end of school year milestones…retirement and graduation

Today is the last day of school in our community…the day all school children have been ready to see for the last month! Except my second grader, who went to bed in tears last night. The tears are understandable, as she has had an exceptional teacher this year. I couldn’t dream of a more compassionate, understanding and nurturing person for my daughter to have as a teacher. To make the last day of school even more bittersweet, her teacher is retiring. She says she won’t even get to pass her in the halls next year as she moves on to third grade.

To celebrate her retirement, a few moms in the class organized a party for her and the class yesterday. There was cake, ice cream, presents, and…tears (these kids love their teacher). One of the presents was a gift card bouquet. Each child was asked to contribute some type of gift card in any denomination…restaurants, stores, salons, etc…as well as a letter to the teacher. I was asked to create the bouquet, and what a fun time I had doing this!

I purchased a flower pot urn, and I planted some English ivy and green accent plants. The thought was that she could remove the paper flowers and then plant any flowers she would like for her yard.

I added a few of these gorgeous silk flowers to the urn. They almost look real, and I loved the colors!

The next step was to organize all the gift cards, letters, and pictures of each child in the class. Then I began making the paper and tissue paper flowers.

I attached each paper flower to dowel rods of various lengths and placed them in the urn. The gift cards were paper clipped to the back of each flower. I continued to add them until there was a flower representing each child in the class.

C and her classmates were so excited to present this to their teacher!

What a special ending to a wonderful year!

Tonight also marks the ending of high school for our seniors…it’s graduation time! I was asked by a client to create a wreath for her front door to commemorate her daughter’s high school graduation. She wanted the wreath to match the pillow on the bench by her front door.

She also imagined a graduation cap in the middle of the wreath. So I gathered supplies…silk flowers, ribbon, spray paint…to decorate a grapevine wreath. After searching a few craft stores with no luck of finding a graduation hat, I felt like I hit the jackpot when I found this simple black felt outline of one.

To make the wreath, I painted the wood frame and anchored it to the wreath with wire and ribbon. I attached the graduation hat to the center of the frame. The wood numbers of her graduation year were painted and glued at the bottom. Then I wove the orange printed ribbon through the wreath and added the flowers.