Holiday Gift Baskets

This year for Christmas I planned ahead. Unusual and uncharacteristic I know.

I made blackberry jam, apple butter, and fudge, packaged and sealed them into cute, pint sized mason jars, and printed out little labels at work. Next stop was the dollar store where I got plastic baskets that kind of look like the ones for collecting eggs. I shredded newspaper and then customized the baskets according to who I was giving them to. All of them had the three homemade goodies and then a couple of extras. For my older sister and her boyfriend we had a six pack of nice beer and a chocolate bar. For my younger sister, a bottle of Martinelli's organic sparkling cider, chocolate, and several photocopies of a particularly good Christmas card we were sent, and for our neighbors, a dozen of the eggs that the family chickens had laid. Grandma got a necklace that I bought from a street vendor, and Boyfriends mom got a scarf bought from an amazing Etsy shop

For our friends in Portland we also made fun gift baskets. We made them Bloody Mary kits with the previously described horseradish vodka. They included Worcestershire sauce, celery salt, lemons, organic tomato juice and olives stuffed with various morsels.

It was amazing and surprisingly inexpensive! The best part is I have extra goodies left over to give to people who write me letters of recommendation. I am going to have to try this planning ahead thing more often!