Santa's Belt Gift Jar

Want to create a really cute and inexpensive holiday gift? I made these little beauties for my sons' caregivers at daycare. They're made from empty Starbucks mocha glasses (cleaned and sanitized of course). I washed them in hot water to remove the label and the gunk that adhered it. Then I filled them with holiday chocolates (mini Hershey's bars).

To create the Santa Bottle, you'll need scissors, paper, a printer, a glue stick, clear tape, aluminum foil, thin cardboard (like a cereal box), ribbon, and construction paper (red, white and black).

Step 1: Trim out a strip of red construction paper. You'll want it to be about 2.25" wide by 8.5" long. Wrap this around your empty bottle and adhere with a strip of clear tape at the back (have the back of your bottle be the side where they've printed the use by date).

Step 2: Trim out a piece of white construction paper, approximately .5" wide by 2.25" tall. Using the glue stick, adhere it on top of the red band (vertically oriented).

Step 3: Trim out a strip of black construction paper, .5" wide by 8.5" long. Wrap this around the bottle, adhering it with a glue stick.

Step 4: Cut out a small, square piece of  thin cardboard. I used an empty cereal box that I cut up. My square was about 2 inches square. Cut out a smaller square inside the cardboard square. My smaller square is about .75" square. Then I wrapped the entire thing with aluminum foil, just like a Christmas present. I used a sharp exacto blade to trim out the inside to create that hole in the middle of the buckle.

Step 5: I printed out the "Ho Ho Ho" label that i created in photoshop and glued it onto the top of the lid with a gluestick. You can download the free printable HERE.

After that, I just tied a bit of red ribbon around the neck of the bottle and filled the bottles with the chocolates. Super easy and super cute!

Santa Free Printable Advent Countdown

Inspired by yet another pin on Pinterest, I've created a free printable. This time it's a Santa Beard Advent Countdown. It prints on two sheets of paper (make sure you set your printer to borderless printing) and I recommend printing on heavy cardstock or heavy resume paper (it'll hold up better than your regular printer paper). Link to free download below.

The poem explains it all:

"Santa's beard is very bare. On his chin there is no hair. So each day add one puff so white, and when they're all on, He'll come that night!"

Every day during the month of December, have your little helper glue with tacky glue (or you can use scotch tape balled over) a cotton puff onto the beard area. Once you get to 25 Santa will be on his way! I'm keeping mine on my fridge this year where my little guy can reach it. I'm going to store the cotton balls in a ziplock baggie next to the fridge as well so he knows how far he has to go until Christmas.

Due to convenience's sake, I've created the printable to print on two standard sheets of US paper (8.5 x 11) since I know most people don't have 8.5x22 paper sitting around. You can turn the sheets over and attach them together with a simple band of clear scotch tape along the seam. The file saves as a pdf file, and you can download adobe reader for free from http://www.adobe.com/.

DOWNLOAD SANTA'S BEARD COUNTDOWN HERE

You can see my original inspiration HERE at Oopsey Daisy..

Linking up at: Tatertots and Jello, One Artsy Mama