Just for Fun | Marriage Confessions Just for Fun

School is winding down and summer is on the horizon.

Have I mentioned yet how excited I am about summer?

Yes? Okay. Moving on…

With summer a-comin’, it’s time for lots of you to say goodbye to your child’s teacher. As a teacher myself, I thought I’d share some ideas for popular teacher gifts around my school. Even if you don’t want to spend a lot, or if your child has multiple teachers so you can’t do something big for all of them, it is still a really nice gesture to send a little thank you gift to a teacher. Even if it’s just a note. Often times, teaching is a pretty thankless job. Our students very rarely appreciate their school years, so it really means a lot to hear from a parent that your classroom has made a difference because at the end of the day, that’s really all a teacher wants – to make a difference to someone.

Here are a few fun little gift ideas for teachers, organized by category:

Gift cards are a super choice because they are easy for you to buy and fun for your teacher to spend. But if you can make it personal, it makes it seem more like a thoughtful gift than an “I-am-giving-you-money-because-you-taught-my-kid-to-read” gift. Try to connect the location of the gift card to your child or the teacher’s subject in some way. As an English teacher, I have my own class library that I personally buy books for. A Barnes and Noble gift card would be perfect for my classroom. A teacher supply store card is pretty great, too, since most of us have to purchase our own classroom decor and necessities with our own money. My favorite gift card, though, is for an office supply store because in my school, we have to buy our own ink cartridges and reams of paper that we use for the year. Any extra help buying classroom supplies is greatly appreciated!

(SIDE NOTE: If you’re wondering what supplies your teachers have to pay for, simply call the front office and ask either the receptionist or the bookkeeper what supplies your teachers are provided at the beginning of the year.)

1. An office supply store gift card
2. A bookstore gift card
3. A teacher supply store gift card (jackpot!)
4. A Dunkin’ Donuts gift card
5. A Starbucks gift card
6. A Target gift card

Practical but fun gifts for daily use (either in the classroom or out) are always a big hit. For a secret Santa exchange at my school one year, another teacher gave me a box full of desk supplies – paper clips, post-it notes, pencils, pens, red pens, etc. It wasn’t anything expensive, but it was all stuff that totally saved me a trip to the store for myself. Another big one I love are acrylic cups. These are pretty popular these days, so you can find them anywhere. But they are super helpful for teachers who can’t leave their room during the day to get to the drink machine. Just about every teacher I know has an acrylic cup and straw on their desk at all times. You can fill these with just about anything – candy, gift cards, tea or coffee, colored shredded paper, pencils, erasers, dry erase markers, etc. Super cute and not terribly expensive.

7. Acrylic cup filled with goodies
8. Acrylic monogrammed cup
9. Basket of small desk supplies
10. A big pack of fun colored pens, markers, or Sharpies
11. Personalized notepads
12. Personalized note cards (“From the Desk of Mrs…”)
13. Fun stamps and ink pads for grading papers (Michael’s sometimes has these in their $1 bin)

Bean and Gracie each have three teachers in their classrooms at daycare, so we really can’t afford to do elaborate or even personalized gifts for each of them. Instead, I go for clever and crafty. For Teacher Appreciation Week, I got each teacher a multipack of Extra chewing gum ($2.00 a pack at Target), printed a few clever little tags (“You’re EXTRA special to me!”), tied some curly ribbon around it and voila! A little something to tell them we appreciate what they do for our kids. I got the idea from this website and they have a lot more little craft ideas if you’re looking for something clever.

I think the trick with small gifts is to make them thoughtful and personalized. It doesn’t take a lot to make a teacher (or anyone!) feel special. Just as long as it is sincere and makes them feel like you were thinking about them.

14. Candy with a message (“OWL miss you”)

15. Personalized pencils (“Mrs. Brown’s Classroom”)
16. A houseplant (“Thank you for helping me GROW this year”)

If your child only has one teacher, or if there’s someone special you really want to go above and beyond to thank, I think summer-themed gifts are a great end of the year option. Teachers are just as excited about having summers off as students are, so most of us are ready for sunshine by the end of the school year. Themed gifts are a pretty great way to go, no matter what time of year or what theme, actually.

