General Conference Bags for my Nursery Kids

When I was released from Cub Scouts and as a primary teacher I was called as the Nursery leader.  One day I'll post what I have started in there, but several months later I still feel like there is so much to do/learn!  My first nursery post is going to be about the kits I made them for General Conference this coming weekend.

Last year I found an idea in which you stick a picture of the prophet or apostles on a bag and when that person was speaking in General Conference the kids were able to do/eat whatever is in that bag.  I found it right before conference and threw it together (not completely) for my kids.  This year I hope to make it a little more complete.  I decided to do something similar for my nursery kids (right now we only average 4-6 kids, but that will change shortly)! 
I found this awesome site that had all the pictures I needed sized to print on labels.  The only downside is that I didn't have labels and of course I remembered Saturday night that if I was going to give out something for Conference it would have to be the following day so I just printed them onto regular paper, cut them out, and used packaging tape to tape them onto baggies (both snack size and sandwich size).  Inside the baggies I put pictures to color (I used some from here, but I later I think printing some from the nursery manual would have probably been better for this age.  My internet was BARELY working so I wasn't able to search around for other pages), treats, or activities.  The activity bags included: a bag with dental floss & cheerios so they could make a necklace (I tied one cheerio onto the end so it was ready to go),  a matching game - I printed two copies of this Bingo game made for toddlers.  I cut out the pictures using the lines as guides & put them into a bag to be used as a matching game (there were nine pictures per game so they didn't have all the apostles), home-made play dough I had leftover from these Valentine's cards, and bubbles (I put this in President Monson's so the parents could choose to blow it a few times every time he spoke or just give it to them the first time he spoke).  I also had snacks: Capri sun, teddy grahams, Nilla Wafers, pretzels, skittles.

I put it all in a gallon size Ziploc bag and included a note so the parents knew what it was all about.  I introduced it to the kids and told them they had to wait until conference before they could open it.  Hopefully it'll make conference a little more exciting for those small, but oh so bright spirits! 

Sorry for the pictures.  The one of the items in the bag was taken with my phone.  The others are in a kit that isn't complete, but it will show you what I did.  We are missing large heart marshmallows, another coloring page, and a bag of teddy grahams.  Hopefully the activities and food will be spread out!

Sneak peak at the St Patricks Day Treat

Here is a sneak peak at what we will be giving for St Patrick's Day. And it was NOT pinterest inspired!

Tutorial to follow, but all you need are Glad containers, green spray paint, black ribbon, yellow or gold paper, and something fun to put inside.

To see the post go here. 

A Birthday Cake for a Teacher {Supply Cake}

One of the first things I saw when I joined Pinterest was this supply cake. I KNEW that is what I needed to make for the birthday's of my kids' teachers this year. As you can tell from this blog I'm a big advocate of giving teachers a little something. Unless you are in the schools (volunteering/substitute teaching, etc) you have no idea how much these teachers do!
Since I work at the elementary school, every month I look at the whiteboard calendar to see if it contains any birthday's I need to know about.  So the beginning of March I look at the calendar and see that Boo's Teacher's birthday is the NEXT day!  I still want to do make her a supply cake, but I have no time to go to the store.  So I do the next best thing.  I go through my stash of school/office supplies to create this:

If I had more time/supplies I would've liked to do a few different things to it, but considering I didn't purchase anything I think it turned out nicely.
I didn't take step by step instructions, but here is what I did.  First I took a roll of paper towels as the center to hold everything.  If I had it on hand I would have used a large (Coscto size) container of Lysol wipes.  Teachers definitely could use those more than paper towels.  Anyway, take a roll of paper towels (or container of wipes) and wrap around some spiral notebooks (or folders with or without brads - or even composition notebooks, but these are short for paper towel center) and stick a large file elastic around the entire thing to hold it together.  It will probably require extra hands because those notebooks don't like to stay curled around.  Don't worry too much about how spread out they are, you can move them around after the elastic is on.

I almost forgot.  You will need a base.  It ends up being pretty heavy so make sure it is sturdy.  You could you cardboard or a cake base, but I stuck with the supply theme and used a clipboard (I just set the cake on it, I didn't adhere it):

 

Now it is time to put supplies onto the cake.  I really like the boxes of crayons along the bottom to make the bottom layer wider, but I didn't have enough.  So going through my supplies I came up with this:

The bottom layer of the cake is glue.  It rotates between liquid glue and glue sticks.  As you can see I had two different kinds of school glue on here.  I wanted a middle layer, but it couldn't be too thick and so I came up with post-its.  One can never have too many post-its! Put as many on as you can and put another elastic around it.  You can add more after the elastic is on.
For the top I put a smaller elastic around three boxes of crayons.  Then put mores supplies around them.  First I added pencils to two sides opposite each other.  To the other two sides there are pens (They lay flat against the crayons when my hand isn't moving them).

