thank you for helping me grow

May 2012- It is a busy time of year with the end of school wrapping up for the boys.  I wanted to give their teachers something for a gift for the end of the school year.  I thought about gift cards or something fun for summer, but then I found a cute (and free!) tag to download from Pinterest.

It says "Thank You for Helping me Grow this Year!"  I thought it was appropriate for both of the boys.  And it was easy so that's what we did.  I printed and laminated them, then used a glue dot to attach them to a yellow #2 pencil and stuck it in the pot.  Voila!  It might have been the easiest teacher gift I've ever put together.  

Here are the ones we gave Brazos' teachers at his Mom's Morning Off program.

Here's the plant we gave Pecos' Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Sander's.

This is Mrs. Fiedler.  She was the teacher's aide and computer lab teacher for Pecos this year.  She was even wearing a flower shirt the day we delivered her geranium flower to her!  She was a very sweet lady and told me so many times during the year how much she enjoyed having Pecos and what a good boy he was.  What mom doesn't want to hear that?!  She is retiring this year and we'll sure miss having her at school.

appreciating our teachers

May 2012- For teacher appreciation week we made lots of simple goodies to give Pecos' kindergarten teacher.  All ideas are courtesy of the multi-talented people on Pinterest and their willingness to share.  I love a good play on words, even if slightly corny, so Pinterest is like a dream come true.  Most of my ideas came from this blog that I have recently discovered and love.  It has so many ideas and best of all, FREE downloads of most all of the tags.  I altered some of them to fit what I needed and voila- a full week of appreciating Mrs. Sanders.  

Day 1

Drink cups with tea mix for his teacher and lemonade for the teacher's aide.

With these cute tags that I borrowed on a free download from a blogger.  Aren't they cute?!

Day 2
Binder Clips and this note, cut with a 2-inch circle punch.  I used the tag from Day 3 (see below), just changed it up a bit.  The idea was on multiple blog posts and Pinterest boards.

Day 3
Extra gum for an "Extra" special teacher, with this tag cut with a 2-inch circle punch.

 Day 4
Bright colored dry erase markers with this note, cut with a 2-inch circle punch.  I had originally planned to do this one with a pack of highlighters, but when I saw these neon markers I just couldn't resist.

Day 5
Swedish Fish candies with this note, cut with- you guessed it- a 2-inch circle punch.  Punches are my new favorite thing.  The tag is the same I used for Day 4, just a few quick changes in Photoshop.  This idea is all over Pinterest, too.  If you'd like to do it with Goldfish crackers, here's a free cute download to use.

this gift looks way cuter in a clear pillow box, but all i had was the frosted

In addition to the gifts we did for Pecos' teacher, I also helped the PTO with a few ideas.  One of my favorites was this one.  I've seen it several times on Pinterest, but found the tag here and modified it a bit so it didn't just say teacher, since our PTO was giving something to ALL of the staff at Harper ISD.  That's 100 of each item for each day this week!  

After printing I used a 2-inch circle punch on these and attached with a glue dot to the top of an A&W Root Beer can.    Cute, right?

here's all 100 of them!

Here's our other days of PTO thanks:

Can you tell how much we LOVE our teachers and APPRECIATE all they do?

muy buena teacher

May 4, 2012- To kick off Teacher Appreciation week a little early, Pecos gave Mrs. Sanders a Cinco de Mayo gift.  The idea and design was inspired by Pinterest.  I got all of the ideas and most of the graphics for next week from there.  It is my newest addiction.  I rarely pin anything because I haven't quite had the time to organize myself to do it.  But I stalk it regularly and anytime I need a creative and cool idea or inspiration I check there first. 

Here's the tag that you can save to your computer and use as your own next year!  I got the idea from another blogger, but I created this particular image, so help yourself!