Currently Loving: Ice Days && Yoga Pants

This blog post brought to you by....Icepocalypse 2014 && a cup of delicious coffee! Honestly there are few things greater than days off of work to lounge in yoga pants and hoodies. I know that there will more than likely be make up days involved (crossing my fingers for them to be excused), but this doesn't happen often in South Carolina so I'm enjoying everything about the icy hot mess Charleston has become. {{No sense in being mad at something you can't control...so keep calm && lounge on.}} 

Our 2.5 day break from reality has given me time to make a dent in my forever expanding to do list (think: tame the chaos that erupted in my closet, lesson plans, grading papers, junk TV). It's also been a recovery period from the madness that the 100th day of school brought into my life. The kids were AMPED...I'm talking jacked up like sugar was being pumped into their veins via an IV, but hyper kids I can do. The computer blowing up...that I can't do. A clogged up toilet with its disgusting contents floating much too close to the top of the bowl threatening to find its way on the floor...CAN'T DO {{barf}}. After a lot of deep breathing I composed the panicked/frazzled/about to snap teacher trying to explode, put my 100th day tiara on && went into crisis management mode. I unplugged my printer from the now completely dead computer and set up shop in the back of the room at a student computer. I have no Smartboard, but I at least have access to email & printing capabilities. Added bonus: my kids think I'm a genius & the strongest teacher alive for moving & hooking up the printer.  HOT mess, but I'm attempting to make lemonade out of the sour puss mess one lemon at a time. 

After the Y2K14 beast was tamed our day of celebration began. For math each friend presented the 100th day project that they made at home and then we hung them up in our school's gallery. Talk about pumped? Our walk through the 100th day gallery turned my typical power walking maniacs into turtles trudging through peanut butter. The 100 pennies approach was definitely the most popular (I definitely made a few of them when I was responsible for making a project), but my favorites were the ones that showed off the personalities of their creators. It doesn't get much cuter than "I made 100 deers because I like deers." Love LOVE the projects that you can tell the kids helped to make.

For our writing block we wrote about life as a 100 year old. Let's just say that I have a lot of future grumpy old men and women in the works... "I will whack people with my cane", "I won't let anybody help me across the street." Despite their grumpy antics as old people, I was impressed with their writing. Opening sentences and closing sentences actually included without me wanting to poke my eyeballs out?? What!?! Our zen like writing block made a turn into the land of belly laughing and rolling on the floor when the "Aging Booth" app made its grand entrance. It might be the best 99 cents that I've ever spent. The app takes a picture of you and turns you into a member of the 100's club in a matter of seconds. Hilariously scary...mine has me saving pennies for the plastic surgery I'll need if I end up looking anything like my before and after. Eeeks!

Lunch, special area, and literacy centers sped by and before I could call the custodians AGAIN for the clogged toilet it was the end of the day. To end our celebration we took these sweet treats out to recess...for once they preferred "made from scratch" over the boxed stuff. Super simple recipe && absolutely delicious chocolate chip cupcakes that were kid tested and kid approved...yep this is reality. I whipped up the cupcake toppers using Publisher, my Slice machine, and chevron paper straws. Easy enough && the perfect treat for making it through 100 days of school.




Before they left each of my energetic loves got a picture underneath our door banner (major sparkle swag alert) && I propped my feet up on my desk and ate bon bons....wait...not right...I grabbed my binder and headed to PLC...barely awake.

Snap to last night and I finally had the motivation to get their "thank you for doing a project" reward pieced together. I found sparkly pencils at Wal-Mart that I intended to be sharpened and waiting to be used on Monday morning. Well traffic jams happened and my plan to get there early didn't happen. The pencils didn't make it onto their desks and I'm so thankful they didn't because how cute did this reward turn out?!?! The cupcake toppers and the reward tags will be up and available in my TPT store later today as a flash freebie.

Until next time, live, love & sparkle on!