Crafts And Yums: Teacher's Appreciation Week

Teacher's Appreciation Week was the first week of May. In addition to Boo making homemade cards for her teachers, we also planted basil plants in metal buckets and made chocolate covered strawberries.
Untitled

I got two potted Basil plants from Home Depot for about $3.50 each. I knew I could separate the roots and get about 4 mini plants from each. The little metal buckets are from Target at the $1 Spot:
Untitled

After we planted them, I felt that they didn't look quite finished. Something was missing but I wasn't sure of what:

Thankfully that same day, I was with a friend who mentioned she got a bag of little pebbles from Home Depot for her flower projects. Yes, I think this was exactly what I needed! This was about $4:

It made a huge difference:

Looks much more polished now, and I'm confidently in giving these as gifts:

Chocolate covered strawberries were so easy to make, believe it or not!

I got a box of strawberries from Costco. The first thing is to wash them and let them dry really good. Then I used toothpicks and stuck them from the top as pictured below. I placed them all on a cookie rack:

Then I took some milk chocolate chips, pour some in a glass bowl with a tablespoon or so of Crisco shortening. I melted it in the microwave in intervals of 10 seconds, taking the bowl out each time and giving it a stir, until completely melted. Don't over heat or it'll burn. Add a little bit of shortening if it's still clumpy. It should be a smooth consistency. Then I took a strawberry by the toothpick and dipped it into the chocolate at an angle. I dipped each maybe 2 to 3 times, and rotating the angle to make sure all sides are covered with chocolate:

I laid the dipped strawberries on wax paper for them to set:

While those are cooling down, I made some melted white chocolate with the same microwave method. I poured the melted white chocolate into a zip lock bag and closed it. I cut a tiny hole at the bottom corner of the bag and piped in a zig zag motion onto the strawberries. It would be less messy if I used a pastry piping bag to do this, but oh well. This was still good and they tasted so good!