If you are crawling toward the end-of-school finish line like me, chances are you can barely muster the energy to feed and clothe yourself, much less come up with and put together a cute gift for your kids to take to their teachers on the last day of school.
Pinterest feeds our guilt with adorable class yearbooks, baked goods, totes filled with summer rejuvenation activities for the teacher—all so cute and great ideas, but seriously?! Who has the time/strength/mental energy/cash flow for that?!
Not me.
A few days ago, I wandered the aisles at Wal-Mart. My plan was to put together an apple-themed gift basket for each of my three children’s teachers in appreciation for the awesome year that we have had. Apple chocolates, apple flavored beverages, actual apples, mini apple pies….you get the idea. I wandered approximately 10 minutes before I lost all enthusiasm. I had this conversation with myself:
“Apples? Do they really like apples?”
“I bet they get a ton of apple stuff. They are probably so sick of apple stuff.”
“This is going to cost me a fortune”
“But they are worth it! They are great teachers!”
“When am I going to actually have time to put these together?”
So in the end, we went with gift cards. Some may say that is the lazy route, but me? I love a good gift card. Especially to somewhere fun that I normally wouldn’t go unless I had a gift card.
Packaging these are easy. Just print my {admittedly cheesy} tag, trim it, and stick the gift card to it. One of my kids wanted the gift card stuck to the front. Either way works just fine. Stick it in a bag if you want. Or not. Extra points if there is ribbon involved in the final product.
Or you could just do this.After a summer of recuperation and lots of shaved ice, I will be ready to endow my kids’ new teachers with the love that they deserve.
And I will.
Because by the end of next year, we will be lucky to scrape together whatever we can.