The homestretch of the school year is such a busy time ... between the classroom projects, field day, special performances, and end-of-year teacher recognition, there is a lot to fit in to those final days! Amazingly, the school year closes just one week from today, so it's time to get the teacher gifts set. Since store-bought gifts are a no-no at school, it can be tough to put together something homemade that will also be clever and useful. This year, I took our gift choice straight from one of my favorite blogs, Simply Seleta. Seleta had the fabulous idea of taking an "Izze" soda carton to use as a gift box, leaving one bottle in and filling the other 3 compartments with other goodies ... here is Seleta's picture-perfect photo of one her finished gifts:
The link to her tutorial can be found right here. To my surprise, ours turned out looking pretty close to this ... my girls chose the pomegranate flavor of Izze and we decided to leave 2 sodas in the back row, filling the extra compartments in the front with a similar shredded paper filler. For the extra goodies, we took a mini bag of Newman's Own microwave popcorn, a drinking straw, and a mini Hershey bar cookie ('wafer bars' from a 100-calorie box) and tied them together with raffia.
We cut down the divider in between the 2 empty front soda spaces and stuffed the goodies into the front compartment. Ours came out looking like this:
Both of my girls have a main classroom teacher and a couple of important 'support' teachers (piano teacher, math tutor, book club, art teacher, etc). For their main homeroom teachers, we will give the gift that is packaged in the Izze carton. And with the extra soda (from the 2 empty slots in the front), we created gift bags for the support teachers. They include the same combination of goodies (one soda instead of two), but they are packaged in a small gift bag rather than the Izze carton ... a little less uniquely packaged, but still a very thoughtful gift:
Not too bad for a mom who was crippled by a cold for the entire week! Seleta's clever post really saved the day on this stressful annual task. This practical, thoughtful, and fun gift fits the bill in every way ... thanks, Seleta!
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