TBT: Our Wedding....

*One Year Anniversary* 

So we just had our first wedding anniversary on Monday (we spent the weekend in Asheville to get out of the new house and celebrate, so that was VERY nice)!! In honor of our recent anniversary, I thought I'd complete a #THROWBACKTHURSDAY post to share a few wedding ideas and pictures with you!! Sorry it only took a year, but I hope you enjoy it! 

The Destination: We decided on the Beloved Hotel at Playa Mujeres (a few miles north of Cancun), Mexico. It was an all-inclusive resort, which was absolutely amazing.

The Party Favors: 

If you could zoom in, it says: "Don't be blinded by our love; take some shades!" The baskets were rented from the hotel, so I didn't have to bring them from home. One basket contains sunglasses, and the other holds handheld battery - operated fans (This was inspiration from a cousin's outdoor wedding). They were bought from Oriental Trading, and very cheap.

These were also from Oriental Trading. I saved the ones that were left over for the treasure box in my classroom :)

The Guest Book: 

$4 from Walmart. I bought a frame, and will {one day} place our picture in it to put up on the wall. This *amazingly* fit flat in the suitcase and was never ruined! :) 

The Wedding Party Gifts: 

Spanish Phrases for Dummies!! (We were in Mexico...) These were $1 each - impulse buy from Office Depot. I bought like 20 of them, lol!! 

 

Yes, I had to pack one full suitcase for wedding accessories and gifts. They couldn't be assembled until we got there. The girls received custom t-shirts for our morning brunch, the necklaces and earrings to wear for the ceremony, and a cute little personalized poem. I also bought their hair and makeup at the spa, for their main gift, because the jewelry was VERY cheap. They knew about their gifts ahead of time :) but the t-shirts were a surprise. The boys received a "coupon" for one 30-minute jet-ski session with the groom. Yes, that was his idea. That's what he wanted to do. Then, of course, everyone got the Spanish for Dummies book  :) along with a pair of matching sunglasses to wear during the sunny ceremony (I couldn't survive without glasses outside, so I didn't expect anyone else to either)

Everybody's role in the wedding party (bridesmaid, maid of honor, mother of bride/groom) is listed on the front with our wedding date in the middle (7*21*13)

The numbers on the back made an excellent guessing game! It's equal to the number of years I've known that person. My mom=my whole life. LOL. And my number stands for the number of years I've been waiting to be "Mrs. Kramer" (the number of years since we met. lol) and I met the Mother-in-law one year after we started dating (only because she lives in NY)

The bouquets: 

The four girls had a mixture of yellow & white roses with white ribbon. Mine was the opposite - mostly yellow with some white roses mixed in, but with yellow ribbon. I didn't want a white bouquet for me, and yellow for the girls, because then it wouldn't stand out from our dresses. This was the PERFECT blend.

The centerpieces: 

These were *Very* Cheap. I made the print outs, brought the ribbon with me, and cut the bows after we arrived. The white flowers were made from tissue paper, and the vases were pop-out cardboard (All was packed flat, and then assembled when we arrived). That set came from Party City. The yellow flowers are artificial flowers from Wal*mart (99 cents per piece!) Bringing these from home saved me about $600 (at least) versus paying for real floral centerpieces. 

The dancing shoes!

Flipflops: $3 from Old Navy. Stickers from walmart, stuck on with modge podge and extra tape for just in case!

My Something's: I never did get a picture, but my something new was my tiara, which perfectly matched my something old - my grandmother's bracelet and my something borrowed - one of my bridesmaid's earrings that she wore on her wedding day. My something blue was my garter - which was from Walmart. I didn't care that it was under $5 and I knew my husband wouldn't, either! lol

The boy's suits: The boys wore Sean Jean separates (from Macy's). We got them on sale, and each groomsmen (and my dad) only paid around $60 for a matching set of gray/plaid dress pants and vest. They all were kindly asked to wear a white button down, black shoes and socks (just for the ceremony).

The trial hair-do at a local salon: With my wedding being a destination, I did a trial hair style with Taylor Brooks Salon. They were awesome, and I went right after my birthday, so I used my $20 off coupon :)

The blog/wedding website update before the trip: http://sarahanddanwedding.weebly.com/ This site was super easy to use, and I was very impressed with out great it turned out!

