Tommie's Tools: 2011

December 22, 2011

Schoolgirl Style Gingerbread

http://www.schoolgirlstyle.com/2011/12/christmas-and-winter-classrom-decorating/

Melanie always amazes me!

It may be too late for all the decorations but there is still time for a gingerbread party.
Check out her website and see all her fantastic stuff and a couple of really cute kids.

Gingerbread, candy canes, and hot chocolate....that could go on for all winter.

Plus, Jan Brett, my favorite!

Kate, my first grader, came home the other day and said...."I love Jan Brett!"

I said. ""Me too!"

Jan Brett says there is more to tell in a story than you can say with just words.

That is why she puts picture borders around the pages in her books.

You can spend as much time looking at the pictures

as you do reading the book.

There are several Christmas books by Jan Brett.

Find one and read it. Don't forget the pictures!

My favorite is Wild Christmas Reindeer. What is yours?

CTP 5889
http://www.creativeteaching.com/

December 21, 2011

Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends....

This activity is from my favorite book

Making Memories.

Check our the e-book at

http://www.creativeteaching.com/

May we all be blessed by the lights of the season.

December 12, 2011

If you celebrate Hanukkah, I wish you.....Happy Hanukkah!
If you celebrate Kwanzaa, I wish you....Happy Kwanzaa!
I recently had a wonderful conversation with my beautiful doctor who was fasting for Ramadan.

I celebrate Christmas, so I wish you Merry Christmas!

Here is a great story that I "borrowed" from my friend Amy and Pinterest.
Amy is a great mother of two little boys, Preston and Bergen. Find out more about her on her blog. http://alsoknownased.blogspot.com/

You've Been RACK'ed!

Have you heard of Pinterest.com? It's a virtual bulletin board where you can not only organize your recipes, craft/decorating/style ideas - but you can spend hours (upon hours...upon hours) looking at other's pins as well. Friends, strangers, come one - come all.

My favorite right now is a list of Random Acts of Christmas Kindness (RACKs). This lady posted about doing random acts of Christmas during the season of advent to help us remember, it's about giving, not receiving. And you know, random acts tend to roll forward, and hopefully form a snowball of kindness during this wonderful, stressful season.

(These are some of the pictures from Pinterest. I am addicted to it too.)

My kids have been weird lately. Have yours? I'm not sure if it's

Christmas-itis, or if my 10 year old is starting the moody preteens early.

But it's been weird around here. Honestly, this is where these

random acts of kindness really come in handy.

When we are feeling snarky, doing something nice always helps turn it around.

Friday was no exception. We were all a little tense Friday night waiting for dad to get home from work. We loaded up in the car to take the dry cleaning and find a RACK to recover us from our attitudes. I've been saving this RACK for a nice day - it rained for like a whole week here, and this needed a nice, dry day.

We drove up to the main grocery store close to our home and attached candy canes to car doors with a little note. We got the note from the original RACKer, found on Pinterest. If you are so inclined, please use for your own family's RACKing or you can make up your own version.

I tied the note to candy canes and we ran through the parking lot attaching them to doors of cars. It was really very fun. Preston was so worried we were going to get into trouble for touching other people's cars. Such a rule follower, just like his momma. We ran back to the car and waited to see a shopper find their candy canes. But since it was dark, we could not really see. We imagine that they were all *very* happy and felt *very* blessed and decided to pass it on. And that's what we'll continue to imagine.

This was a very fun RACK!

We left the store to head to dinner. The restaurant had video games and a crane lift game to win balls. What a waste of money...um, I mean fun time. $.20 balls now cost $5.00! Anyway, Preston comes running over to tell me he did a RACK! He won a ball, and gave it to the 2 year old watching him. Oh, this momma's heart swelled up with pride - so proud of Preston and what he's learning from helping others. A Merry Christmas, indeed. I hope y'all had a great weekend and enjoy your week!

Regardless of how you celebrate the season, KINDNESS is always in season.

Go forth and RACK!!!

December 5, 2011

Deck the Halls

Remember my creed....

Anything worth doing is worth over-doing!

and

Everything looks better with a bow!

It has been a while since I posted on my blog

but I have been busy re-enforcing my creed.

I want to show you all of my over-doing and my bows.

Bows at the front door to welcome you in.

Bows by the reindeer having fun in the back.

Bows on the baskets and bells too.

Bows on wreaths both fat and thin.

Bows both large and small

to deck all the halls.

No bow! Oh dear, I missed one!

or two!
What should I do?

Bows in the kitchen...

on baskets for plates for serving good food.

One, two, or three bows
how many do you need?

With bows and with food
Less is not More
More is More!

Bows on the fire wood but not in the fire.

Bows by the candles, but not very close.
A fire in the fireplace is really quite enough!

Bows on all tables and to deck all the walls.

Bows in baskets with Santa Claus.

Bows beside a Santa from 30 years ago.

Bows work in bathrooms just wait and see....

beside the sink or...

or on a toilet...

What do you think!

Bows on the Christmas tree from the top....

to the presents below.

BOWS, BOWS EVERYWHERE!

In this picture it seems the bow is on me!

Be careful when you deck the halls!

Ding, Dong, Ding, Dong,
Christmas Bells are Ringing!

November 16, 2011

Fun with CTP at NAEYC in Orlando

Welcome to our CTP booth at NAEYC in Orlando, FL.

The People of Our Neighborhood was our theme.

These are some of the people in OUR neighborhood.

Presentation area was set up and ready for guests.

Projects made from our products were displayed.

Dr. Jean was there....singing and dancing.

Everyone joined in the Dinosaur Boogie.
Stomp Around!!!

I got to sing my favorite song with her...
May There Always Be Sunshine!

Lots of folks stopped in to join us for the presentations.

Who would believe that grown women would have so much fun wearing a border crown with a flower.

Doing More with Less.
That is what we were doing!!

When we started this session we knew that we were getting close to hitting the 100,000th visit to this blog.
Several of the ladies had phones with Internet access.
They all logged in to the blog.
This is Kay and Lisa who were the ones that
made us hit 100,000.

Can you believe it?!

Since People of Our Neighborhood was our theme
we made people, houses, and cars with our
10" and 6" cut outs.

The people were really cute!

I will show you more of the people in another post.

We had everyone from

Einstein to Ben Franklin in the booth.

We gave some of our visitors one of our
people cut outs and challenged them to
make a "Mini Me" using anything they
could find in any booth in the convention hall.
I love Dottie's creation.
Dottie's Mini Me even had earrings!