a few gifts

I realize it is after Christmas and if you are like me, once Christmas is over, I am ready to move on. March forward towards a new year. Clean, organize, and put away all thoughts of gift giving until next fall. So, if you are like me, then this post will need to be filed away for later.

I wanted to share what we did for friends gifts this year. I have to admit, that these are usually my favorite gifts to plan for. I like the challenge of trying to think of something creative and find a way to make multiple gifts for cheap.

My friend, Jennifer, gave me a recipe several years ago that is one of my families favorite. It is for a bacon wrapped pork tenderloin. We seriously eat this at least every other week. The recipe calls for several different spices to create a rub. So, I decided to bottle up all the spices and create the rub for all our friends. I realize that this is not an original idea....but for us it was a way to share one of our favorite things with some of our favorite people.

This did involve a bit of math. Which isn't my strongest point. I'm sure it took me longer than the average person to figure out all the measurements!

Here are the players:

and the big bowl of spices:

and the finished product....complete with round label with a fancy name (pork rub....because i am so good with words) and also a scoop and the recipe:

I also tried my hand at coffee staining paper for the first time. I had heard of it before but never given it a try. It is so easy and really achieved the look I was hoping for. All I did was print these cards out on white card stock and then brush on some coffee that had been sitting in the coffee pot for a few hours (it was cool). Then let them dry. It gave the paper a cool, aged look. I'm sure there is a different way to do this, but I was pleased with how it turned out.

I found these really cool crosses at Hobby Lobby (aka...my favorite store). I so wish I could learn to make stuff with glass and metal. But, I am so accident prone. I would be sure to have band aids on my fingers all the time. So for now, I'll just leave the manufactures up to making these. They really are cool. Our church's advent verse was the one printed on the card. So for the founding families of our church, we gave the pork rub and these crosses.

I really do love thinking of unique gifts. I do try to search at different times throughout the year and store ideas for a later use. If anyone is reading this...what are some ideas you have seen? There is a blog I follow called giverslog . It is the perfect place if you are looking for inspiration!