The silly father/daughter dance routine: Since I have been a "Daddy's Girl" since Day #1, I knew I need to do an upbeat song to eliminate tears. So I started with a slow-dance (instrumental version of the Dirty Dancing Song: I've Had the Time of My Life), and created a custom choreographed dance to a custom set of clipped songs. So our slow-dance quickly transitioned after about 30 seconds, and we broke the ice with "Do You Love Me?" (Now that I can dance... HEY!) by the Contours, and a few other fun dance songs including the Cotton Eyed Joe and the Chicken Dance, ending with "We Are Family" as our finale. It was the best start to an amazing reception, and it really set the mood for the whole night.

The songs that I requested for everything! First dance, perfect! Cake song, perfect! Bouquet toss, Garter toss, Walk-out songs, perfect, perfect, PERFECT! I honestly started thinking of songs WAY in advance. Fortunately, my sister-in-law got engaged a couple of weeks before us and she had her wedding in March. Her music was so awesome throughout the entire ceremony & reception, that I thought about the songs for my wedding the entire 9-hour car ride home. And I continued thinking about it during every jog that I took. I tuned into particular Pandora stations (oldies), thinking songs may pop up that would be perfect. On spring break, I officially started organizing a list on a Google Drive document, that could be updated on my cell whenever and wherever I was. I also started searching daddy-daughter dance routines, and formed the entire ensemble myself (with a little help from a friend ;) hehe).

Piece of Advice:  Honestly, they say that wedding planning is REALLY stressful, and time consuming. For me, it really wasn't that bad. I maybe had 30 emails back-and-forth with my planner, and never spoke to him on the phone. He broke the process up into bearable sections. I would think and plan ideas in my head for weeks before I got back to him. When we finalized one decision, he would pick something else. Yes, it was a LOT of decisions (which is difficult for someone like me), but I did have a vision in my head, and I took my time (it took all 7 months to get everything straight), and it really came together in the end. 
The most important thing is to visualize your perfect day over and over. The more visualizing you do, the more it comes together, and the more you enjoy it when it all does come together. I envisioned my dream day every morning when I woke up, when I went to work out, and when I went to bed. I am so glad that everything worked out perfectly, but I don't think I would have been so pleased if it wasn't for all of the planning I had done in my head.

Our photographer made a very awesome slideshow of all of our wedding pictures, and you can see that video here:

So after everything, I don't think anything could have POSSIBLY been more perfect for us. I wish I could re-live those moments over and over again. Every girl (and guys too, I suppose) deserves that happiness on their wedding day! Please let me know if you have ANY questions about my planning, budgeting, or wedding that I didn't cover here (I started to slack with the details at the end, but thanks for sticking with me)! I'd be HAPPY to help, and especially happy to help make others' dreams come true, like mine did at the Beloved Hotel on 07.21.2013 ....

Lunch Bunch

"You teach something called 'Lunch Bunch'?! What kind of class is that?!" 

That's right..... I'll get to that answer. But first, let me explain:

This year, I'm looking forward to the fact that this is the *FIRST YEAR* (out of 5) that I will be able to roll into the SAME EXACT position. I will be teaching most of the same kids from my caseload last year, and my schedule will be very similar. My position requires me to focus the majority of my schedule on benefiting students with social/emotional skills, and to "push-in" (Co-Teach) students for main content areas, as needed. Therefore, I only pull students into my classroom (resource setting), for morning priming and Lunch Bunch, to teach social skills.

My program (split between myself and 3 parapros) have a group of lunch bunchers for each grade level first through fifth. Our program revolves around students who have an identified need for social skills instruction. We create groups that include both our students as well as a variety of same-aged peers. We have a rotation, so different kids come each week, but the same group will come twice per week (either on Monday & Wednesday, or Tuesday & Thursday).

Each week is geared around a particular social skill, so we work on role-playing and discussing the topic for a week or a few weeks, and we may build on the topic, depending on how complicated it is. We have an essential question, and short discussion, and then we often play a game. Here's what our bulletin board looked like last year:

1st-3rd: Working on Nonverbal Cues & Perspectives to Achieve our Bucket Filling Friendship Goals
4th & 5th: Working on Reacting Appropriately to Various Social Scenarios

Typically, the first and second grade plans are very similar - just differentiated for lack of experience (1st) or higher order thinking (2nd). I usually keep 3rd on the same track - but just add much more difficulty :) And for 4th and 5th, I usually plan for them to do a quick discussion on a social scenario, and then they get to chat about whatever they like (there's more teachable moments in listening to what they have to say, anyways!)

