Two free­bies in one week, I know. Looking for­ward to 2010, I hope to offer more of these on a reg­u­lar basis. But if you’re look­ing for a last minute gift idea, this one in par­tic­u­lar may help you out.

This year I was look­ing for a sim­ple but fun gift I could make for sev­eral peo­ple, so I decided to try out the hot choco­late recipes that Maddy of Inspired Bride came up with (check out part 1 here and part 2 here), with a few adjust­ments. Since I was mak­ing them for hol­i­day gifts rather than favors, I decided to make larger batches, using larger glass jars as the containers.

For each jar, I dou­bled the base recipe and mix-ins. I wanted to cre­ate a vari­ety of fla­vors, so I used most of Maddy’s spe­cialty recipes, and also added two of my own—white choco­late and peanut but­ter. Yum. This left a bit of room in each jar so I added a hand­ful of mini marshmallows—which go with any fla­vor in my opinion—to each batch.

I’ve cre­ated tags for six fla­vors in total: mint, almond, dou­ble choco­late, but­ter­scotch, peanut but­ter and white choco­late, all of which you can find on the tem­plate I’ve cre­ated. Plus addi­tional labels for the tops of each jar and a bag clo­sure. See below for the instruc­tions and downloads.

MATERIALS

• Cardstock
• Label Paper (I use the full 8.5×11 sheets found at Staples)
• Standard hole punch
• 1.5 inch cir­cle punch
• Velvet Ribbon, 1/2 yard per jar (I found mine at MJ Trim)
• Round cor­ner punch
• Tag Templates (see below)
• Gift bags

DIRECTIONS

1. Prepare hot choco­late recipe based on instruc­tions found here and dis­trib­ute into indi­vid­ual jars.
2. Add a layer of mini marsh­mal­lows to top it off.
3. Print out hang tags and labels and trim to size. You can print these double-sided (direc­tions go on the back) but I sim­ply printed the backs on label stock and attached them to each front.
4. Round the cor­ners, and punch the hole for each tag.
5. Print cir­cle labels and trim to size using the 1.5 inch punch.
6. Cut sep­a­rate lengths of vel­vet rib­bon, 1/2 yard per jar.
7. Place each jar in a gift bag and close with label.

TEMPLATE DOWNLOADS

Hang Tags: Front
Hang Tags: Back
Circle Labels
Bag Closure Label

Enjoy! And thanks Maddy for the inspi­ra­tion and deli­cious recipes!

*all design work life down­loads fall under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license