17. Summer survival kits (beach towel, sunglasses, magazines, sun screen, flip flops, etc.)
18. Gardening kits (gardening gloves, seed packets, spade, watering can, sun screen, etc.)
19. Summer scented goodies from Bath and Body Works
20. A gift certificate for a pedicure at a local nail salon
21. Poolside fun kit (inflatable pool float, drink coozie, freezer pops, beach towel, etc.)

Another option besides large gift baskets are to get smaller items that you have personalized or monogrammed for the teacher. These are extra awesome if they are practical gifts that are just so snazzy a teacher probably wouldn’t buy them for herself.

22. Monogrammed hand sanitizers (these are surprisingly affordable!)

23. Personalized lunch bag
24. Personalized key chain
25. Personalized lanyard for their school ID

If you’re looking for clever ideas for packaging, try giving your gift in something that your teacher can reuse in their classroom.

26. A brightly colored plastic crate
27. A solid color, simply canvas beach tote
28. A metro basket (this link is to one at Target, but I’ve found them much cheaper at Walmart and Home Goods)

29. A picnic basket
30. A wicker basket

Whatever you do – whether it is big and elaborate or small and sincere – you should know that the greatest gifts I have ever received were hand written notes. One from the student is really sweet and a great memento for a teacher, but be sure to include one from yourself as well. Parents who explain ways they have seen their child grow because of their education can articulate what a child cannot. I love knowing that parents see the same growth in their child at home as I see in my classroom. Whatever gift you give, or even if you don’t give a gift, be sure you include a note from both the child and the parent. It will make your teacher’s day!

Most of these ideas – and about a billion others – can be found on Pinterest. Either check out my “Gift Ideas” board, or search Pinterest for “teacher gifts.” You’re bound to find something that floats your boat. (For things I found on Pinterest (all of these pictures), I tried to link up today when I could, but some pictures didn’t have links available.)

Happy summer from a teacher who is counting down the days!

2 comments | posted in Around the House, Fun Things, holidays, Just for Fun, Marriage Confessions, Parenting | tags: teacher gifts

This year I challenged each of my students to read 30 books this school year. It started as just a random, incredible high number that I didn’t expect them to reach. I set it purposefully high so that they would keep reaching for it all year. Well, turns out about 30 out of my 110 students actually DID read the full 30 books already – and we still have five weeks left! They have blown me away with their reading.

I have been inspired by them this year and have been working to keep up with their incredible reading pace. In the process, I’ve read a lot of books myself. Some have been better than others, but most of them I’ve really enjoyed. Here are the most recent books to find themselves on my bookshelf:

