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!