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The last couple of days at my house have been a whirlwind! I have been working diligently on making last-minute home-made gifts from my kitchen. Today I’m sharing not one, but two, hot chocolate-themed gifts. And this first one? Just blew me away with how cute it turned out!

Hot Chocolate on a Stick

I saw these adorable gift ideas from Make and Takes (and then found out she’s a local Seattle blogger! What a great site!) They are the perfect little gift for your office mates – I gave them out at my office and the compliments just kept rolling in!

First the home-made marshmallows – I was so surprised at how easy these were to make! I have been wanting to make marshmallows for a couple of years now but felt intimidated by the process. Lately though, everyone I know seems to be making them and telling me how easy they are – they were right!

Then I just cut up the marshmallows – it uses a lot more powdered sugar mixture than it calls for!

And the chocolate squares…

Instead of sticks I used candy canes for THE most complete hot chocolate experience! I unwrapped the candy canes halfway up so that the top sticking out of the bag would stay fresh.

Then I put them in bags and tied them off with ribbon to coordinate with the cups.

You can put one or two in a cup – these cups I picked up at the dollar store looked nice with two 🙂

I tied on a nice decoration – these are foamy coasters from the dollar store – and then attached the instructions for the gift recipient.

 What do you think? They turned out far better than I even expected!

Snowman Soup

Now, for the second hot chocolate gift recipe. Have you ever heard of Snowman Soup? Basically, it is just a fun way of packaging a cute gift of hot chocolate makings – homemade hot chocolate mix, marshmallows and peppermint sticks for stirring.

This is what I originally had in mind for the office gifts until I saw the Hot Chocolate on a Stick (except I was going to put them in cups like I did above.) I had leftover marshmallows and the jars already (I had purchased these jars for the Vanilla Extract I made but they turned out to be too big) so I decided to do both! Crazy, right?! But they are for different people. The hot chocolate on a stick was for my workmates  – great little individual gifts –  and the jars are for some of the families I know and love.

So I whipped up a batch of hot chocolate mix. I found this recipe on the Family Fun website – so simple and fast! I just poured them into jars…

…topped them with fabric squares…

packaged up the marshmallows and attached them, and the candy canes, to the jars with some ribbon.

I love how these turned out too!

What are you making this week for last-minute gifts? I’ll have a few more really easy ideas on the blog in the next day or two so be sure to stop back by 🙂