Top 3 Product & Freebie Linky - WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

Hi y'all! Happy Thursday! I hope your week has gone pretty well... I've been subbing my little booty off, but I love it. I'm learning a lot of what I will do for substitutes when it comes to me having my own classroom, that's for sure!

Anyway, my fantastic friend Brian who blogs over at Hopkins' Hoppin' Happenings is hosting a cool little linky! I am going to show you my top 3 products I've sold in my TPT store and a freebie that's been downloaded the most.

My number one most selling product is my Monster Themed Coupon Set. I got the clipart from Melonheadz Illustrating and I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out. There's so many different ways to give reward to students, but I love coupons. This makes them feel special and happy when they can collect certain coupons to redeem at a later time! Click the picture below to be taken to the TPT page for more information.

My second top selling product is my Word Wall Words in Rainbow Diagonal Stripes. This set is made from the dolch word lists for each grade. I love these because they're nice and big, bright and bold, and absolutely kid friendly. They can be used by putting them on the word wall OR you can hole punch the corner and put them on a ring OR you can even just use them as flashcards! The possibilities are endless. Click the picture below to be taken to the TPT page for more information.

Finally, my last of the top 3 selling products is my Making Words - Yearlong Activities. I love this set. Each page has it's own word as well as 27 spots to write made up words. For example, one of the words is SEPTEMBER. Some of the words you can make are seep, beep, pet, set, bet, and so forth. Students complete these throughout the year, as there are about 80 pages of activities for the classroom. Use this as morning work, afternoon work, "I'm finished, now what?" work, and so on! Click the picture below to be taken to the TPT page for more information.

Finally, my most downloaded freebie is my Wanted Poster! I absolutely love this, as it was my first product ever created. I saw the idea somewhere and thought, "I can adopt that for my classroom" when I was in 2nd grade during internship. My students used it for a book report form about a mystery. You could tailor the form for many different things... this was just our idea! If you'd like to download the Wanted Poster, as well, click the picture below to be taken to the TPT page for more information.

If you'd like to check out anything else in my TPT store, please click here or on the link in my sidebar. I'm always coming up with ideas for products and adding them to my store when my Internet decides to work for me. I love having new customers & I'm here to make what YOU all want. Please let me know if you have any special requests for things you would like - I'll do my best to accommodate!

Please remember - if you download or purchase ANYTHING from ANY TPT store, please leave feedback! Not only does the feedback help the creator, if you leave feedback on a purchased product, you will get points. These points translate into FREE MONEY. What? Free money? Yes. You can use these points on future purchases to get yourself some more things! I've racked up a lot of points, and I'm saving them for the next big sale so I can get some amazing, amazing deals.

Now, what y'all have been waiting for! The giveaways ended yesterday at 11:59 PM soo... it was time to choose the winners! The winners of my giveaway have been e-mailed and if they do not respond within the next 48 hours, a new winner will be chosen for the giveaway where the winner did not respond! Congrats on winning to both Brittany & Gina!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don't forget to check out Brian's linky and sign up for the Ohio Blogger Meet Up that's happening on October 7th - just 10 days away! :)

Have a good day, y'all!

Wait, TWO Giveaways?!

Okay, I know some of you have been patiently waiting for this post to come about.. well, here it is!

I was contacted by MyBinding.com to review some sort of awesome tool. I chose to review the Book Binding Machine since I already have a great laminator and a paper cutter. I also have been interested in a machine to make books for my future students rather than just putting a paper clip on the top or stapling the edges and being faced with crumbled papers. SO, I asked to review the binding machine!

This huge box showed up on a rainy day. I actually missed it walking inside the house because it was off to the side... but I was expecting something so I went back outside to check for it. Low and behold, there it was!

I cut open the box and was faced with this. WHAT?! Did I really just get my own binding machine to make books, calendars, etc.?! AND the box came with tons and tons and TONS of supplies like binding combs, clear covers, AND embossed paper? Yes, yes, I did.

So, I decided to break it out and play with it some! It's a pretty lightweight machine that's REALLY simple to use once you get the hang of it. It being my first time using it, I actually followed the directions. But, now that I know what to do, it's as easy as pie! The BIG gray handle is the hole puncher (in a sort of way). There's a little gray sliding tool on the top there to the right, that's the lock. So, the machine locks and unlocks for safety. Definitely a good idea, in my opinion, so that things don't get punched that you'd prefer not to get punched!

You unlock the machine and the gray handle pops up to allow for you to insert sheets of paper to be punched. I used my Student Word Wall Book as a sample for this project to see how it works. The only thing I didn't like about this part is that I could only fit 8 pages in at a time... kind of disappointing BUT it works great nonetheless! Since my document had a total of 17 pages, I just had to punch through twice. When you're punching through, it sounds like the machine is breaking BUT do not worry. This is good! The handle also does not pop back up by itself.. you have to pull it. You should have seen me trying to figure out how to get the handle back up... what a concept to just pull back up!

Once you've got your holes in, now it's time to set up your comb. The comb confused me at first, too (you'd think I had not experienced anything in life before with me trying to figure out this machine?!). Anyways, you set the comb up so that the teeth are closer to you than the machine (see picture below). You have to physically push the two levers on the side of the machine to spread the comb open (bottom picture), but it's much MUCH easier than sitting there trying to open each tooth to separate it from the continuous spine (does that make sense?). I absolutely love the ease of this step, as it only took me about 30 seconds to do.

Then, place your product on the combs so that each tooth has gone through each sheet of paper. This step has to be possibly the easiest, yet most frustrating, step. I have an issue with things having to go on at the SAME time, so if some of the pages missed some of the teeth, I made myself start all over again. BUT this step is the easiest, so don't over think it like I did!

AND voilà! There you have it. You've made a book in as short as 1 minute. Once you've got things figured out, you'll whip out your books in no time. These are also going to be very helpful when you need to make books for your students to take home for presents, to give to your parents as a thank you gift, and so forth. There are MANY different things you could use this binding machine for, and guess what?

MyBinding.com is giving one of you, my readers, a chance to win your own!

Please enter the Rafflecopter below to have a chance at winning your own Binding Machine with supplies, FREE! Isn't MyBinding.com so generous to be doing this?!

You must do all the required entries. They WILL be verified. If you do NOT complete something that is required, and your name is drawn at the end, you will be disqualified. HONOR SYSTEM, Y'ALL!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

ALSO: At the same time, I'm hosting another giveaway for hitting 300 AND 400 followers! Please enter the giveaway below for a gift card from me for $30.00. The gift card will be of YOUR choice, all for hitting 400 followers on this little blog of mine

Examples could be Starbucks, Target, TPT, TN, Etsy, Applebees, Michaels, Hobby Lobby, whatever you'd like (that I am able to either buy online OR go to the place and buy).

RULES ARE SAME AS ABOVE. Must complete all required entries. Entries will be verified. HONOR SYSTEM, Y'ALL.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

GOOD LUCK!

*All opinions expressed on this post are of my own. MyBinding.com supplied me with free products, but opinions are 100% my own.*

PS. Don't forget about the Ohio Blogger Meet Up! It's happening on Sunday, October 7th, 2012! We'd love to have as many of you that would like to join! Goody bags, good conversation, and new friends!

Have a good night, y'all!