Grin and Grab it Freebie Day

What is Grin and Grab it Freebie Day? Today only, several TpT sellers are offering one priced product for free. Please see the product cover pictures and links, below, to Teachers Pay Teachers to get your freebies. This promotion ends tonight, but please leave feedback while the products are still free as it can't be added after the products are priced again. We are having a give away of a $25 dollar gift certificate for Teachers Pay Teacher for our first Grin and Grab it Day! See the Rafflecopter information, below.

2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th,7th, 8th, 9th, 10th	Tiny World of Insects Magnified by a Scanning Electron Microscope This Powerpoint slide show and PDF printable file includes images of insects and insect parts.
7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, Homeschool	Persuasive Speech & Visual Aid Project with Rubric Argumentative Oral Presentation Project, Rubric for Grading, Argumentative Speech
Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, Student PDFs includedThis product is updated each year with more calendar years, so check back and re-download each fall.	Calendar Math, Birthdays 2013-2016 and Printable Student PDFs For 2013 thru December 2016 SMART Board, Power Point, and PDFs
	Breakfast, Lunch, Desayuno, Almuerzo Vocabulary Practice Cloze“Cloze” sentences give clues to breakfast and lunch vocabulary words in Spanish.
6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th,Adult Education, Homeschool	Three Ways Authors Reveal Characters Authors reveal the physical descriptions and the personality traits of the characters they create by using either direct or indirect characterization.

We will not usually have a give away when we have our random Grin and Grab it Days, but today the winner was Danielle. Thanks, everyone, we hope you enjoy your new resources!

TpT Cyber Monday and Tuesday Sale

TpT Cyber Monday and Tuesday Sale Starts Tomorrow!

All of my materials will be on sale for 20% off. 

Use the code CYBER at checkout and you will save 28%.

All the best,

Mema's Cornbread Dressing

Mema's Cornbread Dressing

Alice Bourland (1917-2008)

This was my beautiful mother’s famous recipe for cornbread dressing. We had it for Thanksgiving and for Christmas dinner. The turkey was not the focus of our meal; Mema’s Dressing was everybody’s favorite. We would pour gravy over it and eat it for days. After my youngest grandson was diagnosed with Celiac Disease, I began making it with gluten free flour and gluten free corn meal. It is as good as ever!

CORNBREAD (Make at least one day early so it can dry out a little. If possible, make in on Sunday before Thanksgiving or three days before Christmas and then leave it out on the counter. Also, dry out a loaf of bread and use for breadcrumbs or buy a bag of breadcrumbs. Just be sure they are not seasoned because that will alter the taste.

Triple this cornbread recipe for a large amount of dressing to feed several people. (It’s better to mix it up and bake it in three batches.)

1 cup yellow cornmeal

4 tablespoons flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon melted shortening (or vegetable oil)

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk (Very important. Don't use sweet milk.)

Mix cornmeal, flour, soda, and salt. Beat egg and add to buttermilk. Then pour this mixture into the sifted dry ingredients, add 1 tablespoon melted shortening (or vegetable oil) and stir only until well mixed. Grease an 8X8 pan. (If you have one, bake the cornbread in an iron skillet.) Pour batter into hot, greased pan. Bake at 425 degrees about 30 to 35 minutes, or until brown.

DRESSING

large bunch of celery

1 large yellow onion

poultry seasoning (Very important. Don't use anything else.)

3 cans chicken broth

butter

dry cornbread (crumbled)

dry bread (Add enough to make the mixture stick together well)

Chop celery and onion and sauté in butter until soft and clear in color. Crumble cornbread and bread in a large bowl. Add celery and onion mixture. Add chicken broth a little at a time until you get the thick consistency of muffin dough. Add poultry seasoning a teaspoon at a time. This will make it salty and give it its unique flavor. Taste until it tastes like Mema's dressing. (For those who did not know and love Mema, just suit your own taste.) Grease one rectangular baking dish with oil. Bake at 350º until dressing is brown and crusty on top. (30 or 35 minutes.) If you want stuffing in the turkey, stuff it with raw dressing before you put it in the oven.

I hope you enjoy this delicious recipe. Here's a link to two FREE activities that the whole family could do for fun after dinner. 

While you are visiting the TeachersPayTeachers web site, be sure to fill your wish list with products and then go back on December 2nd and 3rd and SAVE MONEY with the CYBER MONDAY AND TUESDAY SALE!. Use the code CYBER when you checkout and you will save 28% on all of my books and lesson units.

Now is the time to buy amazing products from some talented teachers.

Huge Back to School Sale at TeachersPayTeachers.com

Huge Back to School Sale at TeachersPayTeachers.com

Sunday, August 18th and Monday, August 19th are the two days for the huge back to school sale at TeachersPayTeachers.com. Now is the time to stock up on useful products. Everything in my store including all of my Simple Steps to Sentence Sense books and materials will be on sale.

Must Stories Have a Happy Ending?

 Do you feel cheated when you finish a book if the ending is not a happy one?

People often do. A good friend of mine confesses to reading the end of a novel before she buys it. If the ending is not happy, she puts it back on the shelf. Now that she reads on her Kindle, it's not so easy to preview the book's ending, but she usually goes with authors she can count on to let their characters live happily ever after.

I have no such requirement in mind when I read, or for that matter when I write a novel or short story.

What I want is for all the loose ends to be tied up, for all the characters' problems to have a chance at resolution (even if the resolution is not particularly a happy one), and most importantly, for the ending to be uplifting and offer hope.

Although most of my novels do have a happy ending, I do not insist on making that happen. Maybe the best thing that could happen to the characters is that they go their separate ways. Perhaps they were making each other miserable. Now, however, they may have a chance to find the one person who will make them truly happy.

Maybe the protagonist's dream has been shattered, but he finds the courage to carry on and find a new dream.

There are so many what if's. Life is like that.

Visit my Kindle Store and take your pick, All of my books are only $2.99.

If you don't have a Kindle, no problem. You can download a freeKindle reader for any smart phone, iPad, PC, or Mac. The download is offered on the Kindle website.

I do all my reading on my iPhone or my iPad because they come with a built in night light.

Also, take a look at my nonfiction books. I have all of my Simple Steps to Sentence Products on sale for 4 days in my Teachers Notebook Store. in celebration of my three grandsons' birthdays. Happy Birthday to Alec and Mason who turn 16 on the 27th,  and to Dawson who turns 10 on the 30th. 

I love you guys! You have my heart!

My teaching tip is being featured today on TeachersNotebook.com
Click here to read: So Many Papers to Grade: So Little Time.

All the best,