My Family Scrapbook

Friday, February 17, 2012

Last Of The Gifts Of Christmas Past

One last post of the Christmas Gifts that I made that you can adapt to other holidays.

This one is less of a craft and more of an all round great gift. I made these for a few co-workers, family members that I didn't know what to buy, neighbors, the mail person, the UPS driver, and made a few extras for those people who stopped in with a gift that I forgot on my shopping list. I only had one left over which my daughter gladly took for her boyfriend's mom.

You can find these "Gift In A Jar" recipes on the internet. This particular one makes wonderful cookies that are best when still warm out of the oven. The recipe came from All Recipes. It is easy to put together, decorate, and have been well received.

As far as the crafty part of this you can get as crazy as you like but I kept them simple. A round of fabric, a hand-made bow using wire edged ribbon, and the printed instruction card that I also used as a gift tag.

Once again these can be used for any holiday gift giving and the decorations changed to fit the event. And tell me who doesn't love a fresh, warm out of the oven home-made cookie? YUM!

The only tip that I can give about these to make them a little prettier than just layering is that you with each layer that is added is that you use a kabob skewer to make hills and valleys in the mix. It is just a pretty touch.





Change things out, decorate them differently to fit the holiday, change the printing on the card to also fit the event and you have the perfect gift... this would work as a teacher's gift, welcome to the neighborhood gift, or for any holiday or event.

Enjoy them... try other "Gift In A Jar" recipes too.

Happy Crafting and Cooking ! ! !

Brenda

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Still More Things To Inspire And A Recipe

I still have 2 or 3 more things to post that I made at Christmas for gifts.

This one you could adapt for ANY holiday just by changing it up. Use different colors and dies for the box, a different cookie cutter for inside and change the recipe using a different flavor chocolate chips for the fudge... oh the possibilities are endless!

But just for the record, the idea of putting the fudge in a cookie cutter came from Pinterest! I will not lie about where that came from. The recipe for the fudge is totally up to the maker. I used the Fantasy Fudge Recipe off the the side of the Kraft Marshmallow Fluff bottle to make mine BUT like I said you could change the shape of the cookie cutter and use any flavor of chips - from white chocolate, peanut butter, to caramels ones which would also change the color of the fudge and a few drops of food coloring in the white chocolate one could create RED for Valentines day, pastels for Easter, green for St. Patty's Day etc. You get the picture.

The recipe for the Oreo Truffles has been around for years. In fact I got that recipe from my sister, Debbie, about 6 years ago when she surprised us with those at Christmas. I will share that recipe below.

First this project was simple but at the same took a lot of things that luckily I had on hand. The main things I used was heavier cardstock, dies, punches, a Scor-Pal and of course the contents of the box which could be anything you chose to put into it.

I have to confess that I started with the "cooking" first. I went shopping and found my metal cookie cutters at Hobby Lobby. They have a wide variety of seasonal shapes and they are big! Which is what I was looking for. I wanted my gift to be generous but not break the bank at the same time and I wanted one batch of fudge to make at least 4 trees.) These cookie cutters were perfect and only cost me 99 cents each. Remove the price stickers, wash and dry the cookie cutters, set them on parchment paper on a metal cookie sheet. Prepare your fudge, and working quickly, fill each cookie cutter being careful not to drip the fudge on the outer rim of the cutter or down the outside of them. As soon as you fill them decorate the tops with the mini M&M candies. If you decide to use icing for decorating allow the fudge to completely cool first. You leave the fudge in the cookie cutters and give that as part of the gift.

After I made the fudge cookie cutters I made the boxes. I did this because I did not know how big to make the boxes.

These boxes are nothing more than an 8.5" square of heavy cardstock, scored 1.5" all the way around, clip the corners so that you have a flap, and then adhere the flap to the next section.
The tops of the boxes were made just slightly larger with the same 1.5" score. I line the box with a piece of thin cardboard covered with foil.

The top of the box was a piece of white cardstock that I used a set of Martha Stewart's all around punches. Martha Stewart punches are available at Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Jo Ann Fabrics, and most scrapbooking stores. Then after I made the lacy edged square I used a square Spellbinder die to cut out the middle so that I had a frame. If you are not good at centering those dies, you could cut out a square of a different color and adhere that to the lacy edged square. Then I used a Scrapping Cottage/Peachy Keen die set (Snowman) which I have to say is a really cool dies set because there are other dies to add to the snowman to add the accessories (Hats)

I also used some glitter on the snowman to jazz him up a bit. Just don't go over kill on the glitz. I also used some ink to highlight different parts of the die cut.

Here are several pictures of my finished "candy" box. When I put everything together the box looked a little empty to me and that is when I got out the Oreo Truffle recipe and made those. I will put the recipe for those at the bottom of the page.



Just the inside of the goodies.



The top of the closed box.



A close up of the box so you can see the glitter and details. (And this box is really red, I hate it when my camera makes reds look orange!)



It is easy to make an assembly line to make several of these all at the same time! What a time saver.



Mix this one up, do it for a different holiday!

Now as promised, that Oreo Truffle recipe:

1 regular pkg Chocolate Oreo Cookies
1 8 oz cream cheese (softened to room temp)
1 pkg White Almond bark (6 of 12 of the bricks will do this)
1 pkg chocolate Almond bark (2 or 3 of the bricks will do this)

In a food processor chop the Oreo cookies to a fine powder, add in the cream cheese and mix until well blended. Refrigerate for several hours or over night. Scoop the refrigerated Oreo mixture (I used my small cookie scooper so that they are uniform in size and shape) onto parchment paper. Melt the white almond bark, dip each rounded Oreo ball in the white bark and return to the parchment paper. Melt the chocolate almond bard and drizzle the dipped balls with the chocolate for decoration. Allow to harden either at room temp or in the refrigerator. Makes 4 1/2 doz bite sized balls.

I hope that my tardiness on posting this project will inspire you to think to other holidays to try something new.

Happy Scrappin' ! ! !

Brenda

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Pinterest Is A Great Inspiration!

I was invited into "Pinterest" by my friend Cindy. (THANK YOU CINDY!)

This site is a wealth of inspiration and a very addicting. The word "serendipity" comes to mind. When I am low on mo-jo I go to the Pinterest site and all the creative juices come flowing back. It is a wonderful site.

I know that I am a little late showing these projects, as Christmas was a month ago, but the ideas are fresh, a little funky, and can be used for other holidays or projects. Or if you like to think of it this way - maybe I can inspire you for next year and you can start early for the 2012 Christmas season.

In any case these are 100 % craft lifted.

I found old rulers and Scrabble Game tiles in a local junk/thrift store AND my friend Rainy also sent me some (THANK YOU RAINY.) I found items like plastic buttons that I removed the shanks, ribbon, glue and spray poly in my stash.

Now out on Pinterest there were several versions of these, but I liked the "portrait" hang instead of the "landscape" hang. I also changed them up and put family names on them to be able to use different letters because let's face it there are only so many letters in a Scrabble Game.







If you look closely at the last picture you can see my hand-made paper chain garland that I posted about previously.

I loved the way these turned out and they made darling "tags" on the top of a gift and I was so excited to see how quickly family members put them on their Christmas trees.

Don't be afraid to "borrow" someones idea and make it your own. Looking forward to next Christmas because I have "pinned" so many more ideas that I found at Pinterest.

So with that today I say Happy Crafting ! ! !

Brenda