Christmas Gift Certificate Tree

If you haven't already caught on, the one thing I love as much as crafting is giving gifts. I think it's the perfect outlet for my creativity. I absolutely love coming up with thoughtful gifts tailored to the recipient.

For Christmas, I decided to get my brother and his girlfriend a bunch of gift certificates to restaurants in the neighborhood in Chicago that they lived. While I thought this to be a fitting gift for them, I thought it sounded kinda boring..."here....they're gift cards for a bunch of restaurants". So, I came up with a nice way to display them that didn't seem so flat.

First I purchased a piece of rectangular foam and a gift bag from Hobby Lobby. I used a wine gift bag, and the piece of foam was probably 3/4 of the height of the gift bag. I went outside in my backyard and cut 5 or so twigs off of the leaf-less tree (it was winter time), and arranged them so they looked like a mini-tree.

Then, I made little envelopes out of cardstock and scrapbooking paper that fit each of the gift certificates. Sorry I do not have a tutorial for these....but, stay tuned - I promise to do one soon! 

With this one I used a striped patterned paper and I cut it into strips. I laid the strips out to look like a Christmas tree and cut out a non-perfect star for the top (Who likes perfect things anyways?). This one is created as a sleeve, where the top is open and the gift certificate slips out of the top. 

This one was made with patterned paper, some cardstock (the off-white) and some stickers. This one is also created as a sleeve. Notice that I cut a semi-circle at the top for easy removal of the gift certificate. 

I tried to make this one look more like an envelope. The snowman sticker is meant to look like a stamp and on the back I cut a slit and tucked the folded part of the cardstock into it to close it.

I went simple with this one. This was the first one I made, so I didn't figure out that I should cut a semi-circle on the top. With this one you actually couldn't pull the gift certificate out unless you ripped the ribbon off. It is also a sleeve for the gift certificate.

At each of the restaurants I went to, they gave me a take out menu to go with the gift certificates. I slipped those in the wine-shaped gift bag, as they were the perfect size to hide in there. 

While the gift was slightly difficult to transport, I felt much better giving this than I would have a stack of gift certificates. I think overall it turned out to be a nice gift that keeps on giving. 

Happy Christmas Gifting :)

Desserts in a Jar

What do you get for someone who has everything or enough money to buy whatever they want? This is the issue I was facing when I decided to create these desserts in a jar. They are a nice thoughtful, simple gift for someone who enjoys baking. I made these as a retirement gift for my boyfriend's aunt.

I found a bunch of different recipes on various websites and I picked the ones that sounded the yummiest. (Please excuse my dirty kitchen in the background of my photos!)

I ended up making the following 4 recipes:

• Cranberry Hootycreeks
• M&M Cookies
• Chocolate Chunk Cookies
• Sand Art Brownies

I used a funnel to get all of the sugar, flour, etc. in the jars. In order to make them look pretty, you have to strategically layer each ingredient. Alternate between ingredients with contrasting colors. All ingredients are meant to fit in regular sized mason jars. Basically the idea behind these is that all of the dry ingredients are included in the jar, they would just need the wet ingredients to complete the recipe. In most cases that is butter, eggs, milk, vanilla.....all things most people would already have around the house. The complete recipes should be attached to the jar. I included all of the tags I used for mine below. 

Ingredients (layered in this order!): 

1 1/8 cup sifted all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar, packed

1 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup white chocolate chips

1/2 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped

I got this recipe & tags here.

Ingredients (layered in this order):

1/4 cup sugar

1 1/4 cup M&Ms

2 cups sifted flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 tsp baking powder

I got this recipe & tags here.

Ingredients (in this order):

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chunks or chocolate chips (per your preference)
1/2 cup pecans or walnuts, chopped

I got the recipe here. For this one I made my own tag.

Ingredients (in this order):

2/3 tsp salt

1 1/8 cup sifted flour

1/3 cup cocoa powder

2/3 cup brown sugar, packed

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup white chocolate chips

1/2 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped

I got the recipe for this one here. I made this tag myself, also. 

I chose the same type of nut for all 3 recipes so that I didn't have to spend a ton of money on ingredients. Here is what each jar looked like before I did all the decorating. You can see all the layers, which really looks cool!

For the decorations, I used a lot of stuff I already had in my crafting collection. I did go to Hobby Lobby and buy 1/2 yard of white fabric to put over the tops of all the jars. Much more economic than buying a bunch of different fabric types. I also bought the yellow and white/red string from Hobby Lobby. The red/green/white/blue ribbon is actually from the Dollar Tree, along with the blue bow that I put on top of the Chocolate Chunk jar. I used card-stock and scrapbooking paper for all of the tags.

Since these ended up being pretty heavy, I used one of those cardboard half boxes that come in the bottom of large packs of soda from Costco. I cut it in half and folded up one of the sides so all the jars fit snug. 

The gift recipient loved the gift...she said the Cranberry Hootycreeks were her favorite. :)

Happy crafting!