The Ballad of Tom Dooley by Sharyn McCrumb – This was a random book I found at the public library. To be honest, I was in a hurry that afternoon because I had both kids with me, and the only reason I grabbed this book was because it takes place in the rural mountains of Tennessee, which is where my Grandma was born and raised. That’s really the only reason I checked this one out. Turns out, it was a great find because the story is actually really interesting. It’s about this very rural community just after the Civil War. The main character is a poor, morally questionable young woman who goes to live her her even poorer cousin and her husband, and it’s about how their lives all cross paths with Tom Dooley, a young, drunk veteran of the war who manages to ruin everything around him. The characters are not lovable – they aren’t even really likeable – but the story is really well told and the plot keeps you interested.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult – This could be the single-most important book I’ve read as a mother and as an educator. It is an incredibly disturbing, powerful, and moving story about a school shooting. I was hesitant to read it at first, being both a teacher and a parent. But what the book focuses on are the choices our children make and how we can help them make better choices. The boy who kills his classmates was viciously bullied for just about his entire life. It was heartbreaking to read for me because the bullying began when he was just a year or two older than Bean, and it touched such a raw nerve with me. It follows the shooter all the way up through school and shows how hurtful and heartbreaking being a teenager can be. As a teacher, it instantly changed the way I managed my classroom. I talked to all of my classes about the book. We had open discussions about bullying and pushing people beyond their limits. In my own home, it made me more aware of not just how my kids will be treated as they grow up, but also how they treat others. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has any kind of interaction with kids – their own, or otherwise.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller – I have explained this book to other people and they just didn’t seem to find it as interesting as I did, so this one might not be for the masses. A friend from church recommended this to me and then organized a group of people to meet for dinner to talk about it. Sort of like a one-book book club. I had to miss the dinner, but I was really bummed because of how much I loved the book. It’s an autobiography of an author who found his life at the center of a documentary. Film makers wanted to turn his life into a movie, but they basically told him that his real life wasn’t interesting enough, so they were going to have to “doctor up” the truth to make it more exciting. The book is about the process of writing that doctored up movie and how somewhere in the process of creating a fake exciting life, he decides to go out and make his actual life exciting. He begins to make better choices, like committing to ride his bike across the country for charity, even though he had never ridden before and was overweight. He also talks about incredibly inspiring people he’s met and why their lives were so powerfully significant. Basically, it’s about living a better, more full life. The guy is a Christian author, but the book isn’t a philosophical or Christian-based book, but he has a really great view of faith, if you ask me. I read this just after the first of the year, and I honestly think that reading this book was the first step towards me becoming a more active, more healthy, more fulfilled person this year. Months later, I still think about the principles of this book on a weekly basis.

11-22-63 by Stephen King – I read this one on my Kindle while Chris and I were in Costa Rica. It was my first Stephen King book, and I was a little nervous because I don’t like scary books. But some friends at work insisted that this was not a typical Stephen King book, and that it was actually an incredible story about what would happen if the JFK assassination were prevented. The book is about a time travel portal and the man who decides to go back into time to try to stop the JFK assassination. But it’s about so much more than that! He actually goes back and lives in the 1960′s for several years leading up to the assassination, and it’s about the life he builds there and the relationships he makes. I’m not into sci-fi or anything usually involving time travel, but this book was amazing. The plot took twists and turns that I never saw coming, and it’s told in such a masterful way. I am a Stephen King fan and I never even knew it.

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory – I read a couple of Philippa Gregory’s books in college and had mixed feelings about them. I love historical fiction, and it’s not something you find a lot of in mainstream books these days, but she took the sex part of the stories a little far after her first few books came out and when that happened, I quit reading her books because they became more trashy than historical and I lost interest. But I had heard that this book began a series of hers that was more along the lines of the original type of writing she did. I was so happy to find that was true! This book tells the story of King Edward of York and Queen Elizabeth in the 1400′s. I love the strong, female main character and it is just the right amount of historical fact to make it interesting, as well as entertaining. This is the first in a series of books she calls the Cousins’ War and I will definitely be reading the rest of the series.

Matched by Ally Condie – I started this book today at the recommendation of some of my students. Though it is a young adult novel, it is supposed to be pretty good. I started it this morning, and after sitting down with it a little tonight after dinner, I’m already half way through it, and it’s pretty good. It’s about this futuristic utopian society that matches you to your spouse. It follows the main character as she is matched to her best guy friend, but then discovers that she might have been mis-matched. It’s about her struggle between her assigned match and her desire to get to know the other boy she might have been matched with. It’s a social commentary on free will and what lengths we will go to to keep it. It seems like a great beach book because it’s easy to read and at the core is a love story. It’s the first in a series, and I think I might add the rest of the series to my summer reading list.

So, that’s what I’ve been reading lately. Next on my list at the library is Ken Follet’s “World Without End.” I read “Pillars of the Earth” and it was one of my favorite books ever, so I’ve been waiting for a chunk of time to read the second one. Summer kick off seems to be the perfect time! If you’re interested in seeing other books I’ve read, or following along with what I read this summer, be sure to follow me on Good Reads. My user name is KatieMC.

What about you? Have you read anything good lately?

