The Best of 2015

I just cannot believe that 2015 is coming to a close. It has been forever and a day since I blogged but I got my wisdom teeth out yesterday so that has forced me to sit down for more than 30 minutes. I absolutely love the linky that Kristin, Traci, and Hadar set up at the end of each year and so I thought I would link up with them and share 10 of my favorite memories of 2015.

{one)

Being an aunt to sweet Jude Dude is definitely a favorite memory. He just brings me and the Mister so much joy! We got to see Jude in January and then again this summer for his birthday! He even got to spend the weekend with us this summer which was just such a treat!

{two}

Building a garden with my husband this year has been such a fun experience. We grew all kinds of things like strawberries, blue berries, green beans, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, snow peas, and bell peppers. We learned so much this year and can't wait to plant for our 2016 garden.

{three}

In May we took my mother-in-law to Boone for her birthday. We got to hike all around see some amazing waterfalls.

{four}
This year for my birthday, my best friend Windsor got all the girls together and we had a low country boil and then some sweets and wine pairings for desserts. It was so much fun and anytime that I get to spend with my girl friends is the best time!

{five}
Mia is a very special lady in my life and I was so blessed to be able to make so many memories with her this year!

{six}
Family time is the best time and we got to have some very special family time on our vacation this summer. We absolutely loved getting to see my husband's Grandmommie, Aunt Patti, and his cousin Jeannine and her family.

{seven}
Disney is definitely one of my favorite memories of 2015. That was our big trip this year and I loved every little bit of it. We also got to go on a cruise while we were down in Florida!

 

{eight}
This year I got to be a part of a very special launch team for Jen Hatmaker's book For the Love. If you haven't read it, you must! The book has been such a blessing to me but being a part of the launch team has been even more of a blessing. 500 people were chosen to help launch the book and these people have just taught me so much about what his kingdom could look like here on earth. So many amazing stories have come out of the launch team and I am so overwhelmed and humbled to be a tiny speck in that story.

{nine}
The Mister and I got our first live Christmas tree together this year. It was my first live tree ever! I was so nervous about getting it but I loved it! It was so special to have Christmas at home this year!

{ten}

 It's so sappy but true. Any memory I get to have with the Mister is a favorite one! I still can't believe I get to do life with my best friend!

I hope you have had a fabulous 2015! I am so looking forward to seeing what 2016 has in store! 

Tech Tips Round 2: How to Flatten Images

Alrighty friends! It is time for Round 2 of Tech Tips! I am going to show you how to flatten your images in a product and then save them as a PDF!

 

A reason that you need to flatten your images is because you do not want people to steal some of your product and take credit for it! Most Clipart Artists, also require that their images be flattened in their terms of use.

 

 

You will start with your product. Mine is a simple poster that I use to help count the days of school!

 



Fonts are Kimberly Geswein, Clip Art is Krista Wallden, and Backgrounds are Megan Farve.

 

 

Once you have finished your product, make sure you save your work as a PowerPoint. Then, you are going to want to save your work again and change the Save As Type to a PNG file. Make sure you are saving them to a place you can find them! Then click Save.

 

 

A window pops up and asks if you want to save all of your slides or just your current slide. I always select every slide. Once you do that, you will receive a confirmation message.

 

 

You will then create a new PowerPoint presentation. Format the slides to match your original product then right click and select format background from the pop up menu.

 

 

A screen will come up and you will first select Picture or Texture fill and then select insert from file. Then go and find the images that you saved and select the first one.

 

 

Magically, your image will now be the background! No clipart can be "lifted" from the product now! You will have to go through this process for all of the slides. Once you learn the routine, it doesn't take much time at all to get the hang of it!

 

 

So here are all of my slides, in the new PowerPoint, where the images are now my backgrounds!

 

 

You will want to save this as a new PowerPoint Presentation just incase you ever need to modify the PowerPoint in the future without starting all over!

 

The next thing you will do is save this PowerPoint as a PDF. It is really quite simple. All you do is go to File, Save As and then change the Save As Type to a PDF.

 

 

When I save things as PDFs the file normally opens automatically but if yours doesn't you can go and find it and open it! So here is my saved PDF!

 

 

Now let me mention that if you have links in your PowerPoint, those links will not work now that the slides have been "flattened." However, in the next Tech Tip, I will show you how to make links and images clickable! I use that tip a ton when making Credits Pages!

 

Let me know if you have any questions! I would love to chat with you!



All About This Kinder Teacher Link Up!

Can we just all take a minute and freak out because this is FIFTH blog post in a row! If you have been following me longer than a week, you can understand how big of a victory this is! 

Since a lot of you have only been following me for a few weeks or even less, it is such a great opportunity for me to link up with my gals at KinderTribe and share All About This Kinder Teacher!

