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)

Personalized Notepads for dads, teachers, etc.

Found this SIMPLE & EASY gift idea on Family Fun.  I thought it would also be fun to do something similar for teachers and let your child draw a pic of their teacher at the top and then write or type under it "from the desk of Mrs. Brown".

DAD'S PADS

Memo pads adorned with your child's original artwork make a noteworthy Father's Day gift. Simply have your kids decorate the top of a piece of paper and take it to a copy shop or printer to be made into notepads. Pads start at 50 cents each, depending on the paper size and your printer.   

Fathers Day Book

I saw this creative gift idea for Father's Day on Stacy Julian's blog and LOVED it! I'm pretty sure this is what I'll be making for the hubs and maybe even a different version for the grandpas this year. Thanks Stacy!

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)