"Have A Kool Summer!"

As co-room parent, I've taken on some major responsibilities this year.  The room parent and I, Stacey, have worked incredible together.  When she has been unavailable, I would just assume the roll as room parent and visa versa.  The entire 3rd grade, at Fort Lewis Elementary School, has been very limited on parties this year.  They are getting BIG! No time for play, sniff, sniff. Since they've had an entire month of reviews and SOL testing, the teachers rewarded them with a party.  "Class Zimmerman's" class  (Ty's Class) chose to be in charge of the goody bag and the games, while "Class Scott's" class agreed to do snack and drinks.

I took the lead at heading up both the goody bag and the games.  I had 42 students to shop for. This would be no easy task.  First, I emailed the parents and asked for cash donations.  I collected over $115 dollars, so I had a decent budget to work with.  I knew I NEEDED an affordable gift, but I also knew I wanted something impressive, yet practical.  I think these kids are over pencils and erasers AND the parents are over mounds of candy and little toy trinkets.  Here's what I decided on...

Water bottles filled with goodies!

 Filled with colorful bouncing balls.

 "Kool"-aid packets!

Colorful bubble wands.

Airheads

The bottles were so colorful and fun looking, but I just felt like something was missing.  And then it hit me. They needed to be personalized.  YES!!!! That's it.  I considered purchasing vinyl myself and attempting to create the names on my cricut, but I chose to try Etsy first and see if it would be in the budget to just pay someone to do the names for me.  I contacted 3 sellers on Etsy and chose to go with Blue Moon Boutique NC.  Her first quote was $1.00 per bottle... YIKES, but then she agreed to $20.00 total (.50 cents a bottle).  YEA!!!!!! Originally, I inquired about much larger vinyl lettering (I didn't realize it), so her price went down since the names only need to be 5" tall.

I literally ordered the names four days before my deadline and Blue Moon Boutique delivered AND on time.  Fortunately, she is located in Raleigh, NC.  Below are the 42 names.

Eeek!  This meant my job was NOT done and it also meant, with less than 16 hours until the party, I needed to "get cracking!"

I applied all of the names to the bottles.  It would have been a SIMPLE task, but I ordered 5" names when I should have ordered 4" names.  Some of the children's names were so long and I was having a hard time fitting their names on their smoothly.

You see the letter "e" here?  Rest assured, I did NOT leave this water bottle looking this way.  I had to carefully "tuck" it under the cap's ring. That part took time and several attempts sometimes, but eventually, I got it looking flawless.

The item would NOT have been complete without a fun printable attached, so I went ahead and used the Kool-aid packet, located in the very front of the bottle, visible for the kids to see, as my reference point for my printable. The printable reads, "Have A Kool Summer!"

Tada!

 There's my Ty guy's bottle!

 Here are a few others.  They really photograph well, haha!

The Front: Above

The Back: Below

The back!

When I was passing these out, you could tell the kids were super excited to have a personalized water bottle filled to the brim with goodies.  They arrived at the perfect time... FIELD Day is Monday and hopefully they will bring them to Field Day to use, to keep cool!

So the million dollar question everyone probably wants to know is... "How much did the end result cost?

I'll break it down for you.  

Water Bottles: Purchased at Michael's craft store.  Originally, $1.49 each, but I had a 30% your ENTIRE order. Yahoooooooooo! 

Water Bottle $1.04

Vinyl Names: Purchased at Blue Moon Boutique: $.50 cents each

Name: $.50 cents

Balls: Purchased at Michael's craft store.  Originally, $1.99 (12 balls to a pack and I needed 4 packs), but I had a 30% off your ENTIRE order.  Yahooooooooo!

Ball: $.17 cents

Bubbles: Purchased at Michael's craft store.  Originally, $1.99 (12 bubbles to a pack and I needed 4 packs), but I had a 30% off your ENTIRE order.  Yahooooooooo!

Bubbles: $.17 cents

Kool-aid packets: Purchased at Wal-mart 5 for $1.00.

Kool-aid: $.20 cents

Airheads: Purchased at Sam's Club.  90 airheads for $7.00.  Each child got TWO LARGE airheads.

Airhead $.16

Bubble Gum: Purchased at Sam's Club, but I ALREADY had it from Ty's Valentines he did back in February for his classmates.  I believe a bucket of 200 pieces is like $7.00

Gum: $.5 cents each

GRAND TOTAL: $2.12 EACH x 42 students equals: $89.04 give or take a little due to tax.  

I have a little over $29 left over for games and prizes.  I'm pretty proud of myself for such a "KOOL" gift, for such little cost.