Tuesday, January 1, 2013

A year in review...

What a year it has been!  2012 left the frugal girls with some AMAZING memories!  Looking back on all that we have accomplished this year definitely brings a BIG smile to our faces!  Starting our blog definitely made it in the top five on our list of things to do in 2012... and look where we are today!!!  We are SUPER excited to see what 2013 has in store for us!  Here's a quick look back at some of our FAV memories from 2012...  

 This is a Melissa and I ringing in 2012... exactly one year ago!  My oh my, time sure does fly!
Later that same night, as the ball was dropping, Matt popped the big question and of course I said YES!  Well... actually, the first words out of my mouth were "what are you doing..." hahaha 
Truth be told,  I thought he fell or was fooling around, I totally was not expecting him to go down on one knee and propose!  We were officially engaged during the first minute of 2012!   


Our fabulous coworkers nominated us for the 2011-2012 Teacher of the Year (Brittany) and Rookie of the Year (Melissa) so we were able to attend the Gala together. Plus we got parking spots side by side, SCORE!!!


SPRING BREAK 2012!  Melissa and I decided to get a jump on wedding planning and ventured off to St. Augustine to check out some venues and of course hit the beach... after all, isn't that what spring break is all about!  We just HAD to snap a pic as we passed by the oldest wooden school house in the U.S.A. - how adorable!

 

Spring break should be longer than just one week.... there's absolutely no way to fit it all in!  And believe me, we had an agenda!  This was Melissa and I on one of our many trips to the beach... post spring break!  The weather was PERFECT!


Then we celebrated the end of a great school year with a trip to CANCUN!!!
This guy would fit perfectly with my classroom theme... FROGS!



 FOURTH OF JULY!  Melissa and I decided to go ALL OUT!  She picked up these snazzy party favors on sale at TARGET!  I ADORE THIS PIC!


We continued to celebrate our nation's independence by grubbing out on this delicious FEAST!  Our good friends hosted a seafood boil fit for a king... or more suitably, a QUEEN! 
 It was DEE-LISH-US!  Can't wait to do it again next year! We all decided to make it a 4th of July tradition... YUM!


Oh and how could we forget... MY 30TH BIRTHDAY!  Ugh, the dreaded dirty 30, it sounds so OLD! (sad face) To be honest, I really wasn't looking forward to my birthday this year.  I wanted to hold on to my 20ies just a little bit longer!  haha Melissa and Kelly really know how to make a girl feel special!  Love them!  SIDE NOTE: This turned out to be the HOTTEST day ever!  We managed to snap a few cute pics before we were dripping in sweat!


Since I down in the dumps about turning into an old woman, Matt decided to get a bounce house for me!  WE HAD A FREAKIN BLAST!  Oh to be a kid again!   It was the perfect gift to make me feel young again! 


We continued the birthday festivities a couple weeks later with Melissa's 27th birthday on October 1st!  We went for dinner at one of our FAV restaurants, HARRY'S!  They have the absolute best mussels we've ever had and the pecan crusted trout is A-MAZ-ING!  It makes me hungry just thinking about it! Mmm...mmm


OH YES WE DID!!! haha Miss Nelson and Viola Swamp made their annual appearance in our classrooms for our Literacy Celebration this year (our version of BOOK-O-WEEN).  You should have seen our firsties faces! PRICELESS!  Melissa and I have been doing this bit for 3 years now and we've got it down to a science.  She starts off dressed as Miss Nelson and reads both of our classes the childrens' classic we all know and love, Miss Nelson is Missing.  I pretend I have a meeting to go to and scurry off to transform myself into Viola Swamp.  At the end of the story, Melissa pretends that the kids are being rude and acting up (just like in the story) and she's had enough, so she runs out.  And that, my friends, is when I make my grand entrance!!!  I read the sequel to the first story, Miss Nelson Comes Back and teach our little ones to respect their lovely teachers!  Our next step is to take it to Broadway!  hahaha


In November, our good friend Jessica welcomed sweet baby Kennedy into the world!  Here she is with her fabulous sister Chey who threw her an absolutely adorable baby shower!  SO PRECIOUS!  No babies for the frugal girls until after our weddings!  We are sweatin' for the dress! 


We also found a hidden gem here in Ocala this year called "A Cut Above"... its a fabulous little boutique where we happened to stumble upon some even more fabulous deals in our many shopping trips there.  The owner (also named Brittany) hand picks some of the cutest dresses we've ever seen!  We L-O-V-E it!  It's a definite stop when we are perusing through town! Check out A Cut Above's website! They deliver and they blog!! It's a win-win!


MERRY GRINCHMAS! We picked up these adorable shirts to go along with our Grinch themed day!  We'll have to go back and take pics of all our adorable anchor charts and activities that we made.  Most of our ideas were inspired by things we've seen on some of our fav teaching blogs!  Who doesn't love the GRINCH!!! SO fun!


And of course, THE GRANDE FINALE!  Melissa and Rob got ENGAGED! I'm SO SO SO happy for them both!  Matt and I were so excited we got to be there for this oh-so-special moment!   


And there you have it frugal followers... this was only a glimpse at some of the happenings of 2012!  It truly was a great year and we are hoping to top it in 2013!  Lucky number 13, right?!  Melissa and I had a blast this past year and are so very excited that our blog is up and running so we can connect with all you fabulous people!  We love blogging about our lives as teachers and as friends and all the stuff in between!  We will keep you posted with what we're working on in our classrooms, our frugal shopping finds, and, of course, our wedding planning!  After all, we now have TWO  weddings to plan and we couldn't be more excited!  (thank God for PINTEREST)  Wishing all our frugal followers and their families and HAPPY NEW YEAR, may this be your BEST year YET!





