Thursday, December 14, 2023

DIY Teacher Gifts



Hey friends! My daughter is in daycare and 3-year-old preschool, so she has a lot of teachers! Her daycare director gave me a list of 5 teachers, and she has 3 preschool teachers as well. I wanted to get them each a little something, but with so many gifts, I needed to think of some budget friendly ideas!


For her preschool teachers, I picked up these cute little gingerbread candy jars from Walmart.
I had planned to put homemade caramels in the gingerbread houses, but my daughter wanted to put cookies in them, so we made our favorite chocolate chip cookies. I cut a piece of parchment paper in half to fit inside each house.

 

I was only able to fit 2 cookies into each one. 


Then I just folded the remaining parchment paper over the cookies. I wanted to the parchment to act like tissue paper in a gift bag.


I made some little tags with regular printer paper that I tore along a fold.


I used some silk ribbon I had from my gift-wrapping last year to attach the tags around the chimney of each gingerbread house.


For her daycare teachers, I bought a set of 4 Christmas mugs from a local thrift/antique store. I got these before I learned she had 5 teachers, so I ended up getting a different Christmas mug for the lead teacher.


I decided to make monogram ornaments to put into each mug. I had this piece of 3” oak in my scrap pile, so I cut it into 3” squares.

  

I only had enough oak for 3 ornaments, so I used an old 1”x4” reclaimed scrap for the other ornament. I sanded them all down really well with 220 grit sandpaper. I added some holes to the top of each one with a 7/64” drill bit to add a piece of twine for hanging.


For the monograms, I printed the letters in the size and font I wanted and then cut them out.


I tried to make sure the margin around the letter was the same in all sides, so I didn’t have to measure when centering the letter onto the ornament. I used tracing paper to get the letter onto each piece of wood. I made sure the darker side of the tracing paper was face down and then put the letter on top and traced over it with a pen, pushing down kind of hard.


The tracing paper leaves a perfect outline to paint inside!

 

I used a small paint brush and acrylic warm white paint to paint the letters onto each ornament. I ended up doing 2 coats of paint on each ornament.


I added some red twine with a little bow on each ornament for hanging. For the extra ornament I had to make, I used a scrap 1”x4” that was stained Minwax Special Walnut.


I added 2 packets of hot chocolate with a monogram ornament to each mug. I put them each in a cellophane bag with the same silk ribbon and tags as above!

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