Going Away Gifts

With so many of our friends moving on to new chapters in their lives I thought it appropriate to give them a little going away gift. After an extensive search online everything I found was either too impersonal, too cheesy or just not what I had imagined. So, as I usually do, I made something.

Teacher Gift-

Jenne was our daughter's teacher this year and had also been teacher to two of our boys. She is taking a sabbatical year to teach overseas! We wanted this to be a gift from the whole class but also something she could take with her onthe adventure. We decided on a journal with special sentences written by her students on random pages. That way when she's writing in her journal she can stumble upon a special memory and smile just as if she passed a former student in the hallway. As a bonus we added a class picture at the beginning and another one at the end. We wish you the very best Jenne and we hope to hear all about your adventures sometime soon.

Principal Gift-

Our elementary principal has been with us through out the good and the bad. She has struggled with us in many ways to improve the education for our students. While we still don't know who will take her position we are hopeful that our Superintendent will find someone with equal capabilities since he promoted our dear friend. It's hard to capture so many years and so many faces in one gift but, we took this opportunity to make a flower vase for her new office. 

If you'd like to do something similar, it is actually quite easy.

Find the vase you would like to use. Print the picture and cover it with contact paper, leaving an extra border of contact paper on all edges. Then cover the picture with a layer of mod lodge, going over the edge of the contact paper. Once dry, you can paint a border using specialty glass paint. Leave it to dry at least 24 hours before you use it as a flower vase. Hand wash only.

New Job Gift-

Our lovely blog co-writer, Genesee, recently accepted an offer to work at a well known University in the area. Although we will miss seeing her as frequently as we have become accustomed to, we know she will visit often (we promised her dinner and awesome company!), we wanted to give her something special to celebrate. My daughter and I came up with a little white lie to explain why we needed a group picture then we printed it and mounted it in a yellow frame we picked up. To take it from basic to awesome we printed chevron digital scrapbooking paper and used mounting adhesive to attach it to the mat. Then I painted/traced the letters on the the glass and baked it to set the paint.