Holiday Gifts

Happy December, Friends! 

Today I am linking up with my blogging buddies from the Elementary Grapevine to present to you a Holiday Blog Hop!!

Today I will be sharing some gift ideas with you that I have done in the past.

Student Gifts

Each year, I order books from Scholastic and stock up on the multiplication flash cards from the Target dollar section. I will usually add in a candy cane, Christmas pencil, and some type of holiday straw into their gift bags. 

I also bake these melted snowman cookies for them. 

If you would like detailed directions on how to create these cookies, as well as an awesome sugar cookie recipe you can check out this post.

If you're interested in using these editable cookie bag toppers, you can download a free copy in my TPT store.

Parent Gifts

Each year my students make snowman finger printed ornaments to gift to their families. It is super simple and easy. I purchase clear plastic ornaments (because the glass ones easily shatter) and fill them with glitter (fake snow).

Faculty Gifts

I usually like to give something small to the office staff, custodians, counselors, etc. They help to ensure the school runs smoothly but often get overlooked. It can get a bit pricy when purchasing something for all of these people, so I usually like to bake something. 

One year I made some chocolate covered pretzels and decorated them with sprinkles. In addition I baked some brownies and added some candy canes to this cute holiday box and then tied it up with a cute bow.

Another idea is to make some puppy chow, add some holiday m&ms and throw them into a Mason Jar. This comes out SUPER CUTE and who doesn't like puppy chow?! 

In the back row of the photo above, I also used some large Mason jars and added dry cookie ingredients. I decided to do M&M cookies, since they're much more colorful than plain chocolate chips (although I believe they have red and green chocolate chips now!) 

I added some ribbon and tied on directions on how to prep. the cookies (along with the wet ingredients needed). You can snag the labels I used here. 

I hope you are able to use some of these ideas this holiday season! All of these gifts are easily adaptable for anyone :) What are your go-to holiday gifts? I'd love to hear in the comment section below! 

Head on over to Lory's blog to find out about Classroom Snowball Fights!! 

DIY December Linky #1: Melted Snowman Cookies

Happy Sunday!

This month I have been doing a lot of DIY and baking projects for the holidays. I decided that I wanted to share it with you all and since I know that you are all a bunch of creative and crafty teachers- I want to see what you've been DIY-ing this month! SO..I present to you a brand new Linky:

Yesterday, my baking buddy and I  (another teacher) got together to make some Melted Snowman Cookies for our students. 

I absolutely love baking and decorating cookies, so this was a totally fun project for me! 

We started off by making our sugar cookies from scratch. This was my first time making sugar cookies and it was pretty easy! I have a really yummy recipe if you're interested. 

Click the photo above to download a copy of this recipe :) 

We then used circle cutters to cut the dough-then baked the cookies. 

The cookies will need to stay in the oven for a bit longer than the 15 minutes the recipe suggests. We just took a peek into the oven to make sure they were browned around the edges. These are what our pre-decorated cookies looked like. 

We then made our frosting using water, meringue powder, and some powdered sugar. 

We had to experiment better with how we liked the frosting. As you can see..we originally tried frosting the entire cookie-but didn't like that. We ended up using a plastic baggie to outline the melted snow look. Make sure to pop the marshmallows on before your frosting hardens. 

We then added some food coloring to the frosting-and used plastic bags (instead of piping bags) to draw on the eyes, nose, arms, and buttons. 

You could get fancy and add scarves, bows, and earmuffs but we were running low on frosting since we made 75 cookies! 

We then bagged each cookie into a plastic Ziplock Sandwich bag..and added these cute topper tags. I absolutely love how they turned out! It makes the packaging look much fancier!

The back of the tag also lists the ingredients.

