Blog Redesign + New Name!

Good evening everyone! I've been super busy since I returned home from Houston after attending Debbie Diller's conference, and part of what I've been up to is a little makeover for my blog! Although I liked what I had come up with a few months ago, it still wasn't as "me" as I thought it might could be, so I did a little tweaking to my banner, color scheme, and background. I also decided to change my blog name! I am hoping this does not cause a lot of problems for any followers or subscribers; I'm assuming that if you were already following me via Blogger, an RSS feed, or Google Reader that nothing will change, but I wanted to alert those of you who might just bookmark my blog that the domain name is now http://yaythirdgrade.blogspot.com. Part of the reason I changed my blog name is because I'm in the process of redesigning and updating my Etsy site, which is called Yay Paper. I'm hoping by correlating my teaching/blogging endeavors to my Etsy shop it'll push me to create more and put my products out there.

In other news, I am over the moon because I noticed I now have 100 followers! I started this blog a little under a year ago, and it was mostly so I'd have a site to link back to as I blog stalked - never did I imagine I'd become so addicted to being a part of this wonderful teaching community! I am so glad you've found me, and I hope that by following me you've found something useable for yourself and your classroom. I will be hosting a giveaway soon to celebrate this milestone, but I want to take some time to think long and hard about what it will be. As a way to say thank you to you all right now, I've reduced the price of my fonts on my TpT site (which is also now called Yay Third Grade). I love the feedback I've gotten from y'all on what I've created, but since no one has purchased a font yet, I think that may mean the price is too high. I know there are a billion free fonts out there, so I get that paying for a font seems unnecessary, but perhaps someone out there will want to spend $2 so that I can at least say I've made my first sale on TpT! That'd be two milestones in one week!

Thanks for stopping by to check out the change! Tomorrow is my school's final day of the 7 Habits/Leader in Me training, and next week I will share some of the great things I learned and experienced with y'all. I also got lots of great ideas from the Debbie Diller conference, and after I create the things I'll need to implement those ideas, I'll be sure to share those, too! Have a great rest of the week, y'all!

Font Freebie!

Hi friends! Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'm knee deep in laundry and reorganizing my apartment - I just got the furniture delivered from my grandmother's house, so I'm trying to make everything fit in my tiny apartment. After I finish all that, I'm going to go meet some friends for some Irish celebrating (my aunt is really into genealogy, and my maternal grandmother's side of the family does indeed hail from Ireland, so I owe it to my ancestors to enjoy this day!).

Before I get back to work, I wanted to share with you a font that I created with the iFont Maker on my iPad - I call it Plain Print, and it's the font I used for the signature you see at the end of all my posts. This was the first font I made on that app, and it's very similar to my actual handwriting. I bought a Bamboo stylus to use on my iPad, and it made making this font a breeze! (**Just to clarify, I purchased the iFont Maker app and the Bamboo stylus myself; I am not being paid to review, endorse, or share their products - I'm simply telling you about them because that's what I used and I love what I made!**)

Anyway, I submitted it to dafont.com, and they accepted it! Click here to download it for free! I'd love to know if you end up using it - leave me a comment if you do! :)

Also: If you are like me, you probably do most of your blog reading through Google Reader or Blogger, and don't visit blogs all that often unless you're commenting. But: I redesigned my blog instead of writing lesson plans one of the nights I was up at the observatory, and I absolutely love how it turned out (I was previously using a free template from here, and while it was super cute and well made, I never felt like it was really "me".) For my background, I used a polka dotted digital image from here - if you've never visited Mel's blog, she's got some GREAT ideas and tons of freebies - go check her out!). I even made my own banner and button, using my Plain Print font! I'm very proud of my first attempt at creating digital images and messing with HTML, so if you have a second to come check it out, I'd love it if you would (and tell me what you think!).

Have a great weekend!