Some of the quick games that we play are:

    *Hangman

    *Bingo

    *Headbandz

    *Apples to Apples Jr.

    *Uno

    *Crazy Eights

    *Jenga

I've used SO many awesome resources from other great bloggers, but I plan to make my own social scenario cards and games based on the needs of my students from difficult scenarios that they've experienced. So, STAY TUNED! :)

I love my job to death, and it's definitely a one-of-a-kind position. So hopefully people like you can read my blog and find ways to implement some of my teaching strategies into your part of the world. 

Wordless Wednesday

What a cute linky party idea!! I had seen it before, but this will be my first time linking up with Miss DeCarbo (from Sugar and Spice) for Wordless Wednesday.

 

CONFESSION #1:  Okay, honestly... This picture is not from today. It's actually from a few weeks ago... but I was at a lack of words when I saw this. I would have shared this sooner had I not been busy moving and starting summer school! I just KNEW that I HAD to share this, because this was the best chicken soup for my soul that I think I've ever received. I mean, how cute is this end of year gift?!

CONFESSION #2: I guess this picture isn't quite wordless.... It's quite WORDY, in fact. But oh well.... Anyway, here is a close-up of the tag:

 

To remain confidentiality, I've blocked the student's name. However, this was a student that I had taught for a short time at the end of the year. He was in my small group for the week of the CRCT, but he had another resource teacher as his case manager. So we primarily worked one-one-one for Affective Skills to develop anger management. I was teaching the "Unthinkables" from the Social Thinking program, but all we could do was talk about it. With little time and no other small group participants, we never got the chance to role-model situations. With that being known, here's the one thing that I guess really clicked in his head:

(Picture courtesy of Kelley Hively)

*Click on the picture to visit her blog: Baldwin Elementary S.C.O.R.E.S Program

If you teach social and emotional skills, and haven't heard of Social Thinking, please see more at https://www.socialthinking.com/ and visit my Pinterest boards here and here! 

To teach your kids about Glass Man, you may watch this Glass Man Video which was made to created to specifically model inappropriate and appropriate behavior: 

I have to give credit to the awesome team of teachers who made this video!! Aren't they great?! :D

BOTTOM LINE: I guess it's easy to make a difference, after all. I NEVER would have guessed that I had made such an impact on this child, but I guess I did! Overall, when times get tough, ALWAYS REMEMBER to *KEEP CALM [find your Chicken Soup] AND TEACH ON!* 

Then, look back and smile because you did.

 ;)

Click the picture below to return to Miss DeCarbo's blog and the other Wordless Wednesday posts!

Currently July 2014

I don't think I've posted in a year. I remember posting this time last year with WEDDING BRAIN. I cannot believe that our 1-year wedding anniversary is coming up in a couple of weeks!!!

Well... Here's what's new!

Since this time last year, I've moved twice, started two new jobs, and remained busy the entire year! Overall, I would say 2014 has been an awesome year, and I can't believe that this year is almost halfway over! 

After moving, I'm especially addicted to HGTV to get inspiration for decorating our new house. We've done some painting and updating appliances, but so far: Nothing major. It took a few weeks before we actually moved in, but we moved in on my birthday (ugh) and we've now been in the house for a couple of weeks already! I'm so relieved to be done with moving, but still have SO much reorganizing and decorating to do!!

Well, that's all I have time for right now! Must. get. some. sleep (I feel so old)!! 

Click here to go back to Farley's Currently Linky Party!

Good night!

:)

~Sarah

TPT Social Skills Purchases That I 100% Recommend...

DON'T YOU JUST LOVE TECHNOLOGY?! 

In my previous posts, I complained about how my snipping tool wouldn't work (because Windows 8 is a little over my head in some areas). Well, in an effort to solve my excessive pop-ups problem, I found that I had "Launch [-ed] Google Chrome in the Windows 8 mode." Is anyone else a fan of Google Chrome? I love it until I can't figure something out. Well, now that I've got it back to "desktop mode," I can now have the internet window open at the SAME TIME as Snipping Tool. WHEW! I feel like I got my life back....

Moving on.... to what I came here to write about in the first place: 

So, the other day, last week, I finally submitted my receipts for PTA reimbursement. The deadline honestly snuck up on me, so I took advantage of some of the things on my wishlist, and I bought a million great activities to use during morning priming and lunch bunch. I can't wait to prepare everything and put it to use, but here's just a few of the amazing products that I purchased:

This is SUCH a great skill to practice with students who have Autism. I purchased this gem from the all-star Jivey! :) I've had my eye on it for a while. Click the picture to pick it up and place it in your shopping cart!

