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Thursday, June 17, 2010

Mrs. M.'s Garden


 
Tomorrow is the last day of the school year and in the weeks leading up to this day, I have given many thoughts about my gift to Mrs. M., the twins' 1st Grade teacher. I could make her a slideshow on a dvd with pictures of the past year of all the kids from the class, just like I did for Mrs. E last year. But then I recall that Mrs. E was so moved by it that she had to choke back her tears and was not able to talk to me after she watched the show. Although I was flattered that my work evoked such strong emotions, it was not quite the reaction I was expecting. Then I thought I could make Mrs. M. a wall art using crayons to spell out her initials. I've seen that on many blogs and have always wanted to make one of those. But then I chanced upon this book:


In case you are not familiar with it, Mrs Spitzers' Garden by Edith Pattou is about a teacher who tends to her garden where the flowers are actually her students. It is a metaphoric but lovely story and it gave me the idea for what to give to my kids' teacher this year.


The first thing that I bought specifically for this project is this pair of Martha Stewart fringe scissors. Except for a rock garden, every garden has grass, right? Forget the fact that I've always wanted this but had no excuse to buy it. Now I can justify the purchase!

Next, I got a metal bucket ($2.50) from Target and about 5 lbs of split green peas ($0.49/lb) from the grocery store.



Using the Walk in My Garden cartridge, I start cutting out flowers in different shapes and sizes. But when the time came to hot-glue them to the top of the pencils, I hit a snag. You know how it is when you need a fork and all you can find are spoons? Well, I needed regular pencils that has a green body and all I could find are the yellow ones. A yellow sunflower does not look so good on a yellow stem. Ack! So I start my hunt for green regular pencils.

Thankfully, my search did not take long. I found these Papermate Earth Wise pencils that comes 10 to a pack for about $2 at the grocery store nearby. Whoa hoo! I bought them and got right back to work.



A bit of hot glue here and a blob of hot glue there, and this is what I ended up with:




I made a total of 25 flower tops for pens and pencils to represent all 25 kids in the class. But I also got Mrs. M. a gift card. How should I stick that in? I decided to do it this way:



Okay, Mommy can't be the one who does all the work. So Mean Mom got the girls to draw and cut out (By hand! No Cricut! Muahhahaha!) some butterflies and I attached them to the pencils with wire. 
 

I can't give a present without including a card so I also made Mrs. M one and I will get all the kids in the class to sign on it before I give it to her. This is how the card looks like on the outside and on the inside:




 Now the "garden" is almost done but something seems to be missing:




I know! How about adding this little fellow?




The 3" snail  from the Create-A-Critter cartridge is perfect for dressing up the roll of sticky tape. Isn't he the cutest thing? I even found matching erasers from a pack that I bought from Target a while ago.




 A little bit of rearranging later, and my gift is finished. 

May I present to you....Mrs. M.'s Garden:







22 comments :

  1. now how stinkin cute is that?...and that snail tape...adorable!...

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  2. Wow..awesome job on this! Looks like hard work with all those flowers! I love how the snail fits perfect on the tape! tfs ;)

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  3. So very creative, what a lovely thoughtful gift!

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  4. That is a wonderful gift. Bet she loved it. Thanks for sharing.

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  5. too freakin cute I love it!!!!

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  6. Your garden is tooooo cute. Love it.

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  7. Oh, wow, wow, WOW!!! I know she loved this--what an amazing gift.

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  8. This is so cute...great job! I just got this cart last week at M's for $20....I need to play!

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  9. Absolutely adorable!!! I'm sure the teacher loved it!! Who wouldn't??

    Hugs!

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  10. Oh she had to love this gift it is wonderful and so thoughtful!

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  11. This is SO CUTE!! I hope she loved it!!

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  12. Wow, I'm totally impressed! Not only is idea from the book adorable- but how thoughtful of you to include supplies she'll use! Awesome project!

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  13. I thought the whole thing was adorable, but when I saw your snail tape...I was BLOWN AWAY!!! The Snail Tape is GENIUS!!
    Beautiful work AS ALWAYS!
    Joy
    http://joyslife.com/

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  14. WOWWWW!!! Amazing! I could never be patient enough to pull this off like you did! Awesome, awesome job!

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  15. Thanks everyone for your comments. I really appreciate it. I planted myself outside the classroom yesterday morning and got the kids to sign the card as they went into the class. Mrs M seemed overwhelmed by the basket but she hugged me for a loooong time after I gave it to her so I think she liked it? She really loved that the kids signed the card. My girls came home and told me that she read the book to the class after I left. I thought that was really nice. :)

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  16. What a cute cute gift. I know she will treasure this for years to come.

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  17. That is the most ADORABLE and FUNctional teacher gift I think I've ever seen. Fantastic!! That snail tape is pure genius.

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  18. Very Cute. Love the tape dispenser

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  19. This is so amazingly cute. I want to make a bouquet of flowers like that for my house.

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  20. This is adorable !!! what amazing work you did ! LOVE IT ! Congrats

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  21. What a wonderful gift! And Mrs. M must have loved the whole thing. Especially the flutterbys the kids made. Congrats on the Chirp mention! TFS

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