I thought it was a little plain so we added more supplies around the pens and pencils. On one side are some stamps:

On the opposite side are some dry erase markers:

The other two sides have a pencil sharpener, an eraser, and a bottle of white-out.  On top/in the center is a container of clips:

After all your supplies are attached via elastic (and if you have pieces such as the crayon topper attach with adhesive - I used a tape runner). It is time to add ribbon to cover up all those elastics you see:

I went through the ribbon stash and found some cupcake ribbon and alphabet ribbon.  I found some coordinating 1 1/2 inch ribbon.  I didn't have much left of the pink & yellow cupcakes, but there was a few elastics to cover up (since I added so many layers).  I used the yellow ribbon over the elastics and had just enough cupcake ribbon to put around one of the ribbons:

The middle layer has the alphabet ribbon:

and then another layer of birthday ribbon:

Here is the full cake with the ribbon:

I decided it need a little something else to spruce it up and hide the seams in the ribbon.  I went through the flower stash to see what I had in coordinating colors.  I came up with this:

I think Boo's teacher was impressed with her cake.  Hopefully she will enjoy it and won't have to purchase many supplies out of her own pocket.  Happy Birthday Ms. Millson!

Linking to:

Bloom Design

Dr. Seuss Day - Hair and Dinner

Continuing on with Dr. Seuss Day from this previous post: Lunch & Teacher Treats.  The girls wanted Cindy Lou Who hair again (Bugs' class didn't dress up).  This year their hair was longer, but it is very thin and fine, especially Boo's.  The poor child was blessed with no hair just like her mama.  Since it was longer this year it turned out a little better, but Sis's hair was a bit too long on top for the same style we did last year, but I didn't have time to adjust it so she had to go with however it turned out.  I went wrong in two places this year: 1- I just rolled cardstock into a cylinder instead of a cone.  This saves a lot of time, but it doesn't turn out nearly as well.  Take the time to figure out how to roll & trim a cone that fits your daughter's hair.  2 - I didn't use hair products.  When I three cones in Sis's hair for Wacky Wednesday I did and boy did it hold!  Click on the link to see more about what I used and did.
With that being said this is what they looked like:

You can see that with paper rolled instead of in a cone the elastic didn't stay in place.  It leaned forward.  To make this style I used only the amount of hair on top of the head that I needed to cover the paper.  The rest of the hair was divided into two and braided.  I bobby-pinned the braids up and curled the ends.  Boo's hair is the better length for the cone, but Sis's is the better length for the braids.  Goes to show you that they didn't use real hair in the movie!

After school it was time to get ready for dinner.  Our menu: ham and green {deviled} eggs from Green Eggs and Ham, Who Hash (hash brown casserole/funeral potatoes) from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Hat Jello from The Cat in the Hat, and Pink Ink to Drink from One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  

Ham:

 

Who Hash:

Green {Deviled} Eggs:

 Hat Jello:

Pink Ink Drink:

The Dinner:

The ham was just a spiral ham cooked as directed with some pineapples added.  The Who Hash is a hash brown casserole most commonly known as funeral potatoes.  I'll post my recipe at the end of this post for those who want it (I didn't have the crushed potato chips on top because I was too lazy in too much of a hurry to go downstairs and find some).  I actually assembled it the night before and put in the fridge.  After the ham was almost done I baked the Who Hash.  The Green {Deviled} Eggs are just deviled eggs with food coloring added.  I added a little blue and a little green food coloring (since the yolks are yellow).  The Jello was layered with Strawberry Jello, Whipping Cream, Strawberry Jello, Whipping Cream.  If I were to do it again would have done one more layer of Strawberry Jello.  It would look a little more like the Cat's hat.  I had some extra Jello the first time around (I made one small box) so I put it into a small container (or two) for the kids' future lunches.  When that was set up I did a layer of whip cream and started making the next layer of Jello.  For that layer I used ice cubes to partially set up the jello so it wasn't liquid pouring onto the whip cream.  To see how to do that check out this post.  I made one small box again, but didn't have enough so I had to add another small box.  I put it into the fridge to finish setting.  When it was ready I added the top layer of whip cream.  The Pink Ink was just crystal light ~ any pink drink will work.  You could get fancy or just use Koolaid or pink lemonade.  I found these cute cups to use too.  When you move them the picture changes.  Gotta love Target's dollar spot!

I also saw some Cat in the Hats made with an Oreo and gummy life savers on Pinterest (I didn't pin it so I can't give credit).  Well, I happened to have gummy life savers that I couldn't find at the time for the owl cake (oops), but found shortly after (they were downstairs in the food storage - imagine that).  I didn't like how the Oreo was so much bigger than the rest of the hat.  My solution: Mini Oreos.  

