Mother's Day in East Texas

We celebrated part of Mother's Day weekend in East Texas with my in-laws. Here I am with the kids, Jean Jean, Esther and Aunt Sissy.We took full advantage of the wonderful spring day. The kids played in the sand, kicked the soccer ball around, sung on the swings and ran around the yard.

Mother's Day 2010

Here is a picture of all my Mother's Day cards and gifts from Christian and the kids.

Bailey made me a flower pen and holder at school.
Here I am with Bailey

Jack made me a set of note cards.

Here is me and Jack.

From the pancake breakfast to dinner at Carrabba's, it was a great day. I can't wait to use the gift card to the nail salon. I am truly blessed!

How does she do it?

This made me laugh so hard when I first saw it.

Happy Mother's Day

Rose Stamps

Roses are red, violets are blue,

sugar is sweet and so are you. We made these rose prints using celery in my preschool class. I wish I could take credit for coming up with the creative idea. I got it from the Methodist conference I went to last month. One of the classes I took was all about food and this was one of the ideas they gave us. It was so easy my 2 year old class was able to do it.
Just love how these turned out. Would made a great Mother's Day Bouquet!

Year End Teacher Gifts

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.

We got the nicest thank you notes from all the recipients. These also make great Mother's Day Gifts!