Teacher's Gift

School's Out For Summer! (Well, almost...) It's that time at the end of the year where you have to start thinking about a teacher's gift. You don't want to spend too much or too little. You want your gift to be appreciated and you want to convey the right message. Whether it's, "Thanks so much for putting up with my little hellion all year," or "You made this year extra tough, thanks for retiring" or "You were a fabulous teacher and my child had his best year ever."

Now, I'm sure my son's teacher would be happy with a small note of appreciation. And we do that. But I usually like to do a little more in addition to the note from my child. This year I had an idea of what I wanted to do months in advance. So here is a case where vision and reality don't quite meet up. I found this brand new metal pail from Goodwill. (It still had it's Ikea store tag on it.)

My idea was to tape off a chunky stripe around the center of the pail and paint it with chalkboard paint so we could write a message to the teacher. Well, either it was nearly impossible or I was just having a very uncoordinated day. I had a heck of a time trying to tape in a straight line around a cylinder that increased in size on one end. I mean I was really frustrated since I tend to like things I'm working on to be as near to perfect as possible. It just wasn't happening so I ended up just taping off a rectangular section in the front. Gave it two coats of paint. Because I was so annoyed with the taping, I forgot to lightly sand it before I painted it. So hopefully it won't have any problems down the road.

It turned out okay except for the crooked line right in front.

I made banana muffins to put inside.

I wrapped each one individually with a different colored curling ribbon. Not the fanciest but by this point I wasn't going to change anything.

I tucked the muffins in with some tissue paper and wrote the teacher's name on the chalkboard portion of the pail. I'm going to add a tag to the handle so my son can write his name to it in addition to the note inside. Hope Mrs. Ruiz enjoys it!

(photo credit: school bus, scottsanflippo)