DIY End of the Year Teacher Appreciation Gift Baskets

You guys, I must confess I am the world's biggest flake.  I'm the worst at returning calls/texts/messages.  I'm at minimum 15 minutes late to EVERYTHING.  I still have a birthday present for my closest friend and her birthday is in February. . . I'm just the worst!  But I really really want to be that friend, auntie, mom, student parent that remembers dates and occasions with cute packages and cards in the mail, arrives early, creates cute gifts for the fabulous teachers at the end of the year, etc.  I managed this ONE thing this year, I'll keep working hard on the rest :)

Truth is, my girls both had incredible teachers this year (I wonder if I'll just think this every year).  They both were just thrilled to walk through those doors and spend day after day with them.  And as their mommy that struggled to drive away from them day after day, that has meant the world.  

Here are the cute and pretty easy gift baskets we put together for my daughters' teachers to show some appreciation and send them off on their summer vacations!  

All you need is:

• a cardboard 6-pack holder You can get six packs of coke, or 3 different kinds of Crush sodas at Walmart which you could, in-turn, use for your gifts, I happened to have a secret stash of them so I bought my drinks separately
• 2 Glass bottle drinks how fabulously cute are those lemonades?! I found them for $1.68 at walmart and they came in several flavors
• flip-flops, nail polish and gum that match the magazine color scheme because color coordination just looks good!
• Fancy candy bar I fell in love with these "hello my name is ___" bars by Lindt, totally cute!
• Scrapbook paper and double sided tape.

Before filling, cut your scrapbook paper to fit the front of the carrier and attach with double sided tape.  You could get really fancy here with labels, stickers, cricut or sihlouette cut-outs . . . I wish I had but I left mine plain and later attached a cute gift tag by whole punching directly into the corner in front of one of the bottles.  Basically whatever you do at this step will be cute and fabulous!

Assembly is just a matter of carefully tearing the dividers in the back rows so you can fit your magazine and flip flops across the three slots and then arranging as you see fit.  I did use some crumpled up tissue paper in front of the candy bar to make the nail polish stick out.  

Here's how they turned out all assembled:

Now, chances are your little probably has some kind of regular support staff that you may also want to acknowledge with a little gift.  Using just two cute elements I through together these smaller gifts for the teachers' aids and helpers in their classrooms: