Teacher Appreciation (Garden) Gifts

At the end of the school year, we like to show our appreciation to the teachers who teach and instruct the kiddos every day. This year I put together garden themed baskets for their 3 main teachers. Of course, being on a tight budget I made them as inexpensive as possible.

We hit the Dollar Store and found solid garden trowels, pretty gloves, and cute flower pots for $1.00 each. We also got flower seed packets at 4/$1.00.

At home, I made some yummy smelling cucumber melon sugar hand scrub. It smells really fresh and summery and is great to use after you've been in the garden or if your hands are rough and dry.

It's super easy to make too! Simply fill your jar about 3/4 full with granulated sugar. Then add a scented liquid soap (like Softsoap or Dawn dish detergent), leaving about 1 1/2" of room at the top. Mix well with a spatula or spoon. As the soap mixes in, the sugar level goes down. Add more soap or sugar until it has a nice consistency, not too thin or too clumpy. You want it to be like baby cereal or oatmeal.

I used Word to create a circle shape and then typed out the hand scrub label. I printed it on patterned scrapbook paper from my stash and then used my Nestabilities circles to cut them out. I stuck them on top of the regular canning jar seal with a bit of scrapbook adhesive. A little twine wrapped around the top dresses up the jar lid and holds the little teaspoon in place ($0.99 each at a kitchen store in our nearby outlet mall.)

All the goodies went into baskets from my gift-giving stash along with a little shredded filler (also a stash item.) To finish it off, I made little tags to attach to each. Using my Sizzix, I cut 3 Super Traditional Tags out of scrap paper. Then I stamped the gardener image from TAC's Old Friend stamp set. I used TAC's Ordinary Greetings for the sentiment and Bloomin' Boxes for the flower stems.

After coloring in the gardener, I cut strips of green patterned paper left over from the hand scrub labels and used the Martha Stewart grass punch on the top edge. I attached the grass strip and little Jolee's flowers above the stems. On the back of each, I wrote "Thank you for helping me 'grow' this year." and had my kids sign their names for their respective teachers. A bit of ribbon from my stash attaches them to the baskets.

Since I had soap and sugar on-hand along with my stash of papercrafting supplies, they only cost $4.25 each! I think they came out cute---something pretty and useful that will hopefully show our teachers that we do appreciate how much they do throughout the school year!

Linking up to these great parties.

This project was featured here