Gift Kit: Easy Like Sunday Morning

After a long Friday night-Saturday of experiencing the weekend to the fullest, sometimes a Bloody Mary isn't enough to shake that feeling of restlessness.  The "have I done enough with my weekend" feeling that never really goes away if you think about it for too long.  And the conquering of the next day goes best with grabbing a cup of coffee, tea, or hot cocoa.  With a towel and a coaster to prevent catastrophes of course.


Components
Cappuccino Mug
Hot Chocolate on a Stick
Printed Tea Towel
Coasters
Coffee-Scented Candle
Fun Straws
Tea Bags
Biscoff Biscuits
Emergency Chocolate

Personalized Cappuccino Mug

When I was in Italy, I got used to drinking 2 cappuccinos a morning.  The first day, my right leg about shook itself off my body.  By the last day, the second cup was what I needed to get through the rest of the caffeine free day.  Now, in my defense, these were European portions, not the huge cups I found for this kit.  Two cups this size and I would have been able to climb up and down those hundreds of steps along the Amalfi Coast... twice.

Materials - from Kate's Creative Space's Primal Instincts
Ceramic Cappuccino Mug
Chalkboard paint - black or contrasting color
Enamel paint - used sage green

Trace or freehand draw a tea bag on the onto the mug using a pencil.  Or freehand for expert level crafting!  Fill in with chalkboard paint.  Let dry; and paint in the opposite direction.  Let dry for 24 hours.

Paint on the string from the end of the tag into the cup.  Remember!  Don't wash in the dishwasher and be careful around the paint!

Hot Chocolate on a Stick

The puppeteer Jeff Dunham taught me you can put anything on a stick or "steek" and make it awesome, while the cake pop revolution taught me that virtually any food item on a stick makes it more tasty.  This is something sushi can claim partial hipster points for since it is eating using sticks.


Ingredients - adapted from 30 Pounds of Apples's Hot Chocolate Sticks and King Arthur Flour's Cocoa Blocks
1/4 cup heavy cream
7oz (1/2+1/8 cup) sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 cups semisweet or bittersweet chocolate - melted
6 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp oil
1 tsp coffee - optional if the recipient likes coffee
72 mini marshmallows
wooden stir sticks/cake pop sticks

Mix all ingredients minus the marshmallows together.  Pour mixture into silicone (simply for easier removal) ice cube tray.  Place 4 marshmallows in the corners of each cube & a stick in the center.


Let sit in the freezer overnight.  Pop out and wrap in clusters.  Small tags with how to make hot chocolate on a stick are optional because it's much more entertaining to figure out how to make it yourself.  Personally I go for the "dissolving in saliva" method; it's emergency chocolate on the go.  Sticks really do make everything better!

Printed Tea Towel

Materials - from Brit + Co's DIY Neon Patterned Tea Towels
Spray Dye
Napkins or tea towels
painters tape

Iron and lay out tea towels.

Tape out pattern on the tea towels.  I did a diamond and a tartan pattern.  Use up that painters tape.

Spray the paint onto the towels.  I used 2 colors per towel: green and blue on the tartan tape, yellow and green on the diamond towel.

Let dry for 4 hours.  Remove tape.

Coasters

I've already covered how to make bottle cap coasters and how to use alcohol ink for decoration (scroll to the section on "Coasters" - incredibly original).  If neither of those is what you're looking for in your gift kit, you can try the 3rd option in the flight: using washi or decorative tape on a tile coaster.  I see your challenge and I'm accepting it - you will find a coaster you like.

Materials
Washi tape
Tile in white or complementary colors to your tape
Sealant
sugru, small rubber feet, or no-skid pads (4 per coaster)

It couldn't be more simple: lay the tape however your heart desires across the tile.  Let a little overlap the edges.  Cut; I found using an exact knife worked well.  Seal.  Let dry.  Enjoy not marking your furniture.

Examples of patterns

I recommend designs that don't end with the tape in the middle of the coaster because it looks like you honestly forgot to finish extending the tape.  Plus your cuts have to be perfect, and that's quite annoying after awhile.

Coffee-Scented Candle

From the amount of times I use old votives in crafts, you probably getting the correct impression that I'm addicted to candles.  Extra drinks for you.  I had some ones in the new Glade 3oz design which unfortunately can't run through the dishwasher and masquerade as something new.  Curses, looks like I'll have to burn the midnight candle on repurposing those.



Materials - from Henry Happened's French Vanilla Scented Candle
3 oz votive
Soy wax
Wick with holder and glue
Whole coffee beans
Vanilla beans chopped or vanilla scent

To fill these most votivey of votives, I decided that I wanted to perfectly replicate the smell of an easy Sunday morning all day long.  So much easier than trying to fire up the coffee maker, and grind the beans, and wait for the coffee... Makes me want to just eat a hot chocolate on a stick.  Or enjoy coffee porter.

Extras

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm confident the only shot that needs to be served in any situation is chocolate.  Preferably dark.  Just like my coffee.  And beer.  Rounding out a morning you can look forward to as much as the fun experience of the night before are tea bags of assorted teas and some Biscoff cookies. The world's problems can be solved with a simple supplement of these embodiment of goodness each morning.

Putting it All Together

Place items in cup & place in bag with newspaper as support.  Because they've been running around so much before, the recipient probably haven't had a chance to catch up on local news in their or your neighborhood.  Due to how this also is constructed, you can place the kit in box to wrap as well.  In the world of gift bags, it's nice to have something substantial to unwrap.  After assembly, enjoy 1 drink of choice as this gift is as easy as whatever day on which you've finished assembly.

