Teacher Gift - Wordle

This year, I made all ten of the kids’ teachers a Word Cloud or a Wordle. Here is an example of the one I made for HHE using all the teachers/administrators names and school words.

I emailed each teacher the following letter:

Hi
I am going to make your year end gift and I need your help to make it better. Please provide me with the following information to make your gift more special. Just skip any areas that don't apply. The more info you provide me the better.
What color tones do you like (Greens, Blues, Maroons, Other):
Names (your name, spouse, children & their spouse, grandchildren):
Nicknames (if any):
Names of your pets (if any):
If you have grandchildren, what do they call you and your husband?
Places or words that have meaning to you (college, favorite team, hobby, pets, nicknames, etc.): The more words the better!

Then you take the list of words and type them up in a word document. I added the following words deleting the ones that did not apply: fortunate happy kin loving parents offspring relatives wonderful hope love blessed faith son daughter sister brother daughter-in-law son-in-law trust wish dream ancestors joy mother father mom dad Hidden~Hollow elementary school educator Family Family Family

The words you want to appear larger you will need to list more times. I did last names and the word Family three times, first names twice and the remainder of the words just once. If you have two words that you want to appear together, you will need to us a ~ in place of the space.

Once you have your list of words, go to http://www.wordle.net/create. Copy and paste your list of words into the “Create” box and press “Go”. The next screen will allow you to pick your colors, fonts and layout. My personal preference is “Heat” for the Color, “Mostly Horizontal” for the Layout and “Loved by the King” for the Font. Once you are happy with your settings you can “Re-layout with current settings” or “Recolor” until you are happy with the finished product. Once I was happy with the look, I printed them on an 8.5 x 11 piece of photo paper and place them in a document frame. Here is an example of how they turned out.


submitted by Tracy Barger (www.bargerfam.blogspot.com)

Lego Party Ideas

A few weeks ago my 7 year old wanted to have a Lego Party with some of his friends.  Here is what we did (just cutting and pasting the rest of this post from my own blog):

The Lego Party was a huge hit. Mark had a great time and all his friends seemed to also. I had tons of fun putting it together and was really happy with how it all turned out. And let's be honest, I'd much rather plan a party than clean house, pay bills, etc. So, it really was a great week. Although my bathrooms, floor and laundry may complain of neglect.

Here was the invitation Mark and I put together and delivered:

And here are some pics from the party:

(click to enlarge)

Each picture above is numbered and a coordinating number is below with a description/explaination:

1. We decorated in traditional Lego colors with balloons streamers, and different colored plates, cups, forks, etc.

2. One of the games we played I printed off of Lego.com, it had two similar pictures and the kids had to find and circle the 15 differences between the two pics. The winner got to pic a lego person keychain/bag charm as their prize.

3. For another contest we had everyone build anything they wanted to out of legos. We had spaceships, Star Wars ships, a house, and other things that I had no idea what they were, but everyone loved what they made and loved playing with all their creations together after this game. For this game everyone got a bag of Lego Brick candy that I got at the bulk candy store in the mall for a prize.

4. Here are the Lego Brick Candy prizes. We had one for the most colorful creation, one for the fastest looking one, one for the person that used the most people, etc.

5. These were the prizes for the other games. They are Lego figure keychains that the boys like to hook on their backpack zippers. I took Mark to the Lego store at the mall and he picked them out so of course they are all Star Wars.

6. These are the gift bags I put together for the boys. I found the idea online and just bought bags and coordinating cardstock and then used a craft punch to punch the circles out of the cardstock and then attached them with pop dots to the bags. Inside the bag was a lego poster again a download from Lego.com that I had printed on 8x10 photo paper at Fred Meyer, and a set of lego stickers (from Lego.com) that I printed on sticker paper from the office supply store.

7. The first game we did as the boys arrived was to have them guess how many Legos were in this jar. They all guessed super low, and I would have too if I didn't know how many were in there. Can you believe there are 300? 

8. We had a tallest tower contest to see who could build the tallest tower in 2 minutes and it couldn't fall over. 

9. I used the bags as place cards at the table so that boys who knew each other would have a friend to sit by (some of the kids were from church and some from school so they didn't all know each other before hand)

10. I found the basic idea for these Lego cakes online from Betty Crocker and thought they turned out great. I'm not a cake decorator by any means so they definitely aren't perfect, but the boys thought they were great!

The time actually flew by and the boys were totally content to just build and play with their Lego creations. I had to pry them away to eat the cake before their parents came to pick them up.

submitted by Emily (www.delightfuldistraction.blogspot.com)

Tall Cupcakes

Okay, here it is, the tall cupcake post.  The pan is made by Wilton, along with the cupcake wrappers/papers.  I found both at my local craft store (Michael's).  There are 6 cupcakes to a pan. One cake mix makes one pan.  Then I just use a can of frosting and decorate according to the occasion. 

Photo Book Gift

I might be a bit late to post but I wanted to share the gifts that I made for my mom and my mother in law for Mother's day... Photo Books from Shutterfly... they were easy to put together and I watched for a good sale and I'm really happy with how they turned out. I feel like it's a personalized gift and a little different from the gifts they usually receive.

This one is for my Mother in Law... it's her son's (my husband's brother) wedding in Hawaii last summer.

Here is a link to the whole book:

http://community.shutterfly.com/gallery/post/start.sfly?postId=/gallery/1/post/GMGDBg2Zt2DVk0YA6TmZla&v_r=t

submitted by MaryRuth (thefrancks.typepad.com)