Greetings From the North Pole - via USPS

Who doesn't love getting mail? I know I do.  And I know my friends and family do.  And how about this fun idea to send in the mail?  Yes, in the mail!

We had so much fun sending our Easter Eggs through the mail.  Then we mailed off some Love From the Oregon Coast.  Well, we just couldn't stop at there.  And it is Christmas time, after all.  How about this idea?

And they were so simple to make. 
 

Supplies:

* empty 2 liter soda bottle (with lid)

* candy or anything to fill them

* scissors

* packing tape

Cut the top of the bottle off with a pair of scissors or a knife (parents do this part.)  I forgot to take a picture of this part (I was a little too excited to get these into the mail.)  Cut at the point where the bottle starts to curve.

Wash the bottle and dry thoroughly.

Fill with candy (or toys or any goodies.)

Tape the top part of the lid back on. 

Print out your label.  This one isn't fantastic but you are more than welcome to use it.  Just right click and save it and print it out.  Write in the address and cut to fit the soda bottle.

Use packing tape to tape the label onto the bottle.  If you position the label at the cut line and then tape the label there, the recipient won't be able to tell there's a cut line.  This is always fun when they get it and can't figure out how you got the candy inside the bottle.  

When you take these to the post office they may give you a funny look.  The woman that was helping me gave me this really weird look and said "really?  You're mailing them like that?"  I just smiled and said "you bet!"  She weighed them and then said "that's so cool."  Totally agreed!

What do you think?

They were around $7 to mail from Oregon to Chicago.  Not too bad.  The smiles will be well worth it!

 

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The Perfect Way to Give Money

When kids get to be a certain age, money seems to be the perfect gift. I used to think that giving money was a lame-o gift. But I love to get money. So why wouldn't I give it??? What was I thinking?! My son's friend was turning 9 the other day and I wanted to come up with a fun way to give him money (rather than just in a card.) You know. So he thought we still put some effort into his gift. I was thrilled with how it turned out! I had my daughter help me tape $1 bills together. You can use as many or as few as you would like. We went with 20. That seemed like a good number =o)

She was quite happy with her money chain.

Here are the supplies needed. Easy!

* Container (we used a baby formula tin that we've been saving for the "perfect craft"

* Mod podge

* paper It doesn't get any easier than that!

Mod Podge the paper around the canister. We cut out "happy birthday" on our Cricut machine (using the Beyond Birthdays cartridge." Mod Podge that on the front.

I wasn't sure how to make it so the dollars didn't keep falling into the can so we made a pull tab.

Take it to the first dollar bill and stick it through the cut you made in the top. Now roll the dollar bills up. (We stuffed tissue paper in the canister as well for some cushion.

Pretty cool, right?

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You're the Star of Our School {Teacher Appreciation}

We needed another fun Teacher Appreciation gift idea. We actually made this craft for the Secretaries at the school. Secretaries Day was April 25th. Did you remember? Secretaries need a little extra love too. They have to deal with all the yuck in a school. Don't believe me? When a staff person thinks a child might have lice - guess who has to check? When a child throws up in the hall - guess who has to go check? When a child is naughty and gets sent to the office - guess who has to deal with them until the Principal is available? Yep... the secretaries. So we needed to give them a pick me up to.

I'm kind of in love with the whole recycled frappuccino bottle thing.  We made some for Halloween and Valentine's Day.  So it was kind of calling to us.  The best part?  My co-worker gave me a ton of these bottles!  I don't drink the stuff.  Blech!  Coffee!  But I love the bottles.

I wrapped the outside with some card stock.  I just picked colors that would match the totally cool (and totally free) printables I printed off the internet.  (Thank you Nothing But Country for these!!!)

I spray painted the lids too.  To coordinated and all =o)

I cut out the tag with a circle cutter and then added a background color.  Mod Podge that one and there you go.  Easy as can be but so cute.  Oh yeah, and fill 'er full of Starbursts!

Are you looking for other Teacher Appreciation gift ideas?  Here are a few you might like:
Giant Teacher Pencils filled with goodies (recycled Pringles cans!)
Candy Gram for the Teacher
Great way to package a coffee card (to Espresso your thanks)
Fun pencil holder made with pencils =o)
Lots more great ideas for your teacher



 

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A Great Treat For My Egg-Cellent Teacher

What better way to say thank you to your teacher than with chocolate. Seriously. I work in a school. Chocolate it always good =o)

I found these great printable labels over on Detail-Oriented Diva. I love when I can find printables because I'm so not capable to creating anything like this.

My kids filed up plastic eggs with Easter candy and put them in an egg carton. 

We tied on a ribbon and added a tag.  Viola!  Some treats for an Egg-Sellent Teacher!  Cool, right? 

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Fun Easter Lunch for the Kids

I had all these grand plans to do great things this Easter. Some of them got done but a lot of them are still in my "to do" pile. Crud. At 6am when I was getting ready to pack my kid's lunch for school I remembered I wanted to pack their lunch a little differently. Lame-o planning on my part. I quickly checked out my recyclables in the garage (for craft projects, of course) and found 2 egg cartons. I filled the egg cartons with plastic Easter eggs and filled each egg with a small portion of my kid's lunch.

I made a pb&j sandwich and cut it into small cubes. A peeled cutie orange in a couple of eggs. Two quarters went into one egg for them to buy milk. A few pieces of candy for dessert went into a few eggs and a couple of potato chips.

I wasn't sure what my kids would think. But at this point I'm thinking this looks pretty cool.

When I dropped my kids off at before school CARE my daughter went into her backpack to get out her notebook. She looked up and had this strange look on her face and asked "what's this?" I told her it was er lunch and she screamed "NO WAY!" and then threw her arms around me. I can't believe I almost didn't do this thinking I didn't have the time. Yeah!

Wouldn't your kids love to sit at the table on Easter as you served them breakfast or lunch in this?  Thank you Gluesticks for this great idea!

Happy Easter!

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Sending Some Love From the Oregon Coast

 If you know me at all you know that I love the beach.  I'm not sure what it is about the beach - the calming noise of the ocean, the smell of the beach and clean air, the feel of the warm sand on my feet.  Maybe it's a combination of all of that.  I've been going to the Oregon Coast my whole life.  When I think of the beach, that's what I think of.  It's beautiful!

 This summer we had some friends come and visit us for awhile from South Dakota.  It was the first time some of them had ever seen the ocean.  It was so much fun watching their faces as they saw the waves crashing on the sand.  Instantly they turned into 6 year olds and ran around and splashed and played.  It was a blast!  It reminded me how fortunate I am to live so close to such an amazing place.

So when they left I wanted to send them a little reminder of their visit.

What do you think?

When I put the bottles on the counter at the post office, the women looked and me and started laughing.  Everyone behind me started asking questions and they all agreed that it would be so much fun to get something like this in the mail!

Super easy.  I cut a clear pop bottle.  I used a 2 liter bottle for the taffy but just a large water bottle for the sand and treasures.  (The sand was pretty heavy so I didn't want to have to mail 3 pounds of it.)

We filled it with our treasures and then taped it back up.

 Then we put an address label on it.

We filled one up with salt water taffy (delicious!)

And one up with beach treasures we found.

Wouldn't this be fun to find in your mailbox?

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