Enter to Win Your Dream Classroom – The Educents Teacher Appreciation Giveaway

To celebrate Teacher Appreciation month, Educents, FreshGrade, S&S Worldwide, and the Sellers of Educents have partnered to give educators funding for their dream classrooms. The 7 educators with the most votes will win a combined $10,000! Any educator is eligible to win – teachers, homeschoolers, parents, and school administrators.

How to Win

Educators get pretty creative when it comes to raising money to cover expenses for classroom supplies. Many host bake sales, ask the community for second-hand supplies, or pay out of their own pockets. However, there’s a new way to get money for your classroom… and it doesn’t include raiding the aisles of your local dollar store.

It’s easy to enter to win the Educents Teacher Appreciation Giveaway, and it still requires a little creativity (see Step 3).

Step 1: Save up to $5,000 in products for your dream classroom in your Educents wishlist.

Step 2: Click “Enter to Win” on your wishlist page and create your voting profile.

Step 3: Share with your friends, family and community and ask them to vote for you every day until May 6. This is your opportunity to get creative – how will you share your wishlist, and how will you involve your community to vote for you??

Any educator is eligible to win – teachers, homeschoolers, and school administrators. Ready to get started?

 

Here are a few other entries I love – vote for your favorite!

“Vote for me because I LOVE teaching. I have a wonderful class that is full of spirit and who loves to learn. I will be putting all my dream items to the end of the year lessons and summer school lessons.” -Diana R.

“I am a homeschooling mom of 4 children, and one baby on the way! We live on only my husband salary. I would love to create a dream classroom for them.” – Gina H.

Traditions, Skills And Gratitude

While as a child, having a parent who is very detailed oriented and almost OCD about their space, is not a fun person to grow up around, I did learn quite a few useful skills from my adoptive father’s very exact personality. From how to cut an onion in precise and extra small pieces to careful and detailed gift wrapping, I am grateful for this knowledge and am often asked to teach those little skills to others.

Getting ready for the Holiday season, which in our family happens to be also the season where everyone seems to be having a birthday, I go through tons of wrapping paper and ribbons.

If you are like my friends and family, you probably think a lot less about the wrapping of those presents then the content of them – but I thought you might appreciate a little tutorial I found on youtube that shows a quick and easy way to make your presents more beautiful.

Speaking of gift giving, have you began to plan your shopping for the upcoming holidays yet? No? Me neither, but at least I have a plan in place for everyone on my list. Do you plan your holiday shopping in detail, like I do or are you waiting for whatever is on sale on days like Black Friday (which I do not participate in). I am not I would be able to get everyone a thoughtful gift without this planning ahead – which, by the way, I always do, throughout the year, and make a rule that it has to be done before Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Floral Magnet – Personalize It!

Another tradition, albeit one that was a lot more fun to learn, was making Christmas cookies. I am grateful that both of my Grandmothers were avid backers and usually provided us with at least a dozen varieties each. This year I have to add some vegan varieties to the mix, so my daughter can eat them as well. I, on the other hand, will for that occasion not restrict myself and stick with tradition.

 

Do you have any favorite holiday skills and traditions that you enjoy? What skills did they teach you, even if at the time you might not have appreciated the learning process as much as you do that skill now?

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

And check out the custom designer Christmas wrapping collection, I created for you. It includes the most beautiful wrapping papers for this holiday season, I could find on Zazzle.

Christmas Wrapping Paper
by Claudia H. Blanton

 

This blog post is a part of the following blog hops:

Celebrate The Small Things

No Rules Weekend Blog Party

Share With Me

Transient

Undead was such an uncaring word. Zombie was not much fun either. There are better labels I would choose for myself if anyone that mattered would listen. Who did not matter where my sisters, who thought I was way out there, and well I was pretty cool, after all I still had all of my fingers and most of my hair. Transient was more descriptive of our state, technically a state between states, which, thanks to my crazy family had spread through the world like wildfire.

Claudia H. Blanton 2015

A New Life – A Five Sentence Flash Fiction

A New Life

The headache caused some confusion, a migraine more powerful than what she had ever experienced before.
Nausea added to the discomfort, but despite all of this, all of the pain off the last few days, there was more joy in her eyes, than she had ever shown before, her heart overflowing with love.
What did it matter, what came before, when the most beautiful creature laid beside her, waddled in a soft blue blanket, eyes closed, dreaming of things to come.
Giving one last glance at her newborn, her heart sorring with so much love, that it almost hurt, Liza smiled.
Grateful, she closed her eyes as well, falling into a deep, well deserved sleep.

Copyright Claudia H. Blanton 2014

This post was inspired by a prompt from Lillie McFerrin’s “Five Sentence Fiction” blog. Every week or so, Lillie posts a word that serves as a prompt and has to be used in the story. That particular weeks word was “Confusion”.

An Unexpected Guest

“I almost forgot how much I loved cake.”
“Aunt Lilly is a genius in the kitchen. You are the last person, I expected to see today.”
“Why? You had a lot of visitors lately, specially since your Mother passed.”
Sienna sighted.
“That is true. There have not been very many moments to just be alone.”
The older gentlemen nodded.
“Everyone wants to make sure you are okay.”
“Not a conventional way of making sure I am okay, though.”
“Since when has anyone in our family, ever done anything conventional?”
She chuckled.
“You are right, Grandpa. We are not exactly one of those cookie cutter families”.
His smile deepened.
“Absolutely not”.
“Thank you.”
“Has she stopped by, yet?”
“No. I miss her.”
“She will be here, soon. She is still going to be close by. We all are.”
“I know, Papa, thanks.”
“Of course, my Darling. I am going to go now, it takes a lot of energy to talk to you, hon. But if you need me, just call my name.”
“Thanks, Papa.”
He smiled one more time, before disappearing into the Nothing he had arrived from.

Copyright Claudia H. Blanton 2014