End of the Year Teacher Presents - S'mores Gifts!

Hello friends!! I hope you all are having a fantastic day! It’s been a while since I checked in, but as we get closer to the end of the school year, it was time to put together some awesome gifties for some pretty amazing people.

My girls are blessed to have some pretty amazing teachers and leaders. This year the girls came so far in school and in dance and that can be attributed to their awesome teachers. The girls also both started in girl guiding (Miss E in Sparks and Miss A in Brownies) and had an absolute blast. I wanted say thanks to their school and dance teachers and their guiding leaders in a special way.

One of our favorite treats in the summertime are s’mores. We camp a lot, and we often make s’more-gasboards with fun ingredients to up our s’mores game! So we decided to make s’mores gift baskets for our special teachers. I hit up my local dollar store and found small cooler bags to use as my “baskets” and got to work filling them up.

We picked up marshmallow roasting sticks, marshmallows, graham crackers (the necessities), and then got a couple of types of chocolate (one with caramel, of course!!). I just printed a cute little tag for the front of the gift and tied it up with the cooler bag straps! Easy peasy!

For the tags, I made a few different types:

• School was s’more fun because you were my teacher!

• Dance was s’more fun because you were my teacher!

• Brownies was s’more fun because you were my leader!

Even though my sister says all teachers actually want is a gift certificate to Starbucks or some wine, I’d like to think that our teachers will like these gifties!

Thanks so much for stopping by, I hope I’ve inspired you today!!

Teacher Gifts for a Summer of Fun!

Hello my friends! I’m back with a project – finally!! I have a bunch of projects in the works, some that are finished, and photographed but not yet written. It’s just been crazy busy with the kids, school, life and all that fun stuff.

Can you believe it’s June already? I can’t! It seems like just yesterday I was happily purchasing school supplies and labelling them with my littles’ names in preparation for the first day of school. Now here we are at the end of the school year and it’s time to celebrate the year that was.

Miss A is finishing up first grade and she has learned so much this year – she can read independently, she can do math equations and she knows much more about life under the sea than I do! She has also started to really love Irish Dancing. She competed in her first Feis this year and although she didn’t take home the great big medals, she tried her best and I couldn’t be prouder of my little dancer.

Miss E was in preschool this year and her biggest accomplishment would have to be how many friends she has made! She started the year sitting quietly on the carpet listening to her teacher. Now she shows up in class and half of the kids call out her name and want to play with her. She has another preschool year ahead of her before she’s off to kindergarten, but my baby is definitely growing up!

Alright, enough proud mama-ing! It’s time for the project! Last year the girls and I put together these adorable gifts for their teachers. We filled insulated cups with drink mix and candy and added a thank you card. 

For the teachers this year, I’m going with a Summer Fun theme! I found these adorable bright and sunny beach towels at Walmart in the states. Miss A was my helper in putting the gifts together. 

To the beach towel I added some candy, sunscreen and some bright summery nail polish for a fun beachy pedicure, and a pair of flip flops. I wrapped it up and added a little card signed by the girls.

The card reads “Thanks for making learning fun, now enjoy some summer sun!” I mounted the sign on some summery cardstock and tied it onto the ribbon I used to bring the gift together.

I also made some cute cards (if I do say so myself!).  The girls will write messages to each of their teachers inside, plus there will be room for a note from me!

We are giving these gifts to their preschool, first grade and dance teachers. I hope they will love them!

Thanks for stopping by today, and if you like this post, I hope that you will Pin It!



Linking to Joyful Homemaking, Not Just a Housewife and A Bowl Full of Lemons.

2012 Round Up - Best and Most Loved Posts of the Year

I can hardly believe that it’s been almost a year since I decided to start this little blog. Back in Feb 2012 I wanted to participate in I’m An Organizing Junkie’s big organizational challenge. So I started this site and since then have spent many an evening baking, cleaning and organizing, all while taking photos and documenting the fun for all of you to read about it. 
 
In 2012 I managed to put together 164 blog posts! That seems crazy to me, and some weeks it was crazy! Fun, but a little insane. I’m lucky that my husband works evenings, so I don’t have to feel like I’m ignoring him when I sit under my blanket with HGTV on while blogging on my laptop.

I took a look at which posts were the most popular in 2012, and here is my round up of the most-viewed projects and posts from the past year.


Beef Enchilada Bake

An Organized Command Center

Little Girl Room Organizing

My 29 Day Organizational Success

Dr Pepper Cupcakes

Minimalish Rules

Spring Break Spring Cleaning

Tastes Homemade Box Cake Recipe

End of the Year Teacher Thank You Presents

Chicken Macaroni Bake Freezer Meal

Taming the Hair Ties

Linen Closet Loveliness

What do you think? Are any of these your favorites? 

 

Here are my favorite posts from the past year:

 

Secrets of a Happy Marriage

Butter Chicken Lasagne

Half Marathon Highlights

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes with Fluffy Peanut Butter Frosting

 

Summer of Fun Chart

Turtle Cupcakes

Pasta with Prawns in Boursin Cream Sauce

 

Kindergarten Graduation Presents

Super Amazing Totally Irresistible Chocolate Trifle

I hope you all like what you have seen so far from my little corner of the internet! There are many more fun and exciting things to come!

Photo Shoot with Alana Joy Photography

While we were camping this past weekend with my friend Alana (of Alana Joy Photography, check her out, she is fantastic!!!), we decided to use the beauty of the scenery, and the gorgeousness of our children (yes, we are biased, but that is a mother's right!) and put together a little photo shoot.

Check out the entire post here on Alana's website but here is a sneak peek of my big brave cowgirl (we took all the girls riding this weekend) in her pretty pettiskirt and boots. Don't mind the serious face - she can't be smiling all the time!!
Thanks for taking the time to read, and please take some time to visit Alana Joy Photography, she takes some amazing photos, you'll love her!

Unplugged - August Hiatus

Can you believe summer is almost over?!? I promised myself that while I was on vacation that I would try to “unplug” from online life and spend more time being present with my family. 

Aside from the post about Miss A’s 6th birthday, I did not even turn on my laptop the whole time I was on vacation!

Uncle Robert with my Mom :)

We had some wonderful family visitors from across the pond – My uncle Robert and cousin Ciara came to visit from England for three weeks.

We went to the waterslides, to the beach, to the water park, to the trailer,

we watched a movie outside,

ate some home grown veggies,

oh, and there was party in the mix!

Eighteen little girls, 100 cupcakes and a candy buffet!

Miss E got training wheels and a two wheeler to ride around on… Miss A learned to ride her two wheeler without training wheels!

On her last day in Canada, we did a fun photo shoot with cousin Ciara, she’s such a doll, we are going to miss her!!

I’m working on the recipe for some amazing cupcakes I made on my Quest for the Perfect Cupcake, it should be up tomorrow!

I have so many things on my list to do this week, so many blog posts on my list to post, so many photos to edit and add to the blog for the projects we completed in the past few weeks, and a good few easy recipes to put up here too – I’m actually looking forward to September for Back to School, and all of the early bedtimes, routines and normalcy it will bring!