So I guess, the Christmas shopping season is “officially” underway. I don’t personally have an “official” start and have been known to pick up Christmas presents as early as April. But don’t let that fool you, I usually am still shopping the week before Christmas.
I think my biggest gift giving quirk is that I love giving homemade or useful gifts. I’m not such a big fan of giving just to give.
This is the third year that the kids and I have undergone a homemade gift giving project to use for neighbor, friend, extended family, and teacher gifts.
Two years ago, we made soup jars. It was a simple recipe with dried onion, beef boullion, and some other seasonings in a jar with layered, tri-color pasta. Since you can only seem to buy tri-color pasta all mixed up, we turned it into a preschool sorting project so we could have the colors layered in our jars. I can’t seem to find the actual recipe, but you can Swagbuck or Google “soup jar recipes” and find a recipe you like. When we gifted ours, we included the can of tomatoes the recipe called for so all the receiver had to add was water.
Last year, we made chili seasoning and gave it away in cute, Christmas-themed, Chinese-takeout-type containers. We were able to get inexpensive spices at Sam’s Club and BulkFood.com.
This year…well you’ll just have to wait and see since some of you will be gleeful recipients of this year’s project 🙂
I’d love to know how you keep your Christmas homemade. What are you making this year (or have you made in past years)?