Gifts In A Jar

Do you ever struggle to find the perfect gift for someone?  Ever have a “hard-to-buy-for” person you need to give a gift to?  Or that person who has everything?  It can be overwhelming coming up with creative (and clutter-free!) gift ideas.

These gifts in a jar are the perfect solution!  

When my kids were younger we usually gave these jars with cookie mix to their teachers so we knew we were giving something unique, appreciated, and clutter-free. Teachers get a lot of gifts and, let’s face it, many of them are repetitive (how many “#1 Teacher mugs” does a teacher really need?!).  We’ve also given these to grandparents for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day or for hostess gifts and Christmas gifts. 

If you’re not familiar with the concept, all the dry ingredients for a recipe go in a jar, with a tag telling the recipient what wet ingredients to add and how to bake these yummy treats.  There are books for cookies, muffins, squares, and even dinners!  We usually made cookies since they are universally loved and the jars look pretty!

We used a few books with recipes (you can find them here and here).

These jar gifts are REALLY easy to make, which is one of the reasons we loved doing them.  The kids helped measure, pour, and push ingredients down, and decorated the jars afterwards. 

Here are the steps we usually took:

• Choose recipes for each person.  This particular time we made two jars with Wholesome Peanut Butter Cookies, 1 jar with Ginger Rounds, and 1 jar with S’mores Squares. 
• Get mason jars. We had extras from storing our leftover paint but you can use any jars as long as they are large enough for all the ingredients. Note:  Make sure you use the right size jars for the recipe you’ve chosen.  There is a real variety of sizes and shapes of Mason jars out there.  We tried to use a pasta sauce jar (the small one in the picture) but when we started putting ingredients in we realized it wasn’t big enough. 

• Gather all the ingredients for the recipe(s) you’ve chosen.
• Measure the ingredients and put them into the mason jars in layers.  Sometimes you need to pack them in tightly (especially brown sugar).  We used an ice cream scoop because it’s not as pointy as a spoon when it’s inside the jar. 

Here’s the Wholesome Peanut Butter Cookies recipe in a jar.  You can see the layers of ingredients.

Note:  Sometimes the recipe says to mix all the dry ingredients together first and then pour them into the jar (it seems to happen mainly when the ingredients aren’t very colourful or textured so then it looks nicer to just have them all pre-mixed). 

Here is the S’mores Squares jar.  You can see the layers of graham cracker crumbs, brown sugar, marshmallows, and chocolate chips.  Mmmm…

• Screw the lid on top of the jar and decorate it if you’d like.  We sometimes used tissue paper or coloured cello wrap.  This time we used pieces of material.  Aren’t these animal prints cute?!

• I used an elastic to help hold the fabric in the centre of the lid while I tied the ribbon in place.  Not pretty but it works.  

• Once the ribbon was tied tightly I removed the elastic.

• Attach a card with the directions so the person who receives this gift in a jar can make the yummy recipe.  The books include several tags for each recipe but whenever we used the last one we made sure to copy it so we had it available in the future.  You could also copy them on cardstock or print them up yourself.

• The backside of the cards is blank so you can write a note to the recipient if you’d like.  We usually wrapped these jars in a gift bag and included a card so we didn’t usually write on the tags.  My daugher often put stickers on hers instead 🙂

• Give the gifts in a jar to the teacher and enjoy their appreciation for a thoughtful, unique, and clutter-free gift!  We never had anything but positive comments from our kids’ teachers or anyone else we gave them to. Everyone can use these gifts because everyone enjoys homemade cookies!  And even if the person doesn’t enjoy baking very much, these are so simple to make that anyone can make them 🙂

That’s it!  A great gift in a jar.

Knowing we always gave these gifts in a jar to our kids’ teachers took away the stress of figuring out what to give or make each Christmas and June. It was simple, organized, and clutter-free, just the way I like things!

Have you ever made gifts in a jar?  What gifts do you give to teachers?  If you are a teacher, what’s the best (or worst!) gift you ever received?

If you need help decluttering of organizing, contact me for in-person organizing services in the Mississauga area, or virtual organizing services anywhere else.

Happy organizing!