Do you appreciate a teacher that has a sweet tooth?

If so, this might be the teacher appreciation gift for you! Back when I was in Junior High and High School, I made the super popular candy bar notes. You know what I'm talking about, right? You'd take a piece of poster board and write out a note, inserting candy bars for certain words. Like "you make me "Snicker" and "Rolo"ver with laughter when you tell me a joke." Yes, I was (am) that lame!

Here's a new (less lame) twist on it!


We did this for Turtle's teacher last year. Looking at the photos, I realize that I didn't really decorate the paint can. I'm surprised at myself - I usually never miss an opportunity to embellish. Oh, well. This year!

I got the clear paint can at Michael's. Love them! It's a cute way to package up a gift. Inside were the following candies:
Jolly Ranchers
Smarties (I found a jumbo Smarties at Joann's)
Almond Joy
Pop Rocks
Skor
Mounds
Snickers
Nerds
Andes Mints
Reeses Pieces



It's easy to whip one of these up for Teacher Appreciation Day. Print out the cute poem (that I found on the web, so I can't take credit for it), embellish it a bit and glue it on the can. You can put tissue paper or paper shreds inside the can for color before adding all the candy goodness.

If you have a Cricut, it'd be cute to cut out vinyl polka dots and put them on the can. Ribbon or fabric scraps look adorable tied to the handle.

What a fun and yummy way to tell a teacher thanks!

The Note:

I SKORed big when I got you for a teacher. Don't SNICKER, but I think you're great! You are MOUNDS of fun and you have brought me so much JOY! I think you ROCK! Thank you for always being so JOLLY and for helping me become a SMARTIE. Teachers like you are worth a MINT. I'd be a NERD if I didn't thank you for helping me put the PIECES of the knowledge puzzle together. Thanks for a great year!

Birthday Wreaths

I love birthdays! I really, really love them. Especially, when we're celebrating my girls birthdays. I get a kick out of planning the parties and am always looking for new ways to make their birthday special. Miss Monkey is celebrating her 5th birthday this month so we've officially started our new tradition of birthday wreaths!

I always have some kind of wreath on my front doors and have been wanting something birthday related for awhile now. I'd purchased this plastic netting at a local home decor store a year or two ago and didn't have any idea what I'd use it for until I found these awesome plastic balloons at Hobby Lobby. The birthday wreath idea was born!

Aren't the balloons just neat? I love them so much I'm trying to figure out what else I can use them for!

When I was telling a good friend about my plan to make birthday wreaths, she suggested that I put the girls age on the wreath. Genius! I bought a plain number 5 at Hobby Lobby and Modge Podged scrapbook paper on it to make it pretty. I'll switch out the number accordingly as each birthday comes.

I'm going to make a smaller version of the wreath for my side door and post a tutorial soon. Hooray for birthdays!

Interchangable Fabric Flower Headband Tutorial!

Seriously, how cute is this headband?! (As an aside, I learned that it's incredibly difficult to take a picture of your own head and that when you make multiple attempts to get a good picture while sitting in the school pick up line, the other parents look at you funny as they try to figure out what it is that you are up to!)


I found wire headbands in the jewelry making section of Hobby Lobby. They had black and silver. Bonus! These headbands are actually fairly comfortable and won't make your head feel like the headband is trying to squeeze your brains out of your ears after wearing them for a couple of hours.

To make the headbands you'll need:

• headbands
• fabric scraps (for the red and white headband I used a jersey knit and for the orange and turquoise headband I used a calico)
• velcro
• felt
• hot glue gun
• beads or buttons and needle and thread (optional)

First, cut your fabric into strips. I make mine about 1 1/2 inches wide. The strips don't have to be cut straight - you won't be able to tell once you've made them into a flower. Make the strips long (like length of the fabric long). Once you're happy with the size of the flower, you can cut the excess off.

Fold the strip in half and make a knot at one end.

Hold the knot in your hand (the short end of the fabric facing down). Put a dab of hot glue on the side of the knot and attach the long part of your tail to it. This is the start of your flower.

Now, give the fabric a half twist. (The fold of the fabric strip will be facing down and the two cut ends will be facing up). Glue to the knot/flower. Give the fabric strip another half twist (now the fold will be facing up and the two cut ends will be facing down). Glue. Continue to twist and glue until the flower is a size you are happy with.

Tip: If you put the dab of hot glue toward the bottom of the flower, you'll be less likely to see the glue on the top of the flower. Don't use a lot of glue. A small dab is all you'll need and will prevent it from oozing up to the top of the flower.

You should end up with something that looks like this. Tuck the end underneath the flower and secure with a little bit of hot glue.

Once you've made all your flowers, cut the tail of the knot off. Now you can embellish with beads and buttons if you'd like. I use seed beads and hand sew them on. A thimble comes in handy for this part! Now, play around with the flowers to find an arrangement that you like.

Cut a piece of felt in a rough oval shape that is slightly smaller than the arrangement of flowers that you've decided on. Glue the flowers to your felt oval.

Now that your flowers are glued to your felt oval, cut a small piece of velcro and glue it on the back of the felt. I like to put the soft side of the velcro on the flowers, but it doesn't really matter.

