Hostess Gift and Free Printable!

Hello, friends!  It's that time of year for celebrating with family and friends and that means lots of invitations and fun events!  Alicia created this lovely DIY hostess gift, perfect for the holiday season.  I've designed a coordinating printable so you can recreate her project for the hostesses you're thankful for this season!  Enjoy!  - Jen

This hostess gift was pretty fun to put together.

 I filled clear ornaments with popcorn kernels, and I strung popcorn and wrapped it around a small rosemary plant.  I picked this one up at Lowe's.  The plastic planter it came in wasn't so pretty, so I used our Merry Christmas stamp and Encore silver ink on kraft paper to wrap the pot.  I printed out the easy peasy printable, cut on the lines, and tied it on with red yarn.  This smells lovely, and makes me want to eat gourmet popcorn every time I pass by.

And just because we love you so much, here's the hand lettered and hand drawn Printable Hostess Gift Tag - which also has a card you can cut out and fold.

Download the printable PDF at the link!

Printable Hostess Gift Tag and Card

If you're feeling a bit more ambitious, I'd suggest making a loaf of rosemary herb bread.  This would be a good way to get two hostess gifts from the plant.  Or just pass along this recipe with it, I've made it before and it is really tasty. It's Pastor Ryan's Herb bread from the Pioneer Woman's blog.

Stamped Napkins and Tea Towels

Hey guys, Alicia here.  I am honored to be part of Paper Sushi helping Jen get some of her great ideas posted for you to see.  I'm going to dive right in with a project she came up with months ago that would be an easy DIY Christmas gift.  I imagine this could work great for just about anyone- neighbors, teachers, your brother's girlfriend, or yourself.

Jen sent me a big box of goodies and an idea.  The supplies were some fun stamps, VersaCraft fabric ink stamps and a couple packs of plain white flour sack towels.

 This tea towel has bright pink hand drawn succulents in a random pattern covering the towel.

We try to use cloth napkins in our house, and with little ones, I can always use more.  One tea towel cut into four napkins and I was able to iron, fold and stitch a simple hem for all four in under thirty minutes.  I stamped away to my heart's content and ended up with some adorable napkins.

I did learn that these need to be set with an iron, not the dryer.  The dryer left some ghost images of the stamp across the fabric.  

Seriously easy! The VersaCraft ink comes in Pink, Red,  Blue, Black, and White. And that Hello! stamp?  You can get it here. 

Rapid fire gift giving.

When we dropped Cheeseball off at kindergarten this morning, I learned that although school isn't over for the year until mid-August, today is the day they do gifts to the children and the children bring gifts for the teachers. Wait, what!?!?! This is the last week of German grade school for the year, so families start going on vacation next week, taking their kindergarteners with them.

Well, this left me with nothing to do but speedwalk/sprint home and start brainstorming. I was going to consult a German friend to see what would be the typical kinder-to-lehrer (teacher) end of year gift. But, then I thought wait...when I have friends from exotic places, I don't want them to bring me whatever I'm used to! I want to check out whatever they're used to. So, I decided to bake something American. Apple pie would be a little tough to wrap up and transport and also I suck at it. What's more American (though, less American than apple pie) than chocolate chip cookies!?

Unfortunately, the move and corresponding gutting of the kitchen for the movers still has us a little low on staples. The baking soda, the brown sugar, the flour, really everything is different here and the Internet told me you can't mix American baking recipes and German ingredients. So, I had to drive to post and by then, it was time to bite the bullet and buy ready made cookie dough.

But, the packaging could be homemade! I downloaded some box templates and used an adorable wrapping paper template by Kellie Medivitz that I'd saved previously.

Download the box templates here.

Download the tags and wrap here.

I printed the wrapping paper print on one side of cardstock and the box template on the other.



Then, used craft glue (even though craft glue and mod podge both claim to be non-toxic, the craft glue seemed even nonner-non-toxic to me) to line the inside of the box with wax paper.



I cut the wax paper off the flaps and scored the dotted lines. Then, put the box together! I recommend gluing flap by flap as you go - both so that the glue stays fresh and because until you're putting it together, it's tough to figure out which flaps you're going to want to glue on the inside and which on the outside.

I had cut the pre-made cookie dough squares in half to make smaller cookies. I stacked the cooled cookies inside the boxes.



Then, closed them up, tied a pretty ribbon and attached a coordinating gift tag.



All in all, I thought it was a pretty cute, very last minute and with limited supplies kind of gift!

And, the teachers asked "sind diese amerikanischen cookies!?" and they seemed pretty excited about it. So, I think bringing an American gift from their American kinder was the way to go.

Although I ended up having to use pre-made cookie dough, I'm posting my totally awesome chocolate chip cookie recipe anyway. I use a half a bag of chocolate chips in these, and the girl who originally gave the recipe to me uses a bag and a half, so go with your own chocolate lover level.

2 sticks butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla (or better yet, scrape the inside of one vanilla bean)
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Cream together butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth.

Combine dry ingredients in separate bowl. Slowly add to egg/sugar mixture. Stir in chocolate chips.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes. Enjoy.