Owl Party Printables

I'm so thrilled to be adding a new design to my party printables section of my Etsy shop The Grasshopper's Knee. One of the teachers at my children's school told me that her son's 1st birthday is coming up. She wanted the theme colors to be blue and green and she loves owls! So, I designed some things for her to use. I loved having her give me the idea and letting me run with it! Here are some pics:

Last Day of school gift for bus driver

For a last day gift to our bus driver, I made a school bus label for a regular size Hershey bar and found an adorable gift box from Target earlier in the year. I wanted to add to it so when I found this Burt's Bees hand set, I knew that's just what I wanted. I put in a letter saying something to effect that I wanted her to pamper her hands after driving the bus all year.

Maybe my gift will give you an idea, too!

I got the idea for the candy bar wrapper design and the saying here: http://likeaprettypetunia.blogspot.com/2012/05/bus-driver-appreciation.html She has a free printable, but I made mine just a little different. I think I like hers better, but I wanted to put my own spin on it.

Lolli-paw-ps

The last day of school for my kiddos is tomorrow. It's bittersweet, as anyone who is a parent or teacher knows. It's wonderful that they're growing and advancing to the next grade, but they're growing more and more independent -- soon they won't want to cuddle anymore or let me read to them at night. Ok, enough of that! Summer is about to start!!! And that's pretty awesome!!

But first, I want to share some lolli-pawps I made for my neighbor's son's high school graduation (yes, it could be high school graduation I'm whining about - suddenly the end of Kinder and 1st grade don't sound too bad, huh?). Ok, anyway, my neighbor knows I'm kind of crafty, so she asked me to help her with a few things. One of them was making these:

Pretty cute, right? I also designed their graduation invitations and a sign-in poster for people to write words of encouragement and wisdom for the new grad. So fun!!!

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??

St. Patrick's Day teacher gifts

St. Patrick's Day is almost here! I'm trying to think of some cute ideas for teacher gifts. In the meantime, I thought I would share with you what I gave them last year. I could do the same this year, but one of our teachers is one we had last year so I'll try to think of something new for her. 

I bought the cute little plastic cauldrons on sale at Target after Halloween. They're really witches' cauldrons, but they work just fine for a pot of gold, too! : ) I made the tag and attached with a shamrock ribbon. 

I made a fold-over label for this small bag of treats. I bought chocolate gold coins from Meijer, but you can get them at other places, too. I've seen them at Hobby Lobby as well. 

Have a great day everyone!!

Keeping little treasures

Do your children give you scraps of paper where they've written "I love you" or have drawn sweet pictures? And you don't know what to do with them because you can't keep everything their little fingers have touched? Well, mine do, and if yours do the same, then maybe this post will help you.

I'm a fan of Smash books - I have three I purchased recently, but I actually started one of my own using the same concept, but with a regular journal instead of one with the offical "Smash" name.

I found this journal at TJ Maxx, but you can find them just about anywhere! The concept is simple. Just "smash" the item in the book using staples, glue stick, etc. I like it because I don't feel I have to go to my craft room and scrapbook an entire page for every tiny, little, beautiful item my kids make for me. I also like it because it is completely informal, but I can added embellishments if I'd like or not ,and I've saved a valuable piece of paper.

I might add that I do get giddy whenever they make something for me. I don't want to sound like it's a nuisance that I have to find a place to put it, because that's not the case. However, it's a common thing among households with children so I wanted to share.

I keep my little treasure journal, as I call it, on the kitchen counter in a basket. That way it is completely accessible at pretty much any given time.

Since I use it so often, my kids have started their own "smash" books and they feel proud when they see me put their little handy work in mine.

Like I said, it's not formal, but it still holds my treasures in one location for safekeeping and I like that!