Gifts in a Jar

Every year folks struggle to come up with unique yet inexpensive gifts for the holiday season. This year is going to be quite difficult for many who have found themselves recently unemployed or facing the threat of unemployment. One solution to keep the cost of holiday gift giving is to give homemade gifts. Homemade gifts take a bit more thought but I think they are nicer because they are personally tailored to fit the recipient.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Homemade gifts from the kitchen are always well received. The holiday season is always quite busy so unless you start out early you may run out of time for baking. In this case turn to making gifts in a jar. I recently made Gift from the Kitchen - White Chocolate Chip Cookies that took me about 10 minutes to put together so this would be a great last minute gift as well. Essentially gifts in jars are made using all the necessary dry ingredients with the recipient adding the wet ingredients (oil, eggs, liquid) when they want to use their gift. Gifts in jars can range from cookies, brownies, breads, soups to spice blends and quick mixes. They are really easy to make. If you have scrapbooking supplies you can get some lovely tag and gift card results.

A list of material follows but they will greatly vary depending on what you are making. You can buy used mason jars but should use new jars and rings for a nice presentation. The outside of the lid can be painted as can the ring if you like or you could decorate it with embellishments or you can cover it with a square of fabric or decorative paper. Check the craft and scrapbooking sections of dollar stores for a wide variety of affordable embellishments. Each jar depending on the ingredients and including additional materials will come in at about $2 per jar or less.

Materials

recipe ingredients
1 mason jar per recipe (size varies depending on recipe)
lid and ring (decorative or plain)
ribbon or twine
embellisments (eg. brands, spoon, cloth, tags)
recipe tag (hand printed or computer generated)
cardstock in colours of your choice
craft scissors
decorative pens
pre-cut tags

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009