A few weeks ago, I mentioned my kids’ school was doing a fundraiser dinner auction and I shared some awesome basket ideas. I volunteered to be the “basket lady” for two of my kids’ classrooms – a task which sounded daunting at first, but turned out to be pretty painless, overall! I finished up both classroom baskets over the weekend and I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out.
The hardest part about this project, for me, was keeping track of the monetary donations from parents! I’m not a naturally organized person, so it’s sometimes a challenge for me to keep things straight. For this project, it helped tremendously to write up a detailed letter explaining exactly what was the auction was and what parents would be donating to, and I sent a copy home with every child. I stapled an envelope to each letter with my kid’s name on it, so parents could easily slip five or ten bucks (or even a check) and send the envelope back to school. I also sent an email out to the entire classroom, because I know I don’t always see stuff that comes home in backpacks!
Once I figured out how much money I had to work with, I hit the stores, shopped the sales, and tried to get as much bang for my buck as possible. The themes I picked ended up being on the pricey side (but they’re so cool!) so I had to be creative in spending the amount of cash I had. I wanted these baskets to really catch people’s eye so that they’ll bring in as much money as possible for our school! I saved a little by using plastic tubs I found at Big Lots, and I used ribbon and tissue paper I already had on hand. The shrink wrap added such a great touch, but I did find it to be a little tricky to work with. It took me a few tries to get all the bubbles out! Now that I’ve played around with it a little, I want to shrink wrap everything!
ANYWAY…onto the baskets!
This is the basket for the 3rd grade classroom:
It was reeeeeally hard to keep my kids from snagging the cool LEGO sets I bought for this basket! Whoever takes it home is going to really enjoy it!
And here is the basket for the 5th grade classroom:
I think the 5th graders are going to flip when they see this. Every kid I know seems to be so Minecraft-obsessed! This basket presented a bit of a challenge because, sorry to say, Minecraft stuff is EXPENSIVE! I shopped around and got some really cool stuff, though. And both teachers ended up using some of their Scholastic points from book orders to buy books to add to the baskets – the Minecraft user’s guide and the LEGO Official Movie Handbook. That was an awesome addition!
If you’re thinking about being a basket coordinator for a fundraiser, go for it! It turned out to be really fun and not nearly as scary as I thought it would be!
Doctor Who Custom Hand-Painted Shoes!