The other side of the velcro gets hot glued to the headband.

Cut a small piece of felt the same size as the velcro piece and glue it to the back of the velcro. Your headband will be sandwiched between the velcro and the felt.

Now you can attach your fabric flowers to your headband!

Voila! A cute, interchangeable fabric flower headband!

(That's my mini me in the background. She wanted to be in the picture, too!)

Valentine Lollipop Bouquet!

Isn't it the cutest?! Forget roses that die. I want my flowers made out of sugary sweetness!


Want to make your own bouquet for your Valentine? Here's what you need:

Lollipops (you can get boxes of Tootsie Pops or Blow Pops at Wal-Mart in the Valentine section)

Floral foam (mine came in a pack of 4 from Dollar Tree. These were the perfect size)

Cupcake liners (mine came from Hobby Lobby)

Flower Pot (from the garden section at Wal-Mart)

Paper shreds (Dollar Tree)

Green Duck Tape (Hobby Lobby)

Wire (I used 24 gage beading wire from Wal-Mart)

Hole punch

You need 1 lollipop and 6 cupcake liners per flower. First, take your cupcake liners and fold them all in half.

On two cupcake liners, you're going to use your hole punch and punch a hole on the fold.

On the remaining 4 liners, punch a hole slightly above the fold (approx. 1/4 inch):

Keeping these 4 cupcake liners folded in half, insert the lollipop stick into the hole. Offset each liner from the one before to create a circle around the candy portion of the lollipop.

Open the 2 remaining cupcake liners and insert them onto the lollipop stick. I like to put the wrong (non-printed) sides together. If you do this then you see the pretty printed side on the top and the bottom.

Now, we're ready for the leaves. Take a length of the duct tape (approx. 6-8") and lay it sticky side up on the table. Place a length of wire on top of the duct tape.

With another piece of tape, place the sticky sides together, sandwiching the wire between the two pieces of tape. Using scissors, cut the tape into an hourglass shape with pointed ends.

Once the leaf is cut out, you can wrap it around the lollipop stick and give it a twist to hold it tight.

Once I had a pile of 5 flowers, I was ready to move on to the flower pot.

I took some of my craft paint and painted the rim of my flowerpot. In hindsight, I should have painted the whole pot. Once I put the flowers in, you couldn't really see the rim.
Once the paint dried, I used a black Sharpie to write "Be Mine" and draw some hearts.

My floral foam bricks were pretty small, so I stuck some crumpled newspaper in the bottom of my pot first to take up some space.

Then I put in my floral foam. My brick was exactly the right size, except that it was square instead of round. No worries - the edges got shaved off as I shoved the brick in. I just brushed off the floral foam dust and was ready to continue!

To cover the ugly green floral foam I used a handful of paper shreds. I put a couple of spots of hot glue on the foam first to hold the paper shreds in place. Next came the flowers. The first one I put smack in the center. The next two went to the left and the right; the final two went in front and back.

I love the way it turned out! I'm going to have to make a couple more. Wouldn't this be a cute teacher gift?!

Valentine "XO" Letters

I'm sorely lacking in Valentine's Day decorations. After making my initial letter magnets, I thought it would be fun to make large "XOXO" letters to place on my mantle. So, off to Hobby Lobby I went.

I was initially going to buy some large chipboard letters, until I found these white letters in the "wall decor" section. They were already white, so no painting needed (bonus!) and were 50% off (double bonus!). Their regular price was $2.99

I wanted two "X" and two "O" letters. The problem was, they only had one letter "X". How is that possible? Who buys the letter "X"? (same with the chipboard letters, only one "X"). So, my "XOXO" became "XO". No extra hug and kiss for you!

Here's what you need:

letters
Modge Podge (the nectar of crafting Gods)
paintbrush
scrapbook paper
scissors
pencil

First, lay your letter on the back side of your paper, wrong side up.

Trace around the letter with your pencil.

Once you've traced your letters, cut them out with your scissors.

Put a layer of Modge Podge on the front side of your letter and then place the patterned paper on the top, smoothing out any bubbles as you go.

Once you've got the patterned paper stuck to the front of the letter, let it dry for a couple of minutes and then give the top a coat of Modge Podge.

Once the Modge Podge had dried, I took a piece of sandpaper and roughed up the edges a bit. I did this for two different reasons - it helped get rid of any paper that was hanging over the edge of the letter and it gives it a bit of character.

After I'd wiped off the dust from the sandpaper, I distressed the edges of the letter with some chalk from my scrapbook stash. You could easily do this with a bit of brown craft paint, too. (You could also have fun dressing up the letters with things like rhinestones and ribbon.)

Once that had dried, up on my mantle they went! The "O" kept wanting to roll off, so I got a bit of HandiTak to stick it on. (HandiTack is made by the same people who make Super Glue. It's a yellow putty that you can use to hang stuff up with and it removes easily leaving no residue behind. My favorite use for this stuff is to put it on the backside of pictures on the wall to keep them level)

Now, I've got a little bit of Valentine cuteness in my house!