A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we gave out some eggs from our chickens for Teacher Appreciation gifts. I also mentioned that we gave them something else that I'd reveal soon. Well the time has come to share the Coffee Cuffs that I made for two preschool teachers in our lives.
I found the idea here while I was blog hopping one night and thought it was just too cute. It seems that we often give coffee gift cards to friends for different events/celebrations. So this just seemed like a great way to add a homemade touch to such a gift. So here's how I did it.
First you'll need:
*two pieces of coordinating fabric at least 5"x13" (I used some fat quarters that I liked),
*insul-brite (found with the interfacing--it's the heat resistant batting stuff that's between pot holders),
*matching thread, pins, iron, yada, yada, yada.
I started out by making a pattern. I opened up a cardboard cuff/sleeve and traced around it leaving extra space for a seam allowance. I gave myself an extra 1/2" on both the top and bottom and 1" on both sides. Then I traced the pattern onto the wrong side of my outside/main fabric.
Then I layered and pinned my pieces together in this order: insul-brite on the bottom, inside/accent fabric right side up, and outside/main fabric with wrong side up, and cut it all out together.
Then I used a walking foot to sew all three pieces together, making sure to leave one end open. And trust me a walking foot is better. The first one I made, I tried using a regular foot and it was not working out and got stuck. I'd much rather use the walking foot than have that frustration. I also realized that I didn't need the extra little triangle piece on my open end, so I cut it off. That's what I get for being particular and tracing the cardboard cuff just so. Ok, so sew the three pieces together, clip the corners, and turn. I used a chopstick to push out the corners neatly. Then press.
See my opened non-triangular end? Then I turned in the open end and pressed.
And top stitched along all four sides.
Then I had a long nice top stitched parallelogram that I wrapped around a coffee cup from my favorite local coffee shop. I marked with a pin where I wanted the overlapping edge to end. The I sewed right on top of the top stitched seam to make a circular shape.
Then I switched my thread and bobbin so I'd have green on top and purple on the bottom and I sewed along the top stitched seam that was on the inside of the overlap. That way nothing is flapping up and everything lays flat.
And then it's done! Ready to slip over your favorite to-go coffee cup. To give this, I stashed a coffee card inside the cup. If I make this again, I will probably try to use some velcro rather than stitching the overlapping edges into place. Because not all coffee cups are the same size around. And it would also eliminate a random looking stitch on the outside of the cuff.
The coffee cuffs were just a part of a bigger gift from several parents for the last day of Teacher Appreciation week. I volunteered to do a basket for each teacher. I found the baskets for 1/2 off at Joann's (yay!) and hemmed the edges of a fat quarter to line them. Then most of the parents and kids brought in something to go in the basket. There were a few small gifts, notes of thanks, and some art work from the students. It was neat to put all of our little things together and make a big impact of appreciation on these two wonderful teachers. There baskets were overflowing with tokens of appreciation for all the hard work they've put in and how they touched the lives of each student and their family.
There are no diets going on in this house...as you can tell! I've been on a real cooking and baking kick lately. When I'm not able to do one or the other, I'm thinking about what I'll cook or bake next. Maybe it's my form of nesting right now. I currently have a batch of mocha cupcakes that I made today just for fun, sitting on the kitchen table. Well, I should clarify, it's approximately one batch--there may or not be a few missing. :) I'll have to share a few with my neighbors tomorrow--don't want to gain too much pregnancy weight.
I made this cheesecake for a get together with some friends the other night and it was as delicious as it looks. I got the recipe from this site, a food blog I recently discovered and have literally been drooling over for the past few weeks. She's got a lot of good recipes that I'm interested in trying out, so I guess my friends and neighbors better look out!
One cool thing about this recipe, is that aside from the difference in the fruit I used for garnish, I'd say my version looked a lot like the picture on the website. Yay! A recipe that actually turns out like the picture--AMAZING! Oh, and also my crust looks different because I followed the suggestion listed on the blog and went with a standard graham cracker crust rather than the almond one called for in the original recipe.
And one thing I learned from this cheesecake: I need a new spring form pan. I'm guessing mine has a leak. (boo!)
