Homemade Gifts

This year, we gave lots of semi-homemade gifts for Christmas. We chose to do this since we didn't have extra money to spend this year, and we had a lot of fun making the gifts together. I can't believe I forgot to take a picture of the gift baskets I made my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. I noticed that one of them happened to be in the corner of another pic, so it will have to do.

Like I said, this basket just happened to be in the corner of another pic and I just cropped it the best I could, so it's not the best. The coloring sheet was not part of the basket. :) I got this idea here. My mother-in-law loves pink, so I did everything pink in her basket..a pink and white potholder, pink and white silicone spatulas, pink silicone heart shaped baking liners, and a pink recipe box. I filled the box with recipes that use cake mixes that I made in a Word document and printed on pink cardstock. I did a screenshot above of one of the recipe cards. I tied on ornaments with her initials with pink ribbon. I really wish these were facing the right direction. They are decorated to look like iced sugar cookies. I chose one recipe that I knew she'd love, German chocolate bars. I put in the dry ingredients for the recipe (cake mix, choc chips, and frosting...all of which I already had stockpiled from great sales!) and attached the recipe to the cake mix box with ribbon. This was a very affordable gift and fun to make. I think she really liked it too. She loves to cook and loves pink, so I knew this should be a hit! :) My sister-in-laws was the same, except in a Christmasy basket, and everything in her basket was red, red Kitchenaid spatulas, red potholder, red baking liners, etc. I did rocky road bars in hers which I also had all the ingredients for in my stockpile.

One of my gifts from my mother- and father-in-law was tied up in a big green Williams Sonoma canvas bag. This is what was inside! Yes, that's a hot chocolate maker! I've been making homemade hot chocolate at least a few times a week lately. Now I have my own hot chocolate pot with a frother! How fun!! I also have the ingredients and lots of yummy treats to enjoy with it!

Great minds think alike! I love that we gave each other baskets of cooking stuff! Neither one us had any idea that we were both doing this. It's seriously scary sometimes how much we are alike! I love it though. We get along great and have lots of fun together!

We made a coupon book for our 6-year-old nephew. We filled it with things that we are going to do with him over the next year from day trips to the aquarium to making a homemade pizza. I will try to take and post pics of some of the individual pages when we have him over later this week. He seemed really excited about all the fun things we are going to do together. I think this was the perfect age to give him this. He's in kindergarten and is reading really well, so he was proud to show off his reading skills to find out what each coupon was for. He still loves to color, and each coupon has a coloring page that Casey added that goes with the theme of the coupon. We are really looking forward to a fun-filled year with Andrew!

The first coupon in the book is for making Gingerbread together. I gave Andrew one of my favorite books from my personal collection, Gingerbread Baby. I actually had 2 copies of this, so I gave Andrew one and kept one for my classroom. I wrote a note inside the front cover. I made Gingerbread cookie mix and put it in a jar and tied a gingerbread man cookie cutter around it and attached the recipe. This was a very fun and affordable gift. It will be even more fun when we make and eat the cookies together!