Christmastime is here again!

Every year I plan to make a lot of my holiday gifts from scratch or by hand. Gifts tend to be more from the heart and sentimental when you make them yourself. This year I planned and actually accomplished making cookie boxes for close friends and family and small truffle boxes filled with goodies as stocking stuffers.

The cookie boxes included recipes from my favorite chefs. Chewy Ginger Cookies, Grandma Doyle's Sugar Cookies, my favorite Coconut Macaroons, Chocolate Holiday Cookies and Chocolate Caramels. My favorite part of all this is the presentation, assembling the boxes, wrapping the caramels in festive wrappers and putting the cookies in cupcake liners. It really ties a cookie box together.

Carmels and Macaroon Truffle Boxes

I know at times it may seem overwhelming, trust me, at one point I couldn't stop working. I had glitter all over the floor, double stick tape stick to me while pulling cookie batch after cookie batch out of the oven. My suggestion to you in times when it just doesn't seem possible to make a lovely gift when its a whole lot easier to go buy something...assembly line baby! Making something is way better for your soul, your receivers heart, and all around better for mother nature. Here's how:

1. Choose a box that fits well with what you want to put in it and how you want to ship/give it.
2. Pick out festive papers and stickers for labels with a special touch
3. Embossing makes your crafts pop of the paper. You can find the powder and heat gun at your local craft shop
4. Pick a paper to line the inside of the box. This can be a tissue paper or parchment. I use wax paper because my Grandma wrapped everything in wax paper
5. Organize an afternoon of baking. I split the days in half, make all of the dough on day one and bake all the cookies on day two.
6. Assembly line! Build all your boxes, make and apply your labels, line all your boxes and fill them up.

Here are some photos of what I did this Christmas.

Layer 1

Layer 2

Layer 3

Final Cookie Box

I hope your holidays are full of warm cookies, sweet cakes and family and friends. Happy Holidays from the Mixing Bowl!