Favorite Pins Friday, a Bundle, an Award, a Freebie, and 20GB of free cloud storage?

This is going to be a loooong post. Stick with me, please! Favorite Pins Friday, a bundle I'm SUPER excited about, an award, a freebie, AND 20GB of free cloud storage!

Favorite Pins Friday!

Today I'm linking up with Cara from The First Grade Parade for Favorite Pins Friday!

Here are some of my favorite pins from this week. Yep, I totally subscribe to this belief:

If you choose to link up, here's the only rule:  please make sure to link back to the ORIGINAL poster and not to Pinterest. :)  

Here are some of my favorites from the week:

Favorite TEACHING related pins

I absolutely love this post from Kim on her blog, Let Me Start by Saying. It's for her kids, but it absolutely has a place in my classroom, too!

This is an AMAZING idea from Reagan at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits! I am in love. Reagan's system for morning work makes me miss 2nd grade. I just need to find a way to make this work for 4th graders... I'm only teaching math, science, and social studies, so it has to be filled with that content. I start school in a few weeks and my to-do list is already a mile long, so I don't see it happening for the beginning of THIS year. Maybe mid-year? Or next year? If anyone has great 4th grade ideas for adapting this, let me know!

Seriously. In love.

My favorite FOOD pins

We bought an ice cream maker this summer. It has been getting a LOT of use...at least twice per week! We've been using nonfat Greek yogurt, nonfat sweetened condensed milk, and fresh fruit to make all sorts of DELICIOUS frozen Greek yogurt. We are addicted! But we don't want to get stuck in a rut, so I've been pinning other ideas..

This yummy-looking berry sorbet from Martha Stewart:

This simple base recipe for vanilla ice cream. We can't WAIT to make it and add Heath bars, or Reese's cups, or pumpkin pie filling, or... Yep, we have an ice cream problem in our house. ;)

My favorite SCHOOL SUPPLY pins

Erasable pens. Seriously. Just do it. I pinned it, I bought them, and I'm in love. I am finicky about pens, and these are phenomenal. Perfect for my teacher planner, so I don't have to keep scribbling out changed meeting times.

Magazine files. Miss A's Kindergarten let us know that Target is ALREADY putting out back to school items. This was the first place I saw it, but lots of folks are pinning, blogging, and Facebooking about their Target Dollar Spot finds!

Favorite JUST BECAUSE pin

This idea is just brilliant, even for big fingers.

If you want to see what else I'm pinning, come follow me on Pinterest!

If you'd like to link up, go visit Cara's blog!

A Bundle

My "Find Someone Who" activities have been selling like hotcakes in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, so I decided to bundle them!

When you buy the bundle, you get all of my grades 3-5 Find Someone Who math activities - for life! When I add new versions, you can re-download the bundle with the newest editions included. Every time I add a new edition, the price will go up, so the earlier you buy the bundle, the better deal you get. The bundle itself is 30% off the regular listed price. Don't miss out! I have several more versions in editing stages, so the price will increase soon. Click now to see it in my TpT store!

An Award

Wow! This week I was nominated twice for the Liebster Award! Thanks, Erin (Mrs. Beattie's Classroom) and Lisa (Grade 4 Buzz), for the nominations!

To accept the nomination, I must:

1. Link back to the blogs that nominated me

2. Nominate 5-11 blogs with fewer than 200 followers

3. Answer the questions posted for me by my nominators

4. Share 11 random facts about myself

5. Create 11 questions for my nominees

6. Contact my nominees and let them know I nominated them

I am nominating Katie from Rock and Teach, Renee from Growing a Teacher, Mary Kate from Windy City Learning, Sarah from Write on Fourth Grade, and Carla from Comprehension Connection. You know you've spent too long drafting a blog post when several people you nominated have received the award in the meantime. :) Chalk it up to great minds think alike.

I'm going to answer questions 1-5 from Erin, and 6-11 from Lisa. :)

1. In my career, I am most proud of sticking with it during a really rough first two years. It was unbelievably trying, and I persevered. I wouldn't be the teacher I am today without those experiences!

