End of the School Year...Finally

In Western New York, some of the schools are out, and some are going to the end of the week.  Our's is out!  Coming from the west, it feels like school should have been out weeks ago, but I'm just glad it's finally here.  I always have a hard time coming up with a cute idea for teacher gifts at the end of the year.  

Maybe all my good ideas are gone by then.  Maybe I just don't have the energy left to actually make the gift, or even think of one.  Maybe there's too many cute things on Pintrest that it's impossible to narrow it down.  Whatever the reason, I found myself two days before school was out with...nothin.

Last year my friend Jenny made super cute aprons for her kid's teachers for end of year gifts  It seemed like a great idea-I totally copied it.  I made my son's teacher this apron.  I had Stephen help sew it with me; he did the ruffle.  It turned out really cute.  I kind of wanted to keep it, but I didn't.

He wanted to take something for each of his aids, helpers, nurses, specials teachers, office workers, etc.  So we made a bunch of cupcakes too.  We mostly made regular cupcakes, but did a few in jars too.  He didn't want the bus driver's cupcake getting mushed in the bus.

We made some little toothpick toppers for them that just said thanks for a great year, and had his name on the back.

We did chocolate cupcakes with some vanilla frosting and some blackberry frosting, and a raspberry or blackberry candy on top.

We took some with us to eat after we went out for lunch; they only had a half day.  They turned out pretty good.  There weren't many crumbs left over.

For Father's Day, we made the same cupcakes in jars, but with cookies and cream frosting with mini Oreos on top.  Little jars just make everything cuter huh?

Our boy scout troop had a dessert auction to earn money for scout camp and high adventure camp.  We made a bunch of s'mores cupcakes in jars for it.

I also made some of these cute rainbow cupcakes that I saw here that were adorable.  Mine didn't turn out quite as cute as hers, but I only used four colors instead of six.  They all turned out great, and looked really cute in little baskets together.

Mini Pineapple Cheesecakes

With a ten month old baby in the house, I end up with A LOT of empty baby jars.  I use some for storing snacks, buttons, and other crafts.  Even after everything I can think of to use them for, there are still way too many.

I came across a recipe for small pineapple cheesecakes and wanted to try making them.  I don't have any cute glass individual serving dishes like they had in the photo, so I thought I would try them in some of my extra jars so I could give some away too.

The recipe made quite a lot.  It filled up 17 little jars, so I had plenty for us, and lots to give away.  The ones for us were just in plain jars, but for the gifted ones, I wanted them a little cuter.  I made some labels on my Silhouette software, printed them on a full-sheet label, then cut them with the Silhouette.  I put a skinny strip of scrapbook paper around the jar and secured it with the front label.
My printer has been acting up lately, so the colors turned out a little different than I had planned, but are still cute.

I spray painted the lids (which I would suggest doing a day or two before hand so they don't smell like paint) so they would be cuter and not have the brand around the rim.  Then I added the pineapple labels to the top and was done!