EASY Homemade Hot Chocolate Gifts

Homemade Peppermint Hot Chocolate

I've got a quick and easy gift idea for classrooms, teachers, friends and more today. Homemade hot chocolate with some mini marshmallows and peppermint -- yum!

A quick list of ingredients and supplies:

25.6 oz Nonfat instant dry milk
16 can of Nesquick
16 oz Coffee creamer (Whoops! Forgot this one in the photo so make sure you add it)
1 pound of powdered sugar
1 bag of mini marshmallows
candy canes
small plastic bags
curling ribbon
christmas tag

Now for the directions:

Put the first 4 ingredients in a very large bowl and stir and then stir some more. Now take all of your candy canes (without the wrappers!) and put them in a ziploc and crush them up. Make sure to leave a few chunks so that they look pretty for presentation. Now take your small plastic bag and add about 5 tablespoons of hot chocolate mix. Next add a few marshmallows and then some crushed candy cane.

Use your curling ribbon to tie the bag off and add your gift tag... the one I've shown is from the Shindig Parties TO GO Let it Snow Collection.

That's all folks - it's super easy! (I found the original recipe here -- don't you just love the internet?)

I'm making 90 of these today for my kids' classes and it's going pretty quick -- what a fun and EASY idea.

And by the way my new friend, Kirsti, is hosting a giveaway of the Let it Snow Collection of printables on her Blog -- the giveaway will run until December 20th so hurry on over there and sign up! It's a great collection -- you can see more photos from it here.

Hope you have a wonderful day today!

Candy Christmas Trees

In keeping with all things holiday, I wanted to share a great tutorial I saw on C.R.A.F.T. today. Jamie has a wonderful, crafty website and a super easy idea for decorating your home this Christmas -- Candy Trees! Yum!

Well, OK, you really shouldn't eat them, but they are very cute nonetheless. Take a look.

Aren't they beautiful? And so easy, too. Easy enough for a little family holiday project.... that is if you can keep the kids from eating all the candy first!

These are a few of Jamie's materials.... spice gumdrops, cherry slice gumdrops, peppermint puffs and m&m's. She also uses heavy duty poster board to create the tree forms, some hot glue, a knife, a cutting board, packing tape and some marshmallows.

These are her tree forms..... she cut heavy duty poster board and formed it into a cone shape and wrapped it all tightly with packing tape.

Jamie cut the gumdrops in half to save a little on candy and it also helps with the stickiness factor.

Next she layers them down the cardboard tree until the form is covered.

She uses various candies and patterns to create a beautiful holiday display. I just love these! I think they might even last a few years if you packed them away carefully in some oversized ziploc storage bags, too.

I hope Jamie's project inspired you as much as it did me! I'm still praying for a few more hours in the day -- too many great projects and not enough time! Be sure to check out C.R.A.F.T. for more fabulous tutorials and ideas!