The Little House Living Show – Episode 013 – Gifts in a Jar

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The Little House Living Show – Episode 013 – Gifts in a Jar

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What’s In This Episode?

 

0:36 – Introduction
1:00 – Jars you can use
2:00 – Food Mixes in Jars
6:33 – Candles and body products
9:00 – Survival Kits
11:00 – Gift baskets with jars
13:56 – Encouragement for gift making

 

Links Mentioned in This Show

 

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Podcast Transcription

And welcome back to another episode of the Little House Living show. I hope that you guys had an awesome Thanksgiving and you were able to do something fun. And hopefully with either friends or family, I just, I love this time of year because it’s so special. There are so many special traditions that happen, special food that’s being made, and it just is just an over overall, just a great time of year.

So we’re getting pretty close to Christmas now because we’re into December. And so today I wanted to talk to you about some gift ideas. I love to make guests in a jar because they’re so cute and they package up so nice. And I always have jars. I don’t know if you will have extra jars this year. I know there was the whole jar shortage thing happening, but if you happen to have any jars that you can use for some gifts, I have got some ideas for you today, and you don’t have to use like the fancy ball jars or anything like that to make a gift in a jar.

Since it’s not something that’s going to be heated or processed or anything like that, you can just use old Mason jars, old pickle jars that you clean out, any kind of jar that you can find. It worked for a gift in a jar. The only exception would be if you were going to put like a candle in it or something that actually would warm up the jar, but for most gifts in a jar, any type of jar is going to be fine.

So I want to start this by talking about probably the most popular gift in a jar, which is food mixes. Everybody likes to give food mixes in a jar because they can look so pretty if you put them in layers. And it’s just fun to give somebody a new mix. Some of my favorites that I’ve liked to make in the past would be sugar cookie mix in a jar oatmeal cookies.

Both of those are really inexpensive to making, give us gifts and cookies are always appreciated, especially with older folks. They love those mixes because it’s so easy for them to make the recipe later. And maybe not so much with the oatmeal cookies, but with sugar cookies, you can kind of dress up your jar a little bit by adding a cute little cookie cutter, kind of tied onto the side, maybe something in the theme of whoever your gift recipient is something that they really enjoy. That’s a really fun one to any kind of bread mix is always fun. My favorite of course is doing quick bread mixes because I love making quick breads myself and you can customize them so much. I know we have a recipe on the blog for an orange cranberry bread. That would be a really fun one to give at Christmas time as a bread mix.

And then of course you could do some kind of scone or muffin mix, and you could leave those plain, or you could kind of personalize them to the tastes of whoever you’re giving them to by adding in some dried fruit or chocolate chips or something like that. Those are really easy to put together. And all the food mixes are just really inexpensive to make. You can usually make them with what you already have in your pantry. So it’s really easy. Yeah, those are great to give us gifts. And, and one alone is a great gift, especially for someone that you don’t plan on buying a big gift for. You can always do just one jar, one of the one gift in a jar, something else to kind of think about that’s along the lines of food in a jar is doing some spice mixes. This one is really fun and just a little bit more unique than just doing like a regular cookie mix in a jar.

If you mix up your own homemade spice blends, those can be really fun to give someone because they’re so unique and tailored to you. And so giving them as a gift feels just a little bit more special. You can get like a smaller jar to put those in. You could do the smaller, not half pint, but the little four ounce jars. Those are really cute for little spice mixes. I have bought some actual little glass spice jars off of I’m pretty sure it was off of Amazon. I will try to link that in the show notes if I can find them, but I bought little spice jars to do not quite spice mixes for a gift one year. But what we did one year was do different flavorings that you could put on top of popcorn. And I think we put five different flavoring mixes together and then gave them as a gift.

And I put them in those little spice jars. So that was really fun and something just unique and different. I’m pretty sure I gave them as a gift with a bag of popcorn to pop. So that’s just kind of fun and something different. Maybe get your creative mind working on some different food gifts that you could give in a jar that might be just a little bit different from the normal. And that’s especially good if you know that someone might be prone to getting a lot of gifts in a jar, something just a little bit different, you know, that they’re not going to get a duplicate of another gift that they’re receiving. So those are all really fun, really easy. Some other food things in a jar that aren’t necessarily to eat, but to drink our cappuccino mix and hot chocolate mix. I have recipes for both of those and I will link them in the show notes, but those are always well received in the winter and really easy to put together.