For those of you I don't know, allow me to introduce myself! My name is Lindsey Nihart and I am a Kindergarten Teacher in North Carolina. I have been teaching for two and a half years. I am one of those silly people who decide to start teaching in January! 

I definitely CANNOT live with out my sweet tea! I normally make a stop before school each morning to pick some up to start my day out right! 

I absolutely love Flair Pens like you wouldn't believe and I use card stock like it is running out of style! 

I don't know about you but, I love reading the Cat in the Hat to my Kinder friends! Right when I read it to them aloud is right about when the light bulb goes off and they realize that they can read that book on their own! I wouldn't even say that it is the book that I love so much but the inspiration and encouragement that my kiddos get from the Cat in the Hat. 

Cara Carroll from The First Grade Parade is by far my favorite Kindergarten blog! I started reading Cara's blog right as soon as I started my education major in college. I have gotten so many wonderful ideas and so much encouragement from her. I'm kind of just waiting for her to ask for applications to be her new bestie because I am totally there. 

I absolutely love teaching Kindergarten because the kids are just so excited to be in school and love it! I also gain so much from watching these babies grow into little people! 

{Secretly: I also like to teach Kindergarten because I really enjoy being these kids first experience with school. I work really hard to make sure that they have a memorable and fun first year of school!}

If you are a Kinder Teacher, go to Kinder Tribe, grab the picture and link up with us! I would love to meet you! 

A HUGE Announcement + Giveaway!

Have you ever been so excited about something that you are just giddy about it? Like so giddy, you kind of squeal out loud and possibly jump up and down just thinking about it? 

No?

Oh, Me Either.

NOT!!!

Y'all, I have had the amazing opportunity to be a tiny part in getting a new Kindergarten collaborative blog launched and today it is finally live! I definitely did the jumping up and down and squealing thing! I LOVE IT! 

I have mentioned being a part of the Kinder Tribe in a previous post! Well this tribe is just amazing and so many good ideas and opportunities were happening in this tribe so we decided to start a collaborative blog about all things KINDER! 

This is such an amazing thing and unlike any other blog that I have ever seen. I love the concept of have a one place as a host for so many ideas for Kindergarten! There are a team of 16 Kinder Teachers that are admin for the blog. Can you believe that they chose me to be one of the admins! I die. If you want to meet the other lovely 15 ladies that I have teamed up with you can click on the Meet the Teachers tab on the Kinder Tribe Blog. 

However, there is opportunity for ALL Kinder teachers to join in on the fun! We are hosting several linky parties and would love for you to be a part of it! Keep in the loop by joining our Facebook Group here. 

In order to celebrate to blog launch, we are hosting a HUGE giveaway over at Kinder Tribe! Some of the prizes are a clip art bundle, several TPT product bundles, a $75 gift card to TPT, and more! Click the button below to check it out! 

Tech Tips Round 1- Grabbing Color Tutorial

On Periscope, I have shared a few Tech Tips and want to share them with you if you weren't able to catch the replay! So for the first round of Tech Tips, we are going to learn how to "grab colors from your clip art!

I am kind of lame and and don't have any of the fancy programs that you have to buy in order to grab colors! I like to stick with the FREE so today we are using the website PIXLR! I learned about this website from Megan Farve from I Teach What's Your Superpower?.

Let's me show you how this works! 

So let's pretend that you are working with a something that starts out looking like this: 

Background by Megan Farve and girl by Krista Wallden. 

The next thing that I want to do is create a shape at the top to form a header for the title! I have created a rectangle that spans the width of the slide. You can do this with any shape.

 After I do that, I want to scroll down on the home page on PIXLR and choose to launch the web app for PIXLR EDITOR. 

 Then, choose to open up an image from your computer. 

 I chose to use the background paper however if you want to grab colors from a piece of clip art, you totally can! 

 The next thing you will want to do is click the black rectangle that is in the bottom of the tool bar. 

When you do, a color wheel will pop up and your arrow icon will change to a dropper icon. 

 Click the color that you would like to grab and check out the RGB codes that I have highlighted with the black rectangle. You will need these codes in order to change the color on your rectangle in Powerpoint! 

Then I go back into PowerPoint, click on my shape, go to shape fill, and click on more fill colors. 

 This screen pops up and I type in the RGB code that I got from the PIXLR Editor. I then press OK. 

 Once I do that, I have now grabbed a color! 

You can grab colors for backgrounds, shapes, texts, and even outlines of objects as well! 

I hope that this tutorial was easy to follow and let me know if you use this method of grabbing color by commenting below! If you have any questions, you can also put them in comment section!

Thanks guys! Round 2 of Tech Tips will be coming to you soon!