Neighbor Gifts for FWF

It's the last Friday of 2011--bring on the Friends with Flair! Be sure to check the Unity blog for a complete list of participants (there's a randomly drawn prize for commenting!!).

Today I'm sharing one last Christmas project! We have a great neighborhood--our neighbors invite our kids to swim in their pool, support our kids' Girl Scout and Cub Scout fundraisers, take turns with me walking the elementary kids to school, and keep an eye on one another's homes. Christmas is a great time for my family to let everyone know how much we appreciate them, so I like to remember everyone with a gift--but with six families in our neighborhood, it has to be something that doesn't break the bank. I keep the costs down (way down!) by making treats to give in pretty handmade packaging.

This year I made peppermint bark as our neighbor gift. So easy! I start by crushing 8 full-sized candy canes. My kids love doing this part! After they've unwrapped the candy canes and dropped them in a plastic bag, I hand them my heavy-duty ice cream scoop and let them go to town. While they crush, I melt a pound of vanilla candy wafers (I use Melting Wafers from Make 'n Mold) in the microwave. Once the wafers are smooth and melty, just stir in the crushed candy canes, then pour the mixture out onto a cookie sheet covered with waxed paper. After spreading out and smoothing the mixture with a spatula, just pop the tray in the fridge to chill for 20 minutes or so. When it's all set up, break the peppermint bark in to pieces, and that's it. Done! (Each recipe makes 20 ounces of candy.)

I bought the candy wafers for our peppermint bark at my A. C. Moore store before Thanksgiving when they went on sale for $1.67 per pound. I snagged candy canes as soon as they started going on sale, too. That meant I could give our neighbors about a pound of peppermint bark candy for less than $2 per family. Now that's something I can get behind! I picked up some Wilton Cookie Totes at A. C. Moore using some 50% off coupons--these were perfect for packaging the peppermint bark, and I love that they are resealable. All that was left to do was add a handmade gift tag:

At the beginning of the month, I helped a friend make tags and gift bags to package Christmas cookies. We had a few large tag shapes left over, so I used those as the basis for these tags but used images from my new Greetings of Christmas stamp set from Unity. I love how these turned out! I'm linking up this tag to the Unity Gift Wrapping challenge (which includes gift tags), the Simon Says Anything Goes Challenge, and over at Paper Sundaes Challenge #100: Celebrate.

Here's what the complete package looked like:

And here's a closer look at that yummy peppermint bark showing through the treat tote window:

Thanks for stopping by today!
Emily