Gevalia House Party

            House Party is a super fun company that sends you awesome products to host parties in your home. People all across the country host parties the same day with the same products. It is a great way for companies to get people familiar with their product. Word of Mouth advertising. I only discovered House Party last month, and was super excited to get picked to host a party already. Especially a coffee party. I love coffee.
         When your application is approved to host a party, you invite 10-12 friends through emails via the House Party website. Then they send you a box with your party supplies. Your party should be held on the day they tell you when you first apply, although if something comes up you can reschedule.
            I was picked to host a Gevalia coffee. My party pack included a bag of Gevalia House Blend, 13 stainless steel coffee mugs, 13 coffee scoops, and coupons for all the guest and myself.

I really love the Gevalia coffee. It is very smooth with great flavor. My kids made cookies to serve to our guest with the coffee. My little princess made chocolate chip pecan cookies and my son made Scottish shortbread. 

Unfortunetly a lot of the people I invited could not make it. Most of my friends are either teachers or parents, or both. May is a hard month for us all to have free time, at the same time. With the school year wrapping up and graduation, schedules get out hectic. 

I had a great time with the people that could make it. 

I am going to try to through another one after school is out, when (hopefully) schedules settle down a bit. I really wanted to try the Chocolate Mocha flavor, but the store was sold out. I will have to get it for next time. Thank you Gevalia and House Party for a great day.    

Teacher Appreciation

                         Teachers don't teach to have a job. It is a very low paying, emotional exhausting career with long hours. It is not a thankless job, because the moment that you see the lesson you are teaching click with a child, that is your thanks.
                         Teacher Appreciation Week is the first full week in May.When I was teaching in a Kindergarten classroom, as an Instruction Assistant, I always felt very loved during Teacher Appreciation week. I was lucky that the PTO of the school where I worked promoted it. They came up with fun themed days that made it easy for families to show their appreciation to the teachers. For example bring a flower for your teacher, and by the end of the day you had a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Or bring a fruit for your teacher, and teachers would have a nice fruit basket by the end of the day. They also had school supplies day, sweets day, make a card for you teacher day, etc. The best gifts were always the ones that were handmade. Over the years I received a cross-stitched Christmas ornament, child decorated planters, vases, refrigerator magnets, candles, coffee mugs, and many other things. One of the best gifts I ever received was a beautiful handmade lanyard that a student's grandmother made for me. I was heart broken when I broke it over the summer, but the next year she made me another one when she found out. Even though her granddaughter was no longer in my class.  I still have every gift I ever got from my students that wasn't perishable.
                     I always try to do something nice for my kids teachers, because I know the sacrifice that it is to be a teacher. The school they are in now doesn't promote it the way their old school did, so I wanted to be extra sure to do something nice for them. I don't have a lot of money to spend and the older they get the more teachers they have each year. This year my son is in middle school so he has 7 teachers. My daughter is only in 5th grade, but she still has 4 teachers (classroom, choir, band, and a student teacher). So I have to get creative in showing my appreciation of the time they spend with my child.
                    Sometimes I make baked goods for everyone. I bought a mini loaf pan a couple years ago just for this purpose. With it one batch of bread can make 9 mini loaves of bread. We usually give these to all the teachers at Christmas time.
                   This year I saw a really fun gift idea on Pinterest. It is called a Teacher's Survival Kit. It is a basket full of many everyday items with a note enclosed that relates them to teaching. The one on Pinterest had a full pack of each item in the basket, but times 11 teachers would have been out of my budget. So I got a pack or two of everything and split it between the baskets. This is what the list looks like:


 

 

It isn't much, but I know that it will show the teachers that I appreciate their hard work.