Five for Friday 8.8

I'm linking up with Doodlebugs for Five for Friday for some summer & getting ready for school randomness...

[one]

First, I'm so excited to be averaging between 25 and 30 miles a week for the entire summer!

For those of you who don't know about my blog title, I ran track & cross country in college and created the blog as an undergrad assignment... my running addiction + reading class assignment = teacherwillrunforbooks!

I've been wanting to get fully back into running for a while (I kinda gave it up for a bit after college... at which point I'd been competing since 7th grade!... 10 years!). Every time I try to get back into it I run for a month or so then stop for a while, then run for a few weeks, then take a few weeks off... you get the idea... Well I've been faithfully running now since the end of May (faithfully meaning 5-6 days a week) and I'm feeling better than I can remember for a LONG time. Sorry for the run rant but I'm just so excited about how great it feels to be making a comeback :)

[two]

The laminating has begun! I haven't been able to get into school to print out any of my new labels, tags, posters, etc. (I left my keys at school & now they're waxing the hallways ugh!) but I bought a cute birthday wall set and laminated those babies so they last me at least 2 years!

[three]

I've been working on my first grade set of morning work & have the set completed! Click above for the full year bundle. Links to the individual 10 week sets in the description! Be sure to check out my TPT store for the second grade sets too!

[four]

As you may or may not know I live a mile from the ocean and have been continuing to love my summer life lounging there! Loved the pretty clouds this past week!

[five]

Not the best picture, but we get tons of wineberries on the golf course we live on (I didn't know what wineberries were until last year, basically small raspberries) I made a delicious berry cobbler/crisp type dessert... it was CRAZY easy... I found the recipe searching through pinterest, check it out here.


2 more weeks of summer!!! Going to be spending a lot of those 2 weeks in my room... pictures to come next week for sure! Have a great week both those of you back at school and those of you enjoying what's left of summer.

Penguins & Holidays!

I'm linking up with 5 for Friday today with a little penguin & holiday fun...

I've been dying to weave my love of penguins into my curriculum the past 2 years and this year, with a unit ending 2 weeks before the break and not wanting to fully start our next unit gave me the PERFECT opportunity! Especially since we are moving from fiction to nonfiction... I could read fiction penguin books, make the transition to non-fiction, then compare fiction and nonfiction, oh how I love when the stars align!

Thanks to Amy Lemons' penguin unit I have all kinds of craftivities and printables to use this past week and this coming week to help us try to enjoy this cold! Click the photo below to get your own copy!

New door decs for December! Penguin themed of course. My kiddos made these craftivities from Amy Lemon's unit above! I loved that one of my ladies picked the big blue bow tie to put in their penguin's hair!

Much love to Scholastic for their points that have been helping me build my classroom library over the past 2 years. This time, they helped me to buy presents for each of my kiddos. I loved that they had a "2nd grade" pack with multiple copies of multiple levels so that I could get a just right book for each kiddo.

Gotta love snow days (except for when you're making them up in June!) See my last post to get the recipes for these delicious goodies!

 

Be on the lookout for posts this weekend on some of my kiddos latest guided reading picks...

Now it's time to get snowed in for the weekend with the hubby & the puppy!

Who Doesn't Love a Snow Day?

As much as I will DESPISE making up the snow day come June, it was SUCH a nice surprise to have a snow day today :)

 
However, I did learn a few things before 6AM...
#1 Be thankful for your co-workers (one of mine texted me excited about the snowday that I didn't even know we had!)
#2 If there's snow in the forecast, don't plan on that being one of the days you go in extra early to get stuff done in your class (I was dressed and ready to go when I got the text from my wonderful co-worker)
#3 Make sure your phone number is on the school all-call list so you don't have to depend on the news to get your district up there before you're out of bed and ready to go.

One of my teacher-friends also texted me this morning, and I can't help but share...

I spent my morning baking cookies, and so in an a-typical post, here are some wonderful desserts to make for Christmas, or just because! Click on the picture to go to the link where I got the recipe!

Oreo Truffles, always a holiday favorite... 3 ingredients and no bake! Follow the recipe on the link, but if you don't like mint, use regular oreos... I use double stuffed!

Nutter Butter Truffles, just like Oreo Truffles. I'm not sure where I found the recipe for these, it is super easy though...

Ingredients: Package of Nutterbutter cookies

8oz package of cream cheese, softened

1/4-1/2 cup of peanut butter

1 bag of white chocolate chips

1 bag of peanut butter chips

(or you could use just one or the other)

Crush cookies in a food processor. Add cream cheese and peanut butter. Process until blended evenly. (I don't have a food processor, so I separated the cookies and peanut butter middle, and put the cookies in a plastic bag and used a rolling pin to crush the cookies, then I put the cookie crumbs, peanut butter middle, cream cheese and peanut butter into my standing mixer and blended the ingredients that way)

Put mixture in the refrigerator for 15-30 minutes.

Using your hands, roll the mixture into balls about 1 inch in diameter and place on cookie sheet lined with wax paper.

Put peanut butter balls into the fridge to chill before dipping.

Melt the white or peanut butter chips and dip the truffles. I drizzled a little white chocolate on my pb dipped truffles and vice versa.

Click here for an easy way to melt & dip truffles or any other chocolate dipped desserts!

Muddy Buddies... my grandma used to make these when I was a kid!

Peanut butter M&M Peanut butter cookies...  No recipe needed for these, just put Peanut butter M&M's in your favorite peanut butter cookie recipe or mix.

White Chocolate Pumpkin Cookies... for the pumpkin lovers out there! These were very sweet, next time I think I will use only half a bag of white chips! For some reason the recipe ingredients don't mention white chips, but within the directions tells you when to add them in, so I wasn't sure how much to use.

 

Finally, the BEST chocolate chip cookie recipe, ever! Since I found this recipe I will NEVER use another! I find the cookies spread less and come out better if you refrigerate the dough first. And you really only need to bake for 10 minutes (even if they don't look done yet, they cook a little more as they sit on the tray for 1-2 minutes). They stay soft and delicious even once they cool! The hubby can't get enough of them! Warning... you may want to cut the recipe in half, it makes around 6 dozen cookies.

I also finished all my grad class work today, hooray!
Now if only I had brought my kiddos book gifts home to wrap during my snow day, I would have felt EXTRA productive!!!

I hope you enjoyed your snow day if you had one, and if you didn't I hope your kiddos were fabulous today :)

Here's a few pictures of my puppy to make you smile...