Grad Gifts

See this beautiful young lady?

She's been our "Girl Next Door" for the last 15 years and we're going to miss her when she leaves for college in August.

Her Mom and I are close friends and we pretty much raised our two children together...going on hikes, cooking up crazy outings and games, planning birthday parties, etc.

Going to the graduation parties of my best friends' kids drives home the realization that Jack is only one year away from finishing high school and leaving the nest. The fact that he's gone all this week and the house is very quiet doesn't help either.

For our Gal Next Door, I made another one of those money trees...I added ivy leaves this time to fill in the gaps between bills and it helped make it look more like a topiary...

I wrote up a tutorial for it a couple of years ago.  Here's the link.  

A number of folks have written me over the years who have made very creative versions:  one person used a styrofoam head used to display wigs and gave it to a retiring hairstylist; another person glued coins to sticks and used those instead of bills; and yet another used a styrofoam cone and made it into a Christmas tree.

I just hate giving money in a card so I'm always looking for creative ways of packaging the green stuff.

My friend Maura's son graduated from a school where he had to wear a shirt and tie every day.  This idea seemed perfect for him...

There were lots of tutorials for this technique...just google shirt tie origami dollar bill and they'll come up.  There are lots of other animals/figures you can make too...enough to suit any occasion.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a pic of Connor but I have a feeling he'll show up here eventually...

Time is a ticking...isn't it?