices and almost went into Cardiac arrest! $25,000 to $30,000 for a Masters degree just isn't something I'm willing to do when I could complete it at UNLV for half of the price.

I knew that UNLV didn't offer any online degrees but then it occurred to me that I never check with UNR. Sure enough, they have entirely online degrees AND it will be the same price as UNLV! Problem solved!

I finished up season two of OITNB and all I can say is AMAZING! That ending was perfect!

To Union, or Not To Union? SOS!

SO happy to be linking up with Sugar and Spice for Wordless Wednesday this week! :)

I was so excited when I received my employment contract from the school district this week. The fact that I am only a few steps away from being a teacher after years of hard work is very exciting!

My biggest concern, which may not seem like a big deal to some, is whether or not I should join the union! I really don't know much about it, I Just know it costs a lot of money. I'm terrified that when I go to the district I'm going to have to make the choice immediately!

My question is, do you have any advice on the pros or cons of joining a union? Do you know of any better alternatives? Please help! Ha!

Suzanna

Follow me on bloglovin to keep up with my crazy adventure to teacherdom!

School Year Calendar FREEBIE!!

After some VERY helpful feed back from Erin at Learning to be Awesome, I have updated the freebie calendar on my tpt store.

I have added days of the week on each page, major holidays, and some cute fonts on the cover. ;) If you would like, download it and let me know what you think! Since my tpt store is only 1 week old, I would love love LOVE some feedback! :)

Suzanna

Monday Meet Me! Interesting things about me!

Greetings!

June 23rd already? I am certainly happy that this summer is going by quickly. I thought it was going to drag on for sure since, you know, I'm just siting here waiting to being my career life in August! Don't get me wrong, I'm all for relaxation, but I will enjoy it soooo much more next summer. When I am employed. And have money. And can go on vacation ;)


Now that that mini-rant is out of my system, I am linking up with the Teaching Tribune for Monday Meet Me!

The topic for today is 3 things that you probably didn't know about me. Since I'm such a new blogger there are a lot of things that you don't know about me. But I will try to make this interesting.

1) I have an identical twin and, believe it or not, we actually share a birthday! Shocking, right? What is a little surprising is that we have an older half sister who has the same birthday, she is just 5 years older! We didn't grow up with our half sister but were able to connect with her via Facebook when we were 17. Every year since then we have wished each other a happy birthday and gotten a huge kick out of it!

2) Allllll the way back in 7th grade I walked into my beginning orchestra class thinking I wanted to play violin. When it came time to get assigned our instruments and almost the entire class also wanted to play violin, I settled for viola instead. Little did I know that that decision could have changed my entire life. Nick was a year ahead of me in orchestra so we weren't in that class together and didn't really talk. Come eight grade, we were in the same orchestra class, and talked a little bit. Nick doesn't remember me much back then though, he says I was too quite and weird! HA!

High school is when everything changed. We played viola together, went to all of the orchestra concerts and festivals and trips together. We became best friends that eventually turned into so much more.

I have become very nostalgic about this lately since I will be teaching 7th grade next year. I'm certain that I will have some girl come up to me who is soooo in love.. Logically, I know she won't find the love of her life in 7th grade, but based on my personal experiences....you never know!

3) When I was younger I absolutely hated movies! I wanted to be outside. Running around. Not sitting. Whenever I went over to a friend or family members house and they asked if I wanted to watch a movie, I would literally cringe! I would have rather taken a nap then watch a movie. And since I was never interested in the movie, a nap was almost always involved. I honestly didn't really get a taste for movies until I was almost out of high school. The boyfriend loves going to movies, so it's a good thing I have grown to like them!

I really enjoyed the topic this week. Hopefully I will learn some interesting things about the other awesome bloggers who link up!

Happy Monday!
Suzanna

Five for Friday! (June 20th)

It has been one exciting week for this almost teacher! It is time to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five For Friday!

 

  Yesterday I received my official offer of employment from my school district!!! That means that I am only a couple of signatures and about $230 away from being a real teacher! A REAL TEACHER. I am beyond excited! Oh yeah, I am also waiting for UNLV to confer my degree...must call UNLV.

 I am officially up and running on tpt! I have been open for 4 days now and have 7 products listed, 5 of which are free. I am surprised with the amount of downloads I have received so far! I even have 2 followers! I just wish someone would rate my items so I know if I'm terrible...ha

I purchased the super cute clipart from Krista Wallden at Creative clips. She has such cute stuff! I also got an amazing starter pack of backgrounds and boarders from Erin Cobb at Lovin Lit. It was an amazing value, I couldn't pass it up!

 That game of Thrones finale doe...

