It's the Day I've Been Waiting For. Plus Sweet School Pics.

Today is one of my favorite days of the year. It's not a holiday. It's not my birthday. So why do I love it? Well I'll tell you why. December 1st is the best day of the year because it's the day I can bust into my chocolate advent calendar for the first time. I have to exercise a lot of patience and self-control to wait until the 1st before I start opening the paper windows of the calendar. Hmm. Speaking of exercise, exercising patience and self-control is the only kind of exercising I do. Definitely not any of the physical kind going on around here. As if that wasn't already obvious considering the fact that I'm writing a post about my love for a box filled with 24 chocolates...

And here she is. Window #1. This little chocolate square is currently sitting in my belly. It was delicious.

Do any of you do a chocolate advent calendar? My Momma's been buying these things for us (my siblings and I) since I was a tot. I still love them just as much (if not more) at the age of 28 as I did back then. Delicious tradition. I've written about my advent calendars for the past couple years on my blog. HERE's a post from 2009 and HERE's a little mention from last year with some of my favorite Christmas things, just in case you're interested in some Waiting on the Butterflies archives.

As a kickoff to December, I will give you much delight as I bombard you with some Christmas photos. I have some pictures of my home Christmas decor including my beautimous tree, but those will wait for another day. My tree is not that of the average bear. I don't believe in putting up green trees. It clashes with my living room. But all of that will have to wait for another day.

Today I'm going to share some school pictures because I just finished this project today and I'm wanting to show it off. I don't really do a great job of posting pictures of things I do in my classroom, but since I've recently acquired many new teacher follower friends (hey guys!), I thought I'd share a little somethin', somethin' for all you because you'll appreciate it. This has been a labor of love. I have a sore back and glue stick burns to prove it. Thanks to stinkin' Pinterest, I was inspired to decorate my door for the Christmas season. Well, one thing led to another and the ideas just got bigger and involved more and more glitter.

The end result: a gingerbread duplex. 

Our duplex. Unit A (Kelly's classroom) and Unit B (mine).

I did this little project with the help of two great kindergarten assistants and Kelly, one of my kindergarten teammates and my classroom next door neighbor. It took us a couple of days to get it completed. It was exhausting but SO much fun. I love doing crafty things at school when we have the chance. It just makes me happy and the kids love it. They said, "It's like we're really inside a giant gingerbread house!"
One of my students from last year (that is a total character and one of my favorite people in my life) walked by and said, "Hey, cool Gingerbread Fortress". I love that I have a fortress. Another kid, that I love just as much and that I could sit and listen to for hours, said (in the cutest country twang you've ever heard), "I just love all this decoratin'".

My classroom

The full view

The roofing is my favorite part. Beautiful gumdrops and "icing" that looks like sparkly clouds.

Here's another close-up of the beautiful glittery gumdrops. I painted bowls and covered with Diamond Dust glitter to make them look sugar-covered.

You know, I love glitter so much. It makes me so happy but I swear I'll be sweeping it up from my classroom floor for the next month. Extra emphasis on I because I know the night custodian sure as heck isn't going to do it. Grumble, grumble. Anyway, I'll be sweeping it up for the next month because it just gets everywhere and it's impossible to get it all cleaned up. Glitter is like the herpes of the crafting world. It stays with you forever.

Yummy candy.

Scrumptious.

I took this shot before we were finished with the roof of our duplex. I wanted to show the peppermints and gingerbread men from the ceiling that we hung for added cuteness. It's important to make hallway displays as over-the-top as possible. It brings out the comments from haters and grumblers for sure.

Oh, and let me explain the Japanese flag. We didn't just randomly hang this as part of our gingerbread decor. At our school, we have international flags hanging all the way down both of our super mile-long hallways to represent all of our diversity. Just wanted to clear that up.

Here's my bulletin board. It is the most boring and simple and pointless bulletin board that I've ever done, but after doing the door display...well, I had nothing left to give. So I sprinkled candy on the board. Short and sweet. Pun very much intended.

Well, that's my little hallway tour.

Here's one more little treat for you. This is my cute little classroom Christmas tree. It's actually a picture from last year, but the tree still looks the same.

I hope you enjoyed the picture fest. Happy December!