Monday Made It (On Wednesday): Branching out with a Bullet Journal

Well, I haven't blogged in awhile... Anyway, one of the nice things about summer is having more time to do things like blogging and reading and napping and eating lunch with grownups.

On Monday morning I was reviewing over the Monday Made Its at Tara's blog (including the ones from last week). I have enjoyed surveying everyone's creations for Monday Made It for the last few years. It is always inspiring and gives you ideas to get you thinking about getting ready for the school year.

I felt completely inspired by Nicole's guest post from last week where she shared her bullet journal. I have seen bullet journals on Instagram, but I hadn't given it too much thought yet. Nicole shared her bullet journal and this blog post, which had been her inspiration.

So for my Monday Made It (shared on Wednesday) for this week, I decided to start my own bullet journal. I actually use an Erin Condren planner that works pretty well for me for keeping up with grad school homework and due dates. I have used both Plum Paper planners and Erin Condren planners. I prefer to horizontal weekly layout; it works better for me. At work, I tend to keep a little task list on a small notepad I found at Staples last year for a $1. On one half, it says "To Do Now" and on the other half it says "To Do Later."

The part I have struggled with keeping organized is more for long term goals and ideas. I liked the idea of trying a bullet journal to organize other parts of my life like lists of books I want to read, long term research goals, projects for grad school, projects for my classroom, etc. I had a cute journal I bought at Barnes and Noble a couple months ago that I hadn't used yet. I love this size journal. It is slim enough to fit in a purse or backpack easily, making it even more portable than my planner.



I have always kept an "idea journal" (hence, part of why my blog is named the Idea Backpack). I am someone who is always coming up with ideas and finding the need to record them somewhere. My idea journals have never been very organized though or necessarily easy to locate things later.  So I liked the idea of creating a bullet journal to organize different lists of goals and ideas with a table of contents.



Below are a few more pictures of some of the pages I started. Of course, one of my first priorities was making different "To Be Read" pages. I love keeping track of my reads on Goodreads, but I also like the idea of a physical list I can add to by genre.



I haven't added any doodles or artwork or done creative lettering yet. I was more just trying to get it started and begin organizing goals and ideas for this summer. Hopefully over time I will branch out and be a little more creative with some of my entries.

Once 2016 is over, I might also try incorporating the planner aspect into the bullet journal as well. How do you organize your ideas and goals? Do you use a journal or planner?

Monday Made It: Paleo Recipes

Well, I haven't linked up with Monday Made It in a long time...  But I thought I would link up with 4th Grade Frolics today even though I haven't really done anything crafty.  I thought I would link up with some Pinterest recipes I have tried.

If you aren't on Instagram, you should be.  It's my favorite social media - so much fun to be inspired by those you follow: books to read, recipes, workouts, teaching ideas, and just life.  Last year I decided I really wanted to try the Paleo diet after seeing everyone's Whole30 Instagram posts.  I did a 30 day strict Paleo diet in January (It was more just Paleo than Whole 30).  I would like to do another 30 days of strict Paleo after school starts, so for now I am making an effort to try some new recipes that would meet Paleo guidelines.  I find it is easier to be successful with a strict diet when I have an arsenal of recipe and food ideas I am already comfortable with.  If every meal is a new recipe, it can be overwhelming.

Summer Squash Taco Boats 

I bought some summer squash at the farmer's market, so I thought I would try this recipe for taco-filled summer squash. The recipe calls for ground turkey, but I used ground beef.

I used SmileSandwich's recipe with the taco seasoning part from Skinny Taste's recipe. If you leave off the shredded cheese, it is easily Paleo.  It was very good.  The hardest part was hollowing out the squash with a small spoon. Here was my picture right before I put it in the oven:

Made taco filled yellow squash tonight. Thank you #farmersmarketveggies. Very easily #paleo or #whole30 without the shredded cheese. Love #pinterest recipes that come out well. #teachersfollowteachers #healthyteachers #summerdinners

A photo posted by April Walker (@ideabackpack) on Jul 21, 2015 at 7:26pm PDT

Sweet and Sour Meatballs

I really wanted to find a good recipe for sweet and sour meatballs without soy.  I have made Plaid and Paleo's recipe a couple times, and it is very good. It is one of my new favorite recipes.  I did use the Coconut Aminos and Apple Cider Vinegar alternative they mention in the recipe.

