Top 10 Reasons You Know It's Back to School Time Linky Party

This has to be the cutest and most appropriate linky party I've seen in a while! Reagan at Turnstall's Teaching Tidbits came up with this great idea and I have to join in the fun! Here's my Top 10 Reasons I Know It's Back To School Time:

10. I have spent way more than I should have on school supplies ~ and that does not include supplies for my own children yet! And still, I keep thinking of other things I simply must buy!

9. My living room is missing a corner since all of my school stuffed is stacked semi-neatly in a pile. I can finally get into my classroom on Monday and my husband is more than ready to have that corner of the living room back!

8. I spent the morning bouncing between Staple's and Office Depot's Teacher Appreciation Days. Office Depot had a better goody bag, but Staples had more prizes! Only a teacher could spend 4 hours standing around a Staples on Saturday morning and think it was fun! (I did win 2 grab boxes AND a free lunch at a local restaurant!)

7. I just realized that while I have been planning how my room will look, I forgot to start working on my first week of school lesson plans! The time is slipping away too quickly! I go back to work on the 16th and students come on the 19th!

6. I have begun drinking coffee again after not having any all summer! Partly so that I can get up early to attend events (see #8) but also so that when I am downing 2 huge thermal mugs of coffee each morning I do not spaz out on my poor kinders because of caffeine overload!

5.  Every time I lay my head down at night I see the faces of my former students - I am volunteering at enrollment on Monday just in the hopes of seeing some of my "babies". I'm also wondering who's siblings will be showing up in my class this year!

4. I have arranged and rearranged my room in my head so many times that I am exhausted even before I get everything out of the storage unit and into the classroom! And I just know that I did not pack right at the end of the year - I will have some major reorganizing to do!

3. I have started instituting a bedtime after letting my own kids stay up late all summer. We are all night owls in my house, but that habit has to stop now before school starts or we will all be zombies in the morning. I am trying to avoid another morning of losing the keys because I put them in my purse and then forgot that I had done so 2 minutes later, leading to a frantic 15 minute house-wide hunt for the keys that leaves the place looking like a pack of rabid wolves had run through it.  

2. I have a stack of crock pot recipes to try out for the new school year because I just know that I will not be getting off in time to actually make dinner most nights. Last year we ate way too much fast food ~ it's really embarrassing when the McDonald's drive-thru clerk starts recognizing your voice and knows your order!

and...the number one reason I know it's time for back to school:

1. I have seen so many cute crafts and ideas on everyone's blogs and they all make it look so easy that I'm actually starting to attempt some of it! My history with crafting is NOT good. In the past I have: set our house on fire once while making soap, had my youngest glue his mouth with super glue when I set it aside without twisting the cap tightly enough, dyed my skin several different colors that took dozens of washings and many days to come out, and accidentally cut my sheets while trying to craft while sitting on the bed. Yet even all of that isn't enough to stop me from thinking that maybe, this time, I could actually make that cute thing I just saw, without calamity befalling us! 

Oh! I tried to make those cute clipboards that have been floating about on almost everyone's blogs. Went out and bought Mod Podge, opened it, peeled off the foil topper and handed it to my middle child to toss in the trash can on his way to to the kitchen. He decided to hand it off to the youngest child instead who thought it would be a good idea to lick it to see what it tasted like....seriously. Thank goodness Mod Podge is non-toxic! Please send me back to school before I decide to craft anything else!

Alright, head over to the party to link up, and please, feel free to share your crafting catastrophes to make me feel better!