Homemade Christmas: Gifts in a Jar

This is the first of a few coming posts about homemade holiday gifts.  When times are tight, creativity can help to reduce your gift-giving budget without losing the sincerity or style of the gift.  Here are a few links for gifts that are compiled with or stored in a jar as well as some of my own ideas that came to mind when I found them :).

For some of these projects, any size jar will do.  Others will need a specific type or size of jar.  Scope out your projects and start saving those jars and see what you can make for this holiday season.

Reduce*Reuse*Recycle - Use emptied condiment jars (peanut butter, pickles, salsa, etc.) to gift your holiday goodies.  Wash them out well - especially the lids.  Decorate the lids with a bit of holiday fabric or wrapping paper and you're ready to go.  Check for lingering odors and then fill them with holiday cookies, fudge and candies.  Your goodies will stay fresh until they're ready to be eaten.

Chocolate Chip Cookies in a Jar This is a fun idea to pass along food that doesn't have to be eaten right away.  The method is to neatly stack all of the dry ingredients for a cookie recipe into a jar.  Decorate the top and add the recipe and shazam - gift ready for giving.  The method can be used for most types of cookies although I would caution you to stick with basic recipes.  Throw in some holiday colored M&Ms for color and enjoy.  I once received one of these that was all pretty and decorated but the combination of ingredients (raisins, M&M's, and chocolate chips) didn't appeal to me so it sat in the cabinet for a long time.

Homemade Bath Salts Bath salts are relatively easy to make if you have access to the ingredients.  PioneerThinking has a lot of fun bath salt recipes.  If you'd like to gift some rest and relaxation this holiday season, check it out.

Jar Photo Frames I stumbled across this idea and I love it!  It's especially fun for grandparents and showing off pictures of the kids.  I have a couple of ideas for putting multiple photos in the jar that I'm going to try out and will post more on later.

Applesauce Cake in a Jar This one is a little out there but I thought it was interesting so I gave it a link.  I'm wondering if you can make it work with other cakes.  Or use the little half-pint jars and homemade brownie batter... hmmmm.

Sewing Kit in a Jar I recently have jumped back into sewing and this gave me great ideas for organizing my sewing stuff!  Read through the comments on the linked page as there are also some great ideas there too.