It's Christmas! Day 21: Wrapping Christmas Presents PLUS Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

Ok, I have a confession to make. While I absolutely love Christmas and do consider myself pretty crafty, no matter how hard I try, I stink at wrapping presents. Like seriously, I try every year, but it’s just not that pretty. I don’t know what to tell you. So, I’ve decided to embrace the bad wrapping and have my son help me. That way, if anyone says anything, he wrapped them. Yeah, I know, I totally am throwing my son under the bus. Oh well.

Let’s get wrapping!

Phew! That was exhausting and felt like it took forever! But now it’s done. Want to see? Here are our presents, ready to be opened on Christmas morning!

Now that we're done wrapping presents, it's time to make some hot chocolate. But we're not going to make it for ourselves. Remember when we made our neighbors some gift baskets? Well, inside them, we placed some jars of hot cocoa mix, so today, we're going to show you what went into those.

First, we grabbed 4 16 oz glass jars.
We added our ingredients to each jar in even layers.
First is 1/3 cup of sugar.
Then, 1/3 cup of cocoa powder.
Next up is a layer of finely crushed candy canes (3 to be exact).
Then, 1/3 cup of mini chocolate chips.
Finally, we top our jar with 1/2 cup of mini marshmallows.

Tips:
- Add candy canes to a plastic bag and use a rolling pin to finely crush.

- Use a funnel to prevent spills and ensure even layers. Build a wide-mouth funnel by rolling paper into a cone and taping it in place.

Now that we're done filling our jars, we're going to screw on the lid, add a gift tag with instructions, and top it with a bow.

This is what our tags said:

Peppermint Hot Cocoa
You will need:
1 jar cocoa mix
6 cups milk

Steps:
1. Remove marshmallows from jar. Set aside.
2. Whisk cocoa mix and milk in pot set over medium heat until hot.
3. Pour into 4 mugs and top with marshmallows.

Don’t leave your wrapping until Christmas Eve. And make some homemade hot cocoa to share!

As always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 17: DIY Gifts PLUS an easy DIY for your kids

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

One very necessary part of Christmas is gift giving. With online shopping (hello, Amazon!), picking out gifts for people is easier than ever. Most of my family have wishlists that I can shop from. However, sometimes, I like to add a little something extra. Today, we’re talking DIY gifts.

I have a lot of crafting hobbies, but my main one is crochet. Here are the gifts I made for people this year.
I made a pocket shawl for my mother-in-law.

A couple cherry pie pot holders for my parents.

An astronaut for my son.

A Mandolorean ornament for my husband.

A small Dobby (you know, from Harry Potter) for a Secret Santa gift.

And Ron Weasley (again, from Harry Potter) for another Secret Santa gift.

My husband and I have recently gotten into 3D printing in the past year, so we made a couple gifts with that this year, too.
For my Secret Santa gift, I made a Ravenclaw bookmark and a spinning deathly hallows pendant.

I also made a Gryffindor bookmark for my other Secret Santa gift.

I plan to make a couple more things before Christmas, but I'm almost out of time!

Now, for the reason you’re really here, my son and I are going to show you how to make an awesome DIY gift that he made for his grandma and grandpa.

We made candle art! First, you need to cut a piece of tissue paper that just fits on your candle.
Then, draw whatever you want on this piece of tissue paper with markers. I had my son think about things his grandparents like and things he likes to do with them.

When you're done coloring, cut a piece of wax paper that fits around your candle, but is about 6 inches longer.
Put your tissue paper in place on the candle, wrap the wax paper around it, and hold onto that extra bit of wax paper while you carefully use a hairdryer to melt the tissue paper into the candle.

Not all gifts need to be bought from a store. They mean so much more and I get so much more excited to give them when I've put time and effort into the gift. Seriously! Try it!

As always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!