If you try this recipe, I hope you enjoy it. Otherwise, you might enjoy peaking around at Annie's food blog like I've been lately.
The first part of this week has just flown by for us. So much so that I'm finding myself doing my first blogging of the week on Wednesday night! The main reason for this is that I've had my "nose to the grindstone" and finished up all my requirements for an online course I've been taking. This afternoon, I finished off the last two things and emailed them off. Now I'm just waiting for my final grade. It feels so good to have that done. Now I can better focus on other things, like VBS which I'm coordinating again this year and is coming up in a little less than a month. Oh, yeah and the baby that's coming in about 10 weeks. Sounds like there's not a whole lot going on around here huh?
Anyway, back to the topic the title eluded to--we did have a very good but busy Mother's Day weekend. So let's just take a photo walk through Saturday and Sunday.
We started out with a gymnastics class on Saturday. This was the first time for, well...all of us really.
She did pretty well though, especially for her first time. And she agreed to give it a try for the rest of the month. When we first got to the car, she was complaining about how the somersaults hurt her head and she couldn't do this or that. But after a few hours, she was looking forward to telling daddy about what she had done. And since Monday, she's been counting down until her next class. So three more lessons and then we'll leave it alone for the summer--too much else going on.
I definitely need to work on my action photography. I didn't get very many good shots. There was action out on the mats, in my lap, and in my belly. That's a lot of action to balance through and get a photo that's in focus on the subject.
This photo makes me smile. They were doing jumping jacks for their end of lesson conditioning.
After some errand running (which I REALLY try to avoid on Saturday's, but it was unavoidable this week) we got home and got our garden planted.
Yet again, we're giving it another shot. Our garden as a whole never seems to work out all that well. We always have a few plants that do well, but we've never had a whole garden do well. I'm not counting on an amazing harvest this year either, but a few good results would be nice.
This year we planted: sugar snap peas, carrots, spinach, beets, broccoli, lettuce, and herbs. Broccoli is the new one for us. I hope it does well.
The kids enjoyed helping me for the most part. I let them plant a few seeds, but they really got into it when I let them help plant the herb starter plants.
Check out the rhubarb that is growing behind the kids in these pictures. It has literally sprung back into life in just the past week or two. It's definitely ahead of last year's schedule. There should be a lot of strawberry rhubarb crisp for us this summer! Yay!
I was using these large popsicle sticks to label the rows I planted. Then I found that our little budding author used a few to write all the words she currently has in her repertoire.
You may be able to read these if you click on the picture. The words she used were: momma, daddy, love, cat, the, to. So I couldn't help myself, and I rearranged them into as close to a sentence as possible.
"Daddy Momma love the cat to."
Then our actual Mother's Day was busy as well. Shawn and the kids made a delicious breakfast with whole wheat pancakes, eggs, and some fruit. Then we had worship services and went out to eat with some friends at my favorite restaurant, The Twisted Fish. We had a few peaceful hours at home before we went back for evening worship and then out for pizza with friends. Our day was so full that we almost forgot to take a picture of me with the kids. So we squeezed one in right before bed.
I'm so blessed to be a mother to these two precious kids, and to the one that's on it's way. I don't know how many children the Lord plans for me to mother, but I'm so thankful for the ones that He's given me thus far. Oh sure, it's not always a bowl full of cherries and things don't always go smoothly, but the joy and love my children give me far outweigh the bumps in the road that come with parenting.
Hope you enjoyed your Mother's Day weekend and enjoyed some love from your kids or shared some with your mother.
Just in case you didn't know it, this last week was Teacher Appreciation Week. Sorry if you're reading this on Saturday morning or something and just now finding out. There's always next year, right?
Well, after continually stumbling across a ton of ideas on the web about little ways to show appreciation for your child's teacher, I decided I wanted to do something. We actually did two "somethings", but this was what we did to kick off the week:
A six-pack of fresh eggs for each of the little missy's preschool teachers.
And every present needs some good wrapping, so I got out a piece of scrapbooking paper and covered a few of the sides of the egg box. And then I just put the note right on top instead of worrying about another embellishment of some kind.