I put some white frosting left over from the owl cake in a ziploc back and snipped the corner.  I put a little frosting on half of the Oreo and topped with a gummy lifesaver, repeat and you have the hat from The Cat in the Hat!  I was able to make nine hats with one bag of gummy lifesavers until I ran out of red lifesavers.  I pulled out all the green ones for St. Patrick's Day (I think I will make leprechaun hats the same way, but with green icing ~ this is a light green icing from the owl cake and the dark green gummies):

Who Hash aka Funeral Potatoes

Ingredients:

1- 2lb bag hash browns

1 cube butter (or margarine)

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

minced onion to taste (or use fresh onion)

16 oz sour cream

1 1/2 - 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Crushed potato chips & additional cheese

In pan melt butter and add soup and onion.  When bubbly add sour cream and cheese.  Mix until melted.  Mix with hash browns in 9x13 pan.  Add chips and cheese on top.  Bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

Dr. Seuss Day ~ Lunch & Teacher Treats

Here is another day I go a little crazy.  The funniest thing is that I hardly own any Dr. Seuss books.  It wasn't until recently that I realized how much I loved him.  He has some amazing quotes out there.  One day soon I plan to do something with all those amazing quotes I've found.  I just have to figure out what!  But for now, here is what we did this year.

No pictures, but for breakfast we had green scrambled eggs.  Nothing else.  There were plans, but I had to style two girls' hair, make lunch, and drop Sis off at school early (she normally rides the bus) and this meant leaving almost 1/2 hour early and of course when planning out the day I forgot that little tidbit until the night before.  You don't need pictures anyway, most people know what they look like.

My adventure started the night before.  I was scrambling around until after 11:00 getting as much done as possible.  First I made some Yertle Turtles. I had pinned a recipe to make your own rolo turtles and have been wanting to make them ever since.  So what better time than for Dr. Seuss' own Yertle Turtles?  

You can click on the link above to read her instructions, but this is the basics:  Line a cookie sheet with pretzel snaps (the square pretzels - there is more pretzel to hold the melted chocolate), place one rolo on each pretzel (if you get them in the rolls you don't have to unwrap each rolo, but if you have kids to do it for you, does that really matter?), bake for about 4 minutes at 350 (they shouldn't be melted - just soft), place a pecan half gently on top (my daughter helped and I think we over squished some of them).  Let cool and then finish the cooling process in the fridge.  Tada, Yertle Turtles!  With those Yertle Turtles and Swedish fish I made these for the teachers:

I copied and pasted a Yertle Turtle picture.  Using a Dr. Seuss font I did the writing for both signs.  I designed it to be a bag topper (like I did here for the Smeeps), but decided I wanted to separate the treats.  I tied ribbon between the treats, cut out the squares into tags, punched a hole in them and tied them on with the ribbon.  The Fish tag is a little bit longer so that helped since I layered them.  I tweaked the tags a little bit for you so they should be easier to cut as tags and big enough to fit on top of a snack size baggie.  

You can download it here.

The other thing I made is Cat in the Hat hats.  During school one of the teachers I work with told me about this.  I had the ingredients so I gave it a try.  I must say hers turned out nicer than mine, but I didn't take as much time as I should have.  They still are cute (much cuter if you don't take close up pictures).

All it takes to make some hats are large marshmallows, double stuf Oreos, and red candy melts.  First you dip on side of the marshmallow in.

Let harden or put them in the fridge to speed up the drying time.  When dry dip the other end and place it on an Oreo (I guess the very first step is removing one side of the Oreo).  The black is the brim followed by white, red, white, red.  My tip for you is to use a small container to melt the chocolate in.  It works best if you can just dip it in as far up as you need to.  My container was too large so I used a spoon to help it along.  They weren't as precise or smooth as I would have liked, but they were just for my kids.

Having finished those items, boiling and dyeing eggs, and starting some of my jello I hit the sack.  In the morning while the kids ate their green scrambled eggs I was busy packing their lunch.  First the girls had One fish, Two fish, RED fish, BLUE fish sandwiches:

To make those I just dyed some tuna fish blue and red:

 

All of them had Fruit kabobs that looked like the hat of The Cat in The Hat:

To make these you just take banana slices and strawberry slices and layer them.  You could try to match the widths better, but I was just trying to get them done. I put the bottom of the strawberries as the top of the hats.

They all also had colored gold fish and jello from One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and a boiled egg dyed green from Green Eggs and Ham.  I had Easter Egg dye in my cupboard from last year (yep, I really need to clean out that cupboard - now that I revealed that to the world I better get on it) that I used.  If you aren't a pack rat like myself you can use Kool-aid.  Mix on packet of green Kool-aid with 2/3 cup water in a small container.  And lo and behold you now have green dye! I learned this here.

I made the blue jello the night before.  In the morning I whipped up some whip cream and put on some red fish.  I looked all over (okay two stores then I ran out of time) for blue fish or sharks, but I couldn't find them.  So they only had the red fish.

Here is my boy's lunch.  His sandwich was Roast Beast (beef) from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas because he doesn't like tuna fish:

Oh, I forgot to mention I added the Oreo hats for dessert (I was raised with Jello being a side dish not a dessert and so are my kids).
Here is the post to the rest of our day: Hair styles and Dinner!

Just a little video about a book

A little video about a new book, Passage on the Titanic, from one of my favorite authors, Anita Stansfield: