This year is a PIECE OF CAKE!

Hello friends! I wanted to share a quick and easy gift idea for your favorite teachers or even friends!

Have you ever heard of 3-2-1 cake? So simple and easy to make. You take a box of cake mix, any flavor, and a box of Angel Food cake mix (has to be Angel Food!!).

You dump both boxes in a large ziploc bag, close it, and mix it together really well. That's it. When you want a piece of cake, you take 3 tablespoons of the mix and place in a mug. Then mix in 2 tablespoons of water and microwave for 1 minute. Bing, Bang, Boom you've got a 3-2-1 cake!! So simple and delicious.

My favorite is red velvet. Though we have made chocolate cake before and dropped a dollop of peanut butter in the batter before microwaving. You can also make single serving frosting using 2 tablespoons butter, 2-3 tablespoons powdered sugar, and 1 teaspoon of milk.

So I found these adorable jars at Walmart in the Christmas section up front. You know, the area where they have all the boxed gift sets and cookie cutters and candy-stuff like that. Not the area near the garden with the trees and ornaments. Anyway, it had a cookie cutter tied to it with a ribbon but the jar was precious! I kept the cutter for another time.

I mixed up a red velvet 3-2-1 cake mix and filled the jar. Tied a Tablespoon to the jar in place of the cutter (found tablespoon at Dollar Tree!). Also found a mug at the Dollar Tree that would make a great addition to the cake mix.

I made these "Piece of Cake" tags to give out to teachers. Just look how cute it turned out!

Grab your own set of Piece of Cake tags HERE.

Happy holidays!

Pin me!

Secret Santa Freebie!

Does your school do Secret Santa?

Every year during December my co-teachers and I exchange a week's worth of gifts. It's so much fun! We spend a week shrouded in mystery and receiving a small surprise in our boxes. Trying to guess who our Secret Santa is, enjoying our fun treats, it brings such joy to everyone on campus. So I created these simple tags for easy to find and give gifts.

Day 1: Those easy to find foam ornament making packs could be used for multiple things! Does your Secret Santa have a little (or littles) at home? They can spend a night creating Christmas memories. Or your teacher friend can have an easy classroom activity or early finisher activity.

Day 2: Tea, Coffee, Coke products, any caffeine will do! (also included one without caffeine!) I also pick up a new Tervis or other insulated drink container to add with this tag.

Day 3: Paper Plates! Holiday plates are super easy to find as well as cost efficient and your Secret Santa will love no dishes for a night!

Day 4: And who doesn't love a gift card? Find out your teacher friend's favorite store and get a gift card. The amount is up to you. I usually do about $10.

Day 5: And finally I make a batch of my favorite Chewy Cookie Bars with red and green baking chips and place in a Tupperware dish, tie some curling ribbon, and attach this tag. I place it all in a glass or ceramic 9 x 13 inch baking dish, along with a yellow cake mix and Christmas baking chips, include the recipe, and I may add a dish towel or oven mitt themed for the holidays.

In the past, I've glass etched the baking dish with the family name using my Cricut, some vinyl, and glass etching paint. SUPER EASY BTW.

That's it! All together I spend about $25 on Secret Santa Gifts. You can find a lot of stuff at the Dollar Tree (including glass baking dishes!!!) and possibly Target's Dollar Spot. Other things I've stockpiled from after holiday sales from previous years.

Click HERE to grab these tags and my recipe for Chewy Cookie Bars (pro tip: these cookie bars are amazing year round and can be made with multiple types of baking chips). You could even include your own favorite family recipe. I hope these tags inspire you this Christmas Season!

Balancing Equations Interactive Math Notebook!

Understanding the equal sign is a major skill in developing young mathematicians. It helps to cement the idea of one side balancing the other side. Students need this skill in order to understand larger algebraic ideas later in education.

I always loved teaching this unit in first grade!! We used all sorts of models and props and food and fun during this time. It was especially exciting because it always fell during Fall! We used pumpkins, candy corn, leaves, pilgrim hats, feathers-anything I could find at Dollar Tree or the Target Dollar Spot.

It wasn't until I started using interactive notebooks in my classroom that engagement really went up! And I've finally gotten around to posting these in my store!

Take a look at some of the activities!

