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Teacher Appreciation Gift Idea – Teacher Water Bottle Printable Gift Tag

April 22, 2014

Don’t forget we will be featuring a fun and easy Teacher Appreciation gift idea everyday this week for you to make for Teacher Appreciation Week (May 5th-9th)!

Yesterday I showed you our cute You Are ‘SO-DA’ Teacher printable tag and today I have another teacher appreciation gift idea printable tag for you!

It’s no secret that I love Tervis Tumbler! Their cups are high quality and super adorable. Plus if anything does happen to them – they have lifetime guarantees! I love that they are totally customizable, which means they make great gifts! There are lots of teacher inspired cups (even one for coaches!) I chose this fun apple! (To find them quickly just search ‘teacher’) I also decided to get it in a water bottle. I love mine – it even has the ounces on the side so it is super helpful in tracking your water! (Find your perfect cup here!)

Just add a cute tag that says “I can’t bottle it up anymore! Thanks for all you do!” to your water bottle ….

and…

chocolate! 🙂

Want your own tag to add to a water bottle of your own? Just save this and print it! (I made sure to make mine fit an 8×10 paper and had it printed on card stock. It will print 2 tags per page!)

This is a gift that is sure to get lots of use and love! 🙂

Don’t forget to pin it!

Teacher Appreciation DIY Gift Idea: You are ‘SO-DA’ Teacher with Printable tag

April 21, 2014

The next few weeks are full of special occasions! We just celebrated Easter yesterday, Earth Day is April 22nd, Teacher Appreciation Week is May 5-9th and Mother’s Day is May 12th. And just in case anyone is curious, Josh’s birthday is right there in the middle, on May 6th! (11 years old – oh my gosh!!!) I think with the late Easter this year everything else has just snuck up on me!

So if you are anything like me, now that the Easter baskets are put away, you are scrambling for a gift for the teachers. Requirements: Cute, fun, useful, delicious is always a plus and of course, I can’t spend a bundle. (Although, if I could I would! Teachers are totally worth it!) Josh has lots of teachers (Science, Math, English, his Resource teacher and not to mention therapists!) so all week I will be sharing some of our gifts! The hard part will be deciding who gets what!

This first teacher appreciation gift is one of my favorites! One of Josh’s favorite things to do when we are at World Market is to pick out soda bottles. They have so many varieties of ‘old time’ soda and fun flavors. While we were there the other week stocking up on some fun flavors for our Easter celebration, I had an idea. We should take a pack of soda to one of Josh’s teachers! I asked Josh what he thought and he loved the idea. He was so excited to pick out a nice variety for his teacher.

What is a good teacher appreciation gift without a fun pun? We came up with You are ‘SO-DA’ teacher! Cheesy? Check! Awesome? Double check!

I created a quick apple printable and printed it on card stock. Then I made a quick bow (isn’t the ruler ribbon cute?) and attached the tag to a sparkly miniature clothes pin and slipped it to the pack of soda.

You can buy the bottles individually for $1.49 or you can get a pack of six for $8.67.

Cute gift for under $10? Yes!

Want the tag to make the gift yourself? Here you are! Just save it to your computer (chose to have it fill up the page and print at home or take it to your local copy store to have printed on card stock! This will print 2 tags per page!)

Make sure to check back all week for lots of fun teacher appreciation ideas!

(Don’t forget to pin it!)

Linking up here.

Party Bark Treat Recipe

March 1, 2014

Want to know my go to treat for any holiday or celebration? Party bark! It’s so easy to make (it takes just minutes to put together!) and is a fun, festive touch. Plus, it’s delicious. And incredibly addicting. So if you are making for a big group make sure you double!

The ingredients are simple. M&M’s, pretzels, white chocolate and sprinkles!

Yeah. It’s really that good.

If you’ve made it this far without it disappearing – congratulations! 🙂

At this point you have 2 options. Put it out for everyone to enjoy or stick it in a jar so you can hide it. You can tell which route I like to take. 🙂

Isn’t it pretty? So colorful!

If you are looking for some fun ideas to customize:

Use holiday sprinkles (they even have themed sprinkles like butterflies, flowers, heck, they even have Spongebob sprinkles!)

Customize the M&M’s to your holiday or event (We’ve even made these as teacher gifts and made the M&M’s our school colors!) Amazon is a great place to order them! You can order all blue, yellow, green etc. You can order directly from M&M’s but it can get a little expensive!

Use food coloring to color the white chocolate.

If you are giving them as a gift you can put them in a treat bag with a colorful ribbon or even small Mason Jars. I love the jars! Print off a cute label for the tops and you have an instant adorable gift!

