The Gift of Giving

Like many this year, money was a little tight for the holidays. We decided to make a homemade gift for our loved ones. The time and thought you put into making something can mean more than a store bought gift, it shows that you took the time and put love into gift giving. I will not post this until after Christmas because I don't want anyone to see this before we give them their presents. I sure hope they like it :)

Record Bowls:

We hit the local thrift stores to look for old records. Most of them were 99 cents, the most expensive was $1.99. I tried to find bands that I knew people would like, but sometimes it was hard to find what I was wanting, so just make sure to find a vinyl with a pretty design on it!

First you have to find an oven safe bowl that is the shape and size you are wanting your record bowl to be. A glass bowl works best.

Preheat oven to 245 degrees. Do not put temperature any higher as the vinyl will emit fumes at a higher heat.

Place the glass bowl onto a cookie sheet with the bowl upside down, place the record on top of the bowl centered. The side you want to be the inside of your record bowl should be against the glass bowl.

Place cookie sheet with bowl and record into the oven for 3-4 minutes.

At the four minute mark the record will begin to warp over the bowl, take out of oven with oven mits, flip the glass bowl over and place pliable record into the bowl shaping into how you want it to look. The record gets hard rather quickly, place back into over for 2 minutes if needed.

Let the bowl cool completely!

The husband and I then made some treats to place inside the bowls.
We took square pretzels {found them at Target} and place Rolo candies on half of them and Hugs onto the other half. Preheated oven to 350 degrees and cooked for 3 minutes. As soon as we took them out of oven we place an M&M on top to add some color! They were taking a long time to cool so we places in the fridge and they harded up just fine.

We then dipped caramel Bugles into red candy coating, set in white sprinkles and topped with a mini marshmallow to make little Santa hats to add to the mix!

These were a lot harder to make than I thought they would be, but we got a good handful to add to the bag.

We placed the goodies into a holiday Ziploc baggie, attached a bow and threw on a $10 Itunes gift card! Thought the gift card was a cute idea going with the "music" theme. Plus who doesn't like Itunes nowadays? Not too bad for our first attempt at a homemade present. Can't wait to see what we come up with next year :)

Finished product