Handmade gifts that support a local Charity

I realize that I should of posted this about 2 weeks ago but time has certainly gotten away from me. I’ve had this gift idea in mind for awhile now but with the craziness of the holiday season we just started making our gifts this past week. Now that my oldest is in kindergarten and my youngest in preschool we have more people to buy for. Teachers, assistants and bus drivers make for a long list, plus all our friends and neighbors.  I tend to have the boys help me in the gift giving process because essentially these gifts are from them. In the past we have made homemade breads, cookies and treats, went to Nursery’s and picked out plants, made handmade cards and this year we did something special because each gift that we gave is essentially helping someone else.

I belong to the MOMS Club of Drexel Hill and one of the moms came up with this amazing idea of making a cookbook of our favorite recipes. We all LOVE cooking, baking and entertaining and whenever we get together someone is always asking for a recipe of some sort. We then decided to make this a fundraiser for Pathways. Pathways is a great local organization that  was founded in 1978 as the Women’s Association for Women’s Alternatives. It served as one of Pennsylvania’s first residential programs to keep low-income, vulnerable women together with their children and has grown to become one of the Greater Philadelphia Region’s foremost providers of residential and community-based services for women, children and families. Each year over 6,000 women, children and families benefit from our full complement of social services; job training and employment assistance; as well as outreach and residential programs as they move along the path to self-sufficiency. Proceeds of all the books go to Pathways, so they can continue to help in their mission of helping families be more successful in every way.

As I started to look through the book I noticed a great cookie recipe that I thought would be perfect for a “Cookie in a Jar” gift. So we headed over to Michaels and the our local Giant to gather all the materials and ingredients we needed for the gifts. There was a few bumps in the road, like having to improvise with a snowflake wand for our snowflake sponge for painting and the original recipe called for much more dry ingredients then what would fit into the jar so we have to cut the recipe in half. After we figured it all out we got started making our gifts. I have to warn you, it’s a bit messy. Glitter as we all know is just a mess no matter how many table cloths, mats or newspaper you have laid down. We also had an issue with the flour not flowing into the jar but after seeing a similar recipe on Actual Mom. Now Sierra was smart because she used a funnel for the dry ingredients and I sadly did not. By the time we were done we had glitter ghost faces 🙂 LOL

Mix the color paint you want Sponge paint the bags
and spread on the snowflake then cover the snowflakes
or any type of sponge you want. with glitter

After the bags are done, lay them out to dry.
Next comes the real fun!

The ingredients you need for each jar is 1/2 tsp baking
powder, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp.salt and 2 1/2 cups flour

Jackson (with help from me) measured out the ingredients
and placed in each jar

In the meantime, I went outside and painted the tops of each mason jar
with flat white spray paint.

Once the jars were filled and lids dry we placed the lids on the jars and then put snowflake stickers on the top. I found these in the scrap booking section of Michaels. Great area to find interesting things for crafts.

I then printed out each recipe and cut them out to look like ornaments, since our holiday card was an ornament. At the end it explains to our teachers receiving the gifts that each cookbook bought proceeds were given to Pathways and if they wanted to order cookbooks they could contact our club.

In each bag we put a MCDH Cookbook, recipe card, Mason jar filled with dry ingredients,
cookie cutter that was attached to our holiday card.

All ready for delivery!

If you would like to purchase a Drexel Hill Moms Club Cookbook please contact me. They are currently selling for $8 for 1 or $15 for 2 books. These would also be great gifts for Valentines Day, Mother’s Day or even end of the year gifts for teachers.

This post was given to us by Trina O’Boyle founder of O’Boy! Organic. O’Boy! Organic offers services and classes for parents and children. For more information, tips and recipes from Trina please visit her at www.oboyorganic.com