I Reached a TpT Milestone :)

Yup that’s me up there jumping for joy! After two years sharing my work with others on Teachers Pay Teachers, I have hit a sales milestone! Uh-maz-ing!
So people ask me, how did you do? And the biggest question - how do you have the time to even make things for TpT? You have triplets for crying out loud!

Here’s the answer. It is not a secret. This is how I did it:

1 - I create material that I need for my own classroom. This is key for me. It is so much easier to make things, have my class test it out, and then put it up on TpT for other teachers to use. I don't force myself to think up new things. I don't jump on any band wagons. I just move along making things that I can use and need and guess what? Other teachers needed it too!

2 - My triplets do sleep! I do not! Haha! Lots of work done in the wee hours of the morning. Plus, my girls know all about TpT. They know I am working on “school stuff” on my laptop. They know being a teacher is hard work! They are my #1 supporters! Love them!

3 - I keep active on Facebook and with my blog. I collaborate with other teacher authors to share ideas and to motivate each other!

So, to say thank you for this big event! I am offering a paid product for FREE for just 1 week! So hurry up and grab it! 

Thank you for your support! You rock!

Let’s Celebrate The Learning Chambers - Enter to Win!

I'm very excited to be joining some of my fabulous blogging friends to help Stephanie from The Learning Chambers celebrate 1,000 TpT and Instagram followers.  I mean look at all of the FABULOUS bloggers that are involved in this giveaway!!

To celebrate, we are giving one lucky follower an Amazon Gift Card worth $100!!  That is just in time for summer and it would definitely help purchase all of those books that you want to read this summer.

Make sure you enter the giveaway by entering in the rafflecopter below.  Good luck friends!  Fingers crossed!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Pick 3 - June

I love this Father’s Day trophy and actually have been making it for quite a number of years now. This Pinterest link is actually to my post with directions on how to make it! I know many schools end before Father’s Day on June 19th. Here in the northeast, we go until the end of June so we always make a Father’s Day craft to send home.

I love this end of the year idea! I made them last year for my 1st grade team. They were a lot of work. I will say that. The hardest part was getting them to the right pixel to upload them to a photo place. You can’t just upload the jpeg that you make in Powerpoint. You have to resize it. I googled how to do it and used Katie’s from Little Warriors tips that were in her comment section on her blog post to figure it out. I used Costco because they were the least expensive at a 5x7 print for just 59 cents. 

This year, there are 98 1st graders! I don’t have the power to make almost 100 of these for my team so I am going to skip it. I will however, return to making these as they are a beautiful keep sake :) 

I wanted to include a great gift idea for teachers too! I saw this Pinterest pin last year and loved it so much! I went ahead and made them for my girls’ teachers! I changed it up a bit. The hardest part was finding the Amazon cards with the cute arrow that matched the font! They came in denominations that didn’t work for me. So I had to put two together! I think it came out great! The pic below is just 1 of the 3 that I made for their teachers! 

Head on over to other great link ups below. I hope you found these 3 pins helpful! 

If you are out for the summer, enjoy! I go to the very end of June! 

Be sure to stop by next month :)

An InLinkz Link-up

Northeastern TpT Meet Up - May 2nd

What an amazing experience I had at the Northeastern Regional TpT Meet Up in Binghamton, NY! It is difficult to express in words just how awesome I felt all day at this great event. I felt like a star struck, red carpet treated, teacher-author! I can’t say enough just how important I felt among a room full of incredible teacher bloggers and authors.
I met so many wonderful NEW friends. I saw Jen Jones from Hello Literacy! I listened to her presentation full of tips and tricks and insightfulness! And I sat next to THE AMY from TpT! She asked to see a picture of my triplets! THE AMY! OMG! She is like a celebrity to me. She is an amazing person who is there for us teachers! Just awesome!

So after leaving my home with my husband and kids at the eye opening hour of 5am, we made it to my college town of Binghamton, NY by 9:30. Just in time for some breakfast and to take in the beautiful room with the amazing donations, teacher grab bag table, fun props, and fabulous people. Check out the swag I got in my swag bag! So much fun!

Do you see that picture in the upper left and lower right and corners? Those are the donations that came from so many wonderful TpT sellers! Everyone was a winner too! I was one of the 1st six people called! I was so excited! I ran like I was on a  game show to the seriously generous gift card for $100 to Teaching in the Tongas clipart store! Um, yes, you read that right. I won $100 of the best clipart! I was able to choose the sets I wanted and I have so many! I am so thankful to Jen for this super awesome prize that I was lucky enough to win!