 (We are really good at looking at the correct camera, in case you didn't know)

 One of my oldest and dearest friends convinced me to plan a trip to see her where she's stationed in northern Nevada. I have never really planned a trip just to go see someone before. We never had the means to travel growing up. Also, my mom hates traveling and thinks it's a waste of money. I, on the other hand, am waaaay excited to see the world once I start teaching! Fallon, here I come!

Summer time is wearing my kitten out! He isn't used to love all the time!

I had an amazing week! How was yours?
Suzanna

Updates!

Since Mrs. DeCarbo over at Sugar and Spice is on vacation, there is no Wordless Wednesday this week! What to do?!

I guess I will just give a little update on what I've been doing. The past few days I have been hard at work getting my tpt store up and running. I only have 6 item uploaded so far, but it is slowly looking more like a store and less like a nothing! Here are some of the products I uploaded!

The Smell of Time Lesson Plan

This is the only actual lesson plan I have uploaded so far. It was a lesson that we used during student teaching in between units and I really enjoyed it! The passage the lesson is based on is somewhat abstract, but my lower-level sixth graders got the grasp of it with some explanation and discussion!

2014-2015 Daily Agenda Pages

I wanted to get more comfortable with actually creating products, so I decided to make a some daily agenda pages. I put the day of the week but not the date so they can be used year-round. There are 8 colors to choose from.  They turned out not hideous pretty cute. I am happy!

Secondary Student Survey

This is a great survey to really get to know your students! It is 50 questions long and intended for 6th grade and up. I also created a smaller survey for elementary students :)

My shop has been officially open for three days and I've already gotten some downloads! Hopefully I will get some feed back soon so I will know if I'm terrible! Ha

Happy Wednesday
Suzanna

Monday Meet Up! (June 16th)

Greetings!

Last Monday I attempted to link up with the Teaching Tribune for the Monday Meet Up and I successfully wrote a post...I just so happened to be 17 minutes too late to link up! I made sure to get this post written early so I can link up this week!

This week we were supposed to write a letter to ourselves about what we are doing here online. I have been blogging for almost an ENTIRE month already, so obviously I have some history to share. ;)

During practicum 1 I was lucky enough to be placed with an amazing teacher named Susan! She was so nice, only a few years older than me, and an outstanding teacher to learn from! She is the one who introduced me to this crazy world of blogging and TpT. Without her, I NEVER would have wanted to start a teaching blog. I probably wouldn't even know they exist! I didn't have a great experience during practicum 2 so my mentor and I didn't really talk about much. I am fairly certain she didn't blog though. And my student teaching mentor was amazing!...but blogging is DEFINITELY not his scene!

 I am so thankful to have been placed in Susan's classroom!

Happy Monday!
Suzanna 

Father's Day Freebie!

I want to start selling on TpT but I wasn't sure where to start! There is so much information to learn! I decided to make a simple calendar. How hard can it be, right?

I was in for a shock. It took me hours to make a 14 slide calendar! The formatting was off, I couldn't figure out how to erase blank pages, and trying to add things that I had forgotten ruined everything. EVERYTHING.  Hopefully I get faster as time goes on, or else a 50 page packet will take me years!

The calendar is up at my tpt store. I would be so grateful if any of you lovely tpt bloggers could share any advice to make the process go faster! (i.e. how to erase blank pages from the middle of a document!)

Happy Fathers day to all the dad's out there!
Suzanna

Five for Friday : June 13th

Haaaappy Friday! Even though I'm on summer vacation and I'm not as busy as I am during the school year, Friday is still exciting nonetheless. I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. 

Here is what I've been up to this week! 

 

My twinie, good friend Shelly, and myself!

Shelly and her Husband at their wedding last December!

Yesterday I met with one of my good friends and her husband for a "goodbye"dinner. Shelly's husband is in the Air Force and they will be leaving for Japan....tomorrow Well, really, they will be leaving for Colorado, then Nebraska, then Utah, then Seattle, the San Fran and then Japan! Regardless, yesterday was the last time I will see Shelly for probably years. Shelly is understandably nervous but I know she will have a great time in Japan!

I have been netflixing like craaaazy!  I decided to take a trip down memory lane and re-watch Dawson's Creek. Is anyone else as upset as I am that they changed to song during the opening credits?! I'm on season 3 and am just now starting to get used to it.

I've also been watching the new season of Orange is the New Black. I'm only on the third episode but I'm already hooked.

 I'm still patiently waiting for UNLV to confer my degree so I can go down to the DOE and apply for my teaching license...

I was blog stalking a couple of days ago and came across a blogger/teacher meet-up in Las Vegas. I just so happen to live in Las Vegas sooooo I might be am definitely going! I told my friend/future co-worker Alicia over at Encouraging-Curiosity about the meet-up and she is just as excited! I can't wait!

It is summer after all, so I took some time out to just reeeelax! 

Thanks for stopping by!

P.S: If you like free font, stop by The Teaching Tribune later today for Free Font Friday!