Are We Nuts?

As we continue to celebrate our fearless Classified Staffers, each grade level breaks up the week and gives them mini treats every day! The 4th/5th grade teachers are in charge of Wednesday, so we have been prepping our present! 

I used a rubber band to hold the mini stamps together in order to make my stamping much quicker. Step one was to place the word "NUTS" on the tags in a bright orange color.

I then hand penned the remaining words in a bright blue ink, "We are NUTS about you!" The perfect saying to go with our gift! 

Using baker's twine, the tags were attached to the trail mix bags.

A huge shout out and thank you to my teaching partner, Rory, for tying so many little ribbons for the sake of my crazy craftiness! He was very patient, only about 36 bows... :) Thank you RORY! For tying bows and enduring me! 

Final product, boxes of nuts for the people that put up with us nutty teachers!

Pack a Little Picnic (Part Two)

Of course if I show you invitations, I have to show the party decor! This is more of a photo journal sort of post, limited description, but fun ideas! Of course, you know from the invites that the potluck luncheon was picnic themed so we used fun, vintage decor! 

At our lemonade stand, we used old wooden crates and canning jars for glassware. 

Paper products and utensils were stored in various glass jars, and then in a vintage wire basket.

Each table (the buffets and lemonade stand too!) was covered with plastic picnic table cloth as seen in basically every photo! The colored daisies were put in larger versions of the utensil jars. 

And no picnic is complete without ANTS! Ours were friendly, plastic, and snagged from our math manipulatives for a fun effect!

I was super excited that McKenzie (decorating partner in crime!) embraced my harebrained idea to use the bench in our decor. It was really only thought of because it was still in my car from the Vintage Hardware Fire Sale we shopped the day previous. We decided it would be perfect to hold our drink bucket.  This photo was taken before the bucket was loaded with ice and bottles.  

The room as a whole, the tops of the library shelves served as our buffet line, so they were decorated with paper flowers and picnic baskets too! If you look closely, you can see the butterflies that the wonderful Mary Ann hung from the lights! The perfect topper to our picnic party! 

Thank you so much to McKenzie and Mary Ann for teaming up with me to decorate on Sunday, you are both so clever and crafty! 

Thank you to all of our certified staff for providing all of the food! And for your help setting out food in the morning and clean up after! And for giving our classified good break time by covering their obligations for them.

AND BIGGEST THANKS TO OUR CLASSIFIED HEROES! You are truly the foundation of our school and programs. I know I'd be lost without you! 

PS: Lynne B. the bar has been set! ;) 

Pack a Little Picnic (Part One)

Welcome to a blogging mini series! This one will only be a couple posts long, featuring a picnic that the certified teachers hosted for our school's phenomenal classified staff members! These people are literally the heart and soul of a school, bus drivers, secretaries, custodial staff, kitchen staff, classroom assistants, recess aids, librarians, all the people that keep a school running in tip-top shape! Teachers would, in all honesty, be significantly crazier than we already are if these people were not part of a school. Classified Appreciation Week is March 4-8 this year and the teachers pulled together to host a beautiful lunch! 

A hosted luncheon is not complete without a theme inspired invitation! Being a craft nut, if you haven't figured that out already..., I volunteered to create the invitations! I started with rolled craft paper, and used a paper cutter to trim them into 4" by 5.5" rectangles.

I then used a lace edge punch, shown below, from Martha Stewart's craft line, to frame all of the edges of the craft wrap. 

I then glued the craft paper to my picnic table cloth scrapbook paper! Those were cute into 6" squares.

The final piece of the puzzle was the information for the party, of course! Using my new obsession for downloading adorable fonts, I created a fun and spunky information postcard.  The "In celebrations of YOU" is in Office's standard Rockwell.  The large "PICNIC" is Coffee Tin.

The remaining information is Strawberry Limeade. These fonts are both from free websites, so go get them!

After attaching the pieces, used a teacher's go to, glue sticks, then final product was cute and simple! But they got rave reviews! Thanks for those compliments, I'm glad you enjoyed the invites!