Homemade Gift-in-a-Jar Recipes Are a Thoughtful, Tasty and Economical Twist to Holiday Gift-Giving

You can also find a ton of other Gift In A Jar recipes online. For Thousands of different ideas for everyone in the family and all of your friends. Print the recipes out on cute paper and attach to the jars. Tip Junkie has a ton of great recipes. Great way to give gifts this year without spending a lot of money.

Homemade jar recipes with beautifully layered ingredients topped with a flourish are a thoughtful and economical way to treat friends, coworkers, neighbors or teachers to the flavors of the season. And making them is easy and fun - especially if you get the kids involved.

Jar recipes for everything from cookies to soups to hot drink mixes can be found on the internet and even in some cookbooks. In most jar recipes, you'll simply measure dry ingredients into a standard one-quart canning jar, and then tie a card with the cooking instructions to the lid. You can also adapt some of your own recipe favorites, but try a few jar recipes first to get the hang of the proportions.

Here are three classic Recipe Gifts-in-a-Jar to get you started. Build your layers in a 1-qt canning jar in the order written. For the prettiest finish, pack each layer flat before adding the next - a small ladle or meat hammer works well - then secure the lid, add a decorative ribbon and attach the cooking instructions. A link to printable instructions/gift tag for these recipes is included below.

Oatmeal Chippers Cookies Jar Mix Recipe

1-1/3 C old-fashioned oats or quick-oats

1/2 C granulated sugar

3/4 C semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 C brown sugar

1/3 C chopped pecans

1-1/3 C all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

variations: substitute chocolate chips for mini M&M's, or cut pecans and add more chips

Confetti Soup Jar Mix Recipe

1/3 C beef bullion granules

1/4 C dried minced onion

1/2 C dried split peas

1/4 C barley

1/2 C dried lentils

1 tsp. dried thyme

1/2 tsp. garlic salt

1 tsp. dried basil

1 dried bay leaf

1/3 C long-grain white rice

1-1/2 C Tri-color spiral pasta (rotini)

Cocoa Steamer Instant Hot Cocoa Jar Mix Recipe

Note: this recipe yields about 5 quarts of mix. It's a way to make bulk gifts for teachers, neighbors and co-workers, and you can package it in just about anything, from canning jars, to clean recycled food jars, to food gift bags.

1 Box Nonfat Instant Milk (8-qt yield size)

1 1-lb. jug of dry nonfat dairy creamer

1 large jar Nestle Quick, Ovaltine or another chocolate milk mix

1 1-lb. box powdered sugar

1 container Hershey's Powdered Cocoa (Dutch Processed is best)

variations: add 1 jar instant coffee for Mocha Steamer mix

Blend first 3 ingredients together in 1-2 large mixing bowls. Add powdered sugar and cocoa powder, sifting if lumpy. Blend mix thoroughly and spoon into jars, bags or store in airtight container. Tie on instructions together with a candy cane or a small bag of mini-marshmallows for a holiday treat.

Print cooking instructions and gift tags to include with your Recipe-in-a-Jar Gifts.

Krista Fabregas founded Kid Smart Living in 1999 to help parents combine safety, livability and style in a home that's welcoming to family members of all ages. Find more KidSmart child safety, home decorating and living ideas at KidSmartLiving.com and on the KidSmartLiving @ Home Blog

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Learn To Change The Oil In Your Car

In this economy we are all having to learn to do a lot of things on our own to save money. My daughter and me have already taught ourselves how to flush a radiator and are now going to be doing oil changes this weekend on our cars. Great way to save money and keep our cars healthy so we don't have a huge mechanics bill. I unfortunately had to have a mechanic do the motor mount on our car, but none of us had the way to do that. 60 bucks was worth it. But anyway there are a lot of things that you can do yourself on your car for a lot less money than having someone do it for you and changing the oil is one of those things. My husband wants to do it for us, but we think that we should learn to do things like this JUST IN CASE. You never know what might happen.



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Ultimate Family Preparedness Pak

120 Serving Breakfast Only @ $198 (120 Servings breakfast assortment. No entrees) - Order Now!

What we need to do to be prepared...

I am sitting here watching my son play on the indoor playground at McDonalds and thinking about everythhing that we still need to do to get prepared. Sure, we have a lot of food etc, but we need to get around like minded people and get some land in a safe place. Our goal is to get totally off grid. Hopefully it happens soon. We have been looking hard. There are few other things that we need to do that deal with security.

Watching these kids play really makes me want to get prepared even more. I don't want to see any kid hurt or have to go through anything bad. I want everyone to be safe and prepared and hope that even if everyone who reads this blog will do just one thing it will be something. Be Safe.

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Ultimate Family Preparedness Pak

120 Serving Breakfast Only @ $198 (120 Servings breakfast assortment. No entrees) - Order Now!

Food Storage Recipe - Baked Chicken & Rice

This is a great recipe that you could even use your left-over turkey from Thanksgiving in. Yummy way to use all of it up. It also uses the canned soups and mix that you should have plenty of in your food storage.

Baked Chicken & Rice

1 Box of long grain and wild rice mix

1 14 pound of chicken or left-over turkey - can also use canned chicken , like Keystone. etc.

1 can of Progresso vegetable classics creamy mushroom soup

1/3 cup of water

Heat your oven to 350. Lightly oil a casserole pan or use cooking spray. Evenly spread the rice in the bottom of the pan and sprinkle about half of the seasoning mix onto that. Arrange the chicken , turkey, or whatever over the rice and then sprinkle the rest of the seasoning over that. Pour the can of soup over this and the water . Cover tightly with foil and put in oven . Cook until rice is tender.

The Prepper's Pocket Guide: 101 Easy Things You Can Do to Ready Your Home for a Disaster

Ultimate Family Preparedness Pak

120 Serving Breakfast Only @ $198 (120 Servings breakfast assortment. No entrees) - Order Now!

Learn How To Barter

One of the most important things to learn how to do , especially in this economy - is how to barter. Someone has a skill or something that you need and you have a skill or something that they need! Trade for things. Great when you have no cash, but have something that needs done. I seen an awesome case of bartering last week at my son's homeschool academy - a mom has a cow that they are going to butcher , another mom wants some ,but doesn't have the 400.00 for it, so she found out that the woman needs some trees done on her farm. Awesome - her husband owns a tree service - so they are bothe happy. One mom is getting her trees done and the other is getting a third of a cow butchered!! There has to be something that you can do or trade for something that you need done. Just find out around you if someone has a skill that you need and find out if there is something that you can do. Bartering is fun and easy. It is also a skill that we should all know how to do!

The Prepper's Pocket Guide: 101 Easy Things You Can Do to Ready Your Home for a Disaster

Ultimate Family Preparedness Pak

120 Serving Breakfast Only @ $198 (120 Servings breakfast assortment. No entrees) - Order Now!