End Of Year Teacher Gifts

Being the first year that I've had children in school I was excited to make end of year gifts.

I like to accumulate ideas whenever I can, and what better way to share them than on my blog page.  

First, here is a clip of ideas that I saw on the Today Show.

 

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A couple of years ago, in a mommy chat room, I saw cupcakes in a jar.

These aren't mine, but mine looked pretty good too.  I just didn't get any pictures of them.  We're all out of batteries for the camera.  (I hope Daniel picks up some on his way home today.)

These were found over on this blog page.  2cool4myMinivan.blogspot.com is a really neat blog page full of adorable ideas.  You can find the instructions to make this great gift on that link I posted.  Here it is again if you need to copy and paste it.

http://2cool4myminivan.blogspot.com/2010/05/cake-in-jar.html

My experience in making these delightful treats got rolling on Thursday night.  It was around 11PM, winding down from a Girl Scout Leader's meeting that ran over, tucking the kids into bed for the 4th or 5th time and loading the dishwasher, when all of a sudden I remembered that "Oops! I forgot to make the teacher gifts with the kids today!".  So, naturally I had to get it done myself.  

I decided to use quart size mason jars.  

I'd never made these before, only seen a picture, so I made two sheet cakes.  One chocolate and one white.

THEN I looked at the instructions.... I was supposed to make cupcakes.  "No problem," I thought.  "I'll just cut the cake into circle shapes using a glass."    I layered some cake then icing, then cake, then icing...and so on.    After alternating between chocolate and white for the first mason jar I decided that I would like the look of just white for the 2nd one. 

I topped the jars with some pink flowery prairie looking quilting cotton cut into a square with pinking shears.  Tied on a pink plastic spoon with a brown grosgrain ribbon that had little pink, green, and yellow polka dots.  It was just too darn cute.

Have any ideas to share?
What did you do for your teacher gifts this year?