Wednesday, December 18, 2013

5 Years of Neighbor Gifts at Christmastime

Every year at Christmas I like to make a little something for my neighbors and family friends.
But, this is a busy time of year for Flipzles, so I like to do something that is not too time intensive.

As much as I would like to hand-dip chocolates or make caramels and other delicious candy like my grandma, mom, and sisters do -- it is more up my alley to try to come up with an original but easy idea.

I like to try and do something people might copy and put on their Pinterest boards -- knowing that I didn't find it on Pinterest myself.

Here are a few things that my family has done in the past ---

2012- Geyser Gifts
Tag reads "We think you GEYSER awesome and we hope you have a blast this Christmas!"
We taped instructions to the back of the bottle.



In 2011 we bought cases of gum and altoids at Costco and put them in brown paper bags with this note on them -- "We MINT to bake something scrumptious or make some decadent candies... but by GUM we just didn't get around to it.   Merry Christmas all the same! Love, the Lewis Family"



In 2010 we made large candy bar wraps, and topped them off with gloves for hats.  These make great teacher gifts too!  (I didn't come up with this idea completely on my own, I saw something like it at a craft show and decided to go home and make my own printable version)

It is also fun to cut paper to the correct size and let the kids draw their own design to give as gifts.





In 2009 I came up with another way to use gloves as a gift wrap...
Gretchen the glove filled reindeer - the tag is somewhat corny, but cute nonetheless




Last year while my husband and I were on a ski trip in Idaho, we bought some chocolate covered cinnamon bears to try.  We both loved them, and then and there I decided that would be my next neighbor Christmas gift.  At first I intended to buy cinnamon bears and dip them myself, but once again, that ended up not working out.  So instead I ordered an entire case (27 pounds of chocolate covered cinnamon goodness) from sweetcandy.com.  It made 50 neighbor gifts!

Now the problem was deciding how to wrap them. 

Ribbon & tag on top

 Simple

Bow on top, tag around paper cup

 In a bag so the chocolate bears can be seen

I couldn't decide, so I did some of each.  Now I just hope my neighbors like these little blasts of cinnamon and chocolate as much as I do.