Today...and Tomorrow

Today:

We made turkeys out of Ring Dings for Tasty Tuesday this month. (Ok, it's past Thanksgiving and it's technically Wednesday, but these things happen) This recipe (?) varies a bit from the one in my book for a few unimportant reasons, but it ended up super cute and VERY yum! We cut about a third of the Ring Ding off and then stood up the bigger part (the turkey butt, if you will) up against the smaller part. Then we added a Whopper for the head. We squeezed a bit of chocolate frosting on the Whopper to attach the white chocolate chip eyes and candy corn beak. Now, I was contemplating pretzel sticks for the feathers, when I thought, hey there's not really enough sugar here. So, I opted for toothpicks and Froot Loops. The funniest thing is that most of my kids never had a Ring Ding! They were all about the filling in the middle. It was funny to me, but probably will be horrifying to the moms who send organic dried apple snacks in their kids' lunchbox. oops. my bad. I've made my peace with it. It's a once a month treat and these kids will remember today for a long time to come. Today was one of those days when I felt like I was really making a difference. I introduced a whole new generation to Ring Dings. Ah, it's days like these my friends... 

After we sent off November with our 4,000 calorie turkey, we firmly planted our feet in December with our Grinch project. I've seen this one floating around Pinterest and then I bought Deanna Jump's Grinch Mini unit from TpT in which she supplied the patterns. Now she did a cute "Make a Grinch Grin" writing assignment in the mouth, but I changed it up a bit. We wrote about things that make us feel "Grinchy". It's important for them to get out all of their feelings, right? I gave them some examples: Running out of coffee, waking up early on a Saturday, kids who talk too much and don't follow directions... They came up with some pretty hysterical things. I think they liked being able to vent!

Now most teachers would call it a day after our Ring Ding sugar high, trace, cut and glue-a-thon, but  not me. Oh no. I know how to push it just a little bit too far. We added homemade puffy paint to the rim of the Grinch's hat. Blame Pinterest. Again. According to the directions, you are to mix equal parts shaving cream and glue. That's like saying mix equal parts cotton candy and water. I did the best I could and tried not to be annoyed at how many of my kids felt the need to tell me that their fathers shave (imagine that!) and tried not to think about my father shaving without bursting into tears. So I just poofed some shaving cream and poured some glue and mixed until I was tired of figuring it out.

 And here's one of my charmers carefully following my directions to use ONE finger to spread it around.

 Tomorrow:

Tomorrow we will see if the paint is dry and puffy (fingers crossed!) and... our elf on a shelf will be making his first appearance! I'm planning on snapping a picture of my elf every day and posting it to my Facebook page. If you're elfing too - please join me! I'd love to see all of our elves in action!

Tomorrow also kicks off my Holiday Giveaway Days! Starting tomorrow I'll be posting a new freebie or two for you each and every day for five days! The giveaway days will end with one big contest that I'll announce tomorrow and I promise will be super simple to enter (like leave a comment simple). But if you pin my reindeer below or add it to your blog starting today, it will be good for an extra entry. I just want to spread the word so my freebies make it into the hands of as many teachers as possible. So feel free to pin or post this little guy here. See you tomorrow with details my friends!