Everything is in black and white so you can save colored ink! You can also print out on BRIGHT paper!

Just look at that adorable Fall clipart!!

Subtraction fact balancing is a bit of a difficult and abstract concept to understand. I included picture models to help students to create their own facts.

Determining if facts are true or false is also very important. With this activity, students can sort the facts, and then correct the ones that are false. 

You can grab this math interactive notebook in my TpT store today!

Grab it HERE!

Happy Teaching!

Back to School Signs Tech Tutorial!

I have been making friends and family first day of school signs for years! They are actually really easy to do, and I've created a template and tutorial here for you! 

Just for fun, I made Carly one for College!!

Here is your chance to get your very own personalized sign for the first day of school!

Just click on the link below and download. Open it in PowerPoint and BAM! (There's also a Google Slides version!)

You can use any fonts you would like!

So let's get started. Here's how it works:
Open the file.

Click in a Text Box and highlight the text you want to change.

 The font will automatically adjust to fill the size of your words.

Or you can resize the text box yourself, by clicking and dragging the handles around the edge of the text box.

You can change the color, font, and style:

You can't change the font size because I've used word art boxes to automatically adjust the size of your text.

I have included a page without any clipart in case you want to add a picture of your own.
Just click on the Insert tab and choose Insert Pictures. Navigate to find your own pics. 


And that's it! My sister uploaded her signs to Walgreens and had an 8 x 10 printed for around $4 bucks I believe.

For Carly's Eighth grade year I printed the file as a poster on my home printer. Yep, a lot of ink and a lot bigger than I had intended, but hey, it worked!!

Some printers will allow for poster printing. I understand that many printers are different, but it should be something similar to the instructions below.

Go to print the file and click on Printer Properties.

You get this pop up menu. Click on the Layout tab at the top. Click enable under Poster Printing. 

You can opt to print on 4 pages or 9 pages or 16 pages. See where it says 2x2? Use drop down arrow to choose. I used 2x2 and then taped the pages together. Click the "on" box next to Add Crop Marks to make it easier to cut out and tape together. 

Your printer may say something different but a quick Google search using your printer's name and how to print a poster. 

{HERE} is the link for the signs. It's a zip file - download and extract. 

Here is a Google Drive link for the file in Slides, if you prefer to work right in your browser with all Google!

Thanks for reading!

Prepping for Back to School! {Freezer Meals}

Good evening to you!! I just wanted to share how I've been prepping for the coming year other than working in my classroom. I don't know about you, but the beginning of the school year can be super BUSY and I often forget my lunch at home and end up spending money I don't have to Waitr something. Or do the same thing when I get home because I'm too exhausted to fix dinner so I'll just grab something unhealthy like chips or brownies. Does this happen to you?? (If not, what is your secret?!?!?!?)

So I like to meal prep in advance to help me get into the swing of things. I have another meal plan on my blog {CLICK HERE} that I posted many moons ago. These are done in the same way. 

If you want to skip ahead to the meal plans, here they are: 

Freezer Meals Part 2 - Two Week Meal Plan

Freezer Meals Part 3 - Two Week Meal Plan

For those that don't know, two years ago, Carly had a troubling checkup. She has diabetes on both sides of her family, so the doctor was a bit worried about the amount of sugar she was ingesting and concerned she could develop diabetes. So we cut the carbs. And did it help!! We both found ourselves with increased energy, we were sleeping easier, hunger was less, and it wasn't hard to eat things we were supposed to be eating rather than junk. Now, there are times when we go off the low carb lifestyle (like when we go to Disney!!) or like this entire summer (oops), but we always manage to get back on track. 

But just so you know, not all of these meals are Low Carb - I've made notes on the ones on what needs to be changed to make it low carb.

And now we come to my meal prep!! I accumulated over 20 easy to put together low carb meals from the Internet and placed them in two easy to follow documents, complete with a shopping list and instructions on how to meal prep. I also have a sample menu plan for two weeks. They are in two documents, each for a two week plan. Depending on how many people you cook for, you may have to multiply or divide the number of ingredients needed. 

First, look over the shopping lists and determine what you already have and what you will need to purchase. Make sure to look over the meals, too. 

Then go shopping!! Or do what I do and Walmart Grocery Pickup everything!! 