And I got the following items from the AMAZING Dabbling Speechie! Click each picture to go to the TPT store and pick them up! I just bought the bundle for $30, and if you're interested in that, click HERE.

These are all amazing, and I'm still in the process of printing, preparing, and organizing them all, but I recommend them to anyone who needs materials to teach social skills. You can read the Dabbling Speechie's blog here, to see more of the amazing things she does!

Some of her ideas come from the wonderful Michelle Garcia at Social Thinking.com 

Have you ever heard of SUPERFLEX? 

Well, Michelle Garcia and the Social Thinking team are to thank for this wonderful curriculum, and I have a Pinterest board of ideas to get you started. It may have some social materials mixed in, but it's a pretty great collection of ideas!! :)

That's all for now! Enjoy your new products! (Because I know you'll go buy them.... right?!)

~Sarah :)

Tesla, Bones, and Stomach Virus

What do these three things have in common? Well, it's how my week wrapped up after Tuesday.

Fortunately, Wednesday was a MUCH better day. It went along a pretty normal day, and around 3:15 I received a message from the hubby saying that he was able to borrow the company car for the night. :D

FYI: The last time this happened, we naturally had to go out on the town. {naturally, right?!} And we went to Dan's favorite restaurant: Houston's (it's in Buckhead, anyone ever been there?!)

This time was no different. Except this time, we invited a couple of friends. We went back to Buckhead, but I wanted to go somewhere I've never been before. And then our friend suggested BONES. (FYI: The best steakhouse EVER)

So it was a definite turn around from the kind of day that I had on Tuesday, that's for sure! Whew!

Here's some pictures from the night:

Pretty sweet, huh?

My best teacher friend and I

THE FRUNK.
Yup, that's right. The battery is under the floor boards. So you get an extra Trunk (in the front) for extra storage. How cool is this?!

No joke, this is the navigation / camera / multimeadia screen (which is larger than the screen on my laptop). You can show two screens at once, which is pretty cool. The screen that we are looking at is the energy consumption, so you can be conscious of how well you're driving :)

 So, after a night in the Tesla, I decided that it is now my Most Favorite Dream Car, ever!!! I hope Santa brings me one this year!!  (Hey... It's called a DREAM CAR, right?!)

Randomly, I got this cute little piece of Chicken Soup from a student in one of my co-teaching classes on Thursday. TOO SWEET. I folded it and put it in my treasures box. :)

Back to topic: So Wednesday was amazing. Then Thursday was a pretty normal day, as expected. I got home, ate dinner,and took a nap. (SIDE NOTE: I've been going through an awful sleeping phase for the last two weeks... I can't turn my mind off at night, no matter how exhausted I am. and therefore, I stay up until past 12 and can NOT bring myself to get up at 6am. Does anyone else ever go through these phases?)

Well, on Thursday I decided to cut back on my caffeine so that it would help me sleep better. That was a failure, seeing as I fell asleep right after dinner. Then I got up, showered, and went to bed around 9, hoping to get a good night's sleep. Just before I went to bed, I started to get a stomach ache, which made me even more motivated to shut the lights and go to sleep so that hopefully it would go away....

Well, it didn't. I woke up time after time with hot/cold flashes and feeling nauseous. Finally, I got sick in the middle of the night, and it went downhill from there. For the rest of the night, if I did try to go back to sleep, I found myself dreaming about how I need to get up ASAP and start making sub plans.

Isn't it the WORST when you don't have emergency sub plans, and you have that over your head to keep you from resting when you're feeling so green?!

Well, unfortunately, because my routine is so different from day-to-day, there's no way I can come up with emergency sub plans to have on hand for emergencies like this. I had to suck it up, and write them so that my amazing parapros could print them out before the sub came.

Ugh, so after all of that, I finally was able to sleep all day and feel MUCH better now. Hopefully I can make it to the end of the year without taking any more sick days!!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

~Sarah :)

One of those days...

Everyone has those days.... 

....The kind of day where it's just one thing after another.

Well, I haven't had a day like this since I could remember. Although it really wasn't too bad (it could have been much worse), I can definitely use some chicken soup :).

