DIY Gift Bags

 Last year I got super into making my own gift bags from wrapping paper!  It's perfect for irregular sized gifts, cost effective if you don't want to buy bags and perfect for when you don't have a box lying around.  To make a bag you lay out your wrapping paper and set the gift on it (to make sure it's wide enough.  Then cut the wrapping paper and fold the two ends on to meet in the center.  Tape that together.  Then on the bottom, fold several inches up.

Once it's folded, open it into this diamond shape.  Then fold the top and bottom points to the center, there will be some overlap.  Tape.  

Then open up the bag, add the gift and add finishing touches to the top!

Stovetop Potpourri Gift

Oranges were a MAJOR theme of my Christmas last year!  I loved every minute of it! So I decided to give a stovetop potpourri as gifts to my friends at work.  I heard a ton of great feedback - nearly everyone told me they used it and really enjoyed it - which is a definite goal of gift-giving!  And I had fun making the gift look cute!

Way before Christmas I did a flat-lay photo shoot and then had the photos printed and used them in my Christmas cards.  To make the instructions, I just used those photos and added the text on top and had those printed.

Here are the assembled bags - I tied the instructions on with twin and tied a dried orange slice with them and had wood beads on the end of the twine.

In each bag I put: 

2 cinnamon sticks

a cup of fresh cranberries

2 tsp of cloves

a whole orange 

a sprig of pine, taken from my tree

Note:  I told people to keep it in the refrigerator until use.

Fall Tree Painting...with BROCCOLI!

You think you're setting this up for the kids - but it's so satisfying for adults too!

It would be a great Thanksgiving Day activity.  It's so simple!

Print a page of a bare tree.  

On paper plates, give each person a bit of paint for each fall color.

Cut some broccoli florets and give them to each person.  

That's it!  Then you dip your broccoli in paint and tap it on.  It turns out like....

 

Each turns out so pretty and so different from anyone else!

Gingerbread House Decorating Party

This was my first time to host a gingerbread decorating party, so I'm sharing the things I learned along the way!  

Planning is key.

Use a hot glue gun and graham crackers.

Watch for unusual candy to buy.

Unusual things I looked for:
Heart shaped candy around Valentine's Day
Pastel candy at Eastertime
peppermint sticks
fruit slices
gumdrops
chocolate covered sunflower seeds
necco wafers
dots

Other unusual ideas:  sprinkles, cereal, necco wafers, vanilla wafers

Normal Candy Ideas:  m&ms, candy canes, hot tamales, mike & ike, starburst*, jolly ranchers, red and green candy, tootsie rolls, gumdrops, pastel mints, gum, jelly beans, red hots, caramels, licorice

*a fun tip with starburst, you can unwrap them, microwave for a few seconds and then roll them flat and cut shapes out of them.

Buy 8 inch round cake boards.

It looks nice and makes your life so much easier than trying to cut pieces of cardboard.  

A table cloth you can throw away is everything.

They are $1 at Dollar Tree and again, it makes life easier.  

Give yourself time to set up.

I didn't have a ton of time to set up.  It was a fun part for me, seeing all my planning and candy collecting come together.  It takes a while to open every candy package and to put them in containers and spread them out on the table.  I used several muffin tins.  I had saved some plastic ones that come with dinner rolls and they worked great.

Buy a few special decorations for the houses.

I came across some Christmas cake decorating decals at Michaels and they made each house really cute and elevated.  

Squeeze bottles work great.

Piping bags are a challenge to work with and especially for young kids.  I wasn't sure if the frosting would be too thick or get stuck, but we found it worked great.  The one hard part was getting the frosting into the squeeze bottle.  One big piping bag, for filling the frosting would probably be a good idea.

Make sure to take good pictures of every house as soon as it's done.

I read stories about people dropping their houses on the way to their cars.  Just have a plan that as soon as they're done, you'll take a picture.  I took a close up of each house, but I kind of wish I would have also taken one of each person holding their house.  Also in a perfect world, I would have a clean, well lit place to take the picture of each.

How cute would they look, standing in front of this for their picture!?

Ideal world - photograph each using a light box! #IYKYK

🏠😌😡💗💗💗💗💗

Play Christmas music, have a few snacks (including protein since everyone will be snacking on candy), have a batch of hot cocoa ready to go.

It's a party!  Even though everyone is pretty focused on their specific tasks, make sure everyone is having fun!  You could ask periodic Christmas trivia questions or do Christmas memory conversation starters.  You could draw names for door prizes.  

Try to enjoy it - it'll go by in a blink!