End of the School Year Teacher Gifts

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Tomorrow is the last day of school here, and although making end of the year teacher gifts may not be completely related to our journey of city living to country living, I think it`s something that almost all of us encounter at some point in our lives, or we know someone who does!

Holy run on sentence, Batman!

In our home, we have two teachers, and three teachers` assistants to buy for, so spending even $20 per person can get pretty expensive.  With all of the renovations and house prepping going on around here, the last thing we need is expensive.  In order to accomplish this I needed to be resourceful!

First, I went to the dollar store and bought some terra cotta pots.  2 for $1.25, can't beat that!  I also grabbed some of the saucers for underneath at 2 for $1.

My second step was to spray paint them with chalkboard paint.  I already had this on hand from a previous project, so I didn't have to buy it.  If you needed to get some, you could probably buy it at your local hardware store for $4-$7.

When doing this step you need to make sure you are either outside or in a very well ventilated area- this stuff is very strong!  If you are outside you need to pay very close attention to the direction of the wind, because tiny particles can drift quite a distance and lovingly attach themselves to nearby objects.. like your car.  I might have learned this lesson in the past.  Just take my word for it ;)  I did two coats on mine.


Once dried, its time for designing.  I liked this one and thought it was appropriate for teachers. They say `Thank You For Helping Me Grow`.  Have fun with yours!  There's so much room for creativity here!  I used acrylic paints from the dollar store (which I already had, at $1 each).

For the flowers I visited my local garden centre.  I went there looking for a 6 cell package of flowers, so I could plant one in each pot, which would have cost me $2.99... making this project a total cost of about $7.  Unfortunately, they didn`t have any flowers with actual blooming flowers in 6 cell packages, so I ended up spending $19.76 on 5 six inch pots. I`m still happy with the low cost of this project.  If you had to buy the chalk paint, 2 acrylic paints, 2 pots, 2 saucers and a 6 cell of flowers, you could make this gift for two teachers for about $15 including tax.  That's pretty good, considering once the paint is purchased the price for subsequent pots goes down significantly.

Here`s to the end of another school year and the beginning of summer vacation.  I have a feeling (and a hope) that this summer is going to be busy, fun, and full of changes.  I can`t wait!