Simple, cute, and useful. Just right.
And who can beat farm fresh?
We really do appreciate all these two ladies do in teaching our daughter and her class. They do a great job, so I enjoyed doting on them just a bit this week. And I remember being doted on during Teacher Appreciation Week when I was teaching full time, so it was kind of nice to have a chance to return the favor.
Next week sometime I plan to have a separate post about the other way we showed some appreciation this past week. Stay tuned...it's pretty good, if I do say so myself!
Our chickens must be in their element, because lately they are all laying one egg a day for 5-6 days in a row. I think we have nicer weather and more daylight to thank. But it all translates into 4 eggs a day with an occasional 3 egg day. We've had a good time gathering the eggs, eating some, and sharing others. (More on sharing our eggs in a future post.)
The kids also love taking care of the chickens. Our little man particularly likes to be very involved. It's pretty much useless to try to do the morning poop clean/egg collection/food scrap feed without him. It's guaranteed to created crocodile tears if he gets left behind.
Just today when he and his sister were helping me, we were in the chicken yard and he tossed out their food scraps. When the bowl was empty he looked at me and said, "Now you go check for eggs and I'll stay with the chickens." It may surprise you but he's not quite as interested in checking for eggs as he is in just being with the chickens, but it's true.
Big sister enjoys it all! Today I caught her crouching down just talking with the chickens. Then later, she was showing them one of her toys (from outside the fence) and they must have thought it was food because they followed her up and down the side of the fence while she proudly paraded it around. They finally gave up and dispersed when they realized they weren't getting any of whatever she had.
The other day, I accompanied our little girl's preschool class on a field trip to the beach. We went at low tide with buckets and shovels to explore the tide pools. As I'm sure you would expect, all the children loved this.
And, no offense to my land-locked friends out there, but it was definitely one of those times I was so glad to live near the sea. Juneau is really an amazing place to live. There are mountains just outside our front yard, and the ocean is just a few miles away. Plus, we've got eagles, bears, salmon, whales, wolves, and even porcupines living with us in "our neighborhood". That's just one reason that we've turned Alaskan.
This field trip also made me realize the amazing learning opportunities that we have for kids in our beautiful location. Teaching has been on my brain a lot lately, because I'm taking an online course to keep my teacher's license current. Recently, I used the beach field trip and sea life study as an answer for a paper. As I was writing it, I thought back to my days at Oklahoma Christian University and the year I spent teaching in Edmond, OK. I was trying to remember if I had used or created a lesson plan about sea life or the beach. The best I could come up with was a sample lesson good ole' Dr. Vincent gave us in our elementary science teacher's course. As part of the lesson, he suggested bringing in some shells for students to explore and discover. Shells! That's it!? I'm so thankful for the way Juneau kids are able to learn about this area of God's creation. Another blessing to living in the Last Frontier.
The day was great. Not gloriously sunshiny, but it didn't rain on us. In Juneau terms that's classified as a good day. I took a BUNCH of pictures and used the natural beauty around us to practice some of my photography skills. I even switched my lens to manual for a few shots which I really never do. I know...daring of me. I wouldn't say I'm "there" with my photography by any means, but I can tell I'm improving. So that's good.
Showing off a newly discovered sea urchin.
Ready, Aim, Fire!
What is it with boys, rocks, and water? A combination that is almost always guaranteed to turn out a certain way.
Digging up a cockle (in the clam family)
The pose
It took much longer to get him to pose. That's why there's not a pose of them together.
Ready for a snack
Posing with a new friend.
Mr. Crabby
She didn't actually find this herself--unless you count finding the ziplock bag labeled with another boy's name who was the one to actually put the crab in the bag and just became tired of toting it around. If nothing else, it counts as being resourceful. :)
Then it was snack time...on the beach. For some reason the idea of this was so exciting to our little girl. It may have something to do with her love of picnics and the baskets they can be carried in.
Our little man was definitely ready to eat, but he didn't want any part of the group tarp/cloth. So I convinced him to sit on an overturned bucket, set up a "safe" distance away.
Hope you're enjoying your spring and the beauty that surrounds you, where ever you may be.
c
