Sunday School Teachers

We are appreciating our Sunday School
teachers and helpers tomorrow.

Have you heard of Wordle?

The kids have been working
the entire year
on learning a song
with all the books of the Bible.

Let me tell you,
they rock it!

So I put all the books into Wordle,
played around a bit,
and came up with a few choices.

Books of the Bible I:



Books of the Bible II:



Books of the Bible III:



I think it's gorgeous as art,
but it's practically a puzzle
because I can't help
but start to look
for the books in order!

My biggest tip would be to put a ~ where you want the words to link together.
For example, I put "1st~2nd~Chronicles"
and it came out "1st 2nd Chronicles"

Have fun!
Feel free to copy these if you're interested.

Teacher Appreciation

I agreed to head up
Teacher Appreciation Week
again this year.
I love doing it.
I love our teachers.
Our school is the perfect school for us.

Have you discovered picnik yet?
LOVE it.
Like really love it.

I used it to make this subway art for the teachers.


It could not have been easier!

I googled "gray background image"
and uploaded that to picnik.

Then I edited the image to a perfect 4x6 size.

Next I added all the words
and played with their fonts and colors.

I used some obvious words for appreciation
but I also included words unique to our school
to make it really special and personalized.
Our school has dual-immersion, so I included "thank you" and "gracias."
I included our school motto "safe, responsible, respectful"
We have an incentive program where the kids collect "gotcha's"
I even thought about doing individual prints
for each of the teachers
that had their own name on it.

Then I remembered I have four kids.

:o)

This was easy and fun.
I will definitely do it again!
Go try it!

Handwarmer Tutorial

This Mom-Of-Four thing is killin' me.
And I mean that figuratively,
of course.

My craft time is close to extinct these days
but my mamatime is through the roof.
Through. The. Roof. I tell ya.

So hang tight.
I'm planning on a homemade Christmas.
I've got the materials
now I need the time.

Here are some handwarmers
that I whipped up
out of necessity
during One's soccer season.


Cut four pieces of fabric (mine are 4x5)
I did two cotton and two something-fuzzy



Put front and back pieces right sides together
and stitch around all four sides
leaving a hole for turning



Turn inside out and stitch around outside again
still leaving the hole open (this time for filling)



Fill (I filled mine with rice) and sew opening shut.

(I will probably fill with something bigger than rice next time.
Maybe lentils? I'm hoping they might hold the heat longer.)

That's it!
I used scrap fabric.
It took about 10 minutes.
Super easy and would make a great gift
for teachers or any number of other people.

Just microwave and enjoy!

Beaded Serving Spoons

Have you seen these at the craft fairs?


I think they are gorgeous
and I knew I could make them for cheaper
than I could buy them.

I used:
20 gauge wire ($2)
thrifted spoons (50 cents each)
bead collections from Joann's ($2-4 each)

I used the tutorial found here.
They came together so easily!
Two picked out which bead we used
and also strung them on the wire.


(Not only are the beautiful serving pieces,
apparently they are also great
to accessorize that perfect outfit!)


These would make excellent gifts!
If I can bear to part with them,
they might be headed to One's teacher
for Teacher Appreciation!

My teacher appreciation gifts

So, heading up Teacher Appreciation for the entire school kind of pushed ideas for my own personal gifts for One's teachers to the back burner. He took pictures he had colored on Monday, and while I'm sure they were just the teachers' most favorite pictures ever, I wanted to give them something else as well.

I remembered seeing a tutorial for Decorated Hand Sanitizer that I thought was so cute. Check it out here, it was really easy!

Here are my materials:

(Well, in full discloser, the goo gone is my neighbors but I definitely needed it and will certainly be buying some of my own! )

And here they are finished!

I'm really happy with them. I'll be attaching a personal note and viola! A hand-made gift for about $2!

Film Canister Reveal

Here's what the film canisters became:

Cute fake prescriptions!!!
Because our school is dual-immersion,
the staff received one in each language.

Ours read:

Headache Helpers
Use as needed.
Return for refills.

and

Salvadores de Sanidad (Sanity Savers)
Usa cuando necessario.
Devuelve para rellenos.

These were so easy!

1.) We gathered film canisters for several weeks.
(Places were happy to give them to us (for free), but since most people go digital now, it took awhile. Don't worry though, if we hadn't picked them up, they would have been recycled!)

2.) We filled them with M&M's (any small candy would work).

3.) We added address labels (from the Dollar Store!) with our fake prescription on them.

It took less than an hour for me to complete about 70 of these start to finish.

TP Reveal

I've been showing you pictures of toilet paper rolls...

Here's what they became:

A fast un-tutorial:
toilet paper rolls
rolled in a half-sheet of tissue paper
tied off with raffia
with a 3x5 card "label"

Pretty cute, huh?
Makes asking your neighbors
for all their empty TP rolls
totally worth it!

Even better.....

There are full-sized candy bars hiding inside them!!!!

These are our Wednesday THANK YOU
to our superstar staff!

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Teacher Appreciation Week!

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week and I agreed to be the person in charge of it this year. No, I'm not crazy....I've actually been having a lot of fun! The community has been so generous! All I've had to do is simply ask if people would/could donate. They could say yes or no, but I must say, I'm surprised at how many people said YES! We've received free bagels from Panera, free burritos from Taco Del Mar, free drinks from Sonic, a several other donations from local businesses! It's been amazing!

First of all, we decided to do a STAFF appreciation and are celebrating everyone at the school, not just the teachers. That amounts to roughly 70 people!

How much food do 70 people eat? I don't know!
I don't know, yet I went shopping for them today anyway!
Because we are feeding them breakfast in the morning!

Panera Bread donated 2 dozen bagels for our staff.
Then I bought 4 bags of grapes
20 oranges
6 packages of cream cheese
and 2 dozen humongo muffins.

Hopefully it will be enough! Stay tuned for what we're doing throughout the week for our staff! It involves more crafty stuff that you might want to try for yourself! Here's a hint: