NAP TIME!
The Greatest Mother’s Day Gifts
My kids are at the best age for gifts right now because they love giving them and you can still see the childlike virtue/mischief in each gift. This year, they each made things at school on Friday and brought them home for me to cherish.
My son made me a huge tissue paper flower with a bookmark made from his picture and he was so excited to give it to me, making me promise to use the bookmark when I read.
he’s hanging on
My daughter made me a “diamond” ring out of pipe cleaners and a Hershey’s kiss and decorated a cake from Publix. She ate the diamond from the ring on her way home (apparently it was just too tempting to save it for the 3 minutes it takes to get from school to our house) so I never got to see it, but I did get the pipe cleaner ring.
a diamond-less ring
She also ended up eating most of the cake, along with her brother, but I did get to taste it and lick the icing from the edges once I realized the rest was gone.
can you tell she likes sprinkles?
I also got to go out to a Mother/Son Date (K)night at Chick-Fil-A with my boys where they were knighted by Sir Cow, got balloon swords, and were forced happy to give me a rose.
my mini knight (before his meltdown)
knighting himself
my big knight taking his oath to be good for his mommy
Mom, just take the rose so I can play
They also decorated some cute bud vases at Sunday school for me to use when they bring me weeds beautiful flowers from our patch of grass.
Even with all of the great gifts listed here, I think the sweetest part was what they wrote on the cards they gave me and the forms they filled out at school. My son wrote me a personal note that said he really liked it when I helped him make things for his teachers over the last few weeks (a feat that I thought had gone unappreciated). Then they both filled out different form letters with their personal answers, both sweet and funny! Here’s my daughter’s note:
My mom is special. My mom’s name is Courtney. She is special because she’s a princess! I like it when my Mom stays with me! My Mom can do many things! I think she’s best at dropping me off at school! My Mom has a pretty smile! I like to make her smile by saying ‘I love you’. My mom is as pretty as a flower. My Mom is smart! She even knows best! I’d like to tell my mom that I love her!
I like the part about me knowing best. She’s such a smart girl! 
I also love that my best quality appears to be my ability to drop her off at school. Ha! Here’s my son’s note:
Mommy is nice. She is __ years old (I’m just going to leave that blank) and 5 feet tall. She is pretty like a diamond. She is really good at cooking. My mommy loves when we clean but does not like ketchup. I would never trade my mommy for anything, not even a game show.
I love that he thinks I am a good cook (which I am not) and that he would pick me over game shows, which are his favorite things to watch/play right now. It’s always nice to be reminded that I do rank over Jeopardy and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader!
My kids don’t always show me their gratitude, but they always come through just when I need it! It’s all these little things that keep me loving my life as a mom! Hope your Mother’s Day was just as wonderful!
Teacher Appreciation Week
This is the first year I have had a child in “real school” and for that reason, I am fairly new to the whole process of teacher appreciation week (TAW). I didn’t know if I was expected to do something for TAW and for the end of the year or if you choose one or the other. After some input from my more experienced mommy friends, I decided to go with tiny gifts for all of the teachers in my children’s lives with an additional bigger gift for the 3 main teachers at the end of the year (which happens to fall just 2 1/2 weeks after TAW, go figure).
I am an inherently generous spirit who derives great pleasure out of giving gifts to others, but since Publisher’s Clearing House has yet to show up with my check, I am on an extremely limited budget when it comes to these teacher gifts. So, what to do? Head back to Pinterest (just can’t get away from there!).
I knew the gifts had to be at least ‘semi-homemade’ so I kept my search to simple things that seemed genuinely sweet (even if a little bit corny) and things that wouldn’t break the bank. Here’s a few ideas that worked for me and the websites that have the amazing FREE printables to go along with the ideas! Hopefully they will help inspire someone else who is searching for ideas for their kids too!
- “Tea-riffic Teacher” water bottle - I kind of combined 2 ideas here (printables from Domesticated Lady and DIY instructions for a powdered drink package holder from Crystal & Co.) because I liked them both but you can actually just use one or the other if you prefer. This idea involves printing a cute bottle label that says “for a TEA-riffic teacher” and adding a powdered package of Snapple to the package, either via the easy DIY holder or by simply tying it to the mouth of the bottle.
water bottle label
ok, this didn’t turn out quite as pretty as I hoped, but I ran out of time. It was easy to do by hand, though!
- “Fortunate to Have You As a Teacher” Box – I happened to have some tiny, colorful Chinese takeout boxes that I got at a clearance sale at Michael’s a long time ago that I thought would be cute containers for gifts and this idea seemed like the perfect match! I just printed out the lovely free printable from eighteen25 (via a guest post on How Does She)and purchased a bag of fortune cookies from the grocery store. It’s a silly little gift, but it still says we took the time to think about you!
fortune cookies
little tag inside
finished take out box with initial letter and thank you tag
- “A&Wesome Teacher”drink gift – This idea came from a blog on Nothing But Country originally intended for a Father’s Day gift, but the author was brilliant enough to realize that this would work for teachers too and she provided FREE printable labels! I tweaked it a little because I used a box of freezable root beer pops instead of the actual soda bottles, but it can go with anything A & W themed! We will be giving this one to my son’s PE teacher, who spends a lot of time outside!
perfect for a man teacher!
- “We Need S’more Teachers Like You” – One day each month I am asked to bring a small snack for my son’s class to enjoy. I have done granola bars, fruit snacks, crackers, pretzels, etc., but when I saw this idea for s’mores on the glue sticks and tape website, I knew I had to make it for his class, especially since my day to bring snack falls on Teacher Appreciation Day! (The great thing about this site/gift is that she also provides tags for other people who you might need to give a little gift to every now and then and it’s so simple!) I used a tag from Me and My Insanity for the snacks because they were smaller and easier to print. I added some cute “owl miss you” labels from Lisa Storms to the chocolate in the bag.
little packs for the kids and a bigger pack for the teachers
“owl miss you” chocolate wrappers
I’m still working on the end of the year gifts for a few more teachers, but these turned out to be just what we were looking for and very easy to put together! As always, Pinterest came through for me, even if it still made me feel inadequate because I was once again just stealing borrowing ideas from other, more creative people (we still have that love/hate relationship).
DIY: Find It!
About a year ago, my mom bought the game “Find it” for my son. He absolutely loves the game and for weeks would challenge me to beat him! There are various versions of this game available for purchase at the store so he always asks me to buy another one so he can search for new items.
Instead of spending the money on another store-bought version, we decided to make our own! I searched the web and Pinterest to find out if anyone else had ever attempted this (of course they have, my creativity is always late to the game). So, we took a cue from the creative people on Pinterest and saved a few of the liter sized sparkling water bottles that we had in our stash, bought some rice, and combed our house for any random toy items that would fit inside the bottle.
this is all you really need.
It just so happens that all of those little accessories that come with barbies, games, lego sets and other gifts that kids lose immediately upon receiving turn out to be quite handy when you are trying to make this game! Hooray! Free junk to hide in our rice! We gathered all of the trinkets up and took pictures of them so we would know what we were looking for in the bottle.
old buttons, charms, silly bands, craft supplies, etc.
Then, we rotated back and forth between adding rice and adding toys so that things could be distributed evenly.
starting our layers
We filled the bottles up to the top before we realized that you do need to leave some room in there so things can shift around (hey, it’s trial and error). Luckily, dumping out a little rice is a quick fix and then you can seal the lid and get ready for finding fun!
You can see little goodies peeking through
These were so easy to make and the kids loved them so we plan on making more to give as gifts in the future. We are going to print out a picture of the items in each one and decorate them with cute tags for that project, but that’s for another day. For now, this was an easy game to make and should provide hours of fun at a tiny fraction of the cost of the original game from which this was inspired! (AND, it helped clean out some of the teeny toys that I always find myself stepping on all over the house! Yeah!)
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
I have always known that there are major differences between little boys and little girls but this week I am getting firsthand knowledge of how different they are in terms of behavior away from “the family”. My older son is in kindergarten and not particularly rough (I’m basing this mostly on some WILD boys I have seen around the school and on his sports teams), but he is fairly strong-willed and has had a few moments where he has gotten into some hot water at school for basically acting like a 6-year-old boy (or a 35-year-old man who thinks he is smarter than the teacher, but that’s a whole other story on its own).
This week I learned that girls also get into trouble and, more often than not, for talking too much. Apparently, my daughter is one of those girls. I have no idea where she gets it from (I jest, I am not one to sit quietly if I have something to say either), but somehow I have to learn how to stop it before it gets out of hand. Her teacher informed my husband at preschool pickup that she had not been behaving ALL WEEK and it was all because she just won’t shut up! I glanced over at my daughter while my husband was relaying the message to me at lunch and she had her head down, occasionally peeking at me out of the corner of her eyes, quietly judging my face in order to properly rate my reaction and therefore sense the level of doom that I was preparing to bring down on her.
I must admit that my immediate reaction to her “I’ll pretend to be sorry in order to lessen the punishment while I slyly check to see if this works” idea was to giggle hysterically because she is a pretty good actress. However, I was able to muffle my laughter and speak to her in a stern, but kind tone. I asked her why she was talking so much and to my surprise she answered honestly by saying, “I just wanna have fun with my friends!” Oh, Lord, she just hit my Cyndi Lauper weakness button!
I am sooooo not ready for this!
Even though all I could hear was Cyndi in my ear at that moment, I tried to explain to her that she was at school to learn first and have fun second so she would just have to talk during play time while she listened during work time. She gave me a despondent look and sighed, pausing for effect, before saying, “ok, I will mommy.” Now, it remains to be seen whether or not she will actually change her actions tomorrow – I am waiting to see at pickup time – but I hope the powerful words I imparted upon her got through.
Has anyone else been through this? Are my words already landing on deaf ears? This kid is going to be trouble for sure (I swear I got my sister’s child somehow), but I thought she would at least make it through elementary school before I started doubting my effectiveness as a mom and disciplinarian! Do I have my own Cyndi Lauper on my hands?! How do you get a girl to stop talking when all she wants to do is have fun?!
…….Dear Lord, please let my baby be an easy child as he grows up!……
