Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Teacher Appreciation: Quick & Caffeinated

Growing up in a teacher's household, I know teachers treasure the sentiment behind gifts from students.  The gifts themselves are truly secondary to the feelings of appreciation.

Over the span of a teaching career, sentimental gifts abound and start to swamp most teacher's homes, so I try to give consumable gifts.

This year, after seeing this inspired "Thanks a Latte!" printable project I was all geared up to craft some sweet gift card holders with Ranger.



And then I remembered, I have three very young children- two in diapers- and utterly no spare time to wait for glue to dry.

Enter "Thanks a latte!" v.2. Cup and lid: easily acquired at time of gift card purchase.  Hard candy: quick, cheap, and easy.  Ribbon: around here somewhere.  Cellophane/plastic bag: not in my pantry and a Ziplock would lack panache.


So how do I dress up the cups to keep them from being mistaken for empties? I punched a couple holes in the sides of the adorable little espresso cups and threaded ribbon handles through.

Ranger helped put a handwritten note inside (on flower printables) with a gift card and some peppermints.

With smaller plain paper prints (print file as a 5x7 image) of the flower printable and my sticker maker (though any bit of sticky would suffice), I attached some mini-thanks a latte flowers to the cup lids for labels.

Viola.  Little baskets of sugary, caffeinated gratitude.


***Baby Toolkit is written by some sugary, caffeinated, grateful geek parents.  Thank you for giving us some of your time.  We're not affiliated (or even particularly enamored) with Starbucks and this hack could work just as well with your local coffee shop as long as they have gift cards and to go cups.  We are however Amazon affiliates, so a portion of purchases made through this web site's Amazon links help us stay connected.