Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Now that I'm on maternity leave and my day job is not using up all my creativity, I've been wanting to make a project. Ava's preschool offered the perfect opportunity when the scheduled picture day on St. Patrick's Day. In order to add a little green to her outfit, but remove it for her photo, I decided to make a special St. Patrick's Day ribbon.

I basically just grabbed any craft supplies I had lying around that were green, pink or white and hot glued them together. Ava was pretty excited to wear it to school this morning (although you can't tell from this photo -- it was early).

I had to make that bow late last night after seeing the (much, much cuter) ones at Wendy and Peter.

Ava's preschool class is having green pancakes this morning and she was very curious yesterday about how you would catch a leprechaun. Holidays like St. Patrick's Day is so much more fun with kids.

Teacher Gifts

This Friday the parents' at Ava's school are organizing a teacher appreciation pot-luck and we're all supposed to bring a homemade gift. Knowing that I love Ava's artwork, but a non-relative who would be getting art from all the other kids as well might want something that would be useful as well as decorative. And it needed to be something quick and easy that Ava and I could do together.

  We picked up a few supplies from the store and got to work.

I sprayed each pot with chalkboard paint we already had, then Ava filled each one 2/3 full with potting soil.

Then we added the flowers and Ava used chalk to draw a special picture on each one. (In hindsight, this would have been a lot easier if we'd drawn the pictures before we potted the flowers.)

Then we added a message on an apple-shaped post-it note (it says: "Thanks for helping me learn and GROW!") and Ava drew on another set of post-its, then we sandwiched an extra-large pencil between the two notes and stuck them in the pots.

Done! The whole project was less than $20 for all three and, while homemade, her teachers can re-write and re-use the pots to their hearts content (and think of Ava every time they do). Now to decide what to make for the pot-luck...