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Gift Kit: Simple Girls Night Kit

No matter how old you get, there's nothing like a girls night that makes you appreciate the good things.  Like the grownup version of a sleep over where you talk about "boys/girls/romantic interest" (they still have cooties), work (isn't it funny how homework never really leaves you), and how your extracurriculars are going (how much sleep you're getting after rush hour).  However, one startling departure is everyone actually listens to their bedtime.
<pic complete kit in somewhat of a use>

Juice and snacks have been partially supplanted by wine and snacks that you get to pick out.  Even if they're the same snacks you had before minus the oatmeal raisin cookies.  No more will they masquerade as the superior oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.  Celebrate friendship and a night out-yet-in by supplying the hardware.  Cheers!

Components
Wine glass
Wine Charm
Cloth Napkin
Coaster

Wine Glass and Charm

You can always get incredibly fancy and paint the wine glass's base and use that as a marker so you don't accidentally (I see your "accidentally") drink out of someone else's glass.  I like to go the wine charm way because a) whenever I try painting it never turns out the way I want it to, b) I have lots of supplies for making wine charms holed up in various places around my crafting materials.  I made this really easy: just add some seed beads to a wire ring in different color patterns.  You can add a charm for personalization.  Or make some using shrinky dinks.

Cloth Napkin

Feeling classy with your wine?  You're already getting fancy with the charm.  Plus you need something with which to wipe up the crumbs of baked brie.  That was a bad example, you should never have crumbs of this god-like party food.  Maybe from... carrots.  Yeah, veggies.... *chews more baked brie*

Yeah I did it first.  My Bad...

Materials
pencil with flat eraser
blank cloth napkins
fabric paint

Using the rubber eraser of a pencil as a stamp, create rows of dots across the napkins.  For bonus points, measure how long each end of the napkin is and place dots evenly down the row.  Combo breaker: draw on a grid in pencil over your napkin and stamp the corners.  I went with option 1; the rows have "personality" even if a few of them are of someone who didn't have a firm grasp on the concept of straight.

I decorated this bag with the same pattern.  And I might have totally repurposed a Brit Kit for this.  Which is more fun: popcorn or wine?  Popcorn with beer is also an accepted answer.  I used the white chocolate for the covering of Irish Car Bomb Cake Balls.  Appropriate.

Coaster

Because putting the glass down on a nice wooden surface is the ultimate faux pas (It leaves a ring!  It's not even your furniture!  Coasters are the coolest!  Respect the bar!), if you're going to provide glassware, you should provide the accompanying coaster.  You can make some bottle cap coasters if you know the gals in question are beer or soda lovers.

Or Cheerwine lovers!

Or you can take ordinary tiles to new heights by using alcohol inks.  These work wonders with rubbing alcohol and non porous surfaces.

Materials
alcohol inks
white or light tile
rubbing alcohol
sealant (like ModPodge)
sugru, small rubber feet, or no-skid pads (4)

Pour a bit of rubbing alcohol on tile & spread around.  Before it dries, apply drops of color across the tile itself.  I went all of one color, then added the next 2.  Sometimes the later color would "eat" the space you thought you had for one of the first colors.  In that way I recommend not going overkill on the darker colors.

It spreads all over the place

After the ink dries, seal with the sealant.  Put feet into each of the corners or use the sugru to make small equal-sized balls for the feet.

Extras

Because nothing is complete without some emergency chocolate, put in your favorite candy bar.  Add some for this kit and it's complete!  You can wrap the wine glass in the napkin for some protection, or fold it nicely and place it in the glass

Bring gifts + good wine to your next event because you know as soon as these are opened, they're going to be put to good use.  & don't forget the brie.  & sampling it to make sure that this batch was good cheese.

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Bottle Cap Coasters

If there was one grown up thing other than packing my own lunch that I've found I've weirdly gravitated to when older it's using coasters.  Seriously, there's nothing like protecting your own grown up coffee table (or someone else's!) that's important.

Now reminding you not to put the drink on your body.
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Also important: recycling!  More and more I'm seeing a bunch of crafts around reusing things and coming up with some clever tips to use everything from yogurt lids to the pull tabs on orange juice cartons. Though I'm not going to lie, I'm not really wanting to wash out your solo cup.  Even if "you can put it through the dishwasher!" *Pined*

Though this probably says it all
<http://craftsstalker.blogspot.com/2012/03/40-fun-toilet-paper-roll-craft-projects.html>

The most fun thing to recycle has got to be bottle caps.  I've even used them already to resurface the mini bar, and to remake a side table.  But it's not last call so there are always plenty more.  So since we're looking to open a few more cold ones, we're going to use the old caps to protect the furniture.  However, they can't protect from all the random dings that come from opening enough bottles to make the coasters possible.

Materials - yields 4 coasters

20 bottle caps, 5 per coaster

1 Box Epoxy Cast for jewelry (this means you won't die from fumes)

1 silicone soap mold 3"x3"

16 felt bumpers

Mix together your resin as directed on the back of the box.  I mixed together all of it as you actually use quite a bit to cover the bottle caps.  Plus filling the caps in since you don't want big holes in the back of your coasters.  Pour a small layer of resin into 4 of the molds just enough to cover the bottom & about 1/8 of an inch high.

 Let this cure until just solid, about 30 minutes depending on the temperature.  Check your instructions for how long to wait for your particular resin.  After this period of time, place the bottle caps face down into the mold.  This suspends the bottle caps in the resin.  fill over the bottle caps.

 Let cure for at least 24 hours; I let it cure for 48.  Pop out the coasters from the mold.  Look, your drinks are frozen in time!  Place felt bumpers under the 4 bottle caps in the corners so you can't see them from the top.

Acquire more bottle caps.  And keep your furniture looking sharp.  Potentially be the envy of your coworkers.

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