DIY Christmas Gifts Archives

DIY Coconut – Lime Body Butter Recipe

Happy Spring, everyone! I hope this post finds you all warming up…I know that the winter of 2018 was rather brutal.

I am starting the spring off with lots of new DIY ideas and I am excited to share some new recipes on the blog. There will be quite a few changes coming up to my site, as I am launching a new membership club called the DIY Labels Club. This will be a great club for those of you who create DIY products and need some labels or packaging for them! You can check out more info about it here – we hope to see you in the club!

Now – back to the recipe for this spring-inspired body butter! I made a huge batch of this last week and most of the containers are out the door. I love the scent of the fresh lime + warm coconut.

This is very similar to my other body butter recipes, because why mess with a good thing?

Instructions and Ingredients for Body Butter:
4 cups Coconut Oil
1 TBSP Vitamin E Oil
12-15 drops Lime Essential Oil
12-15 drops Coconut Essential Oil

***yields 15 Ball 4 oz. jars of body butter

Place all ingredients into mixer, blend for 5 minutes, and spoon into air tight containers. I used the kitchen aid mixer with the whisk attachment, but you can also use a hand mixer.

Spoon into air-tight containers of your choice and label!

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Instant Hot Cocoa Mix Recipe

by TheChoiceUmbrella Leave a Comment

‘Tis the season! It’s time for hot cocoa, peppermint sticks – and lots of holiday treats!

My kids LOVE hot cocoa. We make it a lot during the winter – and they are used to good, old fashioned, homemade hot cocoa. I decided to start experimenting with a hot cocoa mix this year so that we could have something that was super easy to make on the fly, as well as something we could package up and use as gifts for the holiday season.

So this is a recipe for a dry mix – and it is doubled, so it makes a huge batch. We have been able to use it for after school snacks as well as have enough to make substantial amounts of holiday gifts!

In another post, I will show the labels and 8×10 sign that you can print or buy to set up your own warm beverage bar.

Ingredient for the dry mix:

10 cups of dry milk
1¾ cups of coffee creamer
1¾ cups of cocoa
7 cups of powdered sugar (or your favorite natural sugar substitute, like Stevia)

In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients with a whisk or fork until all are mixed together. Make sure to store this in an air-tight container, or divide into batches for gifts. This can be used for up to 8 months.

To make a cup of cocoa, carefully whisk 1 cup of very hot water with 1/3 cup of the hot cocoa mix – serve hot with your favorite hot cocoa toppings like marsh mallows or whipped cream. You could also add 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla to your cup of cocoa for a burst of extra flavor.

You can also use toppings like peppermint sticks and chocolate chips – so many options – what are your favorite toppings for hot cocoa? Do you usually use an instant mix, or do you opt for homemade hot cocoa?

To see the free “Hot Beverage Station” printables that go with this recipe, read on!

Free download Friday – Hot Beverage Bar with Printables!

by TheChoiceUmbrella 8 Comments

Happy Holidays! I can’t believe that the 2016 holiday season has already arrived and I hope that this post finds you all doing well!

I am kicking off this season with another round of “Free Download Fridays” – and the first one is a set of printables for a hot beverage station. This year, along with the printables, I am also sharing links to where you can purchase the printables rather than printing them yourself. I know that things can get tricky when dealing with printer settings, or just having to purchase certain papers when you do not have them at the ready.

This set includes:

an 8×10 “Baby it’s Cold Outside Print”
2″ circular hot cocoa mix labels
3″ circular hot cocoa mix labels

The 8×10 print is a white graphic over a chalkboard background, and looks great in a white frame.

These glass canisters (as well as the red mugs) were found at my local Dollar Tree! I love the finds at the Dollar Store during the holidays! I used the pre-printed labels for these, but you can print your own if you would like. These are the 3 inch labels, but you can also print the 2 inch files for uses on other types of containers. You can see here that I used an upright jar as well – and this would work with the 2 inch OR 3 inch labels.

Upright mason jar:

The Fiskars circle cutters are great punches for circular labels – you can use the 2-inch cutter on the 2 inch labels, or the XXL much to create a much larger label. (3.5 inch)

Order the 3″ labels here – super easy and I was very happy with the print job!

DOWNLOADS:

Baby It's Cold Outside!

Just enter your email address to receive the
Hot Beverage Bar Printables!

I would love to hear how you set up your hot beverage bar this holiday season – you can tag #thechoiceumbrella in your posts! you can see the entire set of pieces here:

Energy Booster Supply Pack & Relax Supply Kit Labels are Here!

by TheChoiceUmbrella 6 Comments

“Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other.” – Randy Pausch

Thank for the response on my Stress Management Holiday DIY Kit labels – the messages and posts from you all were so kind and completely filled my bucket! I am posting few more labels today that can be used in similar ways, but I tried to make them a bit more broad so that you can customize the gifts as you see fit. I am also including the template for some labels that you can print out with your contact information, should you need that as well. These will fit on the backs of the gift tags. These are Avery labels, and use the template for the #48860.

holiday printable labels for DIY Gifts

Here are some cute ideas for gifting:

holiday printable labels for DIY Gifts

To download these labels, see the following links:

stress-management-labels

relax-holiday printable labels for DIY Gifts-kit

Energy Boosting Kit Label

healthy-holiday-contact-labels

As always, I would love to hear how you’re using these – or if you have additional suggestions! You can message me on my contact form or leave a response to this post to share!

