Mission: Secret Santa

I have a fever, y'all, and the only cure is makin' gift baskets!  Seriously, it's a sickness.  I get it from my mama.  She kinda started the whole thing.  It's a cheap way to make things look like a million bucks.  I think you know by now that I don't believe in blowing money when I can take five minutes to really think about who a person is and try to encapsulate that in a basket.  Ha ha.  I'm mostly just a really, really cheap person.

I've done some form of gift basket every year since I was 23 or so.  It started super small.  Just throwing some books or something in a basket and getting that shrink wrap bag from the dollar store.  Then I started having these crazy sessions where I'd bake for two days straight and do an assembly line thing.  One year I made baskets for all 13 members of the comedy troupe I was in.  Another time, I made dessert and breakfast baskets for some coworkers.  As I type this, there is curling ribbon everywhere because I'm about to make some stuff for a fundraiser tomorrow.

Today's mission: find a suitable gift for a doctor I hadn't met before lunchtime today.  Price: $25.  I started by asking what kind of stuff he likes.  All I got from the ladies at my internship was that he likes books.  Dammit.  I'd have to get a gift card.  Those are so...impersonal.  But not if it's wrapped in a gift basket!

First I got some things from the dollar store (basket, curling ribbon, garland, cards, etc):

All of this was 8 bucks (exceptin' the gift cards), but I only used 5 bucks worth of stuff.  Then I decided to add some cuteness to it.  Check out this card!  The tree is eating the gift cards.  I took some tea I had in my house and wrapped them with ribbon.

Next, I thought long and hard about what to make.  I made the choc chip cookies, sugar cookies, and gingerbread biscotti from VCIYCJ.  I made Cheesy Quackers for the tin, but decided to keep them for myself.  Hee hee.  The doctor got pretzels instead!  I wrapped all of it up nice and purty like.

Then I put everything into the basket.  The basket includes 6 different types of tea, the aforementioned cookies and pretzels, and some chocolate peppermint coffee that I got from Target for $1.  Check that dollar section when you walk into the store.  You find some gems for sure!

This last pic is kinda crappy, but I was running late to my internship.  I couldn't find the shrink wrap bag and didn't feel like weaving through the people at the dollar store so I just got this gingerbead one instead.

And there you have it!  It's a fun and pretty easy way to personalize a gift card.  Just use your supreme baking or crafty skills and 5 bucks.  And nothing goes better with some books than gingerbread biscotti and English breakfast tea!