The making of neighbor gifts

Making cards/gifts for those near and far is one of the things I love to do to get ready for Christmas. I really enjoy baking and my family gets tired of my treats so it's nice to send them off to someone else. Some years we haven't done much and have gone with other neighbor gifts like jams, cookies in a jar or other such things. But this year money was tight so cooking it was. I was able to make all these goodies only needing to buy some eggs and borrow a couple ingredients when I ran low and didn't want to run to the store. All the more costly parts were things I already had which really helped this time of year.

I even still had a huge tub of melting chocolate from a past project that was still good so I could make some treats that were a little nicer without having to foot the larger expense.



So over a day and a half I made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, orange dream sickle cookies, chocolate chip banana bread, molded chocolates, chocolate covered candy canes, sugar cookies, persimmon chocolate chip cookies, peppermint bark, and the kids had fun dipping other things like pretzels, marshmallows, and gummy bears to name a few.

Both girls had a lot of fun, but like most things, watching a 3 year old bake and dip chocolates is just so much fun I can't explain it. She would concentrate so hard. She enjoyed hitting the candy with the hammer to make the peppermint bark, and did it without injury to herself or my house.

My friend game me these cute gift tags she'd made but wasn't going to use so we had them to make the left over plates from some past baby shower seem more festive than the yellow might otherwise have been.

Hopefully those we took the treats to enjoyed them as much as we did making them. At least they maybe got to try new treats they wouldn't have otherwise made and could decide if it was something they'd like again or not. I know we got some tasty things that I've never made like two different popcorns that had white chocolate on them, one with nuts and regular chocolate too that John took care of pretty much the whole bag, another with just a hint of peppermint which we ate the entire bag while we were out delivering. My kids also got fudge which I never make so they loved having treats that were not ones I make to enjoy.

Now, if you didn't get a neighbor treat don't take it personally, though in past years we've made a list and sat down and wrote out who we should give them to to make sure we don't leave out friends and teachers and such we didn't go about it that way this year.

This year we just loaded them all up and went for a drive with the kids. People we saw or houses we saw we stopped at. Sometimes we'd be on one street and the kids or someone would say, "how about so and so" so off we would go to that house, from there we'd see another house or someone would think of someone else. A few we felt drawn to the house that we just felt like we should give to whether we knew them or not. Once we ran out we ran out. That was the end of the gifts for the year. The kids had fun doing it in such a different way this year, and like I said I hope no one who didn't get them felt left out.

This final picture however was a request. I asked John if he would like one large platter of goodies for work people or several smaller plates for people at work that he's closer to. He said one large plate. I started making up plates when he called and told me that multiple people at work when they heard that he was bringing in something his wife had made for them the next day asked if it was my chocolate dipped strawberries. So that night when at the store we grabbed a bunch of strawberries and this is what he took into work that day. Before lunch every strawberry was gone. At least I know someone like the goodies I made for them.