"You Oughta Know"

I am so excited for this Link Up with Jasmine over at Buzzing with Mrs. Mcclain!
Along with other teachers I am sharing something with you that I think
"You Oughta Know"
 and will make your year a bit easier!

When I came across this link up I had a few things come to mind that I knew I had to share.
When I was trying to decide which one to use first it was hard not to let them all out at once.
So, I decided on one that I knew you all might need as you are getting your
classrooms ready for your little readers.

Before I share this with you I have to tell you I tried to take pictures of the process
without being in them and it just wasn't the same so I had to have Josh take them while I acted it all out with lots of smiling and dramatic flair, of course.
So here you have it, me being super happy about creating some book bags!

4 years ago I wanted to do away with book boxes. 

For one thing I was tired of buying them every year
and for another I just did not want to give up the space to store them. 

I desperately wanted to buy book bags to put on the backs of the chairs, 

but like usual at around $6 each I desperately didn't want to pay the steep price for them, 

especially with almost 40 little darlings in my class that year. Yikes! 

So I set out on a mission and I would have to say it has been one of my best yet!

I went to walmart and bought 20 sets of pillowcases for a total of 40. 

They were $3.97 for two so I spent almost $80 for my whole set.
I was at the Dollar Tree a couple of weeks ago though and they had pillow cases too. I couldn't believe it. You could make them for $1 each... there's no beating that!!

Here's what you'll need to do. Take a regular sized pillow case.

I don't sew, but my Auntie has a sewing machine and sewed them all up for me. LOVE HER!

From a sewers standpoint she said it was the easiest things she's ever done. 

It took less than an hour to do all of them.

Here they are in my classroom. I have had them for four years and this year I had to replace two due to someone cutting a giant hole in the bottom with some Fiskars. Stinkers! Other than that they have tons of room for storing books and journals, plus I can take them home and wash them over winter and summer break to keep them looking new! 

I hope you found this helpful. Let me know if you try it out. 

I would love to see how they are working out in your classroom. 

Make sure to head over the "You Oughta Know" blog hop 

and check out some other amazing ideas!

Gettin techy with it! A tutorial for securing clipart for your TPT products.

Trying to navigate all of the technicalities of clipart, products, fonts and being a TPT seller can be completely overwhelming at times. I always want to make sure that I am giving credit where credit is due to be given and protecting the work of others, too. 

So many of you have asked for my simplified sub plans, but I needed to make sure  that all of the clipart was secure. It is important to flatten and secure images EVEN IN A PDF!!! I had no idea, but even when you create a document and save it as a PDF the clipart is still not secure.  I did some research and searched through a few tutorials. After a little frustration and a lot of hunting I came across this gem at the 3am Teacher.

She has an amazing tutorial for Windows users and a link for a tutorial for Mac users. 

There was only one problem for me. Her tutorial for Windows was for products created using powerpoint. I however, use a MAC. Boo, sadsies. The tutorial for the Mac users was for products created with Pages. Danggggg IT! I just started creating all of my products with PowerPoint. 

So again, I was stuck. I could not find any other tutorials that would help so I started tweaking and messing until I figured it out. My efforts paid off for you too because I have a tutorial here for those of you who are in the same boat. I hope that the directions are easy to follow! Let me know if you have questions. :)