Sunday, December 30, 2012

Gus and Linus Freebie


We hope your little mathematicians enjoy these "math brothers" as much as ours did. Please feel free to download these anchor charts for FREE!

So sorry for the error! It's been fixed! 









We love teaching with anchor charts, but we're sure you'd agree that having it pre-made is ideal! Teachers are busy people! We'll have some activities to use in math centers using our favorite "math brothers" very soon!






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<a href="http://www.classroomfreebies.com" target="_blank"><img alt="Classroom Freebies Manic Monday" src="http://www.theorganizedclassroomblog.com/images/stories/classroom-freebies/manicMondayOrangebutton.png" /></a></center>

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Chain of Events

Happy (almost) New Year Everyone! We hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating the holidays with your friends and families. We go back to school on Wednesday, so we are back in school mode a little bit already. We wanted to share with you something we with our students just before Winter Break started. We did an author study on Laura Numeroff. She is one of our favorite authors and our students love love love her books. First we used her books to teach "cause and effect" which later led to a lesson on "chain of events." Below you can find the anchor chart we used to introduce a CHAIN OF EVENTS. 

After reading If You Take A Mouse to the Movies by Laura Numeroff we created our own chain of events by writing the events that took place in the story on strips  of paper (pre-made of course) and connecting the completed strips to create a "chain of events" with our groups. Our teams (we sit in groups of 4... totally Kagan) worked together to create the chains and then shared what they had made with the class. All of our firsties had a great time creating the chains all while COOPERATIVELY working together. To bring in a little WHOLE BRAIN teaching into this lesson we taught a chain of events motion where students made a circle using their fingers and linked them together to show a chain. They did this motion while saying "A chain of events are events or actions linked together." We let the students tug at their "chain" and discussed how without one event, the other may not happen. Rest assured, our students are masters at recognizing a chain of events in a story! Woo! Mission Accomplished!


*One more thing*
To complete our author study we sent Laura Numeroff an email using her contact information on her website and when we received not one, but TWO emails from our new favorite author the kids were THRILLED! It was adorable! 

Monday, December 24, 2012

Wedding Ring Bling!!!

 Some very exciting things happening for the FRUGAL GIRLS this year!  There's going to be another WEDDING!  I couldn't be MORE excited for Melissa and Rob!  I love them both!  Rob secretly planned to have all of their closest friends and family meet at the beautiful Gaylord Palms Resort in Orlando so he could pop the big question in front of all their loved ones!  It was perfect!  Way to go Rob!  He also did an amazing job on picking out the ring... it is breath taking!  Matt and I were so excited and honored to be part of this special moment for two of our best friends!  Oh and I forgot to mention the most important part... SHE SAID YES!  Now the frugal girls are in the midst of planning TWO weddings in the upcoming year!  So exciting!  Here's some pics from our oh-so-exciting day...
 
 

OH MY WORD! Take a look at that BLING!
 



The newly engaged couple featured with thier adorable Mr. and Mrs. champagne flutes (compliments of yours truly hahaha)!  The glasses were designed by our good friend Katie, over at Katie's Kreationz, you can find her and her amazing work on etsy and pinterest.


Such an amazing day!  I can't express enough how unbelievably excited I am for two of my best friends!  I love this time of year!!!

Friday, December 21, 2012

Science Notebooks

This year our state is following the Common Core Standards (Florida style). This calls for much more integration, which we LOVE! We use Composition books as our Science Notebook using a ribbon bookmark and a large envelope in the back for "extras." We have found that some of our firsties struggle to write on the small lines and have a difficult time creating graphic organizers, so many times we just make a quick template ourselves and create two to a page so it can fit in the notebook easily. This has worked out very nicely this year. When we return from winter break we will be finishing up our Sun and Stars Unit and moving into our Plants Unit. 

We hope to create another garden in our school. 




Thursday, December 20, 2012

Ringing in the New Year... freebie style!

The Frugal Girls have already been thinking about the upcoming New Year. Since New Year's Eve 2011 is Brittany's engagement, it is something we're really looking forward to celebrating! Besides, who doesn't love staying up late, drinking too much champagne and watching fireworks! New Year's is a blast! We go back to school on January 2nd this year. BOO HOO! So we made this foldable inspired by The Tattooed Teacher. She made an adorable 2012 freebie so we thought we'd return the favor and make one for 2013. Please feel free to download! 




Frugal Girls Go Thrifting

What's a girl to do with an entire week to herself before Christmas? It's not hard for us to find an excuse to go shopping. Especially when our winter break started last Friday (the 14th)! We jam packed our "sched"with lots of bargain shopping! Even around the holidays we refuse to pay full price! I'm sure all of our teacher friends agree, we did not become teachers for the huge Christmas bonus!

Yesterday we set off for a day of Thrift store Shopping. Most of the thrift stores in our area were offering an ADDITIONAL 50% off! Just when you thought it didn't get any cheaper!!! Since Brittany is busy planning a wedding and Melissa being her honorable maid, they had a few MUST FINDS on the shopping list!

Brittany found this gorgeous mirror for the wedding for a whopping $5! Score!

We found some incredible deals on our day of Thrifting! We both managed
to spend under $50 and got many different things for
Christmas gifts, wedding decorations and books for our classrooms!

Brittany found tons of beautiful frames that she is going to use for the wedding. We are going to use some chalkboard paint to create signs.
Check out our pinterest for examples!


We ended our day with a quick stop to the mall. Tonight we are celebrating our DOOMS DAY- Christmas and Cocktails party so we needed a few last minute things.  The Frugal Girls REALLY wanted to see Santa but he looked a little tired. Poor Santa also had a line of 903589432093 children waiting to see him. We had to settle for a wave and a picture from afar. Growing up is no fun!

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