If you're interested in using these tags-you can download them for free in my TPT Store. This is an editable file (for ingredients and teacher name). Please leave some feedback if you do decide to use these tags :) 

If you'd like to share any of your DIY Holiday Projects from this month-or from the past I would love for you to link up below! I always love getting new ideas and definitely would like to add some new projects to my to-do list! If you don't have a blog-feel free to leave your ideas in the comment section :) 

Thank you for sharing and Happy DIY-ing!

Rules for this Linky:

1. Link the picture of your project to your blog post. 

2. Add the DIY December Linky button to your blog post with a link back to my page. 

3. Check out the other DIY Projects and leave some cheerful comments

Thanks so much for linking up!!

Monday Made it #1: Apple Cupcakes and Centerpieces

This was one of my favorite linkys last summer because it actually got me off of my lazy butt to do some work!! 

I'm so excited to be linking back up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for my first Monday Made it of Summer 2013!!! 

For those of you who are following me on instagram, you know that I have been busy getting ready to host a retirement party for one of my coworkers who has luckily retired from our grade level this past year. SO some of these pictures are probably a repeat BUT I will go into detail on what I did and how..so stay tuned :) 

This week I made some yummy apple shaped cupcakes!!

These cupcakes were given out as favors at the retirement party..

I've posted the pictures on instagram and I had a lot of people asking how I made them. I figured this would be a perfect post for a Monday Made it!

SO..here are MOST of the things I used (my girlfriend had the frosting which is missing from the picture!) 

Things You Will Need:

• Box cake mix 
• Optional: 1 box vanilla pudding and an extra egg (this will make the cake mix extra moist and fluffy)
• red cupcake liners
• green chewy candies (jolly rancher or laffy taffy)
• tootsie rolls 
• 2 dozen donuts 
• frosting
• red paste food coloring 
• red decorating sugar

What To DO:

1. Bake the vanilla cupcakes as directed in the red cupcake liners. You will want to only fill the liners about half way full or a little less so that when they bake, they are about level with the liners. Once the cupcakes are done, let them cool.
2. You can begin by prepping your leaves and stems. All you need to is cut the tootsie rolls in half, lengthwise and you may need to shape them a little. I suggest putting them on a plate because we laid them down on a paper towel and after awhile they got stuck on the paper tower. We had to repeat this step all over again! 
3. You will want to microwave your green jolly rancher chewy candies for about 5 seconds. This is going to soften the candy and make it more moldable. You then want to take some kind of mallet and pound the candy down to about 1/8 of an inch thickness. 
4. I used kitchen scissors and just cut the shape of leaves out. I also used a knife to make the little leaf line and then just gently folded the leaf.
5. Once you're done with this, the cupcakes should be cooled down.  You will want to cut your doughnuts so you have a flat bottom. Frost the cupcake and stick the donut on top of it (picture in background). Once you've got all your cupcakes topped with donuts, stick them in the freezer for about 10 minutes. This helps to set the frosting and will make your job easier when it comes to dipping. 

6. Once the cupcakes come out...you want to then mix your frosting with the red dye. You then go ahead and frost your donut/cupcake. Place your sprinkles into a bowl and dip the cupcakes into the red sugar. 

7. Once that's done you can go ahead and add your leaves and stems.

I loved how the packaging of these cupcakes turned out! I was planning on buying individual boxes for each cupcake..but I couldn't find any and assume that it would have been pretty costly. 

I got these 9 oz. cups at target for about $3. 

Wrap them in some clear cellophane bags and tie it up with a cute ribbon and they're good to go!

Along with the cupcakes we also decided to make these cute little centerpieces for the tables! The cute little pail and all of the candied flowers came from the one and only..Target dollar section!! 

We then just made some cutouts using the cricut and arranged them. I was really happy with how these turned out. I forgot to take a picture of the finished finished product. We actually also added some sparkly easter grass, which made it even cuter! We hid some candy in there as well :)

Here's a blurry picture of the tables...

I sure hope this tutorial wasn't too rambly and was semi-helpful for you! Let me know if you have any other questions about recreating the cupcakes or centerpieces!!