40 comments | posted in Around the House, Fun Things, Just for Fun, Marriage Confessions | tags: books

This past weekend, I ditched Chris and the kids and hitched a ride with my parents to Atlanta to visit my sister. Ginny and her hubby, John Michael, just moved into their new house, and so they threw a big housewarming party. First of all, their house is AMAZING. If Ginny and John Michael were a house, this is the house they would be. It’s classic and open and warm and perfect for hosting lots of friends and family.

I especially loved the front door and porch. I wanted to sit in their rocking chairs for days.

The housewarming was really only half the reason for a party. What this really was was a gender reveal party. I had heard of gender reveal parties before, but had never known someone who threw one. Turns out, it was pretty stinkin’ awesome. We spent Saturday getting the house and food ready for the party.

For the actual party itself, Ginny asked everyone on the invitation to wear either pink or blue, depending what gender we thought the baby would be. As you can see, we were pretty split. Some of us thought it was going to be a girl and some thought it was going to be a boy.

Here’s how the actual gender reveal worked…

Ginny and John Michael went to their ultrasound a couple weeks ago, and when the tech was able to determine the sex of the baby, she turned the monitor off so that Gin and JM couldn’t see anything. When the tech determined the sex, she wrote it out on a piece of paper and sealed that into an envelope without showing Ginny and JM. Then, JM took the envelope to a bakery and ordered a cake. The baker would open the envelope and make the inside cake based on the gender of the baby. So, if it was a girl, the cake would be pink and if it was a boy the cake would be blue. Then, the baker would ice the entire cake with white icing, so that you couldn’t tell until you cut into it what color the cake was.

Ginny decided to use the theme, “What will it Bee?” for her party, so the baker made the cake in the shape of a bee hive. Isn’t it cute???

When it was time to cut the cake, everyone crowded around the cake table and waited to see if the cake was pink or blue…

And the cake was…BLUE!!! IT’S A BOY!

It was such an exciting idea for a party, and so much fun to find out together with Ginny and John Michael’s friends and family. Such a fun day! I am so excited to be an aunt, but I think I’m even more excited to be an aunt of a NEPHEW! Even though I was convinced it was going to be a girl, I was so happy to see that blue cake because I know how great it is to have a little boy and I can’t wait for them to have that experience.

The crazy part was that both Ginny and JM just KNEW it was going to be a boy. For weeks they had been saying they just felt it. They knew. They were so convinced that they both wore blue to the party, but each had a splash of pink, just in case. Looks like that parenting instinct is alive and kickin’ for them already!!!

CONGRATULATIONS, GINNY AND JOHN MICHAEL! I can’t wait to meet Baby D!!!

23 comments | posted in Family, Fun Things, Just for Fun, Marriage Confessions, pregnancy | tags: Family, gender reveal party, sisters

The two times Chris and I have come the closest to divorce would be the time we registered for our wedding and the time we registered for our first baby. Hands down, they were awful experiences. Come close and let me tell you the tale of how NOT to register for a newborn baby. Learn from my mistakes, people. Trust me.

In both cases, the bottom-line reason that the registry was such a fiasco was because I didn’t include Chris in preparing for the registry. When you register for an event, you usually put a fair amount of research into what you’re going to register for. At least, I do. This was especially true for baby things because a) I didn’t know anything about them and b) I wanted to make sure I had the best and safest choices out there.

But when I was doing the actual research and prep work before the day we went to register, I never really included Chris. I’d search online at work (let’s pause to appreciate the days when I had an office with a door and could occasionally surf the internet…sigh…), I’d chat with girlfriends about what products they used, I’d look up consumer reports at night. But hardly ever did I get Chris involved in this part.

Now, I do have to say that I did TRY at first to get him involved. I’d tell him about a product line or a particular style or brand I liked, but his first question was always “How much is it?” and then he’d shut down after the answer. Which made me mad because he was “putting a price on our baby.” (I think I actually yelled that phrase to him one night when I was pregnant with Bean.) He took all the fun out of preparing, and so I just stopped talking to him about it.

