graduation

Summer has arrived!  Can you believe it!  This year is flying by.  Despite my late planning, we made it to our graduations on time, gifts in hand.  I always seem to wait until the last minute to do teacher and classmate gifts.  Always the day of.   But we made it and now it's all over.  Phew!

The sodas turned out so cute for our second cousin!  Hubbs made a drink carrier out of an old box, and we chose two sodas with black lids, in her high school's colors.  I used black craft foam for the hat and yellow embroidery floss for the tassels.

I loved them so much, I decided to use the soda idea again for Griff's preschool teacher.  But I added some POPcorn and attached a note, saying, 'For a very POP-ular teacher'.  My kids LOVED her (Colsie had her a couple years ago).  Every time I mentioned to Griff that he was soon to be a very 'grown-up' Kindergartener, he'd make a frowny face and tell me he's going to miss her.  : (  So sweet!  So I thought it was a fitting gift.  She definitely IS popular in our house.

OH!  And I made an owl bag to put it all in.  ('Thanks for making me wiser') Idea from Lisa Storms.

I wanted to do something small for my boys, to say how proud of them we are, so they both got a pack of SMARTIES, for being such 'Smartie Pants'.  Idea from It is What it is.

He wanted to wear his fox tie that I made him the other day.  I thought he looked adorable!

And, one other cute idea, that didn't make the cut this year- a jar of cookies ('I'm one smart cookie, thanks to you') from Home is Where They Love You.

Teacher gift

Griff's Christmas gift to his preschool teacher this year, was this adorable snowman. I got the idea from the talented Sarah, of Sarahndipities.

My husband is the one who ended up making it all. Which is good, because he's more artistic than I am. We used a small rolled oats container. He made the top hat out of black paper (the brim is just the lid from the oats). He covered the can in white printer paper, carved a little piece of wood to resemble a carrot, let Griffy paint it orange, drew the basic shape of coal with a black sharpie and had Griff scribble them in. Then he made some holly out of paper and attached a note with some of my yarn that read (like Sarah, of Sarahndipities),

'We 'tissue' a Merry Christmas and a 'Handy' New Year!'

On the inside, we put tissues and hand sanitizer (things she can use in the classroom). When we were buying them at the store, Griffy did NOT like our idea. We finally got him to agree by telling him he could also pick out a candy bar for his teacher. So he picked out the Twix. (We cut a slit in the bottom of the lid, and stuck the Twix bar inside. So there's a little surprise for her in the hat!)

And I actually tested a pattern for Sarah a few days ago, so I had the brimmed hat that I made for that, and stuck it in along with everything else.

When she opens the lid:

After making the snowman with daddy, I think Griff finally understood where we were going with all of this and he LOVES it. He was just a little worried in the store. He wasn't sure we knew what we were doing.

I love how it turned out. Check out Sarahndipities for more inspiration and click on my link (#106)!