Homemade Taco Seasoning Gift Jars

I was recently invited to a My Favorite Things holiday party. If you have never heard of this, the concept is that you pick one of your favorite things - be it food, bath item, homemade, cleaning product, etc - and bring 3 of that item to the party. Everyone draws to see what new things they will be taking home and it is a chance to get to try new products and get some gift ideas for the holidays. Tons of fun!

We had a $5 limit (give or take) so I wracked my brain trying to decide what one thing to bring and settled on one of my truly favorite items in the kitchen....homemade taco seasoning. Seriously, if you haven't tried it, YOU MUST. It is so superior to store bought and is simple to make with seasonings that you most likely already have in your possession. It's also cost effective and you know that there are no preservatives in it. I not only use it for taco meat but like to coat homemade fries in it or mix it into sour cream for a dip or put it into a Mexican meatloaf....this list of possibilities goes on and on. Can you tell it truly is a favorite?

Let's make this into a fun little gift now. I already store mine in the freezer in a small mason jar so I decided to use the same thing for my recipients. 

Time to mix the spices. You can get the easy recipe that I follow at $5 Dinners. To make this even more cost effective, I buy my spices from the bulk bins at Winco. I then mixed up one big batch and then evenly distributed it between the mason jars.

Should we make it pretty? Silly question! I found some free printable mason jar labels over at Limeshot Design and used one of the blank designs to create a label for the lid, which I attached using Mod Podge (I am sure basic crafting glue would work fine too). I also hot glued a little bit of yellow ric rac around the rim of the jar for some extra cuteness.

I wanted the people who received these to have a copy of the recipe so they could keep refilling their jars so I printed these adorable recipe cards from Design Eat Repeat. I ended up cutting off the sayings at the top just so they wouldn't be so huge in comparison to the jar. I wrote out the ingredients, where I bought them cheap in bulk, how to make it and some suggestions for using it. The only thing I left off was how much was equivalent to a packet you would buy in the store (which is 2 Tbsp, by the way).

Small Tabasco jars attached with twine completed the gift.

Wouldn't you want to get this from a friend, co-worker, secret Santa? I'm thinking I might have to add it to my own list of homemade gifts this year!

"The Best Of" Shadow Box Gift

My husband's grandpa just turned 80 and I knew I had to come up with something special to celebrate this huge milestone. After some thought, I came up with the idea for a shadow box that featured all of the best things from the year he was born, which happened to be 1933. I started by having my mother-in-law hunt down an old baby picture of Jack (he was a twin too!).

 Then I used The People History for my information on what was happening during that year in history. I chose the topics of popular culture, who else was born that year, and how much things cost when narrowing down my focus.

It was as easy as finding a piece of scrapbook paper I liked for the background, using my Cricut to cut out the lettering (you could simply do this by hand or print it off of your computer), and printing off the information with a few pictures to make it more interesting. I did my magic with a trusty glue stick and the gift had come altogether.

Once it was in the shadow box (which I picked up at Hobby Lobby for 50% off!) it made a great addition to the table at thebirthday party that displayed different pictures of Jack over the years. Happy 80th Birthday Jack!

I think this gift would also be a great way to commemorate an anniversary or any other fun date in history you are celebrating. I know I found it fascinating to look back a ways in time and see what memorable things had taken place.

Featured on The Happy Housewives 100 Days of Homemade Christmas Gifts (2013):

End of School and Orange Themed Teacher Gift

I can't believe another school year has gone by! 9 months ago Nathan was excitedly getting ready for 1st grade - remember this picture?

And now here he is on his last day....he's grown so much!



His thoughts on his last day of school:

Of course he wouldn't have so many great things to say about first grade if he wouldn't have had a wonderful teacher. And a wonderful teacher deserves a special gift for getting us to this point! Last year I used some subway art to make a teacher appreciation gift for his Kindergarten teacher {you can check that out HERE if you are interested}. I have spent the year pinning all kinds of fun gift ideas for this year's teacher gift and finally settled on one when I saw this adorable Orange You Glad It's Almost Summer Gift Basket from Shaken Together. I just thought it was super cute and loved how bright and cheery it was.  I decided to check out the Dollar Store for my supplies and found plenty of fun orange themed stuff. Altogether, less than $10 spent (including the white tub to which I hot glued some orange ribbon). The tag is part of a free printable pdf, from Shaken Together, where you can also find some more fruit inspired tags for future appreciation gifts. I love how it turned out! What do you think?

kitchen towel, flowers, reese's, orange flavored water, an orange shaped popscicle, fan, tumbler, and citrus juicer

Can't wait to see what Second Grade will bring!

