Hello stampers. It is that time of the year when we truly embrace gift giving. We would like to be able to give presents to everyone, but that can cost too much money or involve too much time. There is a solution.  Even simple, inexpensive gifts can seem so much more extravagant when you put some thought into the packaging! This treat holder fits the bill.

Christmas time is also a great time to gather with the family and watch some classic movies. One of my favourites is The Sound of Music and the song My Favourite Things. Hence the title, “brown paper packages tied up with string”. At this time of the year I really love to remind the adults around me to take pleasure in the simple things. After all, we are still all children at heart, and these simple treat holders will make anyone happy.

My favourite go-to quick gift is the diaper-fold pouch. You simply take a six inch square and fold it into triangles to make a pouch. I will share a video at the end so you can see how it is done. Then I put a cookie inside and give it to lots of friends, to shopkeepers, waitresses, mailmen, anyone who crosses my path that day. Everyone is just so delighted to get something homemade and they whip up so quickly that it is easy to find the time to do this even in the midst of a busy Christmas season. A big bonus for any paper crafter is that this will also deplete your stack of excess paper!

The trick with these cute treat holders is the circle. Stamp a cute snowflake and a greeting and punch it out using a 1 1/2″ circle punch and then punch a coordinating colour with the scallop circle punch. This hides any imperfections that might arise from making a bunch of these in quick succession. If the cookies are not going to be consumed right away you might want to tuck them into a cellophane bag. We sell different sizes of these on page 195 of the catalog.

To make this treat holder I used retired paper from last year as well as retired stamp set that I just couldn’t part with. Snowflakes never go out of style! I did however think it fitting to make another one with current product as well. The saying on this next treat holder comes from the stamp set Christmas in the Making which retires on January 2. My advice is to get it before it sells for a ton of money on Ebay!! The paper is Merry Music Specialty paper, also something you don’t want to run out of for a long time. Do you see what a difference one little rhinestone can make? I put one on the treat holder using the retired paper, but I forgot to put one on the music themed one. I will have to fix that!

So, although this wasn’t a brown paper package tied up with string, it did bring a smile to many faces this morning and that made me happy too! Inside the pouches was a sea salt caramel chip chocolate cookie. These cookies are amazing. I adapted the recipe from the Hershey’s recipe on the package by adding a teaspoon of espresso powder. I am sure that this will be added to the Christmas repertoire of favourite, not to be missed cookie recipes. The trick is to not bake them too long so that they are crunchy on the outside but soft in the inside.

This recipe makes about 36 cookies and they do not last long! Let me know how they work out for you.

I tucked a business card in behind the cookie so that people could find out how and where to make things like this if they want to, but you could also easily use this as a gift card holder for teachers, mailmen or newspaper delivery people or really anyone you want to treat.

I thought it would be good to have a diagram as well for how to make this but didn’t have time to make one up myself, so I went to the best resource ever, the internet and found this great one from Dawn Olchefske. Thanks Dawn!!

Here’s the video so that you can see how easy this is to do. Happy Christmas everyone and have fun spreading cheer while simultaneously diminishing your excess supply of paper!

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uOBRktrm8U