The end of the school year somehow snuck up on me. That, or I spent one too many weeks in denial about it. Regardless, last Monday rolled around and I realized that I needed teacher thank you gifts… pronto! Not only did I need them quickly… I needed nine of them. Yes, nine. (How does a Kindergartener have nine teachers?! A post for another day.)

I did what any sane Mama would do… I headed over to Pinterest and searched “Easy DIY Thank You Gifts,” got immediately overwhelmed, and ran away. But before doing that, I saw a couple of cold-beverage tumblers with lemonade inside… and the sentiment of “Thank You for Quenching my Thirst” on them. My curiosity was piqued. That said… cold beverage tumblers say “Iced Coffee” to me and not “I hope you have a relaxing summer” … which is more the sentiment I wanted to send to the teachers who had spent the previous nine months corralling educating my child. Not only that, but where was I going to find nine affordably-priced tumblers in two days?!

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The answer to that was, I wasn’t. A couple of hours later, I was digging something out of my cabinets and I moved a couple of mason jars to get to the back of the cabinet. That’s when inspiration hit. I wasn’t going to use cold beverage tumblers… but I was going to use something much more “me” instead. I ran over to my computer, brought up amazon, and placed an order for the following supplies:

I had the following items on hand, but you also need:

And thanks to the “prime” shipping… all of my supplies were sitting on my doorstep by mid-day Wednesday. That night, I laid everything out on the dining room table, and got to work.

In each Ball jar, I placed five lemonade packets. I’m not sure how it worked (luck), but if you face them all out… five packets fit around the circumference perfectly. I then screwed on the new daisy lid, and popped the straw in. [Full disclosure: I also put gift cards for the main teachers in the center… just enough for lunch for two at a local soup & sandwich place, but a treat none-the-less.] Next I whipped up a simple (digital) lemon slice illustration, and a typographic treatment of “thank you for quenching my thirst for knowledge.”  I customized each tag with the teacher’s name and my son’s name… but in the file I include below, I’ve left them more generic.

After printing those on two sheets of card stock (I don’t seem to have the patience to figure out how to print back-to-back on my printer), I grabbed my two-inch circle punch and trimmed them out. A quick hole punch at the top of the circles and I was ready to string them on the raffia and tie them on the jars. I decided to place the two circles back-to-back so it would still read like a “tag” even though they were two sheets of paper.

And that’s it! It took me just over an hour to assemble all the jars (not counting the time it took to create the printable PDF). I received such rave reviews that I plan to make these for our summer sitters, and the camp counselors. And for about five dollars, I had a gift that Mini was proud to bring into his teachers. (In case you are wondering, I would have absolutely let him help assemble… if I wasn’t so behind the eight ball on this one. I do think it’s something a four or five year old could easily help with!)

If you are interested, you can download a printable pdf of the tags here. Or, feel free to create your own version!

Note: I feel that I would be remiss without thanking all the other bloggers who have done some variation of this before me… you planted the seed in my head and helped me create a gift I am proud of… so thank you!