Prepping for our upcoming "Teacher/Staff Appreciation Week"

It's been a busy week for me.  One of the reasons is because another gal & I are trying to prepare a few little gifts for our children's school staff.  Unfortunately, our school's PTO is rather small & we didn't have anyone to "chair" this annual event.  So, there were no plans & arrangements that had been made in advance.  However, I know we are lucky because when something needs to get done, we pull together & get to it.

Gratitude POPS into mind!

Not only is our PTO rather small, but we don't have a lot of money coming in from fundraisers, so our budget isn't very big for this.  We did some brainstorming and came up with a few ideas.  Since we don't have much money to spend on this, we wanted to stretch our funds the best we could and still have some cute little things to show our appreciation.  The popcorn thank yous are easy & inexpensive.  We bought the popcorn at Costco.  Plus, it was on "sale," which helped even more.  Bonus - I already had printer labels, so I just printed out little labels so we could post a little message on each individual package.

We are very FORTUNATE that our children have caring teachers & staff.

My friend (and fellow PTO member) has picked up this project & taken it to her house to finish.  So, I don't have an all-done pic to post with the fortune cookies put in the labeled bags, but I am sure you get the idea.  We picked up the bags at our local JoAnn's store.  The bulk fortune cookies were bought at Cash & Carry, however we found some individually prepackaged (foil wrapped-30 per box) fortune cookies at a nearby Hong Kong Market.

You put the TEA in teamwork!

Thanks to Pinterest...it's easy to find ideas and inspiration for everything.  So, we had seen the water bottle/powder-drink holder on Pinterest and the link for it.  I had seen things done with tea, too, but I like my own pun better than the ones for "TEA-riffic" teachers since we do it for all our school's staff (not only teachers).  Costco warehouses & Target stores always seem to carry inexpensive water bottles.  We purchased the Crystal Light TEA from Target.  ALL the craft supplies that were used, I already had - so no need to spend any more money on this project.  Yep, I love having lots of craft tools & supplies!  They really do come in handy.

We like you a LATTE & would like to ESPRESSO our thanks!

This gift isn't finished...we still need the re-useable Starbucks' cups.  Our local Starbucks put in an order (for us) for more of their $1 cups so we wouldn't deplete their stock.  For the little message, I printed out small green circles with text (using a round Avery label template) on white cardstock.  Then, I used a Coluzzle nested circle template & cutting supplies to cut each one out individually.  None of my circle punches were quite large enough for the job.  The cut-out circles will sit nested on the top center of the lids (like in my pic) & the VIA packets will hide inside the cups.