And they’re also really easy to make a little bit fun. You can always put it just in a plain, if you want to, especially if you want to give a larger amount, you could put it in a nice pint jar or a nice quart jar. Otherwise you could put it in a cute little bag and stick it inside. Like a fun mug. You could top it with some really fancy marshmallows. There’s a lot of different variations that can kind of take that gift in a jar and elevate it just a little bit. So it makes it just kind of a fuller gift. So those are kind of the food gifts in a jar. There is pretty much endless possibility when it comes to giving some kind of food mix, because you can basically make, you can mix out of anything and put it in a jar.

So get creative this year, new things, new fun things that you want to give as gifts. Those are always fun. So the other thing I briefly mentioned before was when in candles in jars or making body scrubs, both of these are of course non-food gifts, but can still go in a jar. They’re still always really raw. Well-Received candles are a little bit more involved. Of course, you’re going to want to find a jar that can stand up to some heat. I like to use the ball jars. They make these little, I’m not even sure how much they hold, but they’re kind of like a little Squatty ball jar. And those are great for putting candles in because you can pour your candle in there and you can still put a lid on it and give it as a gift that’s really fun. And then body scrubs or lip scrubs or whatever kind of scrubs you make.

Those are always a fun gift to give in a jar, especially like, you know, to like a teen girl or somebody that’s really into like body care and stuff. And there’s so many different kinds of scrubs that you can make with so many different sense. And again, like the food gifts scrubs can be made so easily. And so inexpensively, you probably already have stuff on hand to be able to make them with. So I have a couple of recipes for scrubs in my little house living book that are really good and they’re really different and fun. And then I also have some on the blog too, and I will be sure and link those in the show notes. So you can check those out if you want to make some scrubs. I do have a tutorial too, on how to make candles in teacups, not quite the same as making it in a jar, but both are really cute gifts.

And you’d make both about the same way candles. If, I mean, if you’re going to do it, you’re not going to want to do just one is gifts. So if you decide to do candles in a jar for gifts for multiple people this year, it can be done still pretty inexpensively. Especially if you can find the wax in like a bulk pack, you can always check like hobby lobby and wait until they have it on half price or use the coupon that they have on their website to be able to get that for a little bit less, but candles and bodies grubs, again, really fun gifts relatively. Yeah. Inexpensive to make. They look really cute in jars. So those are also some fun things that you might want to try this year.

So then the other thing, and this is really because this can be so personal, but the other fun thing to make as a gift and a jar that’s completely non-food is a survival kit.

And that’s kind of, it’s just kind of something funny that you come up with and some of the, the themes could be, you could make a teacher survival kits or a winter survival kit, or a survival kit for a nurse or a new mom or a grandparent. Really the possibilities are endless. Like, all you have to do is think of the person that you want to give the gift to and think of, okay, what is something that, you know, that defines them, that they really enjoy something that I could make a theme off of to put this survival kit together. And then in your jar, you can add all kinds of things that they might need. Maybe like a new mom might appreciate a little body scrub you know a tie and tired face, face mask and candy bar, just really small things.

But when they’re all put together in a jar, they make a cute little gift. And I know that people always love those. Those are really fun for somebody that maybe you want to give a little bit more of a gift to not just, you know, a sugar cookie mix or something, but something that you want to be really personal and that you can put together really based off of them. Now, the survival kits are probably the most expensive gift in a jar that I’m going to talk to you about today, but still relatively inexpensive. You might even be able to put them together based off of what you have in your home, you know, depending on what type of kits you’re wanting to make, but they’re really fun and just really unique for the person that’s receiving them. The nice thing is, is that they’re a non-food gift.

So if you don’t like to give food gifts, doing something like the scrubs, the candles or the survival kits, those are all great options. You definitely do not have to give a food mix in a jar, even if you want to give gifts in a jar. So those are just some other things to keep in mind. So then the last thing I kind of wanted to talk to you about with these whole gifts in a jar ideas is gifts in a jar are relatively small gifts. I mean, even the survival kits, if you were to put them in a court jar, it’s still a fairly small kit. So if I want to do gifts in a jar, but I want the gifts to be a little bit more than just the single jar. I like to put them together in a fun gift basket. Now the gift basket could include more gifts than a jar.