Thank you to the ladies who helped organize such a fulfilling day! They are listed on the poster above. They were so kind and helpful. They planned everything out to a tee. We had the opportunity to participate in round tables which addressed many important TpT topics. I took pages of notes! The ideas, tips, and strategies were priceless!

Check the beautiful group above! What a day to remember! Thank you to all the talented people that organized the event! Thank to all the generous people that donated to the event! Thank you to my hubby for driving me and to my girls who left mommy go to “A teachers pay teachers meeting ALL DAY” haha! Love them all! 

Pick 3 - May

I love these sooooo much! I showed this to my first graders and they loved them too! So we are totally making them for Mother’s Day! I made a sample and it came out pretty good! I used an opened paper clip to roll the strip around and then slipped it out. I think I might get wood bbq screwers and wrap them in floral tape for the stem. The paper I tried made the poppies flop. My goal is to post pics of the one we make with some tips on how to make it easier for the littles to do!

I have made this for Mother’s Day before! Super easy and cheap! Came out beautiful! Washers bought from Home Depot, scrapbook paper and ribbon from Michaels. 

Yup, I’ve done this one too! Love it as well! 
I love crafts! I love Mother’s Day! I hope you enjoyed my Pick 3 for May! See you in June! 

An InLinkz Link-up

TpT Northeastern Meet Up :)

I am so super excited to be attending this AMAZING meet up in my aluma mater town of Binghamton, NY this weekend! 60 awesome teacher-authors and bloggers are getting together to share our knowledge, thoughts, tips, tricks, and love of what we do! It is going to be an epic day! I will be sure to post pics and an update of the greatness that occurs!

But...for now, I must go down memory lane as I prepare to travel back to my college town after 20 years! 

I think about how I was a college student back in the day when there were no cell phones. No one had a computer in their dorm room. There really wasn’t the “internet” as we know it. I was a Literature and Rhetoric major and wrote all my papers on a Brother word processor! I found a picture of it! It used floppy disks! OMG! I am dating myself!

Oh, those were the days! I LOVED college! It was the best time of my life! Independence! Friendships! Ordering pizzas at 3am! Pulling all nighters! Going to class in my pajamas! Taking the bus to frat parties! Studying like crazy to do well! I did it all AND graduated CUMA SUM LAUDE! Thank you very much! I loved every single wonderful second of it! So I can’t wait to see how much my home away from home has changed. It will be surreal to drive through campus! 

Should I wear my Binghamton t-shirt that is falling apart after all this time but that I REFUSE to throw away as I believe it is my one last connection I have to my college years (well, that and all the pictures taken on my Kodak Klick)?

So, 2 great things to look forward to this weekend!
And, I have teamed up with my great friends to offer a $1 deal for the day of conference only! Check it out below! 

Teacher Appreciation Giveaway!

If you give a teacher a gift card......they will LOVE you forever! Soooo, my bloggy friends at ITeach First have brought to you a fabulous giveaway to let you know that we think you are wonderful! You do so much each and every day that you deserve to be treated to a gift card!
Take a look at the great places you could win a gift card to....

So....I thought it would be fun to let you know what I would get if I was the lucky winner of 1 of these 4 gift cards! What catches my eye at each of these 4 fabulous places? Well, here is what I would indulge in with my gift cards!

Did you know that Target has Lilly Pulitzer? I know! It is brand new and just arrived to stores this week! I heard they are selling out fast so I might have to run to find these goodies. Check out that lovely iPhone 6 case! Gorgeous for the summer!
And I also love this Lilly Pulitzer scarf from Target!

I am not a HUGE Starbucks drinker but I do swoon and drool over the frappincinos. Add caramel and I will do a dance for it! So anything cold, topped with whipped cream, and drizzled in caramel is for me. Yup, anything from Starbucks that looks like this....

I have PRIME so bring it on. My wish list on Amazon is almost as long as the one I have on TpT :) I could get two of these with a $25 gift card!

 I love these dots! They are dry erase and kiddos can use them like a dry erase board! Great for guiding reading!
They are called WALLPOPS and you have to get the dry erase ones that come with a marker. Of course, I want alternating colors and that costs more because they come in a pack of 3 all the same color.

I would love to get more CLIP ART from awesome TpT sellers! I have my eye on a few sets. 

What would you buy? Head on over to iTeach 1st for a chance to win 1 of these 4 great gift cards! Good luck! Click on the image below to head over to ur collaborative blog to enter!

Check out what some my blogger friends would buy if they won! 
An InLinkz Link-up