I will be honest though; I made a cheat version.  Instead of making the meatballs from scratch I used frozen turkey meatballs and cooked it in the crockpot with all the seasoning from the recipe and with onion, broccoli, and bell pepper.  We had it with rice, but if I was making it more paleo I would make a cauliflower rice.  Crockpot recipes just make things so much easier.  You also can find gluten free frozen meatballs, so I might do that when I do Paleo. I usually cooked it in the crockpot on high for 2-3 hours or low for 4-5 hours.

HERE is my Pinterest board for Paleo recipes.  Have you tried any good recipes this summer?

Monday Made It: Book Bin Labels (Freebie)

I had a great weekend.  My ex-workspouse had her baby shower today.  I spent a lot of the weekend trying to help get ready for the shower and the other part resting and getting ready for the week.  I am not going to apologize for taking a couple days off from blogging because we all need rest.  On a side note, I wish others would stop apologizing for taking a break for a couple days.  We all are working on balancing life, teaching, and blogging.  We all understand.  Actually, tomorrow I am going to be posting about a linky party for the Back to School Balancing Act.  I would love to have others link up and share how they find ways to balance school, family, blogging, and health. So be thinking of ideas you would like to share on how you try and balance back to school.

I am behind on commenting on people's blogs.  The last two weeks I have kept up with reading the blog posts, but haven't had time to comment.  I am going to try and do better this week.

For this week's Monday Made It, I didn't think I would get anything made. 

I am struggling a little bit with how to decorate my classroom.  I am teaching at a small school where all of the rooms are decorated with Ikea furniture and art work from different cities around the world.  I stole the London artwork and made my room the London room since my first theme is going to be the Olympics. This will be our first year to have an elementary age group.  Prior it was only middle and high-school aged students.  I want to use my welcome sign and put up a cursive alphabet.  I will have a bulletin board once we get it ordered.  I want to do something like I have seen by Clutter Free Classroom and Pinterest where you have a designated spot for each student and use a clip to hold up the work.  I think it looks very clean and pleasing to the eye. 

I will have some of my books for my classroom library displayed, but I don't have enough room to display all that I have so I plan on rotating them out.  I was just going to alphabetize the books because I believe students need to be able to find books at a real library, but I have decided to use genre baskets again. I normally mainly decorate with blues and greens.  To go with the simple/ more steamlined look of the school I want to keep things very clean and simple that I put up. I love Kristin's Flipped signs at Ladybug Teacher Files.  Her cursive alphabet signs and genre posters with the bright colors on the black background are on my to-buy list.  They look fabulous.  I have seen pictures of them floating around in the blogging world as people share pictures of their classroom, and I love them.  I would attempt to make a cursive alphabet myself except I can't find any fonts for D'Nelian or Zaner Bloser cursive.  Anyone know where to purchase cursive fonts?

I normally am not one to use black, but the combination of the black with the bright colors is clean but has a lot of impact.  I still want to use my owls with dark colors welcome sign and incorporate some black, maroon, blue, and green into bulletin board eventually. I actually saw some Harry Potter owl clipart on Etsy I thought about purchasing since the theme of my room is London.

I love Kristin's genre book bin labels, but they are black and white.  I needed some other labels besides the ones she had.  I also wanted the text on mine to be blue and green so I made my own.  I have decided to share them with you for free below.


Book Bin Labels

Monday Made It: Owls and Dark Colors

Here were my fantastic finds from Mardel's yesterday that sparked my new classroom theme.  I love the colors and the owls.  It matches the colors in my blog design.

Of course I had to make some stuff to go with it.

So I started with a Welcome sign.

I also love this sign that has been floating around Pinterest that people have been making.

So I made some to match my different classroom decor themes:

You can get all 5 themes at my store for $2.00.