I bought for the entire month!! So this is about $160 worth of groceries from Walmart. I also had a lot of the spices and baking supplies already. 

Then you start prepping!! 

I usually make the simple freezer meals first, such as the ones where I don't have to brown any meat, and set up the bags by writing the name of the dish and the instructions. 

I also save time by using frozen chopped veggies, such as PictSweet Seasoning Blend. I hate chopping vegetables (onions!!) so I save time and sanity by buying frozen ones. 

I also like to purchase some frozen sides, such as riced cauliflower and broccoli so that it's easier to put together a complete meal after a very tiring day at work.  

Halfway through meal prep!! Slowly running out of freezer space but that's okay. I played Tetris as a child. 

I also like to purchase some steaks that we can air fry quickly one night and serve with a side of leftovers. 

And Real Good Foods makes frozen family size pizzas!! SCORE! 

There's a lot of people jumping on the low carb train lately, so there are more and more things out there calling themselves "keto" or "low carb" but make sure to check the label for any sneaky sugar. Just because the carbs are low doesn't mean "sugar free". 

For lunch, I like to pre-pack some tupperware dishes for the week with protein packs and a few hot lunches. I use Oh My Keto's sausage dip stuffed peppers and some frozen broccoli (heated, of course) as some delicious, easy to pack and travel, hot lunch at school. 

The protein packs I like to place some pickles, almonds, cheese, and pepperoni. Sometimes I'll throw in some olives or deli meat. I also love Shrewd Food Protein Croutons*. They are delicious as a crunchy snack and a topping for salads. 

These sausage dip stuffed peppers are SUPER EASY to make and they freeze beautifully. 

A side of broccoli is so simple to add to your meals, and there's a ton of fiber. Topping with some Everything But the Bagel seasoning adds huge layers of flavor to the dish. 

Take out the freezer meals the night before and defrost in the fridge. The next morning, line your slow cooker with a Reynold's Slow Cooker Liner* Dump the meal and set the cooker to the time and setting according to the instructions. 

When you get home at the end of a long day, you'll have dinner all ready!! And clean up will be a breeze since you've used a liner! 

Here is the Cheeseburger Meatloaf with a side of Caulimash and broccoli.  

And who can forget dessert?!?!!? These peanut butter chocolate chip bars from Keto Is Life are divine and super easy to make. 

Okay so here you go! 

Click the titles to be taken to the Google Doc. 

Freezer Meals Part 2 - Two Week Meal Plan

Meals include: 

Low Carb Blueberry Muffins

Lemon Blueberry Muffins

Cream Cheese Pancakes

Sausage and Cheese quiche

Low Carb Waffles

Low Carb Chili with cheese, sour cream, and pork rinds

Slow Cooker Shrimp Chowder

Butter Ranch Pork Chops with caulimash

Mozzarella Stuffed Chicken Parm Meatballs

Slow Cooker Melt in your Mouth Chicken

Cheeseburger Meatloaf with caulimash

Slow Cooker Steak Fajitas 

Crab shrimp and artichoke casserole

Cheesy Keto Bread

Creamy Broccoli Bake

Freezer Meals Part 3 - Two Week Meal Plan

Meals include: 

Keto Stuffed Breakfast Biscuits

Low Carb Breakfast casserole with sausage and cheese

Sausage Cream Cheese Pinwheels

Keto Sheet Pan Pancakes

Sausage Dip Stuffed Peppers

Cheeseburger Meatloaf with caulimash

Slow Cooker Steak Fajitas

Keto Meatballs alla Parmigiana

Mississippi Roast

Crack Chicken on Keto Okie Eggos

Keto Okie Eggos 

Make Ahead Freezer Burgers

Protein Snack Pack

Spinach Artichoke Dip

Cheesy Keto Bread

Spanish Caulirice

I made both of these together for a full month. Though to be honest, we will have plenty more leftovers than the two week daily meals provide for, so it's more like five weeks. Once I get into ketosis I find myself less hungry and more easily satiated, so the meals go further. 

I've included ideas for sides and desserts, and sometimes we like to have the same meal (such as cheeseburger meatloaf) multiple times and it's easy so I prepare it double. 

I hope this can help some of you out! Enjoy!

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