I am a procrastinator.  I had this idea in my head for quite a while and now that there are only two one days left of school, I figure it was time to start making the gift.

You will need:

-Clay flower pot (.50 at Dollarama)
-Paint
-Floral foam ($1 at Dollarama - could make two with this package)
-Felt
-Lollipop and candy sticks ($2.49 and $3 at Bulk Barn)
-Candy lollipop mold ($3.49 at Bulk Barn)
-Different coloured Mercken's wafers .  (Bulk Barn - prices vary)
-Ribbon
-Gift bag wrap
-Microwavable dish to melt wafers (I use this Tupperware soup mug and it works perfectly!)


We decided to make chocolate lollipops for EVILBOY's teacher because I have been making these for his class for each holiday throughout the year and the teacher loves them.  I'm sure you could stick any old thing in the flower pot and make a thoughtful gift,  but the chocolates are really cute and very tasty.

These are the wafers you need to melt into the mold.  They are very yummy (and very fatty!).  They come in many different colours.  Each colour tastes the same as well so you don't have to worry about flavour preferences when decorating with these. 

 This is the mold you need.  As you can see on the packaging, they got pretty fancy with their candies.  I'm more of a simple gal, I like to keep them all one colour.

 These are the lollipop sticks you will need.  They offer two sizes - "candy" sticks and "lollipop" sticks.  For this project I chose Lollipop sticks because I wanted to keep the chocolates away from the floral foam.  You can also mix both stick sizes (or cut these ones down) to make things a little more interesting.

 Normally I would fill this container half-way with wafers.  Because this was such a small project, I decided to purchase only a small scoop of wafers of each colour.  The directions say to put them in the microwave at 30 second intervals.  To be honest, I put mine in for one minute, stir and then add another 30 seconds  (in this case I just put them in for one minute because I wasn't using very much chocolate). 

Important:  Make sure that the wafers do not come in contact with water.  If your container has even a drop of water in it, it will contact the oil-based chocolate and burn in one spot.  I completely forgot and had a little accident with the purple chocolate (sadly). 

 When the chocolate is ready to be poured, it will have a consistency like this.  If there are lumps in it still, you may be able to stir them out. 

 Scoop your chocolate into the mold. It may not completely fill the shape (but we will get to that in a bit...). The good thing about these molds is that they are completely reusable.  I now have a collection for each holiday.  These are always great little gifts to give to friends, classmates, co-workers etc. and are relatively inexpensive.

 Insert your lollipop stick into the mold.  I have pictured the candy stick in the above picture because the lollipop sticks were too long for the mold.  However, I tested and the lollipop sticks will still work if you put them on a bit of an angle over the lip of the mold.

Once the stick is in, give it a little twirl so the chocolate covers the whole stick.  Once this is done, you are going to want to tap the mold against the counter a few times to get the air bubbles out.  This will also cause the chocolate to fill the rest of the mold if you missed any spots in the step above.

 It is very important that you put your chocolate in the fridge right away.  If you leave these out to harden on the counter they will be very dull (a mistake that I have made before..).  Putting them in the fridge allows you to use the mold again quicker and it gives them a nice shine (see above).  The chocolates are usually ready in 10-15 minutes. You will be able to tell because they will come out very easily when they are done.  If there is a bit of a struggle to get them out, put them back in the fridge for a few minutes. 

When you are ready to change colours, just do a quick wash in the sink (the chocolate comes off very easily) and make sure you dry the container and mold completely (see error above).

 Put the floral foam into a decorated flower pot.  For this project EVILBOY painted his teacher's name and some flowers on the pot. I'm sure the Floral foam could be put in a little more neatly than I did but I hate touching that stuff so I just did a quick job on that.

Stick your chocolates into the foam.  Be very careful when you place these because you cannot move them around too much without wearing down the (yucky) foam. 

 I had bought decorative moss to cover the foam in the pot, however when I opened the package of decorative moss I realized it smelled like real moss.  It kind of really grossed me out.  Right away I thought of toads and squirrels rubbing their bodies all over this "decorative" moss and I really wouldn't want to eat chocolate that had come into contact with that kind of crap.

I looked around my apartment, but unfortunately the only things I could find were leftover Fantasia party items and they were pretty inappropriate.  Then I remembered I had some felt in my closet so I cut some felt up and shoved it in the bottom of the pot to cover up that floral foam.  I also do not like the feel of felt, so this was also a messy job (as you can see).

(If you can think of a better way to cover the foam, please let me know!)

I wrapped up the gift (a little terribly) and tied it with a pretty pink ribbon.

Of course you can also add a homemade card from your child or a picture or tag.  Since EVILBOY had given up and went to bed at this point, we will have to save that step for the morning. 

There you have it folks, a fairly simple and inexpensive way to say thank you to a super teacher who has been so wonderful and kind to my family.