I also made some freebie versions:

I need to work on some other classroom decor in the owls and dark colors.  To celebrate I now have 100 products in my TpT store, let me know which of the 5 themes in the Student Inspiration Sign you would hang in your classroom and I will give away the signs for free to someone.

Don't forget about my 300 follower giveaway which ends tonight.  There will be 17 winners!

Monday Made It and a couple Freebies

I am linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for another Monday Made It. 

I have been working on some more products for my TpT store.

Safari Classroom Decor - You can find it all broken down into different items here.

Pirate Classroom Decor  - You can find it all broken down into different items here.

I did make a couple things for myself, too.  (Next week, I hope to finish some more beach decor and paisley decor as well.  I can't decide if I want to decorate with a beach theme or paisley and owls).

Claire at Live, Laugh, Love, Teach made these plastic bag dispensers out of Clorox wipes containers for a previous Monday Made It.  I thought this was a genius idea.  We always use plastic bags for all sorts of things since we have pets, and we have the bags stored all sorts of places. The original tutorial calls for using fabric and mod podge.  I covered mine with my Xyron and scrapbook paper.  It works.  It dresses up the container a bit.  I want to keep one here at home and one at school.

I wanted to make the bucket labels for sharpened and dull pencils.  I know there are probably lots of these labels out there, but I made my own.  You can get your own copy below if you like. I used the Dollar Tree containers again.

Pencil Sharpen Labels

For keeping track of grades, I found I hated using a gradebook because I did not want to write students names over and over.  Plus, the little boxes were too tiny in my opinion. For me, I found it works better to make a little table and either write or print the students names and then copy it.  I use one each week and record the grades on the paper while grading and then move it over to the computer system as I have time. I keep the sheets with the grades in my teacher binder in folders for each six weeks. You can get a copy of this little grading recorder below.  It's simple, but effective.
Grading Recorder

Monday Made It: Writing Prompts and Shared Writing Journals Covers

Yay! Monday Made It.  I'm so excited to be off today, too.  Friday the 13th marked the end of my career 3 (technical writing).  Next Monday I start training at my new school.  So this week is like my "summer."  I'm excited.

Remember my Back to School writing prompts?  (Thank you, Katie, for the original inspiration for prompts in a jar.) Well, I finished putting them together.  Thanks to other people's Fantastic Friday Finds and lots of bargain shopping, I got what I needed to finish putting stuff together. I went to Michael's and got one of those paper trimmers 40% plus the teacher's discount. (Thank you, Tonya, for telling us about the sale.) I also found two packages of 250 sheets of card stock for $7.99. 

I got some jars and containers at Dollar Tree.  (I am proud of those craft caddies.  Target has some for $2.50, but these were $1.00, so after like 3 Dollar Trees I found 10.  I will use them for something!)

I had a Xyron from my monther-in-law I had never used.  Thank you, Elizabeth, for recommending it. (The laminator function did not go very far, but I tried it out.  The adhesive sheets are cool though.  I made my jar label stickers this way, and am also going to redo the labels for my teacher toolbox this way.  The glue dots are not sticking.)

So after printing on my speckled card stock and much cutting and more cutting.  I still need to finish laminating.  That is on the to-do-list for today.  I also made the jar labels a little cuter. You can get them here.

I made some persuasive writing prompts, too.  I intend to make some narrative ones as well.  You can get my 100 persuasive writing prompts here.

I also love this idea Tara and some others have for shared writing journals.  I want to pair them with my writing prompts.  So I made journal covers for different kinds of writing (like persuasive, descriptive, letter writing, stories, poetry, newspaper articles, etc.) as well as topics (like sports, movies, video games, pets, music, family/friends, etc.)  I will have to wait and see which ones I want to use.  I made 26 covers, but I don't think I will actually have that many shared writing journals.  I was trying to decide which ones I wanted. You can get them here.

In case you missed my "Connect the Faces" freebie activity from my guest post at Learning is something To Treasure on Saturday, here you go.


Connect the Faces

Don't forget to enter my giveaway that ends tonight!  You can earn up to $15 worth of my writing products, including the ones above. (I also am planning my 300 follower giveaway.  If you would like to contribute to the giveaway, email me at ideabackpack@gmail.com.)
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