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.

Time to get my green thumb ready

The snow is gone, my daffodils are emerging, things need pruned, the Burpee catalog has been requested - spring is here!  I have so many projects I need to be working on, but I really wanted to get this post up.  These photos make me so happy, and that's what spring is all about.

Last year we spent a ridiculous amount of money creating a new garden space.  Not just any ol' tilled up piece of ground though, we built my actual dream garden!  Yeah, I know, who has that?  ME!  I wanted a pretty space to garden in.  Neat, organized, weed-free and fenced to keep our animals out (it partially worked).  My husband and I picked a spot, sprayed the grass, and then proceeded to spend enough money on it to daily say, "This garden better produce lots of food, 'cause we're gonna need to live off it." as we filled it with wood, dirt and rocks.

My parents started doing raised bed gardens like 25 years ago with great success.  So with the resurgence of the Square-Foot Gardening craze due to the economy, we jumped on the band wagon.  We had been planning to do raised beds, and it was finally the year to get that project done.

PART 1:
We ended up with a plan that has 256 sq ft of garden space!  Yes, that's enough to feed a small village.  But we do have 3 boys, remember?  It took us about a month to get it all done, so we ended up planting just after Memorial Day.  Sooooo......da da da DA!  Here it is a few weeks after planting!

The fencing is pricey, and the same we use for our animals, but it's sturdy and we use it as a support also.  The front edge, where the gate is, we plan on putting an arbor over the gate and planting grape vines along the fence this year.  The small box on the right center is my herb garden, and the one on the left is my strawberry patch.

My neighbors probably thought I was a little crazy because I spent so much time photographing my garden, but here are the photos of my lovely little vegetables.

Beets (yeah, I know - duh!)

 

 Bush beans.

Cucumber vines.

Squash blossom.

Cabbage (ended up going in the compost bin later after a bug infestation).

Strawberry flower blossoms.  We got SO many strawberries off our first year plants!  I had plenty of help picking them, none ever actually made it into the house.

Romaine lettuce.

My one and ONLY spaghetti squash that my dog didn't reach through the fence and eat.  Apparently she has a thing for squash and pumpkins.  They will be moved further in this year.

Lovely green tomatoes.

Cherry and Pear tomatoes.  SO yummy and sweet.  Makes my mouth water just looking at the photo.  I totally snacked on these every day when I watered.

My butternut squash took over half of the garden like a giant squid!  But we got some great squash from it that turned into the most awesome soup.  I'm preparing to post the recipe soon.

I'm so proud of this photo.  Tears.  I not only grew these two blond cuties, but the watermelon they are holding also!  Yes.  I grew a watermelon.  The plan was for the kids to partner up and help raise certain parts of the garden.  They planted, I ended up doing the rest of everything with some help watering, and picking.  But they all got to decide some of what was planted in their boxes.  They wanted watermelon, so we tried it and I was totally amazed that it worked.  I had never planted watermelon before and this Sugar Baby was so good and sweet.

PART 2:

So, after all that planting, I needed a way to remember what I had planted, where, what varieties, and how it worked out.  I found some garden planner ideas, and this is what I came up with for my garden.

 

Front: Really simple design for now in a 1 inch binder.

On the back I have the whole garden plan labeled.

Each box corresponds with it's letter on the plan.

On the right side of the page is a place for the info.  I HIGHLY reccomend Scarlet Nantes carrots!

Close-up of my lovely little herb garden plan.

I just used Microsoft Publisher to do all this, so it was really easy.  I printed everything on cardstock to make it sturdy, and the blank pages in between, will be for photos.  Now that I'm done with 2009 they'll go into page protectors to keep them clean and I'll print out new pages for this year.  If you click on the photos you can read them larger to see more of the details of my garden.

The best part of our garden was that nothing went to waste.  Anything we didn't eat or didn't work out, went to the chickens to eat, or into the compost bin.  As you can see, it really made me happy, and I can't wait to get started again.  It was a huge initial investment and a lot of work, but this year, other than cleaning up old plants and re-stringing, it's ready to go.  Hopefully I'll be planting, and eating, spinach soon.  Of course I'll take photos.

When Cupids Go Bad

My six year old son Evan loves to draw. He has been drawing a holiday scene (or two) every month on his much beloved IKEA easel whiteboard.  I do my best to capture the images with my camera before someone comes along with another idea and erases them.  I get a real kick out of his perception of things and his creativity.  Here are some recent favorites:

 

I thought the castle scene with the bats and dragons was nice, until I noticed my name (and the rest of the family's) on headstones along the grassy hillside.  It's good to know we're all buried together though.

Then the alien invasion picture was interesting.  I personally would have a hard time walking with that many legs (upper right corner).

A family favorite was the mad scientist for Halloween.  The skeleton was a nice touch, as were the skulls on his shirt, and even Spiderman dropped in.  But I loved the fact that he had a remote to fly in the airplane that dropped little mice by parachute all through the scene.

But when I asked him to draw me a nice Valentines picture and I got this, I wonder if I should start to worry?

Yes, those are cupids.  Shooting each other.  And due to the quadruple weaponed yellow cupid in the upper left and the "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh" in the bottom right corner, I don't think they had love in mind.  But, at least I know Evan's interpretation.

Confident in the Kitchen

My experimental herb plantings in my garden last year made me much braver in the kitchen.  I found many new recipes to use my fresh basil, cilantro, rosemary, parsley and chives in.  But I still wasn't sure sometimes what would mix well.  So I was thrilled when my favorite daytime TV show Studio-5 aired a series of segments last year called "Confident in the Kitchen".

Basil from my garden. Makes me miss summer.

Guest contributor Laura Wolford, who is so cool, gave some great basic infromation to help everyone feel more confident cooking even if they don't have a recipe.  I really appreciated her downloadable cards to go with the segments, but I decided to re-type them and make them more user-friendly for my recipe binder.  So I decided to share them with you in addition to the links to her video segments where you can get even more information.

You can click on my cards to view them larger and save or print to 8 1/2" x 11" paper.

Recipe-Free Ingredient Supply List (link to her video segment)
Here is the link to download her cards for this and for the sauces card below.
I thought this segment was awesome and so helpful.  A lot of times you want to add spices or additions to a recipe to make it better, but don't know what goes together.  This list takes the guesswork out of it, plus gives you more ideas that you may have never thought of.

Basic Sauces (links same as above, or more detailed lists here)  Thickeners didn't fit on this chart with the sauces, so they are on the fourth chart below.

Basic Marinades & Rubs (link to her video segment ) WATCH THIS: She gets challenged to use some unusual ingredients in marinades - like JELLO!
Here is the link to download her marinades cards.

I love their website because even if you miss a show you can watch the video segments right after they go on air.  I get tons of recipes there also.  But Alisa Bangerter is my all-time favorite contributor, so you'll have to check out some of the segments she has done.

I hope you find inspiration from my charts, or the originals on the website.  I plan on putting mine in page protectors at the front of my recipe binder for quick reference while cooking.  And I plan on continuing to watch Studio-5 for more great ideas.  You should too.

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