Long Time No Blog

The end of school and the start of summer vacation is a whirlwind blur of packing up my classroom, putting on a class celebration, saying goodbye to my dear sweet kinder class, a fancy dinner out with Mr. Winemaker to celebrate the end of school, his New Jersey family flying in, and then adventures to the coast/wine country/bbq fun/shopping and much more!  Head over to my other blog “She Said G Said” for a picture journey of our adventures!
It feels good to be back in the blog state of mind and back in the blog world.  I missed you!   
It feels like the last week of school was years ago!  What was I up to those last weeks?  Putting together gifts for my volunteers, principal, secretaries, and a gift for my students. 
I decided to put a different spin on volunteer gifts this year.  Instead of heading to a store to purchase something cutsie (that usually adds up and ends up out of my budget) or spending hours on Pinterest getting sucked into cute crafty ideas which would require computer ink and printing, I headed to my small outdoor garden.  Let me preface this by stating I have a love boarder-line obsession with succulents and over the years via gifts, thrift stores, and Ikea I have collected quite a few little pots.  The beauty of succulents is you can cut off parts of the plant and viola they grow a new plant.   Succulents are also incredibly hardy and require very little water.  Seriously,  no-green-thumb-no-worries succulents are user friendly.  My kinda plant, I tell ya!  Plus succulents are becoming quite popular especially as favors, bouquets, and even cake toppers at weddings!  Check out my Pinterest board devoted entirely to succulents!  Back to the volunteer gift… I took a scissors and snipped off succulent parts, planted them in soil, and I was done.  Easy as that.  I got so into it; I made a new succulent table centerpiece for my kitchen table, and I made my fantastic principal and secretaries their very own succulent collage. 
Process:
       


Final Product:
          


These gifts were a hit!  The special touch, they came from my garden, which made the creation even more special. 
As I thought about a gift for my students, I really wanted to give them a special memory of our kindergarten class that they could hang in their rooms.  When I first joined Pinterest, melting crayon art was the craze.  In fact I think melting crayon art was my first pin ever!  In the back of my mind I knew I wanted to try it out some day, and finally my seed of an idea/pin has come full circle. 
With the help of my fantastic volunteer moms, we purchased small canvases from Michaels.  Using leftover crayons from student’s crayon boxes and a few extra purchased crayon boxes, we used a knife to cut the crayons in half.  We taped two colors to each side of the canvas at the top.  This way students could pick their own colors and arrange them on the canvas the way they wanted without crayons rolling off.  Crayons were then hot glued to the canvas.  The blue painter’s tape was used at the bottom so the melting crayons would go over the tape.  This way we peeled of the tape and had room for students to write “I Love Kindergarten”, their names, and the date.
      
Now for the best part of the entire art project!  Students came outside and helped melt their crayons with a blow dryer.  The colors were AMAZING!

Here are some snapshots of the finished product!