Gift Ensemble

This is a gift ensemble I made for my twins' teacher for Thanksgiving. I am volunteering in her room one day a week and I have come to love her! She is such an AWESOME teacher and her values and discipline systems are really parallel to ours at home. Her expectations of our girls mirror ours so we know that what we are teaching at home is also being reinforced at school. In addition to that, she is a very loving teacher and shows the kids in so many ways that even though she expects them to be responsible individuals (by 3rd grade they really should be), she also shows them that she cares about them. Anyway, I am so grateful that my girls ended up in her classroom, that I wanted to show her what our family is thankful for this year for Thanksgiving, HER! I will only add a couple of quick notes about the ensemble. The lotion has the word "gratitude" on it, I don't know if it's visible. The body butter has "with gratitude" in the same font on the top as well. The friendship bread that I made to go along with all this has a belly band of the same DSP used on all the other products and I also have a card that I am showing you that went along with this gift. We gave it to her in a galvanized tin bucket. The card is actually a case from this card by Laurie Schmidlin (Just Give Me Stamps) http://justgivemestamps.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/08/occ-sketch-challenge.html who is one of my top favorite bloggers to draw inspiration from. If you have visited her blog, then you know how awesome she is. My card is not as pretty as hers, but I wasn't able to do some of the details on mine that she did on hers. I know it's an odd color combo (I used pale plum and chocolate chip), but I thought it was very striking in the end.

After my craft show this weekend, I will be able to post new projects that I am working on. And also one of my best girlfriends and I have come up with a "to do" list for the coming year as sort of an all year challenge. We are challenging ourselves to use things we have GOBS of and will have a new challenge each week which I will share with you online and you are welcome to participate in. It will be fun!!!! Check back to see what in store. Have a great day!

Recipe: Thank You stamp set, Chocolate Chip, Pale Plum, Shimmery White, & Naturals Ivory c.s., Chocolate Chip craft, Pale Plum, Close to Cocoa, & Really Rust markers, clear e.p., crystal effects, micro beads, scallop border punch (Martha Stewart), clear rhinestones, brocade DP (MME), Plum ribbon (from my stash), chocolate satin ribbon (from Hobby Lobby), Nestiblities, large oval punch & curly label punch (SU), coluzzle, hodpodge hardware, bronze brads, .