Schultute!

The kids have been at art camp all week, so I have been using my time in preparing for school, which we'll begin on August 1. It is so darn hot here that it is too miserable to do anything outside, so we're starting early so that we can finish the school year earlier. I love the flexibility of homeschooling!

One of the projects that I've been working on this week is a schultute.  I have seen these around the web and thought that they would be a great way to get this school year off on the right foot. I was helped out with a lot of inspiration from the Internet. I used a couple of sheets of poster board I had and decorated them with some gingham ribbon and some cute printables.

 The cute gingham tags that you see are free printables from Birds Party. They are so cute. I've used them to decorate school binders, too.

 In addition to school supplies (pencils, erasers, new scissors, crayons, and the ultra important colored pencils), I included some school-themed candies. 

 The idea for these pencils came from The Blackberry Vine. She used a roll of Rolos, but I couldn't find them, so I used canisters of M&Ms I find at the grocery store checkout line.

 Perfect, right? I remember in my sorority we use to have a Smart Cookie Award. I don't know why I haven't thought of this before! The Busy Budgeting Mama helped remind me. For my tags I used the cursive font I use for Emily Anne's handwriting/copywork and more of the printables from Birds Party.

 The English teacher in me had a little problem with the creative spelling in this tag, but it was too cute to resist. This idea came from a great teacher's blog, Fabulous in First.

 These bookworms are my favorite. What could be better than sitting in a cozy corner eating candy while immersed in a great book? The original ideas came from Sweet Serendipity 23.

I apologize for the poor photography in this post. Photography is not my strong suit anyway, and I was hurriedly trying to take pictures before I had to hide the schultutes and pick up the kids. We'll see if they stay hidden until Monday morning. I'll try to take photos of the kids with them before they rip into them!