It all started before I could even get out of the house this morning. And then I knew that something was up when I turned on my Pandora station (to cheer me up) and of course it only wanted to play songs from the early 2000's that I've just heard wayyyy too many times, which really started to annoy me. Then, when I gave up on Pandora (only because I have the free version, where it would only let me skip a certain number of songs), I tried playing a new upbeat song, and somehow it didn't want to work.

Well, finally it did work (just in time, because I pulled into the school parking lot before it was half-way over), and I completely forgot that my day started out rough. I skipped into school remembering that breakfast was served by our PTA because of Exceptional Children's Week :). They served catered Chikfila, and I couldn't be happier (especially since I haven't had those Chicken Mini's since high school!!). It wasn't until later that I realized that this was just one of those days that was just not going to stop.

For instance.... I forgot something VERY important at 9:00 (making several people very angry) * I made a student cry at lunch bunch * the power went out 10 minutes before dismissal * my student's bus happened to be late, and then...... when a rescue bus DID come, the database was still down (from the power outage) * so we couldn't print out the bus info for the sub bus driver.

So on a normal day, we dismiss at 3:20, all students and staff gone by 3:50. With the new dismissal (added 30 minutes to make up from the storm) that started yesterday, we dismissed at 3:50, and should have been gone by 4:20, but the bus didn't come until 4:30, and didn't leave until 4:45.

WHEW!

At that point, I blamed everything on the full moon (I certainly checked when I got home, and it's not, but it really seemed like it was!!) The part that really got me down was that I couldn't help but feel like EVERYTHING was all.my.fault. I hate that feeling! (Especially when I know I can't possibly be responsible for the power going out, the bus being late... etc. )

Well.... so when I got back to my desk, I pushed my to-do list out of the way, and did something relaxing. :)

Do any of you use picmonkey.com? Well I'm addicted. I can't remember who's blog I was reading that introduced it to me, but I read someone's tutorial on how-to-do-something-rather (I just can't remember!) and I've been hooked since. Also, on Sunday night, I was reading Kristin's post (from A Teeny Tiny Teacher) about organizing her desktop, and I was like:    :-o    This is what her's looked like:

Click the picture to go to Kristin's post!

Isn't it beautiful?! I knew instantly that I must have one!! So I followed the links that she posted from Mrs. M (from Color Me Kinder) which led me to Heather (from Moritz Fine Designs) and I saved Heather's template so that I could make one later. And then I went to bed. That was Sunday.

So as I was sitting at work this afternoon thinking what I could do to unwind, instead of packing my things and going home, I got started and made my own :)

I started with Picmonkey.com. I clicked on "EDIT" and uploaded the wedding pic that I use as my current background on my work computer. I didn't even have to worry about creating a canvas and figuring out the resolution size, because I already knew that this size worked as a background for my screen (You may want to look into that, though if you're not sure! Just follow Kristin's tutorial, or ask and I'll help you out).

Then I faded it by sliding the "contrast" bar under the "Exposure tab." (I apologize for not having step-by-step pictures! I'm still figuring out how to use my Snipping Tool with my Chrome app on this Windows 8!)

So then it looked somewhat like this: 

I added some overlay labels, laid them out (I found that 8 fit on my picture), and I clicked on the gray color, and faded them so that my picture below could still shine through.

After sorting through my messy desktop, I listed out the categories that I would like to have (it worked perfectly that 8 boxes fit, because I wasn't sure if I wanted any in different sizes like Heather's template).

Then, I added some pink banners, text boxes, and the decorative corner overlays, and WAH-LAH!

So, it turned out like this: 

I am 100% in LOVE with my new desktop :) After I saved the picture to my computer from picmonkey.com, I right-clicked on my desktop, went to "Properties," and uploaded it to be my desktop picture. You can check out Kristin or Annie's post to learn how. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know, and I'd be glad to help you!

Here is what it looked like after I finally saved it as the background and got everything all organized:

Isn't it like a breath of fresh air? It's so amazing :)

So after all, I got to sit back and look at the Happiest {absolutely best} day of my life... and I suppose my day sort-of evened out after everything. Hopefully I can get through the remaining 46 extended days (51 total) without another day like this! (*Fingers crossed*)

*On another note, ................does anybody watch How I Met Your Mother? I've only been hooked on this show since last January, but I REALLY loved last night's episode! I can't WAIT till the finale! 

Until next time,

~Sarah :)

**PS: Can anyone figure out my question from my March Currently??? The answers were: "Grey and Yellow" ....... The pictures above may give you a HUGE clue!!    ;)