It can include some other things that just go along with the gift in a jar. For example, you could do some kind of like say you did the spice mixes or something for the flavoring mixes for popcorn. You could put those together, you could put it in with a bag of popcorn, all in a basket. You could put a movie in there, some kind of maybe sweet components, you know, some kind of chocolate or something that would go with like a whole movie night, or maybe even the, like the theater or boxes of candy, something like that, put it all together and in a basket. And you’ve got not just the flavoring mixes for popcorn, but you’ve got this whole cute thought out gift where you use that gift in a jar in it. But it’s so much more than that. So if you’re looking to, you know, make a bigger gift, think about using the, whatever your gift in a jar is, is kind of the base of your gift basket.

So let’s say another example could be, if you decide to do a bread mix, instead of just doing the bread mix in a jar, you could maybe do a couple of different bread mixes, maybe some cooking utensils that go with that, or baking utensils, like some new measuring spoons, a new mixing bowl, just something that would go along with the gift, but you can put it in a basket and just make it more. You could do that with the survival kits too. Those are kind of an all-in-one gift, but maybe you have some things that you’d like to include in your survival kit that just won’t fit in the jar. So like, if you’re doing the winter survival kit, your jar can have this small little winter survival things in it, the little hand warmers or anything that you could find that would be small.

And then you could also include like in a basket, you could do new scarves and mittens or just something that would go along with that, but not necessarily fit in the jar. So you could still pretty easily take those to the next level. If you wanted to, you could do this, the body scrubs, that would be pretty easy to make more of, you could put them in a basket that would include more of like kind of spa things at home. That would be really fun. Yeah. The possibilities are kind of endless with gifts in a jar, and it really depends on what you have for resources, what you have for a budget and who you’re giving it to. Also sometimes those smaller single gifts in a jar are going to be totally fine for who you’re giving it to. And then sometimes you want that little bit elevated gift with a little bit more, and either way you can make gifts in a jar, go either way.

So those are kind of the basic ideas that I have for you. I hope that gets your mind going and gives you some ideas on what you might be able to make and give this Christmas. I don’t know if you like gifts in a jar or special, especially fun if you like to do homemade gifts, because they’re just easy to put together, but they’re still homemade. They’re still thoughtful. And like I’ve mentioned, they’re still relatively inexpensive to make. So I hope this gives you some encouragement as you’re making your Christmas gifts this December. And I hope that you guys have an awesome Christmas. I will be taking a break from the podcast until next year. I always take a little Christmas break just to be able to completely enjoy the holidays with my family. So I will talk to you again in the new year, I’ve got some fun, new podcast episodes that are just waiting to come out to you. And like always, if you have any ideas for future podcasts, or if you have any comments on the ones that I’ve already done, go ahead and email me at little house, [email protected]. I love to hear from you and love to hear your feedback. And again, I hope you have an wonderful Christmas and just an awesome week this week. I will talk to you guys.

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4 Comments

  1. Good Morning,
    This is a nice idee never know what to give for Xmas.
    Yes even a Jar with cookies or something homemade like fudge or even a bottle filled with sea shells………..

  2. Thank you for the great ideas! I am planning to incorporate some of them in my Christmas gifts for family! Love your emphasis on slower and frugal living. I have been enjoying the oatmeal mix from your book every morning lately.
    All the best, Terri

  3. I didn’t find the popcorn seasoning recipes in your book or on your site. Would you have time to share? Thank you!

  4. This year back in May I started a homemade jar, 1000 ml jar, of homemade vanilla. I bought the vanilla beans on Amazon and a half gallon of medium priced bourbon. Followed the directions I saw on Pinterest and made wonderful Christmas gifts for my friends. I put the vanilla in very small jars with a piece of the vanilla bean. With the price of vanilla these days, these gifts were truly appreciated. Once the large jar was empty I put another refill of the bourbon in the jar with the vanilla beans for a new batch next year. The beans are expensive but it saved my a lot of money and time shopping. It smells so good and will be used in baking this winter.