Fun Thank You Gifts

Hello, hello, hello,

Anyone out there? Out there? Out there?

Boy have I been out of a blogging rhythm! But that's ok,.....because...... I'm good enough, I'm start enough and dog gone it, people like me! Thanks Stuart Smalley!

So, I'm not going to beat myself up for not telling you (or working on) my verses twice a month, and I'm also not going to beat my self up about my 1000 gifts posts (that aren't really blogging) either. Nor am I gonna let myself feel bad that lately all my post have been just copy and paste thoughts, BECAUSE tonight I have something cute to show you! Aren't you excited? I know you are! Unfortunately I did copy these ideas, but I ACTUALLY made these so that counts for something right? Yep, just checked, it counts.

OK, so if for some crazy reason your still checking in on this little corner of the world, take a gander at what the girls and I made today.

Super cute huh? Tonight was the final night at AWANA, so we made some fun thank-you gifts for all the workers.

Each of the girl's teachers got one of these lovely buckets.

Really cheap and easy! The bucket was $1 at Walmart where all the beach stuff is. Easter grass was $1, Smarties were $2.50 for a big bag and DumDum lollipops that were $2.75 for a big bag also.  The ribbon and flowers I had and hot glued them near the pencil eraser and outside of the bucket.  I switched the shovel on the bucket for a little card that read: "Thank you Teacher for making me a Smartie and not a DumDum."  They were a hit and Stinky Pete had a lot of fun putting them together.

Then for all the other leaders we made chocolate bird's nest. YUM! This was a really messy project, but aren't those always the most fun? We used 6 big wafers of shredded wheat, 1 cup of coconut, 1 cup of oatmeal mixed with 2 cups of melted chocolate. First we sprayed the muffin tins with no stick spray (and our hands too!!).  Then we mushed the chocolate mixture into each cup trying to make a deep center. We stuck 3 mini robin eggs firmly into the chocolate. You could use jelly beans, but isn't chocolate always a better gift? Next refrigerate for a few hours and the eggs will stick to the nest.  Lastly we put a Peep chick on each nest, popped it out of the muffin pan, wrapped it up and it was ready to go.

Here we are mashing the chocolate. Stinky Pete is fabulously dressed for the occasion as usual. I only have one muffin tin, so we made some free-standing nests. They didn't hold together as well as the ones in the muffin tins and you can't press the eggs in them like that either, they just crumble apart. 

 Pretty believable nest, yeah?!  And now for the Peep.

This is the part where Stinky Pete realizes the Peeps are coated in sugar....

Yep! Let the finger licking begin...

Gonna get all that sugar in the box. HA! 

The finished treat. (Bad picture! Sorry!)

We doubled the recipe to make 40 treats and put Matthew 6:26 on the tags. So fun!

I'm so thankful for the group of adults that sacrifice time and energy each week to teach kids about Jesus. What a blessing! Thank you so much AWANA teachers!!  

I promise there will be more blogging soon. The Curriculum Clean Out is coming next week with lots of fun stuff to give away and I'm almost done with my project and ready to tell you about it. Here is one more sneak peak.

Cute stuff! 

Have a lovely weekend!