Happy Father's Day card and gift idea

Hello friends and Happy Father's Day to all the wonderful Dad's out there!  My son and I worked on Father's Day gifts for his Dad today.  I have so much fun crafting with him and I know it won't last forever so I like to get some craft time in with him whenever I can.

Max is on a baseball kick right now since T-Ball just started a couple of weeks ago and him and his Dad get outside to practice whenever they can.  So it was really no surprise when he said he wanted to make a baseball Father's Day card.  Here is what we came up with:

Max picked the colors and the embossing folder.  I think this one is called Tiny Bubbles.  The white mat is cut from Elegant Edges, the bear is the athlete from Teddy Bear Parade.  The bat and ball are from the Creative Memories cartridge This & That and the glove is from Everyday Paper Dolls.  He wanted it to look like the bear was hitting the ball.  I think he did a really great job!

Here is the inside with his cute little message and the keychain we made for his gift taped to it.

So my husband is a truck driver and he always keeps the key for the semi separate from all of his other keys, but he didn't have a keyring for it or anything.  We thought this would be the perfect gift for him.  We used shrinky dink that I picked up at Michaels a while back.  I loved making things with Shrinky Dink when I was a kid and was so excited to see it back in the stores.  And really, it's just as fun now as it was then!  

I traced my son's hand and foot, he used a couple of dad stamps I had on each and then colored them with a Sharpie marker.  I made sure to remember to hole punch the bottoms of each - although I forgot how much they really shrink and the holes were too small for the jump rings I had.  I ended up threading some jewelry rope through it and knotting them onto the jump ring.  

And then of course we had to make a sweet treat for him!

These are seriously the best brownies in the world if you are a chocolate peanut butter fanatic like we are!

We started with a box of Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Brownies and baked according to package.  Then we made the peanut butter layer with 1 stick of butter, 1 cup of creamy peanut butter and 2 cups of powdered sugar.  Mix together and spread over the cooled  brownies.  Then we took a can of chocolate frosting, put about a half a cup into a bowl and melted it in the microwave to pour over the peanut butter layer.  Add some chopped up Reeses peanut butter cups and you are done.  So incredibly rich, so incredibly good!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and a Happy Father's Day!

Kindergarten Graduation and Teacher Gifts

Hi Everyone!  Today is my son's last day of school and we had the classroom graduation yesterday.  So much fun!  I can't believe my baby is getting ready to go into First Grade already!

I have projects I made for the graduation and end of the year teacher gifts to share today.

First up is the classroom door:

Stepping into First Grade with Pete the Cat.  I used Cricut Cuttin' Up for the font.

Pete the Cat was a little more difficult since, of course, there's not a cartridge with Pete the Cat.  :)

I started with the cat image from Create a Critter.  The ovals for the eyes were cut using Creative Memories This & That cartridge.  The circles of the eyes were cut using Cricut Craft Room Basics.  The triangle for the nose came from George and Basic Shapes cartridge.  The shirt came from Everyday Paper Dolls and the shoes came from My Community cartridge.

I cut one shoe for each of the kids so they all had their names on the door.  The shoe from My community only has two layers, the red and white layers and they were, in my opinion, a little flimsy and I didn't like the open holes for the laces.  So to fix that, in the cricut craft room I used hide features and hid all the holes and lines that cut on the base (red) layer and cut that out in black to go behind.

This was our photo wall where the kids could get their pictures taken in groups or with their parents or teacher.  There were balloons added later but I forgot to get another picture.  I used Cuttin' Up cartridge for the font on this also.

And here is my little graduate!  He's wearing his graduation cap still that I made for all the kids.  :)

These were all hand cut.  I used 9x9 squares of black poster board for the tops and a strip of poster board 5" wide by 20" long for the bottom and secured it all together with hot glue.  You can't see it in the picture, but we poked holes in the tops of all the hats and used yellow yarn to create a tassle.

My little guy wanted to give little gifts to all of his friends and since every one of the kids in the class is now reading I thought bookmarks would be great for all their summer reading adventures!

I used Paper Doll Dress Up to cut the jumping frogs and printed 'Jump into a Book' on white cardstock.  My son signed his name to the backs of all of them for his friends.

Now for the teacher gifts.  Mrs. M is moving to a third grade classroom to teach next year and is using a Hollywood theme.  Here's what I came up with for her:

First up is a couple of bathroom passes that look like a movie award.  I used the cricut digital cartridge called Movie Night and made two of these.

The clapboard is also cut from Movie Night and I used chalkboard paper from DCWV so she can change the message as the year goes on.

These are all various cuts from Movie Night again, to be added to the behavior chart for the classroom.

This was made for one of the other mom's that asked if I would make something for her to give to Mrs. M from her daughter.

This started out as a pizza pan from the Dollar store.  I painted it black and added chalkboard paper to the center.  This way it can be used as a message board with chalk, or since it's a metal pan can be used as a magnet board to hold things.  I used the various cuts from the Movie Night digital cartridge and secured them with hot glue around the sides.  I attempted to punch a hole through the top, but my Crop a Dile wouldn't fit over the lip of the pan and so I added a large rhinestone to the front and hot glued a loop of black satin ribbon to the back so it can hang.

And lastly, I wanted a general gift that she can use in any classroom.

I had ordered these photo cubes from Oriental Trading a while ago during one of their free shipping promos. I used acrylic paint to color it yellow, then used Grade School mat stack for the pattern paper, matted on red cardstock from Core'dinations.  I used some glitter glue to add # 1 to the top.

I had so much fun doing projects throughout the year for the kids and Mrs. M is an amazing teacher.  I couldn't have asked for a better teacher for my son this year!!  My little guy and I are both hoping that he will have her as a teacher again some day!!  Hope you enjoy!  Have a wonderful day!!