Or you can leave it as is. Because it looks pretty darn festive already! 🙂

Party Bark Treat Recipe

Ingredients

12 oz of M&M; Mini’s
2 cups pretzels
16 oz white chocolate chips (1 1/2 bags)
Sprinkles

Instructions

Line a 9X13 baking dish with wax paper.
Spread 3/4 cup of M&M;’s out in the baking dish.
Crumble up the pretzels and add to the M&M;’s. You don’t want to crush them too much!
Melt the chocolate chips. Just microwave for 30 seconds and stir until melted.
Pour the chocolate on top of the M&M;’s and pretzel mixture.
Top with the remaining M&M;’s and sprinkles.
Put the dish in the refrigerator to set.
After it has set, cut into pieces and it’s ready to serve or gift!

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We first learned about this fabulous treat from Simply Staci who calls it Rainbow Bark.

Linking here.

Back to School DIY Lotion Gifts

August 6, 2012

Today I sent Josh off to 4th grade. I can’t believe it. He started a new grade at a new school. I think I have more anxiety than him! So I figured we needed to send him off with a few gifts to wish his teachers a happy new school year. I showed you the lotions that Oops, I craft My pants made. I really meant to print off her pre-made labels at Office Max and I completely forgot. So last night at 9:00 I realized I needed to get it done. So here is my version.

First peel off the label.

Then using the label I traced it to make a stencil. And cut it out of pretty paper.

Word of the wise. If using a cute paper like I had make sure you don’t cut off important letters like the ‘c’ of classroom. This paper definitely got trashed. I could just imagine one of the 4th graders pointing out that our lotion gift said ‘assroom’.

Now I used my little sticker maker. I LOVE this thing. I really use it all the time. I use it when I cut things out with my Cricut (putting small letters on a project is so much easier with this!) I also use it to make quick labels, help decorate for birthday parties, scrapbook and so on. Plus it’s small and easy to store. And SUPER easy to use! Plus you can get it for under $20 on Amazon.

Anyways you just slide the paper in the entrance and turn the dial and it will come out as a sticker.

Peel off the sticker and place on the lotion. Easy huh? I went ahead and made tags as well. I just traced a playing card in the pretty papers and cut out.

For the back I chose a plain card stock. Which was adhesive. (I’m on a sticker kick I guess!)

I scribbled (why, yes, scribbled would the appropriate word) a note. Gave it a quick stamp and hole punched it in the corner.

Then I used a ribbon to attach the note and they were ready to go. I got the 5 bottles done in about 20 minutes. I love the fact that these can be adapted to have any sticker labels on the front! I’m thinking seasonal ones, happy birthday, happy anniversary, congratulations. You name it. Do you send your kids off with first day of school gifts? I will be linking up here. Would you be interested in advertising on Live A FabuLESS Life? Buy an ad in August and use the code back to school for 25% off ad spaces! Check out our advertising page for all of the details. Amanda

Back to School Deals – too hot to miss!

July 20, 2012

Have you heard of ABCmouse? We used it when I taught preschool. It’s a really great online resource for parents that offers games for your children to play online. They have so much fun that they don’t even realize they are learning! It’s designed for kids preschool+. They have 6 different learning levels with over 450 lessons! They cover reading, art, books, songs, puzzles, games, printables, math, science, social studies, & music. There is also an interactive zoo, farm, you can record a book, make an avatar and so much more! Plus it lets you chose which lessons you want your child to play and keep track of their progress to help identify which things your child is excelling at and what they may need help with.
The best part is they are offering 1 month FREE!! After the month is over and you can decide if you want to continue (it’s only $7.95 a month or $79.00 a year – that’s like 2 months free!) Even if you don’t want to continue this is a great program and you should take advantage of the free trial!

Yoki is over at Zulily today with a HUGE deal! Stock up now on girls’ coats! Yoki makes very nice jackets that retail for around $80+. Today you can get them for starting at $17.99! (That cute red one? Yup $17.99! Retails for $77. The cute trench jacket? $19.99. Retails for $85!)

And we can’t leave the boys out! Extreme Sports has boys clothes on sale up to 60%. T-shirts are starting at $7.99 and the hoodies start $17.99!

Make sure to check out the school supply list of deals by store here. It will be updated each week with the newest sales!

10 Back to School DIY and free printables for the best school year EVER

July 17, 2012

It’s that time again – Back to School time. Here are 10 DIY projects to get you started!

Hope your year goes smoothly lotion gift for teachers, bus drivers, office staff with free printable labels from Oops, I craft my pants.

