Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Holiday Gift Idea

In October, I started thinking about what I wanted to get my "secret sister" for our December MOPs meeting. I wanted my gift to be "themed", something she could use, and not cost a lot of money or take a lot of time. I'm now able to be a little more realistic about what I can and can't do in this season of our life. I love looking at Pinterest and getting "grand" ideas, but with two, two year old boys, I just don't have a ton of extra time to do things, so it needed to be easy. I decided to do a "hot cocoa" themed gift. I thought it be perfect for a winter gift and its something she could use, who doesn't like hot cocoa? ;) After I thought of some ideas to go in the gift, I decided to go ahead and do this same gift for the boys preschool teachers. There's two main ones in the classroom everyday, but the two other ones that work in the 3-4 year old class, help out a lot, so I wanted to get them all something.

Here's what the gift basically ended up looking like. I got some inexpensive Christmas mugs at the dollar tree. I wanted to do an idea that I saw on Pinterest where you get white mugs, personalize them with markers and then bake them to "set" the marker, but I knew I didn't have time for all that. ;(

I saw so many of these hot cocoa stirrers. They came in several different flavors and were so inexpensive, I think I put two different ones in each bag. They had these at Target and World Market.

I got some real hot cocoa marshmellows from Yoder's. The bags are huge and so cheap! And these are perfect for hot cocoa.

I put a box of hot chocolate cupcake mix or hot cocoa chex mix in each bag. I thought they went perfect with the theme and could be used whenever the receipent wanted to use them. I didn't want to put anything in there that had to be eaten right away (like fresh baked cookies).

Only one store had these, I looked in every store we went in to see if they had them. I had seen these a few years ago and wasn't even sure if they still made it.

I picked up a few inexpensive treats to stick in the bag at World Market. These chocolates were like 35 cents so I stuck one in each bag.

I also put a can of thse in each bag. I've seen these used as drink stirrers, so I thought they'd be a fun addition to the gift.

I don't know why this is sideways, but I put 3-4 packets of hot cocoa in each gift. I couldn't believe how many different flavors of hot cocoa there were out there, I found some yummy, fun flavors to put in the gifts.

There's so many ways to make this gift better. I am just proud of myself for getting 5 gifts together that were themed and I've had the gifts bought and ready for a couple of weeks now. I'm mostly posting this for a reminder to me if I ever need a gift idea again, but I want to include some other ideas for this gift. Here's the ideas that I've pinned on Pinterest that would go perfect with the hot cocoa theme.

Chalk board dollar tree mugs.

dollar tree mugs personalized with initials.

You could write on a dollar tree mug with permanent marker (maybe a cute quote or something).

I love the idea of making homemade cookies, and then freezing the dough so they can enjoy it when they want. Also, this idea allows them to make as little or as much of the batch as they want.

Homemade hot cocoa stirrers. Super simple and easy.

Mason jars of homemade hot cocoa mix.

Hot cocoa cookies.

Homemade gingerbread hot cocoa.

Hot cocoa cupcakes!

And how cute are these cupcakes?!

Another cute way of packaging homemade hot cocoa mix. This is something kids would love helping with.

Homemade hot cocoa stirrers. I love the idea of making things homemade instead of store bought.

Another cute mason jar of homemade hot cocoa mix.

Hot cocoa stirrers, these would be so easy to make and they're so cute!

I love this packaging for homemade hot cocoa. It looks so fancy.
Source: kirtsy.com via Samantha on Pinterest

These are my favorite decorated dollar tree mugs.

Another cute hot cocoa packaging idea using old baby food jars.

Homemade Santa Hot Cocoa Chex Mix. This stuff would be so much better than store bought!

I love all these ideas, you can see how easily somebody could get overwhelmed with ideas on Pinterest. I kept it simple and easy and I'm so glad I did, but I would really enjoy doing some of these ideas in the future. Some of these would be fun to do with the boys and some would just be things that I would have to wait until they're a little more independent and I can get a little more done.

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