Homemade Christmas Gift Basket Ideas

by Diane

When it comes to homemade Christmas gift basket ideas, I can’t help but think of the variety I made for a number of family members and friends about 6 years ago.

It was one of the most popular presents I ever gave, and one that seems to excite people who just hear about it from me. I think of them as the Christmas Cocoa Baskets, and despite the effort involved, look forward to when I can put them together again.

The baskets center around homemade cocoa mixes. I came up with about ten varieties, all of which shared at least some common ingredients (which allowed me to save money by buying some things in bulk). Some of the ingredients were used in the form they were purchased in – those included the base cocoa flavors / varieties you can find at the store, from companies I know make good ones.

Other ingredients required dehydration and/or chopping up in the blender and then grinding into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle – examples include dried fruit, nuts, and candies.

The idea was to come up with involved cocoa flavors that you don’t generally just find mass-produced. Each flavor was given a cute, silly, or admittedly corny name, which also generally was seasonally-themed.

The cocoa mixes were poured (sometimes with strategic layering of elements) into glass spice jars with screw-on lids from the dollar store, and given labels with the names nicely printed on them.

I just used pretty, stick-on gift tags that didn’t have “To:” and “From:” already on them, and wrote the flavor names on myself, but I have good handwriting. Using sheets of printer-friendly labels and the software that comes with them is another option.

Each person or family receiving one of these gift baskets had for them chosen a few (relative to the number of people) of the cocoa flavors, which I knew or thought they’d like best. Baskets picked out from Dollar Tree would have nestled in the bottom a computer-printed list of the flavors included, and their ingredients.

I printed the flavor names in a slightly larger, prettier font, and then kept the rest as normal text, for ease of reading. On top would go the cocoa vials, a few cinnamon sticks wrapped in colored cellophane and tied off with ribbon, a few chocolate-dipped plastic spoons (in dark, semi-sweet, milk and white chocolate, as well as caramel ones in a few cases) handled the same way, a miniature can of whipped cream, and a mug for each person.

Sometimes I chose a mug that was already perfect for them (don’t underestimate Dollar Tree for options), and for some people I started with a plain mug and decorated it myself with dishwasher-safe, non-toxic craft pens sold for that purpose.

The whole thing would be wrapped in cellophane and tied up with ribbon – which again, I must stress, you will find at Dollar Tree for many times less than you will find the same supplies even at a place like Wal-Mart.