Make Gift "Baskets" in Useful Storage Containers

Reading all of these tips made me remember what I packaged up last year. Sorry, no photos, so you will have to use your imagination!

I hate Easter basket type gifts! This might sound harsh but what I really hate is the basket that these gifts come in. What do you do with them after the gift is gone? The real answer is that unless it is not a true wicker Easter basket, one usually tosses them or donates them to get rid of them. So with this in mind, I did not want to subject others to my strong aversion to wicker Easter baskets when (as a mother of 3) I am giving out thank you/acknowledgment gifts during the holidays to: teachers, neighbors, principals, best friends and casual friends, managers and the like.

During the holidays, our local drugstore was selling food storage jars. Some had a plastic over the mouth seal as a bonus food sealer and some did not. I bought one selling for about $2 each that was a square shape and the size was about 6 inches tall, I believe it was measured in ounces. I got the 32 oz. one. Some things were bought in bulk or multi-serve packaging, keeping the cost low

Ingredients

This is the list that I compiled to create a jar that cost about $10 each:

1. small flower magnet picture frame
2. single serve apple sauce
3. single serve package of nuts
4. a small box of raisins
5. a small pack of post-its
6. a pen
7. single serve coffee packet
8. single serve hot coco packet
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9. single serve tea packet
10. single serve drink mix packet

There might have been more things but as you can see from the list and by using your imagination, my goal was to create a small food snack jar so that the person I was giving it to would have something besides Christmas candy to snack on while sitting at their desk.

Directions

Stuff the jar, putting a scattering of M&M's to fill in the cracks of the other items.

Place seal over mouth of jar with the self sticking plastic seal for the mouth of the jar. A lot of the people I gave them to thought that they were bought at a store that way and some even came to me asking what store I bought them from.

Place stickers around jar. After stuffing the jar, the next step was to get some festive Christmas stickers (not the tacky ones but the ones that looked more classy) and put a few on the lid and some around the jar.

Wrap ribbon with name card and candy cane around jar and hand out to people for Christmas.

I suggest keeping a list of all that was stuffed in jar because this year I did the same type of packaging but I had forgotten what I had put in the jar last year so I might have duplicated some items.

Several of the people that I had given these type of gift baskets to were very thankful to have something other than Christmas calorie punching food to snack on and a jar to keep all the goodies in while taking the time to snack on them (Hawaii has a terrible bug problem).

It also made me feel good not to inflict others with my aversion to wicker Easter/gift baskets.

By Soyzick from Hawaii