My Etsy Shop

I don't think I've mentioned that I have a shop on Etsy....well, I do! I've had it for about 2 years now. I first started selling hair clippies and now I've kind of moved on to other things. I may add hair clippies again in the near future, but for now I'm enjoying designing party printables. I took a vacation from my shop for about 6 months to focus on my family and then one day, after buying an outfit for my daughter to wear to school for Valentine's Day (which I do remember listing here Valentine's tee post) I decided to make my son an iron-on Lego man saying 'Happy Valentine's Day'. I thought, 'you know, others might want an inexpensive way to customize for a special occasion, too.' So, I started selling designs to iron-on at home. If someone decides at the last minute and they have a t-shirt to iron onto, they can purchase a design and get it e-mailed to them within 24 hours -- faster than ordering a custom-made shirt and waiting for it to be mailed. The print quality may not be as good and by that I mean it will only last about 3 or 4 washings, but if it's something that they only need to wear once like for their birthday party or Valentine's Day, etc., then I feel the iron-ons are a good option.

Getting on to my point -- the other day someone ordered an iron-on for their 1-year-old's birthday party. They asked if I do water bottle labels, too. I can, but never have...until now! So, I'm adding those to my shop as well. Right now I only have Lego designs -- my own original designs, not copied from Lego company or anything like that. I need to add my princess designs and bug designs, but I just haven't gotten around to that yet. In the meantime, here are a couple pics of what I'm offering now:

My most recent order was for a little girl's b-day party. She's turning one and the family wanted to have a theme that all the cousins and siblings could enjoy, too. Legos are perfect for that!

 My customer wanted tags to iron onto the back of their shirts. I love when customers have great ideas! I never thought of that, but since I designed them, I will go ahead and add them to my shop as well! 

Here's a picture of the water bottle label. I think it turned out pretty cute! 

If you'd like to check out my shop, please go to The Grasshopper's Knee! : )

Gift idea

Here's a gift idea that I saw on Pinterest. I used this as a gift for our teacher's aide for teacher appreciation week. I think it's really worthy of its own post. LOL! I was told that one of her favorite snacks is circus peanuts. I tried coming up with a cute way to gift them when I remembered I had saved this on one of my Pinterest boards:

My Pinterest Easter board








source: http://toriejayne.blogspot.com/2012/04/bunny-jars-for-easter.html






I thought 'how cute will this be with a circus elephant on top?' And thus, the circus-elephant-circus-peanuts container was born! : )

I hope you enjoyed this post!

Teacher Appreciation Week - Day 5

Ok, so now that I've caught you up on the first four days of the week, I'll finish with day 5 on time.

Friday

I decided to do a paper bag book. I've never made one before, but I've seen them a couple of time. For each one, I took four paper lunch sacks, folded them in half, then stapled the binding. This leaves four little pockets to put things in. I chose to have my kids decorate little pages to put in there. I cut them leaving a tab for pulling out of the pocket.

We also gave the teachers the scrapbook that we collected pages for from the students. They were returned to me in an envelope and I asked the teachers not to peek! ; )

Here are the "scrapbooks" I made using rings to hold them together. The rings serve two purposes: it's easy to put together and it's also easy to add pages if we get more:

I embellished the cover page slightly without overdoing it:

This one was for my son's teacher:

 Here are the paper bag books we made. I covered the staples with a strip of scrapbook paper. 

My son wrote "pull" on the tabs for his teacher's gift:

Teacher Appreciation Week - Day 4

Thursday

We chose to make Day 4 a letter day. I bought the first letter of their last names at Hobby Lobby. I put purple and yellow pom poms (our school colors) on my daughter's teacher's letter. I wrapped my son's teacher's letter in the blue yarn to match the vase we gave her on the previous day -- I didn't use our school colors for hers because she is leaving at the end of the year : (

I just added ribbon on the back for hanging. I attached a tag that I had the kids sign and that was that!

I got the inspiration for this idea here: Land of Nod I saw them and thought, 'hey, I can do that! What a great idea!' I love getting their catalog and looking at their website -- so many cool and inspiring ideas and things to buy!! 

Teacher Appreciation Week - Day 3

Wednesday

I have to say, my kids are really enjoying taking gifts to their teachers each day. This could get addicting!

Day 3 of teacher appreciation was a day for flowers for us. I made vases by recycling jelly jars and a pop bottle (really, it looks like a beer bottle, but it was pop originally). : ) I saw the yarn around the jar idea on Pinterest, of course, and thought it would make a nice gift.

This one was for the teacher's aide. I chose purple and yellow because they're our school colors:

These are for the teacher's aide (3 tulips) and my daughter's teacher (6 tulips):

For my daughter's teacher:

These were for my son's teacher. Her favorite flowers are sunflowers:

Here they are all together. I put a small poem with each one. My son

wanted to give his teacher sunflower seeds, too. : ) 

Teacher Appreciation Week - Day 1 & 2

I've been a little MIA lately. I know in my "about me" section I state that I'm a stay-at-home mom, but earlier this school year I completed an application to substitute at our school. I could substitute in the classrooms, but I just signed up to work for the lunch/recess monitors. I've been doing more of that lately, and I have to say, I love it! I get to see my kids at lunch and at recess. I have about an hour and a half in the mornings before I start work and then two hours at home before the kids come home. It's my dream job - really!! I still feel like there's not enough time to do everything (is there ever?), but I'm not going to complain. I feel so lucky to be able to do this (the sub thing). The location and hours couldn't be better! It has been awesome!

Anyway, some of my time has been spent planning our teacher appreciation week. Our PTO decided to have the teacher appreciation luncheon on Thursday of this week -- even though the official week isn't until May 7th. I planned to have both of my classrooms coordinate to have a gift for this week as well.

I sent envelopes home with a piece of cardstock paper and asked that the children design it letting their teachers know something they like about them or something they learned, etc. I got more than half back for each class. I'm hoping more will come in as time goes on. I made the scrapbooks with rings so we can easily add any that come in later.

Here's how we started the celebration. Oh, I forgot to mention that another room parent and I made over the teacher's lounge. I'll have a separate post for that.

Monday

The other room parent that helped with the lounge makeover came up with the idea to decorate the Kindergarten teacher's door. Her daughter and my daughter are in the class together. She found the idea and I just helped her put it together. I think she sent a separate gift on Monday with her daughter to school, but the door and lounge were pretty much my gifts for Monday. Here's the door:

Tuesday

On day 2, I sent in these gifts with my children to give to their teachers:

This one was filled with packs of peanut M&Ms (her favorite snack):

This one was filled with Mentos. It was for the class aide and I heard that Mentos were 

something she liked to eat:

So this is what they looked like before putting them in the favor box:

This one was for my son's teacher. It was full of Hershey nuggets for his teacher because

she likes chocolate:

I found these adorable favor boxes in the $1 section at Target. 4 for $1!! They were too

cute to pass up. I used Smash tape for one of them and border stickers for the others to hold the flowers

onto the box. I think I saw the flower with tape idea on Pinterest -- imagine that!! : )

Here they are together. My daughter made a gift tag for her teacher:

If you were a teacher, would you like to get one of these??