Teacher Gifts

Another post that's too little, too late.  I told ya I'm not organized this month!

Ok, enough beating myself up over my scheduling.  Here's this years' teacher gift.

This year has been quite a challenge.  Being in a new school (a school that has a lot of activities for a room mom to handle) and setting up house and just plain being a human has been very time consuming.

I didn't have time to make gifts, but that doesn't mean I didn't put a ton of love into them.  I bought a pack of nifty pens (and I got to keep the left overs, so yay), a couple packs of owl and hedgehog sticky notes (I didn't have enough for me, boo), some chocolates  (another yay), and a notebook (double yay because I got them in the dollar isle at Target, and I got one for myself).

That's about it this year.  I wish I had been more purposeful and deliberate in my teacher gift giving, but stuff happens.  I think I did well with them.

Do you have any teacher gift ideas that you like?  I may need some for teacher appreciation week ;)

A Little Bit...

I always welcome ways to make every day life a little easier.  School-time is a particularly stressful time for me, at least in the mornings.  Most mornings I don't even get to brush my hair and teeth.  I'll throw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt or my workout clothes just to get the kids to school.

I realized over the weekend that I lose a ton of time packing lunches in the mornings.  My solution seems very obvious.  I'm going to assume that most people would have thought of this sooner, but I felt like I had discovered the secrets of the universe when it dawned on me.

Why not pack lunches on Sunday?  My kids don't take a regular lunch box to school, so I buy brown bags in bulk.  I put a name on the front, throw the chips, gummies, and whatever they are taking for snack into the bag.  I store the bags in an unused cabinet until the morning they are needed. 

It seems very simple:  pack the lunches before-hand, add a sandwich that morning, and voila.  It also seems like it wouldn't save too much time, but it shaves off about 5-10 minutes of lunch packing, which can make all the difference if I oversleep (been happening more this week), or if I'm just moving kind of slow.  Perhaps it's all in my head, but it gives me a sense of having my crap together.  I feel like I'm starting out a step ahead, having most of it done ahead of time. 

How do you cut down on stresses in the mornings before school/work?  I'd love to hear more suggestions!

~Amanda~

{I'm thinking of doing a little section called "Little Bits" where I just add little blurbs about my time-saving ideas, or even just a little "Hi".  Not an all out post, but a quick stop-in.  What do you think?  I'm trying to get to a point where I'm posting at least once a week.  I have big plans, lets just hope I have the umph to follow through!!}