quick tip tuesday.

Raise your hand if you love you some Sharpies. I am exceedingly hopeful that at least 99.4% of you have an extended bicep right now. The rest of you - you'll get on the bandwagon soon. I may or may not have a small Sharpie addiction, nothing I would be admitted to the Betty Ford Clinic for, but a passion nonetheless.

You might remember that I gave y'all a brief glimpse of my desk in my post about planning. If you look closely enough, you will see that I store all of my writing utensils in little white buckets I snagged in Target's Dollar Aisle on the corner of my desk:

Here's a close-up of my dear Sharpies that are stored with a twist:

I found that if I stored my Sharpies the "right" way (lid-up), all of the ink would sink to the bottom of the marker making the Sharpies dry out super fast. But if I store them the "Eryn-Right" way (lid-down), all of the ink stays at the tip of the marker and ready for use!

I simply dotted the bottom surface of each Sharpie with the color so that I can pull the color I need easily (I left the black Sharpies dot-less)!



Do y'all have a way to store your pens with a twist?

fall.

Happy fall, y'all! Even though the great Lone Star state doesn't have the fabulous leaf colors and temperature decreases like the rest of y'all, we do have things like:

and

that help us welcome in the new season. Worth it.

I know I have been on a bit of a hiatus as of late, but I will be back this week with some updates from Room 102 and la nueva casita.

Happy fall, y'all!

feliz cumpleanos a ti.

There's little that is more thrilling than your birthday when you're in elementary school.

Let's be honest: you probably wake up to a breakfast of Fruit Loops, donuts, and chocolate milk, you head to school only to find that you get to wear a crown all day, you get a new, SPARKLY, birthday PENCIL (oh how we love sparkly pencils), you get a bit o' candy, AND a four-foot tall Sponge Bob birthday cake sits next to your desk all day. If that's not joy, my friends, I don't know what is.

I love seeing the pure bliss on my little nuggets' faces on their birthday! They could not be more elated to be another year older (I wish I felt the same way on my birthday...amen?)! Last year, you might remember that our birthday display looked something like this:

It was completely fine, but when I had 14 (yes four-teen) birthdays in February last year, it was a bit of a chore getting 14 cupcakes to fit in an 8 square-inch space. Not attractive, let's just say that.

When it came to this year's birthday display, I had seen several teachers on Pinterest that took a picture of the kids grouped by birthday month and then placed a single picture under each month! I am so glad there are smart people out there - talk about genius.

For our pictures, I wanted the kids to hold a cupcake with their birthdate on it, but I couldn't find the cupcakes I used last year. Mr. Silhouette to the rescue again! Seriously - how did I set up a classroom without this thing?!

I found a cupcake design in the Silhouette store and just added in some perfect colors, layered numbers on top of the cupcake, and used the "Print and Cut" feature to create these beauties:

Cute enough to eat, right?

Then, during our first week of school, we played a little "Get to Know You" game where I gave the kids clues about each child that had a birthday in a given month. Once we identified each kid in the month, I gathered that month's kids and snapped a quick picture of them!

Now, instead of having multiple cupcakes under each month, I just have one simple picture. Cute and simple! Melt.

How do y'all display your lovelies' birthdays?