Teacher Appreciation Gifts 2014

This week* has been Teacher Appreciation Week in our school district.  As such, I wanted to make something fun for my kids teachers, and I wanted to actually make it.  I think that homemade gifts are so much fun and a little more meaningful.  And considering that I really slacked off the last two years (two years ago we were preparing to move and last year I was in the midst of morning sickness), I really wanted to make them.  However, as previously mentioned (see this post), I don't have a lot of time.  So, I went to good ol' Pinterest to get some great ideas.  I found two that I really liked, so I let my daughters decide which ones they wanted.  Of course, they each picked a different one.  But that was okay with me because I really did want to make them both, and they were both such easy things that it wasn't going to be a hassle.  Here they are:

Dum Dum Bouquet

My second daughter wanted me to make Dum Dum Bouquets for her teachers (her real teacher is out on maternity leave, so she has a long term sub; we made one for each of them).  They were easy to make and only used a few items.  You can the inspiration for them here.

You will need:

• Flower Pot
• Styrofoam Ball (I used a 5 in)
• 1 1/2 1-lb Bags of Dum Dums (the original instructions called for one bag, but I found that 1 1-lb bag wasn't enough; I used about half a bag to finish it.  Since I made two bouquets, three bags was the perfect amount. leaving a few for my kids to eat)

Here is everything you need:

1. Place your Styrofoam ball in the flower pot.

2. Starting on the top, stab the sucker sticks into the Styrofoam.  Tip: Make sure you place them going straight down so that the sticks don't block each other later on.

3.  Working from the center, keep adding the suckers close together so you don't see the green (Don't try to do each side at a time; I tried this and it caused the ball and suckers to fall over from the weight).

4.  You will eventually run out of space and then it will look like a cute bouquet.

5. Now you need a cute saying to go with your bouquet.  I used Paint.net and made 2.5-in circles with read "Thank you for helping me GROW this year, so I won't be a DUM-DUM."

6. Cut your note out, attach it to cutesy scrapbook paper and a craft stick, and then push it into your bouquet.  Voila!  You have a fun and easy teacher appreciation git.

Gift Cups

My oldest daughter wanted to make the gift cups for her teachers (she has her regular teacher, plus her advanced math teacher) and my second daughter wanted to make one for her speech teacher, so we made three of these.  They are even easier than the Dum Dum Bouquets.  You can see the post that I stole the idea from here.

You will need:

• Reusable lidded cup w/straw
• Individual serving size drink mix packages
• Ribbon
• Printed Quotes (from linked website)

Everything you need:

1.  Place the drink mix packets in the cup.

2.  This is the hard part: screw the lid back on.

3.  Use the ribbon to tie the printed tag around the cup....Annnnnnnddddd you're done!

These were two simple and cute gifts that we did out our house this year to show our teachers how much we appreciate them.

*This post was started last week, but once again life got in the way and I'm only now finishing it.  Sorry if your Teacher Appreciation Week has already come and gone.  You can always pin this to use next year!