Homemade Holiday Gifts

 

I’m a horribly uncreative person (btw, I just googled “uncreative” to make sure it’s a real word, and the definition is “not being or productive of something fresh and unusual”… sounds harsh, right?). I desperately want to original, to be one of those people who can look at a piece of cardboard and somehow whip up an adorable and inspired something, but I’m just not. Usually when I attempt some project it comes out looking cheap, plus I have messy handwriting, making it look worse.

 

Every holiday I’m determined – determined, I tell you! – to make something adorable. This year, I got smart and decided just to copy other people’s stuff and viola! I created adorable.

 

Above is the limoncello that’s going to 3 co-workers for the holidays. Below are mason jars going to another group of colleagues; I made a chai tea mix for some, and hot cocoa mix for the rest.

 

(and the awesome gift tags? also copied!)

 

 

 

The first idea was for the limoncello, because I have a few co-workers that love infused alcohols as much as I do. The recipe comes from one of my favorite blogs, Shutterbean, and can be found here.

 

 

Since not all of my colleagues have a thing for vodka, I searched out other ideas. The chai came from thekitchn, and here’s where you can find it. I doubled the recipe, ending up with 19 tea bags (rather than giving them loose tea, I filled up individual tea bags using these, which I just happened to have). I tried one teabag and was amazed (and thrilled!) to discover that it tasted exactly like chai.

 

 

Finally, I found a recipe for homemade hot cocoa that sounded pretty delicious, from the brown eyed baker, and figured that would round everything out. I tried that, too, and found it to be pretty yummy.

 

 

I will say, as I drove around to 3 different grocery stores buying all the supplies, I got a little nervous that I’d decided to make too many things – I like to do that, too, and then not have enough time to finish it all – but all three recipes were very simple, so it turned out fine.

 

I picked up a flat of mason jars from the grocery, and couldn’t resist buying the glass flasks from Sur La Table (I couldn’t find them online, but they were $6 each in the store. A bit pricy!)

 

My favorite part, though, are the tags. I found this amazing website, eatdrinkchic, and she has these holiday tags that are free and downloadable.

 

 

Since my handwriting isn’t super neat, I also bought standard mailing labels and printed the instructions for each gift, sticking the labels to the back of the tags. Here’s the ones I made for the limoncello.

 

 

And there you have it!

 

 

 

Posted on December 18, 2011
This entry was posted in gifts, holidays and tagged chai tea, gift ideas, holidays, hot cocoa, limoncello.