My husband doesn’t eat sweets.  I know.  Ridiculous.  But, on occasion, he will eat a brownie.  So for Valentine’s Day, I made him an “I love you” brownie.  The leftovers were packaged up and sent off to friends.

I added some pink frosting trim to make them look more “Valentine’s-ish”.

I laid each one on a small square of cardstock, trimmed with pinking shears.  A little dot of frosting holds it in place.

Slide the brownie into a clear, cellophane treat bag.  I like to roll down the top and close with a staple or piece of tape.

I added a topper made of some elementary school writing paper folded over the top of the bag.  I printed out an I heart Brownies label on my computer and they were finished!  Not including baking time, the whole project only took a little over an  hour and I was in a hurry. (You can see the sleeve of my coat in this last picture-I was heading out the door as I finished up!)  If I could do it over again, I would let the frosting set up a little more before packaging.  You can see how smooshed the pink dots are in my final photo.  They still looked cute and tasted devine, but I prefer non-smooshed treats when it comes to gifts from the kitchen!  Sorry if you got a smooshed one-I hope you liked it anyway!

Valentine’s cards are nice, but Valentine’s Brownies are nicer!

This tutorial will help you wrap your boring gift of towels, into a fun, delightful, present that everyone one your list will want to receive! Normally towels are wrapped into a cake form for wedding or baby showers, but this tutorial will help you wrap them to look like peppermint candies.

All you really need are towels and a few basic supplies normally used to wrap presents. I used big, white bath and hand towels with some red washcloths. You can actually use tissue paper for the inner color if you don’t have any colored towels. I recommend white towels with red or green accents for peppermint candies. If you wanted to do other candy colors, pink, yellow, orange, light blue would also work and would be very whimsical. I wouldn’t try it with un-candy like colors like burgundy or sage green-the effect would totally be lost. If you decide to do it anyway-please don’t say I gave you the idea!

Hand Towels and Wash Clothes

If you have both bath towels and hand towels to wrap, start with the hand towels until you get the hang of it! It is much, much easier to roll the smaller hand towel and if you start with it, then the bath towel will be a breeze when you get there!

1. Supplies: towels, tissue, scissors, ribbon, stapler, cellophane wrap (available from craft store)

2. Lay out your towel. If it has a monogram that you want to show off on the end product, you many need to adjust the way you roll up your towel, depending on the placement of the lettering.

3. Starting lengthwise, roll up your towel into a tight cylinder. It needs to be tight, but not too tight. It may take you a couple of tries until you get the right feel for it.

4. Next, roll up your red towel in the same way. If you are using paper instead of a towel, skip down to the bath towel for directions.

5. Place the red towel on top of the white and center.

6. Now, start at the short end and roll both towels up together, forming a coil. Hold it TIGHTLY! It may help to have a helper. (Make sure your ribbon and stapler are handy-once you start this step, you will need them before you can put the towels back down)

7. This is the trickiest part of all-wrapping around the ribbon the coiled towels to get it to stay in place! Pull it as tight as possible and if you have a helper it will be a lot easier. I try and balance the towel between my body and the table because if you let go even for a second, it will uncoil and will no longer look like a peppermint candy!

8. Slide the tip of the stapler under the ribbon and staple the ribbon together. I usually do two staples just to make sure. I staple the first one just to get it to hold so I can let go, then I pull the ribbon even tighter and staple again.

9. This is what you should now have:

10. Now, you are ready to wrap up your candy towel. Measure out a piece of cellophane and wrap around the towel with short ends meeting and long ends extending past the towel.

11. Tape the cellophane together very tightly all across the towel so there are no gaps. I tape it together, and then pull and tape again as tightly as possible. Remember, you are trying to make it resemble a piece of candy, so you want it to be taught.

12. Tie ribbons on the ends. Striped ribbon adds to the “peppermint theme”, but really, any coordinating color will work. I like to add those shiny stars on the wire too. It really catches the light and gives it that little something extra.