It’s time to put everything together!

by TheChoiceUmbrella Leave a Comment

Happy Holidays! I hope you are having a great holiday season thus far. I know, to say a “stress-free” holiday season is rather unrealistic for many os us…but hopefully things are falling into place for you.

This week, all of the DIY projects are coming together as gifts for special teachers, bus drivers, friends… The homemade vanilla, body butter, bath salts and smoothie kits are ready for delivery. If you’ve been following along, I hope these recipe and downloads have been helpful to you!

Since many of our children are having their last days of school this week, I decided to post the free downloads a little earlier instead of waiting until Friday. This week I have “stained with coffee” printables, in case you want to add one to your stained wooden crate, “Happy Holiday” folded cards, and coupon cards that are a thoughtful stocking stuffer idea!

Here are some pics of the downloads, as well as how everything looks when it’s put together. Please let me know if you’ve been able to use some of these downloads this holiday season! I would love to see how they turned out!

Wishing you all a happy, healthy holiday next week! I am so excited to see for what 2016 will bring!

Stained with coffee printable – to see the tutorial on how I stained a wooden crate with instant espresso, click here:

Stained with coffee tag – attached to the small wooden crate. I love how this turned out!

Happy Holidays square card:

FREE Download Friday, week 5 – printable holiday gift tags!

by TheChoiceUmbrella Leave a Comment

I cannot believe that it’s almost the middle of December! I hope that all of you are enjoying the season – I know how busy it tends to be. I have to say that I have gotten a lot done around here by using this blog as a reason to complete projects! If you haven’t seen the first 4 weeks of the DIY downloads, you can check them out on the DIY page.

This week the free printables are pretty straight forward! Gift tags! Choose your favorite card stock and print as many as you’d like! They have completed a lot of pretty packages around here. Personal use only, please. 🙂

I hope you enjoy these and I would love to see how you’re using them in your holiday gift wrapping!

Free Download Friday, WEEK 4: December Calendar, Holiday Gift List and Letter to Santa!

by TheChoiceUmbrella Leave a Comment

It’s December! We are in full-blown holiday mode!!! Today’s downloads include a few pages to help with planning for the month of December.

Printable Calendar for the month of December: Personal use only, please.

Letter to Santa: Personal use only, please.

Holiday Gift Giving Checklist: Personal use only, please.

My kids have really enjoyed filling out their letters to Santa – if you have friends who might enjoy these as well, please make sure to share with them!

Espresso-Stained Wooden Crate – for gifts this holiday season!

by TheChoiceUmbrella Leave a Comment

If you’ve been following along with all of the free downloads and DIY projects this month, it’s time to start thinking of ways to combine all of the gifts to give!

I found these wooden crates for $6 at Michael’s Arts and Crafts last week and used the 50% off coupon – The great thing about this crate in particular is that the jars and bottles that I’ve used for all of these DIY projects along the way will fit inside of it.

The crate was a little light in color though, so I knew that I wanted to either paint it or stain it – but I wanted to use something natural to go along with the theme of the rest of the gifts. I remember seeing someone on TV last year – I think it was Tori Spelling – use coffee grounds to stain wood, so I decided to do something along those same lines because I knew that coffee would add a rich color and probably be pretty easy!

I found some instant espresso powder for a few bucks at my local grocery store and was pretty excited about it, because all you have to do is add it to hot water and let it dissolve.

It has really done the trick – and very quickly, I might add!

Here are the supplies needed:

Wooden Crate or box of choice
Espresso Powder
Paintbrush
Hot water

I used 2 heaping tablespoons of the instant espresso in a mug of hot water.

Then I painted the crate, 2-3 coats.

This is after 1 coat of espresso…

After 2 coats – ready to be filled with all of the other goodies that I have been working on! I love it!

Next week, I will show everything assembled in the crate and ready to gift to teachers, friends and family members!

FREE DOWNLOAD FRIDAY, WEEK 3 – Lavender/Mint Scented Bath Salts Labels

by TheChoiceUmbrella Leave a Comment

To print and use the Homemade Lavender-Mint Scented Bath Salts labels, simply print out this file and cut them out with either scissors or a straight edge. Personal use only, please.

The generic labels have a line where you can fill in the scent you’ve used.

DIY printable for homemade bath salts – free bath salts labels

I tied some lavender from our herb garden to these jars as a little addition. Hope you’ve enjoyed this Holiday DIY project!

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FREE DOWNLOAD FRIDAY – Lavender/Mint Scented Bath Salts Recipe

by TheChoiceUmbrella Leave a Comment

I truly love when I have the time to take a bath – and for aches and pains, I always add Epsom salts for the added benefits of healing. Since I love essential oils so much as well, I have started adding them to my baths too – which has resulted in my next DIY recipe:

Lavender-Mint scented bath salts! And once again, you can use whatever scents you’d like – but to stay in line with the homemade body butter that I just made, I am using the same scents.

If you, or someone you’re gifting, doesn’t take baths – this also makes an amazing foot soak.

Lavender-Mint scented bath salts ingredients and instructions:
4 cups of Epsom Salts
1/2 cup of sea salt (optional)
25 – 30 drops of lavender oil
20 drops of peppermint oil
3/4 cup baking soda

Mix all ingredients and transfer to air-tight containers. These glass jars are from Michael’s Arts & Crafts and cost $1.49 each!

To download these labels and view the tutorial on how to cut them out, click here.