Rachel Berry made these super cute vases filled with pencils for a great (and useful!) first day of school gift!

I *love* this idea. It’s a teacher survival kit from Two Peas in a Bucket. It’s filled with lots of things like a bag of animal crackers for when your class feels like a zoo and rubber bands to remind you to be flexible. Lots of items and a poem!

Funky Polkadot Giraffe did a survival kit too! Love it.

Sweet Coconut Lime has an absolutely adorable free print!

Take advantage of all of those back to school deals and pick up a few extra school supplies to make an adorable crayon wreath like The Ballard Bunch did!

Or if you are feeling like getting extra credit how about making one of these school supply cakes! Love this one from The Butlers!

How adorable is this photo? Take a picture on the first day and then have your child hold the first day picture on the last day of school for a photo. It’s crazy how much they grow!! (Call me Crafty Al)

Do you need more photo inspiration? Simple as that has you covered with their Back to School Photo Checklist.

Make sure to slip this little snack into your kid’s lunchbox or backpack! Free printable from It is what it is.

Back to School School/Office Supply Deals List by store

July 16, 2012

Here are this week’s school supply deals! (Valid 7/15-7/21)
(Are you looking for deals on all those other school deals like lunch box supplies, shoes and clothes? Check here for an ongoing list!)

Walgreens
Backpack $3.99
Composition notebook $0.69
8 pack #2 pencils $0.39
Pencil sharpener $0.39
Index cards $0.39
Index card case $0.39
Filler paper $1.59
Multi-purpose 400 sheets $2.99
Elmers jumbo glue sticks or school glue $0.79
Folders with prongs 6/$1.00

CVS
1 subject notebook $0.33
2 pocket folders $0.10

Staples
Avery Dividers $0.01 with $5 purchase
Bic Matic grip mechanical pencils $4.29 – $4.29 rebate = FREE
Bic Velosity retractable pens $0.25
Staples pencil sharpener $0.50
Lucky supersoft wet wipes antibacterial 30 ct. $0.50
12 inch ruler $0.50
Pencil box $0.50
Multipurpose 500 sheets paper $6.99-$5.99 rebate = $1.00
Staples photo paper 500 pack $14.99-$13.99 rebate = $1.00
Plastic clipboard $1.00
8 GB flash drive $5.99
Bring in a binder to recycle and save $2 instantly on each binder you recycle. Combine that with these binder deals to save BIG!
Avery binders: 1/2-1″ 2/$7 (if you bring in 2 binders to recycle the final price is 2/$3!)
1/5″ 2/$10 (if you bring in 2 binders to recycle the final price is 2/$6)
2″ – 2/$14 (if you bring in 2 binders to recycle the final Price is 2/$10)
Dry erase markers black chisel tip $1.00/6 pack
Zebra retractable ballpoint pens $1.00/5 pack
3/5″ memo books 75 sheets top coil $2.00/5 pack
Coupon file expanding file $2.00
Bic highlighters yellow 5 pack $2.00
Sharpies 12 pack assorted $5

Office Max
FREE after $5 min. purchase – crayons, ruler & sharpener
paper mate blue/black pens $0.10 (limit 3) then $1.00
10 pack #2 pencils $0.10 (limit 3) then $0.70
4 packs of glue sticks $0.50
Clear binder zipper pockets $0.50 limit 5
1 subject notebook $1.00
glue bottle/scissors pack or glue bottle/2 glue sticks $1.00
BIC 12 pack black/green/red pens $2.00
post it notes 2×2 cubes $2.00
mini stapler/hole punch $2.00
10 pocket organizer $3.00
5 subject notebook $3.00
white out 2 pack $4.00
Kleenex 2 pack $3.00
Clorox wipes $3.00
Expo dry erasers 4 pack $3.00
3 subject notebooks $2.00
3 eraser pack $1.00

Walmart
1 subject notebook $0.17
BIC pens 10 pack $0.97
calculator $1
Crayola markers $0.97
Crayola crayons $0.50
Crayola colored pencils $0.97
paper clips 100 count $0.67
pencil top erasers 44 count $0.88
1″ binder $0.94
notebook paper $0.82
watercolor paints $0.50
10 count #2 pencils $0.47

It's A Fabulous Life

Teacher Appreciation Gift Idea – Teacher Water Bottle Printable Gift Tag

Teacher Appreciation DIY Gift Idea: You are ‘SO-DA’ Teacher with Printable tag

Party Bark Treat Recipe

Back to School DIY Lotion Gifts

Back to School Deals – too hot to miss!

10 Back to School DIY and free printables for the best school year EVER

Back to School School/Office Supply Deals List by store

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