Dreaming of a White Christmas

It has been way too long since I wrote a blog post! Life in the big smoke has been super busy with so much going on! Since I last blogged I/we have: 

- participated in a Zombie Run where we both survived the apocalypse but I got totally freaked out!

- been to a laser dance party

- been to the most amazing Halloween Steampunk party:

- watched some exciting All Blacks rugby at Kiwi pubs 

- watched the boys play in Dublin and win in the last second of the game - we both nearly had breakdowns watching!

 - explored the city of Dublin:

 Watched the ATP World Tour Tennis Final at the O2:

-completed my first term in my classroom. A term packed with learning new systems, loving my new kiddies, crafts, trips, school reports (longer than I'm used to!) Christmas plays, Hanukkah and so much more! 

- spent time with all of our amazing friends over here! 

- cycled through London with a few thousand other cyclists as part of a "critical mass" take over bike ride on a beautiful Friday evening:

- I visited Bath again for Naomi's (my friend and flatmate) Hens Party:

- Had a visit from my Grandfather and Jacqui

- Eaten a lot of ribs! Andrew's latest food obsession/quest

-Explored Kew Gardens by night (so beautiful!):

- Bought Christmas jumpers and associated paraphernalia:

I have now finished up at school for the Christmas break (thank you private school!) And had a chance to take in the last few months. I can't believe what a busy life we have lead so far in London! I don't think I've really had much time to be homesick, but perhaps as Christmas draws closer those feelings will start to creep in. It is exactly one year ago tomorrow that I left my beloved Ngaio School and constantly find myself wanting to be back there. I probably say a few times a week "well at my old school we did this and it was really awesome!" I always miss my Ngaio family!

It has been almost a year since we first left NZ, but only 10 months since we left for good. We have been lucky enough to have my parents visit and we got to meet Andrew's family in the US. It was so amazing catching up with both but made me miss them more! Before I know it we will be back in the land of jandals and I'm sure, as is always the case, I will then miss London!

Looking ahead is very exciting though! On Tuesday 17 December we fly to Austria for 7 days of skiing and 4 days of Christmassy goodness! I LOVE Christmas and really get into the spirit, so I am really looking forward to my first white holiday!

While we are there, Andrew and I will celebrate our TENTH anniversary!!!!! It is crazy to think back ten years ago to that summer in New Plymouth. We were so young and fresh. But man, we have been through so much together, literally grown up together and been through every new experience as a team. Anyway, won't get too soppy as people don't want to read about that in a blog post!

As soon as we get back from Austria it is pretty much straight back to school then my Bestie Lizzie is tying the knot here in London town. I am SO excited for that!! Can't wait!!

We already have a weekend in Berlin booked for February and are planning a longer trip somewhere in March, as I have most of that month off (again, thank you private school!)

So it looks like life will continue the hectic pace here in this beautiful city. I am so grateful for the chance to live here for a smidgen of my life but also grateful we have a home waiting for us on the other side of the world which we also love!

Since I might not get to blog again before then, my new year's resolutions are:
1. Keep up my exercise and eat more fruit
2. Worry less, enjoy more! (For those that know me well you will roll your eyes as that is a tough ask for me!)
3. Go to the supermarket more regularly so we actually have food in the house!!!!!

Merry, merry Christmas! Love you all!
Christina xxx

Back to School, Back to Blogging!

Well, after an amazing holiday to the USA and a lovely visit from my parents, I am back into the swing of London life. School has started, the encroaching darkness has started and the rain has certainly started and doesn't seem to want to let up! 

Checking out the indoor gardens at the Bellagio

Vegas Lights

(These photos just won't line up!!!)

Our trip to the US with the Darneys was epic! We spent four nights each in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco. I was in awe of the wealth and glamour of Vegas and loved it! San Fran was definitely my favourite though. We had a great time there and I especially loved the day we went to Alcatraz and biked over the Golden Gate Bridge!!

Alcatraz!

Checking out the sights of San Fran - especially the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge! 

The famous Beverly Hills sign

We came home to London to six awesome days with my parents. I had such a great time showing them around London and letting them see the cool life we have here. I was so lucky that they were able to come over and visit me. It's just a shame it was at the beginning of the school year so I couldn't go with them to explore Italy and France..

My Mummy biking through Hyde Park - she was a renegade on two wheels!!

School started back last week, with my class arriving on Wednesday. I have 15 lovely children in my class this year and I can't wait to do heaps of fun, creative learning with them! It should be interesting for me only having 15 and the different dynamic that brings. So far we have started making our own tissue box monsters (like the ones I blogged about a wee while back). Along with lots of other beginning of year things, we also made these cool "greater than/less than monsters" this morning. They are so cute! We are going to use them for hotspot activities related to place value. 

I am feeling super organised for the new school year, but I'm sure as usual that feeling won't last! There is so much to learn at a new school and using a new curriculum, but I am super grateful for my AMAZING school back in NZ where I learned so so so much!! A couple of times over the past week or so I have felt very sad about not being back there, mainly when I don't know what is going on or where to find something or who to ask... As a control freak it's hard not to know the answer to all the questions, but I'm having fun settling in all the same. 

A quick snap of my classroom - unfortunately I didn't manage to get all my new wall displays in the picture... :-( They are to the right!!

An old fave I like to do every year: Thumbprint people! I saw this idea in an amazing classroom in Christchurch on a trip there a few years back and have done it with my class ever since! This year I also created stationery with them so that when the children need standard publishing paper for something, they have a page personalised for our class with the thumbprint person border!

It's been too long!

Last weekend we moved into our amazing new apartment in Highbury. I love it! We have a nice bedroom with a cool view an ensuite bathroom and wicked flatmates - Naomi and Kevin, an Aussie couple we met in South America. It's so cool except that we are still waiting for our Internet to be connected, so that means my online life has ground to a halt! No blogging, no Pinterest(a bit tricky on my phone!), no TeachersPayTeachers or TeachersNotebook! So I am writing this from my phone - not ideal!!! I wanted to do a blog post this week with photos of my finished classroom, but alas! I will have to wait until next Tuesday when our Internet is being switched on.. 

In exciting news, this time in one week we will be in the US of A Baby!!!!

xxx

Parisian Getaway

A couple of weeks ago Andrew and I shot across to Paris for five days of sun, style and pastries!!! 

My absolute highlight was a Scooter Tour around the streets and sights of Paris - including a loop around the infamous roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe. We went with Left Bank Tours (check out their site: http://www.leftbankscooters.com/v02/ ) and had the best time with our guide Pablo. He was super friendly and knowledgeable, plus he liked us because we could actually ride scooters and didn't just claim we could!

The pastries we had in the city of light were amazing!! I'm sitting here drooling as I think about the delectable Raspberry Tart that I had almost every day from the local patisserie. Not only was the custard sweet and a great consistency (with plenty of it too!), but the short crust pastry was the perfect texture and the raspberries were seriously the best raspberries I have ever tasted!!! 

The only bad thing about our trip was the hoardes of tourists at all the big sights. From hours-long lines at Versailles to people changing their baby's nappy right underneath the Eiffel Tower (seriously wouldn't normally have a problem with this but she wasn't even pulled over to the side - not a nice sight to have to walk around!) the over-complex-camera toting, tacky-souvenir buying tourists were everywhere. Now don't get me wrong, I know I was a tourist too but Andrew and I always try to amalgamate with the general population (obviously successful on this trip as I was asked for directions in french at least four times!) and get off the beaten track a little bit. Obviously when you go somewhere like Paris, there are some pretty big/important sights to see, so we had to be around all the usual touristy stuff... It just reminded us why we prefer to avoid it!!

Anyway, here are some of my favourite snaps from our trip!

The Arc gets a thumbs up from the Boss

Life-long dream!

Surrounded by about 200 people taking those "grab the tower" photos

Outside the Moulin Rouge

Andrew on our Vespa

 Van Gogh's Old Apartment 

Sacre Coeur

Vineyard of Montmartre - in the middle of the city!!

I felt like Robert Langdon at the Louvre

Lover's Bridge and Notre Dame Cathedral

Notre Dame - a pretty good photo considering I was on the back of a scooter going 50 km/hr!

Andrew and I with our Vespa

A shot of the Tour Eiffel from the scooter

Chilling in the Luxembourg Gardens

Seriously the best Raspberry Tart I will ever have

Notre Dame and our lock on Lover's Bridge - Instagram shot!

Erin Condren Teacher Planner

I am a very organised person. My classroom is organised, my house is organised (well, most of the time!) and I get stressed out when there is clutter in my life - both tangible and metaphorical. So I am a real list writer/label user/diary user type.

A few years ago my teacher friend Abbey showed me her amazing personalised Erin Condren life planner and I salivated over it!! I spent hours on erincondren.com looking at the different covers, the different upgrades and drove my husband Andrew nuts talking about how much I wanted one. Now if you haven't been to the Erin Condren website and seen her products before, first of all you have to go! You will be instantly obsessed if you're anything like me. But you will also be a bit bummed out if you live anywhere outside the USA, because the international shipping cost (US$40) is crippling... Especially when you are already paying US$60 for the planner. But, I'm going to tell you why it is totally worth every penny!!!

When we moved to the UK I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to invest in a life planner, as they run July to June like a US school year, and pretty similar to a UK one. I always was weary getting one to use in the NZ school year (January to December) as that would mean a diary swap half way through a school year. The other option is an 18 month planner so you would only have this problem every two years. So anyway, I got online and discovered that since my last forlorn visit many months before, Erin Condren was now making TEACHER PLANNERS!!!!!! A specialised take on her famous Life Planner with features designed to make a teacher's life more manageable, organised and stylised (as Erin herself puts it!).

I was so excited and ordered one straight away. Andrew always says the reason I like shopping online is the excitement I feel while I wait for it to arrive.. Well, an Erin Condren planner takes a few weeks to arrive, so I drove him nuts talking about it, updating him on the parcel tracking and literally squealing when the courier arrived with my special parcel!

It arrived about a month ago now and I have been using it to organise myself while I set up my new classroom. I LOVE IT! Every single penny (even the surprise £25 VAT invoice I got from DHL last week) was worth it.

I love having something personalised and the personalised labels it comes with are so cute! I spent hours deciding which cover to get, so when the labels arrived with the designs of different covers I couldn't choose, I was excited! Who knows if I will ever use them - not that I don't have a need, but more likely that I won't want to part with them!!!

The big selling points that Erin Condren mentions in the video (check it out on erincondren.com) are the sturdy aluminium coil and the tabs. And I have to say, these two features are amazeballs!!! What I love the most though is the colourful pages. My teacher planners of old have always been grey or even just plain black and white pages - not inspiring and certainly horrible to look at for hours every day!

Before I hit purchase for this planner I had a good search around the internet and tried to see if there were any cheaper but similar alternatives. After hours of searching I found that NO! There is nothing remotely in the same category as Erin Condren! The designs are so carefully thought about, not just thrown together. Plus you can provide feedback on the products and when the new design comes out every year (about March I believe) Erin does a video to talk through the new design and discuss features and why they have kept them/changed them - this is all about feedback they have from their users. So I guess I'm saying I really like that they listen to what the people who use the products have to say.

Anyway, who would have thought I could write so much just about a diary!! Ridiculous!!!! I better go - the list I wrote in my beautiful teacher planner tells me I have a lot to do today!!

My First Post!!

I am so excited to finally sit down and start my very own blog!! I have spent hours swooning over the amazing blogs of others - mainly fellow teachers or crafters - and always wanted to put together my own.

I am currently setting up my new classroom for the new school year starting in September and have been finding so many inspiring ideas on Pinterest, TeacherspayTeachers and the world wide web! So... I thought for my first post I would share a few of my current inspirations, both school-related and other!


Place Value Polystyrene Cups!
This is such a clever, easy way to create larger numbers. I love how it has different colours as well, so it provides a visual cue to those students who need it. I am definitely going to be using these for whole class hot spots at the start of our maths lessons!


Take Turns Bucket
My latest obsession is using pegs for anything to do with students' names. This is another great way to use them that I'm going to set up first thing on Monday morning! Now I just have to find a cute bucket at the shops this weekend.


Tissue Box Monsters - So Freaking CUTE!
I am planning on making these with my new class in September! I can't wait! There are so many creative ideas for how to make them individual online. I can't wait to see what different monsters my class creates. Once we have made them we are going to do some writing around them - I have a few ideas already; recounts from the monster's perspective, character description/profile, Diary entry, Newspaper Articles about monster citings.. Let me know if you have any other ideas!

I'm hoping to write another blog post this weekend about my Erin Condren Teacher's Planner (one of my Top 5 possessions!) so keep an eye out!!