Father's Day Gifts

Why haven't I blogged in a while?  LIFE.  Yep, we all know how it just seems to keep us busy whether we'd rather be blogging or not.  So, since there's no way to ever catch up, I'll just move on.  But here's a pretty photo of the spring blossoms on my apple tree to prove I have been taking photos, even if I haven't shared them here.

Father's Day, and Dad's birthdays are the hardest ever gifts to come up with, at least for me.  So I am usually in need of some way to give them the only thing I can think of - food!
So, I did these Father's Day gifts for my Dad and my father-in-law two years ago, but haven't ever posted them yet.  So in case someone out there ever reads this and needs ideas for Father's Day, do what I did, go to Kristine Mckay's website here, for this awesome idea.  She has cute printables for these, and other gifts.  Here's how mine turned out.

I got my soda bottles and holder at Target.  I don't remember the brand, but they had roosters on the lids.

Cute huh?  Wish I could take credit for them.  But Kristine is awesome, so check out all of her ideas and the segment from Studio 5.  I totally would have made the fishing one if I had baby food jars.

Now I had better get searching because I only have a week to find the next perfect Father's Day gift idea to copy from someone.

More teacher appreciation

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, but I have been working on some big projects (and have more to come) that have been taking all of my time.  I hope to blog about them soon.

In the meantime, here's something that may, or may not be useful for the rest of the school year.  We just had our teacher appreciation last week and I kept it really simple due to lack of time.  I bought cute necklaces at a boutique and put them in pink bags with some candy and chocolate and used these for the toppers.

I was recently made Relief Society president in my church and we wanted to do something fun for the women in our Ward for Mother's Day to let them know they are special.  My counselors, secretary and myself made some chocolate covered popcorn to hand out, and this is the topper I made for the baggies.  So I just modified it slightly with a new saying for the teachers gifts.

The clipart was in my digi-scrap files so I don't know where it came from, but it was a black and white image that I colored in Photoshop.  I got the quotes from one of my new favorite sources.  Goodreads.com has a quote section where you can browse through tons of quotes and then save your favorites in your own section to refer back to easily.  Very helpful and fast.


So I made two easy, simple, cute and different gifts for the work of one!  Yes, I'm lazy, but I like to think of myself as resourceful too!

Teacher Appreciation Gifts

Unbelievably, the end of the school year is soon upon us.  So it's nearing the time of year that we thank those who put up with our children day after day so that we can keep our sanity.  Oh yeah, and so that they can get an amazing education too.

Last year, the day before the end of Teacher Appreciation Week I finally came up with this idea.  So I'm sharing it a bit early this year in hopes that I can save someone else from a last-minute scramble.

My original idea was just for the vases filled with yellow candies to go with the bee tags, but then I thought the bees would like some flowers to buzz around too.

I filled the vases with all of the gold and yellow wrapped candies I could find: Rolos, Wherther's caramels, butterscotch candies, Lindt truffles, mini Butterfinger candy bars, and Hershey's nuggets.  (I wanted Bit-O-Honey candies but couldn't find them anywhere!)

Then I made some flowers out of my digital scrapbook supplies in Photoshop, cut them out, stuck them through a wooden skewer, and then stuck a Lindt truffle on the top.  I added one bee on a wire buzzing in the air around the flowers and some more with pop-dots on the tags and flowers.  Then a black ribbon to finish it off.

This worked for two teachers, but Noah had a man teacher, so the flower idea didn't fit.  So this is what I came up with for him.

I also made a different variation for an inexpensive and easy gift for a friend's birthday using a clay pot with a Styrofoam ball in the middle to support the wooden skewers.

I covered the white ball with brown crinkly paper filler and strawberry candies. It would have been even cuter to cover the skewers with green floral tape and add leaves.  Or you could use big silk flowers with the truffles in the center of those.  To make a nicer gift you could also fan-fold money to use for the leaves and hook them on with mini-rubber bands.

I LOVE Lindt truffles.  If you do to, make sure you buy extras to taste-test before you give them out, because I'm sure you could use a little appreciation also.

More Nugget Boxes

With Valentine's Day looming, I'm going to post some Christmas photos.  Don't worry, they are for Valentine's Day inspiration.

These are photos from the Hershey's Nugget Boxes I made for my kids' teachers and piano teacher for Christmas.  The labels I made using my digital scrapbooking supplies, but the box and wrap are made from heavy scrapbook paper.  You could also use scrapbook paper and letter stickers for the wraps, just cut the papers to 1"x3".  You could make a box of a certain size to fit any message.  My daughter made some for her friends for Christmas with 3 nuggets in brown/green and they spelled JOY.  But alas, we forgot to take a photo of them.

Here's the link to the Splitcoast Stampers website where you can get patterns of all sizes for making these cute boxes.  Be sure to search their photo gallery for tons of nugget box inspiration - it's where I get mine!

Here's a re-post of last year's teacher Valentine's day nugget boxes from this post.  You can also find more links to helpful websites in this post.

After making these twice now for my kids' piano teacher I have a problem.  She won't eat them.  She told my kids that they are too cute to eat.  I, however, don't have that problem with Hershey's nuggets. :-p