2. Outside of the classroom, my favorite thing to do is relax with my family and friends. I don't truly stop and do just one thing very often, so when I do, I appreciate it completely. 

3. My favorite place to travel is San Diego, CA. It's beachy, calm, cool, and close to Disneyland. :)

4. If I could change one thing about myself, it would be my horrid habit of multi-tasking. I wish I could shut it all down and just concentrate on one thing fully. While I'm working on this blog post, I'm also working on another, organizing pin boards, listening to a TV show, and checking emails. It's an illness.

5. In my classroom, I rely most on my SMART board/document camera/laptop combo. I've had them since my second year of teaching, and I just can't imagine life without them. The one or two days that I've had technology mishaps in the past 10 years have really challenged me!

6. My favorite thing about summer is the pace of life. I feel like I have time to breathe and enjoy things.

7. Besides my technology, my most-used resource is Teachers Pay Teachers. I LOVE using ideas from other teachers, and spend more than I should.

8. If a movie was made about my life, I'd like Candice Cameron or Elisabeth Shue to play me. I've been told I look like each of them, and I enjoy watching them as actresses, so why not?

9. If I wasn't a teacher, I'd love to be a curriculum writer. (Isn't that really the other side of a teacher?) Some days, I wish I had a full-time curriculum specialist to design my lessons, so I could focus on the delivery and reaching all kids. Other days, I wish I was that full-time specialist, so I could help another teacher have time to teach all of his/her kids. 

10. I started blogging because I love expanding my network of teachers and fellow learners. I love to learn, and learning from teachers is the best!

11. I think people would be surprised to learn that I've graduated from college three times - once with a business degree, once for education, and once with my master's degree.

11 Random Facts About Me:

1. I have lived in MN, AZ, and FL.

2. I celebrate a milestone birthday in a few months. Eek.

3. I love Crystal Light and Diet Mt. Dew. A little too much.

4. My sister and I revisit our boy band love whenever we can. NKOTB and friends this weekend, Backstreet Boys in the fall, and Justin Timberlake in December. The men in our lives just roll their eyes. ;)

5. I love TV. I DVR way too many shows, and don't keep up with most of them. But some days, a few hours vegging with comfort TV is just what the doctor ordered.

6. I love books. I own too many books. I was reminded of this when we moved earlier this summer.

7. In a perfect world, I would be perfectly organized. This isn't a perfect world, and I'm never organized to my liking.

8. I tend to start too many projects at once. I'm a starter. I LOVE the feeling of finishing a project, but I love starting new ones more.

9. I have a slight addiction to office and school supplies. I'm on a buying freeze right now, outside of the essentials. I hope it lasts.

10. I don't like coffee - never have.

11. I hate clothes shopping and love new clothes. Great combination.

Questions for My Nominees

1. Which is your favorite subject to teach?

2. How long have you been teaching?

3. How often do you go to the movies? What's the best movie you've seen lately?

4. What are your top 3 must-haves for a new school year?

5. What is your favorite children's book?

6. What is your favorite grown-up book?

7. What is your favorite TV program?

8. What is your biggest strength as a teacher?

9. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

10. What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?

11. Where do you hope to travel in the next 5 years?

Phew! That was a BIG post! Thanks for sticking with me! If you made it this far, here's a quick freebie for you. The link will only stay live until Saturday, July 13, so grab it while you can! :)

Be sure to follow my TpT store to see when this becomes available for sale! 

It was available as a flash freebie for one day only.

FREE 20GB of Cloud Storage - Really?

Yep, you read that correctly. I know many of you use Dropbox. Have you filled your free space yet? I have, so I wanted a place to store more - and to backup the ultra-important files again. I found copy.com this spring, and I am thrilled with it! It works just like Dropbox, but comes with more free storage. You START with 15GB (or 20GB if you sign up with a referral link, like this one) - and can earn an UNLIMITED amount of add-on storage for free. You get 5GB of storage every time someone signs up with your link! That's a great deal! Go check it out - you won't be sorry!