Valentine Love {a FREEBIE and a giveaway}

In honor of Valentine’s Day next week, I wanted to share the love with you, my wonderful blog readers and supporters!  Today I have an AWESOME freebie, and a giveaway :)  Read on for all the details!

As a first year teacher, I taught in a really nice area, and the room mother had an amazing valentine party planned for my class. All of my students made home-made boxes, and we had a great party. The following year, I moved to a low-income school, and quickly realized I was not going to have that same support. Being a new teacher, I was still REALLY into parties.... So of course I had to order cute valentine bags from oriental trading. I won't tell you how many hours I spent hot gluing fuzzy pom-poms to curly pipe cleaners... But it's safe to say that I've taken things down a notch or two over the years. I still enjoy parties, it just gets a little hard when you don't have a lot of parent support and have to plan it all yourself.... That's where the idea for these valentine bags were born. It actually started as a hallway bulletin board idea, then I realized they would look perfect on a bag.... Ta-da! I've been making these bags with my class for a few years now, and they always get a kick out of it. I make these bags with the whole class a few days before Valentine’s Day, which ensures that every child will have something to take their valentines home in. My students are still welcome to decorate a box at home, but I realize that not everyone gets to do that, so these bags prevent any child from having to take their things home in a walmart bag.

Today I'm going to share them with you... you will be able to download the pattern and directions for FREE, exclusively on the blog :) (and I bet you already have everything you need to make these!)  If you use them and love them, please leave me some feedback... I love reading comments :)

 

Click on the picture for the pattern and directions.

And now… the giveaway!!  I had originally planned to do this for my birthday, but I was so sick that I had no energy to do ANYTHING… so why not do it now?! Up for grabs today is one of the “quietest pencil sharpeners” from Classroom Friendly Supplies… what better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than with a super cute PINK pencil sharpener (I think I will have to give in and buy a pink one since I can’t seem to get lucky and win it on any other blog).

 I’ve told you before about how much I love this pencil sharpener, and I still swoon every time I sharpen my students’ pencils.  One week recently, I was being lazy and used my electric pencil sharpener, thinking that my students wouldn’t really notice… OH NO… they definitely noticed!! I even heard one student say “Look, she didn’t sharpen them all the way” LOL! Busted!! Lesson learned…. Always sharpen with the quietest pencil sharpener :)  Use the rafflecopter below to enter… and don’t worry, if PINK isn’t your thing, you can pick any color from their pencil sharpener collection.  Giveaway closes on February 15th, so the winner will be announced next weekend... stay tuned :)

** please note, this giveaway is open to US residents only due to shipping purposes. Thanks!

a Rafflecopter giveaway