Senior Gifts

Tonight is our Ward's Senior Graduation Party. The Young Women were in charge of the party this year, so I've been a big part of the planning. One of my big jobs was to get the Senior Gifts. Not an easy task. But the task was made much harder by a $5 per gift budget. Seriously?!? $5?!? What can you get that's memorable, and a boy or girl gift for just $5?!?

My idea was to do a little gathering of small gifts and put clever tags on them with helpful hints for college-dom or adult life. Like a Snicker's bar with a tag that says "Satisfy your hunger by feasting on the scriptures" or a compass that says "To help you stay on the right path" or a bar of soap that says "To help you stay clean and pure".

Here is the staging.
These little birds were my big bargain find. On clearance for just $1! They're so cute, I even bought one for myself!

A view into a finished basket. I attached all the little tags with ribbon.

And the finished products. I made 5 of these total. Between the shopping, coming up with the clever sayings, writing and tying the tags, and putting it all together, this was a pretty time consuming project.

I admit, I'm not actually all that happy with how these turned out. I think they look a bit like piles of junk. Hopefully at least the girls will appreciate the cutesy-ness of it. $5 is just not enough! I am pretty happy with the bargains I found though. These buckets, with all 8 things inside, I managed to put together for just $5.86 each.

So why am I sharing this with you if I don't even like them? Mostly just because I spent pretty much my whole day on them. Between this and writing "spotlights" for each Senior based on the questionnaire's we had the parents fill out, I haven't done much else today. Good thing our babysitter, Alex, was here today. Without her, I don't think I could have gotten it all done.