13. This is what you should now have:

Bath Towels

The bath towels start out exactly the same way, they are just bigger and bulkier, so you have to adjust your rolling a little bit. If you do it too tight, it will look distorted and if it’s too loose, then it won’t like a candy. Plan on experimenting a little bit with this one.

Also, I did not have any colored hand towels to make the colored swirl. So…I tried using a piece of red tissue paper, and you know what? It worked out great! I used tissue paper, but I think a ribbon, or even colored paper or folded wrapping paper might work too.

1. Because the bath towel is so much bigger, I started by folding it in half and then rolling up each long end to the center. When your rolled ends get to the middle, just roll them together.

2. Now, if you have colored towels to form the swirl, follow all of the directions from the hand towel section to roll up your towel. If you are using the tissue paper, tuck your tissue paper into the fold and on top of your white towel.

3. Carefully, and holding on tightly, roll up the short end to form the coil.

4. Wrap with the ribbon and staple together just like in the hand towel instructions above.

6. Wrap with the cellophane and tie off with ribbons.

You have just finished wrapping your boring towels into a fun and fabulous gift! Great Job!

Christmas morning should be special. Christmas morning should be delightful. Christmas morning should gather more oohs and ahhs than heard all year long. Christmas morning should also be…easy. Make it special with the BEST Hot Cocoa. Ever. In. The. Entire. World. I’m not kidding, it’s worth every single calorie-and there are many. But hey, it’s Christmas morning and Christmas morning was made for indulgence. Besides, January 1st is just days away and you can start your diet then.

Best Hot Cocoa

    6 generous servings

Whip Cream

Slowly heat milk and 1/2 and 1/2 or cream on the stove top.  Once warm, add in the chocolates and gently heat and stir until melted.  Add in sugar, vanilla and coffee powder.  Continue to heat over very low heat until ready to serve.

To make the whip cream, pour the pint of cream into the bowl of a standing mixer and beat at high speed for several minutes until it starts to become thick.  Add in the sugar and vanilla and continue beating at a high speed until the desired consistency.  Personally, I like it to get thick, like ice cream!  If you don’t have a standing mixer, just be patient and keep mixing!  Freezing a metal bowl and the beaters for a few minutes before beginning speeds up the process  along with making sure the cream is very cold!

To serve, pour the hot cocoa into your favorite Christmas mug leaving about an inch of room in the top.  Heap mounds of Whip Cream on top ( be generous! it’s Christmas morning!) Top with sprinkles or serve with a candy cane!  I heart indulgence.  

Want the recipe for these easy, overnight cinnamon rolls, too?  Click here.

Last spring, my daughter’s school had a huge PEP RALLY and spirit day. I made JUNK FOOD Trophies to give out to the winners of the school spirit contest.  The students went crazy over them-but I have yet to meet a teenager who’s world doesn’t revolve around Hostess Cupcakes, PopRocks and Dr. Pepper. This year, I made the Junk Food Trophies into Junk Food Monsters.  The possibilites of where to use the trophies are endless!  I think they would be  a fabulous prize for a costume contest, spirt day winners, pep rally, youth group, or any time you need to give a great prize to a teenager, child or junk food loving grown up.  If you make one, please send me your photos and add them to a flickr group I set up here.

This is what you will need to get started:

You will need an assortment of cardboard boxes.  I use an assortment of cereal, pasta and cracker boxes and bakery boxes for a nice, big stable base.

Lots of cardboard tubes from you empty paper towel rolls.

Glue Gun, Scissors, Tape (double sided tape is a sanity saver), paper to cover the boxes and cardboard tubes-I used tissue and rolls of crepe paper, Spray adhesive makes life easy.

Last but not least, you need…..

JUNK FOOD! JUNK FOOD! JUNK FOOD!

