Handmade Christmas Gifts: Gift Jars

With Christmas approaching, now is a good time to begin planning your Christmas gifts list. One great way to make sure that you have enough gifts for everyone on your list, while maintaining your budget, is to create special and unique handmade presents such as Christmas gift jars.

Christmas gifts in a jar are not only easy on your budget, but are special and are treasured by all who receive them. You are only limited by your creativity and imagination when it comes to the creation of these wonderful presents. Decorative labels can be printed to add a special touch to your gift and handmade fabric covered lids add a nice finished touch to the overall appearance of your gift.

However, the true value is what you choose to place inside your Christmas gift jar. You can create gift jars that contain ingredients for recipes such as cookies, puddings, or cakes. Or you may choose to create a special Christmas gift jar that contains the ingredients necessary to make a wonderful beauty treatment.  

Now, you will need to create recipe cards for the directions for your gifts. The jars will contain all of the dry ingredients layered in a nice arrangement. You may even choose to add some extras to your gifts, such as cooking spoons, baking pans, measuring cups, bowls, pot holders, oven gloves, etc. The choice is yours! All ingredients such as liquids, butter, or grease will not be added to the jar because they will ruin the contents. You will need to list these ingredients along with their measurements on the recipe card. If your handwriting is legible and nice, you may decide to hand write your recipes, otherwise you can print them on your home computer.

Christmas Almond Cookies

Layer the following ingredients in a mason jar:
2 lbs of almonds that have been chopped in a food processor.
2 cups of sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt.

Recipe Card:
2 lbs of almonds (shelled and put through food processor)
2 cups of sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon Virgin Olive Oil
5 eggs lightly beaten
Preheat oven to 350’ then butter and lightly flour a cookie sheet.
Combine all ingredients, adding eggs last and mix thoroughly. Drop mixture by spoonfuls on to cookie sheet. Raise the oven temperature to 375’ and bake until golden, roughly 7 minutes. Let cookies cool before serving.

Bath Salts

By using simple ingredients such as Epsom Salts or Sea Salts, and aromatic oils you can create wonderfully refreshing Christmas gift jars filled with bath salts that will help heal, revitalize, and relax the recipient. When creating aromatic bath salts, it is important to use the recommended amounts of essential oils to ensure that your salts will not be irritating to the skin.

To create your own special Bath Salts use 3 cups of Epsom salts or Sea Salt, and blend with 15 drops of your selected essential oil. Some oils may be irritating to the skin, so be sure to read the labels of all essential oils before choosing your blend. Some great choices however include: Sandalwood, Chamomile, Patchouli, Lavender, and Jasmine.

Whether you create your own bath salts or food recipes, you will find that giving Christmas gift jars are wonderfully appreciated by all who receive them.

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Do It Different Come Cyber Monday

The world of Christmas shopping celebrates two key dates — the day after Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday and Cyber Monday — the Monday following Thanksgiving weekend. Both days celebrate the kick-off of the holiday shopping season, both offline and online.

The problems with Christmas shopping on these days usually out-weigh the so-called great deals. And you can bet just about anything purchased on these two dates will be giftables with mass-merchant quality at best. Great Christmas gift ideas aren’t really going to be found when the masses are out in force competing for the same deals.

So what do you do?

Relax. Breathe in and out. And consider a different approach when looking for unique Christmas gifts.

Take Abernook, for example. Here’s a quality shopping site that completely lacks the hype and hysteria of Amazon or those other mega-malls of the Internet. Products are simply and tastefully arranged. Abernook, much to my delight, sells Willow Tree collectibles – those adorable, faceless creations that evoke such sweet emotion. You can’t get such affordable Christmas gifts at just any shopping site online.

While there take a gander at their seasonal stuff. Abernook features festive reindeer socks for the kids, holiday sweets and treats, and unique decor items you just might want to make a gift of for yourself.

Abernook is bookmarked by us for shopping this season as one of Christmas’ Finest.