When the day came to register, I’ll never forget the colossal fight we had in Babies R Us, while my parents and sister stood there awkwardly trying not to listen, and I pointed my scanner gun straight at Chris’s man parts. I was in tears, Chris was angry, we were both not yelling as much as possible because we didn’t want to make a scene. But it was clearly a scene. I was eight months pregnant. Everywhere I went I made a scene. The source of the problem? The stroller.

I had done so much research about what kind of stroller I wanted to get, and had finally decided that I really wanted a travel system (the ones with the car seat that snaps into the stroller). I thought it would be easiest with a newborn and for me to operate on my own while I was out on maternity leave and Chris was at work.

But when I went to scan the travel system I wanted, Chris kind of sighed heavily. “What’s wrong?” I asked, fully prepared to compromise. He could choose any color he wanted. “I’m just not sure about the travel system,” he said. “I don’t think we need one.” “You don’t think we need one?” I asked with a tone that might as well have said, “Are you stupid????” “I mean, I just think it’s a little over the top.” “You think it’s over the top?” I asked in a tone that now said, “I cannot believe I married someone who doesn’t want a travel system.” “Well, yeah,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t think we need that much stuff.” “You don’t think we need this much stuff?” I asked in a tone that screamed, “It is a crime to humanity that I am about to procreate with you.”

Then, I think Chris threw in a “Don’t talk to me in that tone” and I threw out a “I can’t believe you’re ruining this for me,” and before we knew it, I was crying in the stroller aisle and Chris was stalking off toward the layette section to cool off.

Looking back, the problem was that I went into the registry experience knowing exactly what I wanted and Chris went into the experience not knowing anything about what he wanted. The result was Chris feeling super frustrated that he wasn’t even able to figure stuff out on his own, and I felt incredibly angry that I’d done months of research only to have it all overruled by someone who didn’t even know what a bassinet was.

Now, I know a lot of couples who never had this problem. The husband was on board and anxious to be involved from the beginning and the wife was excited to have his input. But for me and Chris, it was different. Chris was really nervous and hesitant about having a baby and so he was very standoffish. And instead of helping him feel more comfortable, I just took it as a green light to do whatever I wanted. If I did it all over again, I’d go back to the times when I’d start to talk to Chris about what type of pack ‘n’ play we should get and I’d take him to the baby store to look.

Chris (and men in general) are visual people. Chris likes to see things for himself. He wants to try them out and test things. He doesn’t want to just show up and choose something because someone told him to. When he was buying a lawn mower a couple summers ago, he went to Sears five or six times before he actually made a purchase. He just needs to see things in real life before committing.

Baby gear should have been no different. Even when he was uncomfortable, I should have pushed him a little and exposed him to all our choices in real life, not in some link in an email that he probably didn’t even open.

Another thing I should have done was be more open to his questions. When he asked questions like “How much does that cost?” or “Are you sure we need that?” I took them as a sign that he didn’t want to be involved. Like he was using these questions to prove me wrong or make a statement. But looking back, I really just think he asked those questions because that’s how his mind thinks. He just thinks in logistics. He does that whether we are buying a car or taking a vacation or registering for a baby. His mind functions very pragmatically while mine functions more emotionally.

So, when he asked those questions, they weren’t a personal attack against me or against our baby (as I kept insisting he was doing). They were very real questions that he was having, and that means that I should have stopped to talk through the answers with him. I think that would have made him feel more comfortable instead of feeling like he was always asking the wrong questions and, therefore, always left out of the process before we even began.

Registering for a baby is actually a super sweet, super fun time. Or so I hear. I really wish I had wised up a bit before we went through the process so that I was more prepared to help Chris be part of the process, too. For the record, we still have our travel system, we still love using it, and Chris tells me all the time what a great purchase that was. Not that it matters to me…But I was right. In case anyone cares.

Find more posts from bloggers sharing their experiences of motherhood on the Huggies page on BlogHer.com.