Tell Me More and I'm a Winner!!!

Wow, I am just sooooo excited!!! I had been planning to join Amy's Tell me More linky party, so I logged into my computer this morning to begin composing my blog post. I decided to quickly check my email first. I won a $50 Amazon gift card from Amanda Madden over at Teaching Maddeness to celebrate her 500 followers milestone!!!

  Wow, I was so shocked! Of course I had to log on immediately and start shopping! I had commented on Amanda's blog that I would be purchasing more non-fiction titles for my classroom library because my personal collection is lacking in that area. So I stayed true to my word and bought 7 National Geographic for Kids books! I can't wait for them to arrive. Here's a picture of my titles. (I spent a little over the $50.00 once tax was added on)

Anyways, a huge thank you to Amanda. I cannot wait for these awesome books to arrive!

Now for Amy's awesome Tell me More linky party. I've only recently started blogging but I am totally addicted. I love reading everyone's posts. I get so many helpful tips and resources to use in my classroom. But I love this linky because it gives me a little glimpse into the lives of these wonderful bloggers. So here are a few random things about me.

I love everything Disney! I'm slightly obsessed actually. I even read forums about visiting Disney World, even though I don't even have a return trip planned. Two years ago we took our dream trip to Walt Disney World and stayed onsite for eight days! It was a magical trip! I would love to visit the world again, but I would also love to take a Disney Cruise. Maybe I can convince my husband to let me do both, right?

Sundays are family dinner days. Family has always been very important to me. When my Grandmother was alive she held Sunday dinner at her house every week. A normal Sunday usually involved at least 15 dinner guests. If there was a birthday or holiday to celebrate the typical guest roster floated around 30+ people. My mom now hosts Sunday dinners and the crowd is much smaller, but my entire family still gets together for holidays and special occasions at least a few times a year.

I adore Dutch licorice! I don't know many people who even like regular black licorice but I love Dutch licorice, even the 'dubble zout' (double salt) My mother's parents immigrated to Canada from Holland when my mother was just a baby. So my childhood was filled with numerous dutch treats like chocolate sprinkle sandwiches, speculass cookies and olliebollen. But by far my favourite treat has always been salty Dutch licorice.

I recently conquered one of my many addictions. Unless you're Canadian, I don't think you would really understand this addiction. Some say a 'double double' (two cream, two sugar) is the quintessential definition being 'Canadian'. Near the end of the school year I gave up my daily Tim Hortons cup of coffee. Every morning began with dropping Cameron off at daycare and then swinging through the drive thru for my large 'double double'. I still have my morning coffee, I just grab one from my Keurig now. My favourite current flavour is Jamaica me Crazy by Wolfgang Puck.

 Anyone have any other favourites they would recommend? Thanks for reading,

Fabulous Find Friday

I'm linking up again with Elizabeth at Fun In Room 4B for a linky party called

I scored a few really good deals for school this week, along with something a little bit different. I will share my school items first. First off I got some plastic drawer units for my classroom at 50% off. I've been keeping my eye open for a sale on these, and I finally found it.

I think I will leave off the casters and place this along my back counter to hold math games/centres/manipulatives or something along those lines. I bought two, so I basically got one for free. They were $9.99 each at Canadian Tire.

Michael's had a buy two get one free sale, so I picked up a few items and applied my teacher's discount as well. I had a gift card from awhile back so my deals felt even better. No debit to my account or charge to my credit card.

My last find is not school related, but I stumbled across these while shopping online for my son's upcoming birthday. My son and husband have been obsessed with playing Minecraft lately, so I ordered this Lego set at Amazon.com.

Not exactly a great deal, but if you compare it to the price these are fetching on eBay, I guess its a pretty good deal. Anyways, while searching for this Lego set I ran across this website to create paper crafts. A.G. Papertoys. Basically you print off templates to fold, cut and paste little paper minecraft characters. Here's a picture off their website.

You should know that this is NOT a child friendly craft, the cutting and folding is extremely intricate. Definitely an adult or older child job. But they are just sooooo cute and Cameron LOVES playing with them. A great afternoon activity. Plus Cameron is happy to 'play' minecraft using his imagination and I'm happy to get him away from the xbox. Hooray! A quick picture of Cameron with some of his new paper minecraft toys.

He played with them all afternoon cooking up various scenarios, he's a very happy boy! Thanks for reading and Happy Friday!

Fabulous Find Friday Link Up

I'm linking up with Elizabeth at Fun In Room 4B for a linky party called

Basically everybody shares some awesome items that they recently scored. Sounds good to me. Here we go. Item #1 is......

my Scotch Thermal Laminator. I just recently picked this up at Walmart for about $26.00. The prices on these things have dropped like crazy. I remember them being closer to $80.00 when I first looked into them. Anyways, I love it! Especially since I'm printing off so many great things for my new classroom off of TPT.

The second item I'm blogging about are these tasty Skinny Cow Ice Cream sandwiches. I'm trying my best to eat healthy, still trying to whittle away the weight that crept on over our lovely Canadian winter. It's pretty hot here right now so a tasty cool treat is the perfect snack. I adore the combination of chocolate and vanilla. Yummy and a figure friendly indulgence.

Speaking of Canadian winters, I ran across another linky party, calling for Canadian bloggers. So of course I'm linking up to this party as well. If you are a Canadian blogger be sure to visit Patti at Madly Learning to link up.

Thanks for reading,

More great finds stateside

Yesterday, we took a drive across the border for some shopping and dinner after swimming lessons were done. We decided to travel a bit further than normal to Watertown. A trip to Watertown is amazing because Watertown has a Target!

In Canada we do not have Target....yet. A big box chain of department stores has been taken over by Target in Canada, but I don't think that any of the stores have been converted to Target stores yet. Although I'm not sure how similar they will be anyways. The products can vary vastly across the border, there are many products/brands that we simply cannot get here in Canada. A trip to our local Walmart is much different than a trip to Walmart in the USA. Anyways, we inevitably come home with a cart full of products simply because we don't have them here. For example the following food items found there way into the cart yesterday, simply because we can't get them here.

We can't get the sugar free version here

Don't these look delicious! I plan on making rice krispie treats with them

Cameron's special treat - Our family seems to have a chocolate mint obsession

I love this stuff! I bought 4 boxes! I've never even had regular instant cream of wheat, or any cream of wheat for that matter.

Anyways I couldn't resist buying some classroom items as well. I'm trying to curb my spending but there were some really cool things there that I just had to have of course.

Some stickers, self inking stamps, koosh balls, erasers, birthday cakes and a cute little box

Just a short post today, but look for a post from me tomorrow related to planning using a cool technology product.

Thanks for reading