How much junk food do you need?  Well, it all depends on how big you make your trophy, but you want to have enough to fully cover the front, sides and maybe even the back.  You will know you have enough junk food and candy to make up the trophies if you start to feel extremely self conscious and embarrassed about pushing around a cart full to the brim with sugary sweets.  When you start to get strange looks from shoppers with carts full of organic vegetables and unproccessed whole grain foods and you find yourself stopping  to explain what you are doing with all of this sugar laden, artificially flavored-yet delicious junk food, then you know you are getting close.  Now, when these same people start rolling their eyes as they look at your children, who are  dancing wildly with excitement  in the aisle, and then they look back at you and shake their heads in disgust–well, then you have enough JUNK FOOD and can check out.

Now that you have all of your supplies, start planning the layout of your trophy and how you want to stack your boxes.  I always start by cutting my cereal boxes in half.

When your boxes are cut, wrap them in the paper.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you do want  to have a nice background that will peek through the wrappers of the junk food pieces.  Wrap your cardboard tubes in the same paper, or make it easier by wrapping in strips of crepe paper.  This is where the double sided tape and/or the spray adhesive comes in handy.  It will make quick work of the covering process.

When everything is cut and wrapped, you are ready to assemble the trophy base.  Start by placing your largest box on the bottom.  I used a cake box from my stash, but any large, stable box would work.

Stack your cereal boxes on top-I put one one each side to form the legs of the monster.  You can make your trophy into any shape you like and a lot of it will depend on the size and shapes of the boxes you are using.

When you have your boxes in place and know where you are going to place your tubes, glue them to the sides with the hot glue.  Be generous and don’t skimp with the glue.  When the junk food is in place, it will be quite heavy and you don’t want your foundation to collapse.

Finish stacking and gluing your boxes and tubes until you are satisfied with the trophy foundation, and then move on to the fun part!  Gluing on the JUNK FOOD!

Lay all of your goodies out in front of you and decide how you want to place them on you junk food base.  It helps to have a “junk food monitor” available at this stage, you know, to make sure you don’t get distracted and start eating the junk food.  At least not without sharing….

Using your hot glue, start gluing on your junk food.  I like to keep it fairly symmetrical  so I do both sides as I go along.  Make sure to keep the heavier items on the bottom.  I like to use the little cans of soda pop on the bottom tier.  They add some weight to the final product and help keep it stable and from tipping over.  From personal experience, I highly recommend using your most favorite items first.  Once they are officially glued on, the temptation to rip off those wrappers subsides. A little bit.

Continue placing the junk food on the trophy until it is completely covered.  The more the better. This is not something you want to skimp on if you are looking for shock and awe!

Once all of the junk food was added, I attached the spaghetti box arms with a generous amount of hot glue and some wire for added security.

I added a monster mask I found at Target, complete with wax lips.  You can find similar items at Oriental Trading or at your local party store.  Another option would be print, cut out and use  clip art for the facial features.  Try here, here or here.

Green paper shred are glued on top to make the hair.  I traced my hands on polka dot paper, cut them out and glued them to the ends of the spaghetti box arms.  A Giant Lollipop is the finishing touch.  Come on…you are already giving someone 10 lbs of junk food so lets go all the way with the theme and make it over the top, fabulous!

Your junk food trophy is finished!  By the way, does anyone know why the Hostess Twinkies come out of the box with a big letter “F” stamped on them?  Perhaps it’s a nutrional grade?  I mean how appropriate to label an artificially laden, yellow, sponge that is filled with faux cream with a big letter “F”.  Just in case you didn’t know what the nutritional stats were  before you opened the box they label it for you on the package.    Just Kidding, Hostess…I know your marketing people are smarter than that!  And I do, on occasion inhale a twinkie or ten.  But seriously, why the “F”?  Any ideas?

Thanks for reading my JUNK FOOD TROPHY TUTORIAL!  If you have any questions, just drop me an email or comment.  If you happen to make one, share your pics at my flickr group or send them to me by email.

Thanks and Enjoy!