Graduation cards

We had two graduates in our family this year.  Johnson graduated from 8th grade and Hannah graduated from high school.  Now I have two freshman, one in college and the other in high school.

We had nine graduates at our church.  The first Sunday of June we celebrate this with cake and ice cream, nuts and mints after the evening service.  Since we had two graduating, we decided to purchase Michael's subs for the event.  Another graduate's family, brought chips so we had a real feast after church.  

I didn't take pictures of the graduation cards that I made, my fault.  But I have some new cards I made to restock my supply for next year that I do have pictures to share.

The colored ones are really out of my comfort zone but I found some really cute stickers at Wal-Mart and wanted to use them.  The Congrats stamp is PTI Think Big Favorites #5.  The Hats off stamp is PTI For the Graduate.  The colored paper is SU!

This is one of the cards that I made for my kids.

<^..^> Lori

Reach 4 the Sky Grad Garland and table decorations

More graduation decorations for church.  Last post I showed the Grad Cap Pops that I made.  These are the room decorations.

I was inspired by this collection that I saw at Michaels in the $1 bins.  They had coordinating bags, stamps, and cards.  The bag really was what caught my eye.  So bright and cheery and just said GRADUATION dreams to me.

I knew that I had orange tissue paper left from one of my crazy projects in 2009.  Long story but I ended up with lots of orange and kraft brown.  I just keep using it.  One day either I will run out or Hannah will inherit it.

I stuffed one sheet of orange tissue paper in each bag along with a rock for weight.  I put a sheet of orange tissue paper on each table and the stuffed bag on top of that.  I put out some other assorted graduation decorations on the orange tissue.  Graduation items that we have collected over the years and use each year.  Like black plastic grad cap shaped cups.  Not too much stuff...just enough to make the grad theme come out.

I bought the paper lanterns from The Party Store in blue, green, and yellow.

Then I decided to make paper garlands to brighten up the room.  Okay...you can say it...that looks like a lot of work.  It was and it wasn't.  I have seen some really cute garlands on Etsy sites.  I decided to make one for myself.  Now I know why they charge what they charge for them.  I had all the paper I needed to cut the squares of cardstock.  I wasn't exact but mostly I cut them at 2 x 2 inches.  The white ones were cut at 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 inch because it fit the $1 stamp I got at Michaels which says "Reach 4 the Sky".

I cut and cut until I thought that I had enough to make 18 good sized (about 9 feet) garlands.  I winged it.  Then I just used my sewing machine and sewed the squares together.  I left about 1/2 inch between each square.  I ended up sewing 27 garlands. 

Of course when I use the word I, it rarely means just me.  Hannah sorted the stacks of paper, I sewed them, Jim and Johnson cut cardboard out, Jim and Hannah and I wound the garland around the cardboard to transport it without tangles.  The cardboard worked, too!  No tangles. 

We used Command hooks to attach fishing line in the church fellowship hall in X patterns on the ceiling between the lights.  We attached one paper lantern at the center of each X and then 2 of the garlands along the arms of the X.  Did I take a picture...NO...I am so mad at myself.  It was really cool, too.  So the pictures I have above were taken on my kitchen table tonight.  I told my sister that I am tempted to ask Jim to put one section X back up just so I can take a picture.  We left the fishing line up to help with decorating for VBS at church so...maybe.  I have got to learn to take pictures of projects.

Pastor N gave a brief talk to all of the grads, a new Bible was given to each HS grad, and they each told us their plans for the upcoming year.  The 8th grade and college grads were recognized as well. 

We served cake and ice cream and the grad cap pops.  Everyone enjoyed the celebration.

<^..^> Lori

Grad Cap Pops inspired by Bakerella

I saw this post at Bakerella and was inspired to make my own version.  I used Nestle Milk Choc chips, Keebler Deluxe Grahams, mini Reeses PB cups, Wilton Lolly Pop Sticks (tried the popsicle sticks she mentioned in her blog but they kept splitting the pb cups), and Air Heads Xtreme Sweetly Sour Belts.  I did not make them alone.  As usual, I dragged DH, DD, and DS into it!  They were very helpful.  Jim had to make an emergency run to the store as I miscalculated the quantities needed.  In the end, we made over 100 of these delicious treats for the graduation celebration at church. 

We melted the chocolate in my Wilton chocolate melter.  It melts the chips quickly, turn it to warm and they stay melted and ready to use as our glue.  Great tool!  Hannah cut up the Sweetly Sour Belts for the tassles.  More people asked how we made the tassles than most anything else.

It was time consuming to make them since it was our first time.  I could do it more quickly now that we have done it once.  We developed an assembly line.  I certainly would calculate my quantities better.  LOL!  Only used less than 1/2 bag of milk chocolate chips.  Jim bought 4 bags.  Needed many more cookies.  Keebler has about 19-20 cookies in a package.  I only had one package to start and ended up using 3 more packages.  Only needed 1 package of Air Heads to make 120+ tassles.  I had bought 3.  Johnson volunteered to eat all of the extra ones.  I would make room in the refrigerator and freezer ahead of time so we would not have to scramble for space.  Lastly I would now have enough Styrofoam to poke in the finished products so DH wouldn't have to make a late run to the store.     

Many commented on how cute and delicious they were so I consider it a good use of our time to make them.  The point was to help make the kids celebrating their graduation feel special...loved by all of us at church.  I hope it did a little...they are great kids.   

<^..^>Lori