Hello all, please pardon the spotty posting of late-- we've been traveling cross-country on our annual Oh-Hey-That's-What-My-Loved-Ones-Look-Like-I-Almost-Forgot Transcontinental Tour. And like Thanksgiving's meatless post, this one's not a house one (tough to post about house projects when you haven't done any). So if you don't want to read about my solution to the annual gifting dilemma, skip away! We'll be back in January with an update about the slate fireplace (we laid it before we left, and like everything else we've done, it was a learning experience). But for now, Homemade Gifting 101:
Homemade gifts are great for so many reasons. First, making something is cheaper and easier than buying something. Second, you're not saddling your loved ones with gifts they'll never use. And from my end, our little house doesn't have unlimited storage space, and you all know my occasional tables are always chockablock full of crap-- there's just no place to put thirty-seven scented candles and jars of body lotion and coffee-table books and all the other stuff you give people when you don't have much money to burn. But we always, always have room for dessert, so homemade gifts are great. I've experimented over the years, often in collaboration with my culinarily-gifted sister. Generally it's peppermint bark, but a few years back it was jalapeño pepper jelly (not sure my Michigan in-laws quite knew what to do with that one, but we Southerners love it over cream cheese), and once we produced a batch of chocolate-covered pretzels that turned out looking a little odd but tasted great.
Last year I made dog cookies. Yep. You see, my dad's whole side of the family is composed of Dog People. Not freaky human-canine hybrids, mind you, but people who really, really love their dogs. So instead of making candy for my grandmother and my aunts and uncles and cousins, I decided to bake treats for two dachshunds, a cocker spaniel, a lab/chow-chow mix, a corgi mix, a Parsons Russell terrier, a couple of golden retrievers, and assorted labradors.
Homemade gifting is a two-part process up in here. First, the baking, which is totally boring, and the only good part about it is that it usually involves having a glass of wine with my sister (and if you haven't done that, I recommend it, because she's totally awesome).
Second, the packaging design. Now, I should mention that I'm slightly obsessed with aesthetics. Right now you're talking to a girl who spent eight months designing her own wedding invitations and sweating every detail (and had them letterpressed very affordably and beautifully by Mercurio Brothers) and then promptly stopped caring about all other elements of the event planning. I love fonts and little bits of clip-art. I mean, I LOVE them. It's probably not healthy.
So anyhow I usually put the finished treats into some sort of kraft-paper box and then tie on a cool ribbon and attach a tag. Here's the tag design from last year's dog biscuits, which also included a recipe-- making dog cookies is super easy and I thought the families with little kids might enjoy it as a Mommy (or Daddy, we're very progressive here at Our Feet May Leave) and Me type of activity-- and a little dog-bone-shaped cookie cutter:
At press time I'm currently putting the finishing touches on some lovely three-layer peppermint bark and a little Rocky Road bark (that one turned out really ugly-- it LITERALLY looks like dog poop-- but it tastes pretty divine) and I'm tossing around some ideas for my tags.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a tasty holiday!
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