Clothespin Dolls

One of my nieces just turned 4 and I have almost always made something homemade for her birthday and Christmas gifts. This year I went completely homemade with Magnetic Paper Dolls (watch for a post soon with a girl version and a boy version) and Clothespin Dolls. I got the inspiration from these Disney Princess Dolls I saw on Pinterest. I was originally going to do those but I wanted to use what I had on hand and painting something to look exactly like something else isn't really my specialty. So I dug through my supplies and found clothespins, yarn, scraps of fabric and a wooden box. And Clothespin dolls were born! Here's what they look like:

I think they are pretty cute if I do say so myself! And they were pretty darn easy too. I don't have a true step-by-step for you because I just kind of winged it. But I will share the basics with you. First I started with some clothespins and I painted the face a neutral color and some different colored "tops" that would match the fabric scraps I had.

Then I added the dress or skirt. This really was as simple as cutting and wrapping the fabric and using a hot glue gun to secure it to the clothespin. No sewing involved! You can go very basic or as complicated as you desire. Here's the first one I came up with (kind of looks like a mermaid:)

Finally, I added hair. Again this step just involved choosing a length and a style and hot-gluing it into place. I started pretty basic but as I went on I was able to do some more creative styles:

At the last minute I decided to glue pieces of craft sticks onto the bottom so that they would be able to stand. And there you have it, 6 unique dolls using supplies I already had on hand:

I happened to have a cute wooden box on hand so I tucked them all inside so that she would have a nice place to store them all.

Want some more homemade gift ideas? Be on the lookout for my next post, Magnetic Paper Dolls for both boys and girls.

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Pin this - homemade gifts and Christmas decor

With less than a week left until Christmas I thought I would share some of the easy homemade gifts (for you last minute folks:) and DIY decorations that I have been finding on Pinterest the past few weeks. If you have found something you love, feel free to leave a link in the comments.

I thought this "Whisk You a Merry Christmas" was cute...click the picture for 15 gifts under $2

I made this for a friend...it takes only 4 ingredients that you likely have on hand and minutes to make (and smells AMAZING!)

This has to be my absolute favorite homemade gift find this week...magnetic paper dolls!

A tea wreath - beautiful and a great gift for the tea lover in your life

This list is actually up to 30 now (just click on the picture) - including a bean bag tutorial from yours truly:)

A Santa centerpiece made from a coffee can

I love this snowman family made from dollar store gloves - great decor or family gift

This sock snowman would cost next to nothing to make and is so adorable

I hope that gives you some stuff to work on this week if that's what you were needing. If not, something to bank for next year:) For more of the fun ideas I have been finding, make sure to come follow me on Pinterest - just click on the button on the upper right hand side of this page. Happy Pinning!

"Hands Down Best Dad" project

This weekend is my husband's birthday and on top of the coveted XBOX 360 game I got him, I also wanted to give him a more meaningful gift from the boys . After some brainstorming and browsing through the stuff I had laying around I came up with this project I have titled the "Hands Down Best Dad" project. Simple, cheap (or free in my case since I had all the supplies!) and thoughtful...my 3 favorite qualities in a gift.

 Here's how I did it:

Supplies:
*Picture frame (any size will work...pick something that will fit your project)
*Ribbon
*Paint
*Lettering - I used my Cricut for this. You could just as easily use stickers, vinyl letters, stenciled letters, etc.
*Hot glue and a glue stick
*Paper - Something to put it all on. I recently ordered a huge roll of pattern paper for making sewing patterns. It is kind of see through so I also used some cute wrapping paper behind it that slightly show through. You could use card stock, wrapping paper, etc. I also used construction paper for the lettering.

Get Started:
1. Cut whatever paper you are using to fit the frame. This is the wrapping paper I used behind the pattern paper:

2. Paint your kids hands and press down onto paper (Can I tell you how hard it was doing the 8 month old's?):

3. I did a strip of ribbon above and below the hand prints to frame them. Cut two even strips and use hot glue to adhere to the paper (I only glued the ends, I would recommend a dot in the middle of each strip also to keep it in place):

4. Now to do the names by the hand prints. Be creative here! I wanted to match the polka dot theme I already had going to I used red, green and blue construction paper along with my Cricut and cartridge punch set to create the boys' names:

Used my Cricut to create perfect circles

Punched the boys names into the green and red circles using my cartridge punch set

Glued the red and green circles onto the blue ones for this multi-color look

Their names applied to the paper with a glue stick

5. Using my Cricut, I cut out the phrase Hands Down Best Dad and applied to my project:

6. Finally, I put it into my frame (polka dot wrapping paper first, hand print paper on top):

I am really pleased with all of the color in this project. So much more fun than a basic hand print. We couldn't wait to share this with daddy so we opened presents earlier this week and he loved it!!