Inexpensive Father's Day Gift

    Each Sunday I spend an hour and a half with a group of about 25 children, give or take a few, teaching them cool scripture stories and lessons. We play fun games, hear inspiring accounts, and sing lots of interactive songs. I needed a quick and low-cost  gift for them to present to their dads on Father's Day.

    Enter the Bic permanent marker. Oh yeah.

    I was on Facebook one day and noticed that the Bic page had free coupons for $5 off their set of 24 permanent markers. Our local Walmart had these for $12.87, so with my coupon, each set was only $7.87. I got two sets because it is standard for companies to allow you to print each online coupon twice, and because I needed two sets to make sure that no Dad ended up with a girly color.

The leftovers. What shall I do with all these leftover markers? Hmm...I know! 

Give them to the teachers! Score.

    I then  went to my trusty Microsoft Word program, opened a blank document, then clicked on the little envelope icon which took me to the make-a-cool label-page. I chose label size 8463 and made some highly original tags to go with the pens. I'm so clever.

Label size 8463 gives you 10 labels per page. I printed these on card stock, 

then used my handy dandy paper slicer to cut them apart.

Voila! [That's vwah-lah, not viola or wah-la. Ergh.]

I used black, green or gold ribbons to attach the card to the pen. I had the ribbon 

on hand so it didn't cost me anything additional.

This little project ended up costing only about 33 cents per gift, thanks to Bic's mondo coupon.

Note 1: I was probably pretty stupid for purchasing all different colors. I can hear it now, "My dad hates green. Why can't I have the red one? She budged and I would have gotten the red one if she hadn't pushed me out of the way. "  In my defense, I choose to hand out multi-coloreds instead of all black because some fathers have more than one child in the Sunday school. This way a dad with three kids gets three different colors. Oh, and Walmart didn't have enough black-only ones.

Note 2: If you are a frugalista like I am, and you are not getting in on all the cool Facebook deals, repent now!  Most big companies will give you a truly rocking coupon if you "Like" them on Facebook. Last week I got two FREE cans of La Victoria enchilada sauce, by liking La Victoria on Facebook. They gave $2 coupons to "likers" and you are allowed to print twice. Since Walmart had 28 ounce enchilada sauce for $1.88 each, I got two cans for NADA. 

Note 3, Stupid Disclaimer:  None of the above-mentioned companies compensated me for mentioning them in my blog post. As mentioned though, they just might compensate you with a coupon if you give them your Facebook soul.

Note 4: What is up with Blogger's stupid spacing problems anyway?  Things look peachy in my preview, then when I publish there are huge spaces between lines.

Note 5: I really don't care if you copy my label word for word. Doesn't bother me in the least. Have at it.