First Annual Holiday Cookie Swap Linky Party

I am excited to be linking up with Emily from The Reading Tutor/OG with one of my favorite topics: cookies.

If you know me...you know I love Love LOVE sweets.  Growing up, my Nana and mom always made candy for Christmas.  Buckeyes, fudge, white chocolate pretzel sticks, peanut butter roll, and turtles were some of the candies we enjoyed.  My mom still makes all this great candy but has passed the recipes on to me.  But I have added some of my own holiday favorites to recipe book.
This one came from my third cousin way out in warm, sunny California.  She passed it on to me years and years ago.  So I have no idea where it originally came from but....oh!!...do I love it.

Fonts: KG and Gingersnaps

Hope you can link up with a sweet, sweet recipe!

Wednesday WOW!

Wednesday WOW!!!  Hope you have something to share that has gone well for you (professionally or personally) this week!  Just link up below.  We all need a little positive :)

On Monday we had a day without our firsties.  What does this mean, exactly?  LUNCH...OUT!  So we headed out to "Sugar n' Spice."  It is a 70+ old breakfast/lunch restaurant that is bright pink on the outside, colorful and cozy diner on the inside. 
We came to EAT!

We ate EVERY BITE!!

I thought I would share one more success that happened.  I worked on some short i Powerpoints for too long this weekend.  With all that time and effort, you just hope those kiddos will be engaged and....they WERE!  I was so happy to see how well they blended the sounds and THEN unscrambled the sounds.

Hope you have a great rest of the week! Please link up below if you can share with us!

Wednesday WOW!

 It is that time again!  Wednesday WOW!  A time to share something good that has happened to you so far this week (because we all need a little bit of positive.)  Hope you can link up with us!

 Natalie and I really wanted to hit the concept of addition this week.  We have done some addition and subtraction this year (obviously with ALL my posts about word problems!) But we wanted to work on really helping them understand visually what two addends were and how the sum was greater than the addends.
It has gone really well so far!  I am having a great time with the activities in my guided math group.  Here is what we did today:

One more success this week: PumpkinChili

We decided to try a Gluten Free, Low Carb Pumpkin Chicken Chili.  It is from "I Breathe...I'm Hungry..."  I love to try new recipes.  We try a lot of new recipes and you never know how they are going to turn out (pizza is always a back up plan).  But this was great!!!

http://www.ibreatheimhungry.com/2012/11/low-carb-gluten-free-pumpkin-chicken.html

 




 

Favorite Pins Friday

 I'm linking up with Cara over at First Grade Parade today. 

I have been all about these digital papers this week!

They come from Write in the Middle and I love them!  I was able to use them to make these flashcards! (You can click on them if you want them).

Next up is a book...has anyone read this one?

The pin came from "The Best Children's Books." I have been looking for some inspirational punctuation books.

Another great school pin:

This came from Joyful Learning in KC.  I am reading Smarter Charts right now and I am wondering how I can incorporate this Word Box!

Okay--I saw this picture and fell in love with these trees.

The idea is from Dishfunctional Designs.  I have not formulated my idea on how to use this yet.  But I know something will come to me.

And finally...a healthy dessert.

This pin comes from Detoxinista.  This is a pineapple whip.  It only calls for pineapple, almond milk, and honey.  I made it for the 4th yesterday and it was a hit!

Hope everyone had a good 4th!

mmmm....muffins and sight words

Oh, spring break! 
With all of my home time, there has been a lot of experimenting this week with some crafts and recipes.  I found a linky to go along with my experiments for the week at 2nd Grade Pad.  It is a Make and Take linky.  It can be school or home related.  Since I am not at school this week, I thought I would post a recipe that I tried out this week.

I live in a house with one gluten-free child and one diabetic low-carb husband.  We have to be creative.
I found these "Green Monster Muffins" on The Chic Life. They were really good!  But I needed to make them fit our food restrictions.  So I changed things up a bit.  I used almond meal instead of flour.  Got rid of the sugar and decreased the amount of applesauce.  I added some more spices to ensure there was some flavor (since I got rid of the sugar).

Spinach-Almond Muffins
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups of almond meal (I use Trader Joe's)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground gloves
1/2 teaspoon allspice
 1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 cup packed baby spinach (chopped in food processer)
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Get muffin cups ready (about 11 or 12).
Whisk the egg until fluffy.  Add the applesauce and whisk until blended.
Then add the oil, vanilla, spinach, and lemon juice.  Whisk together.
 Pour in all of the dry ingredients and mix until just blended.  Pour mixture into muffin cups (about 3/4 full). 
Bake for about 14-16 minutes.

Mine are not as pretty as the "Green Monster Muffins" but we have had about 3 batches this week!

This is a teacher blog.  So I figure I need to post something related to school.  This year I have created some powerpoints that show sight words quickly.  The purpose is to get our firsties to see the words and know them automatically.  I just made a new one this week.  It will be used more next year because they are very easy/common words.  We show the powerpoint during transitions on our mimeo.  The students can read along with the powerpoint on their own.  If you want a copy just click on the photo.

Happy Thursday everyone!
Em