I tell myself every year I’m going to get a head start on Christmas: mail my personalized, decorated cards in a timely manner; make or purchase gifts for co-workers and people who have really helped me throughout the year; complete and ship family gifts no later than at least 10 days before Christmas. It never fails, I’m always late!

As I count down the days until Christmas and I begin to feel harried, a few things have taken importance over purchasing gifts or making my own cards. I can easily use these as excuses for my late start. One of these important things was taking finals for my credential program classes. It was important to me to do my best, study, and make sure I turned in quality work. Another thing that wraps up around the same time as holiday activities is school. For the past many years, I’ve been placed in long-term assignments that require me to teach up until the day the students begin their winter break. When teaching elementary school students this close to the holidays, there are many things that need to be done: holiday parties and organizing food and drinks, helping the students practice singing for their program, completing holiday projects that they need to take home before they go on a 3-week break. All of these activities take some of my mental and physical time away from “getting ready for Christmas.”

With these excuses now coming to a close, next week appears to be more open and I should be able to fully focus on the holidays. OH WAIT! I forgot. I have JURY DUTY next week. Well, that depends on if they will really need me. I purposefully rescheduled my Jury Duty for the week of Christmas in hopes that the courts really don’t want to go to jury right before a major holiday. I did this for my husband last year, and they didn’t need him at all. All he had to do was call in for 2 days and he was relieved of this public service for another 3 years. Hopefully this will work to my advantage as well. Especially since the court I am assigned to is kind of far away and traffic will be really bad next week!

In the end, whatever gets accomplished will just have to be good enough. And next year, I will again promise myself to start early. like before Thanksgiving and not be so frazzled!

The past two Christmases my husband and I have spent Christmas by ourselves, meaning just the two of us. Our immediate and extended family members live between a 2 to 6 hour-drive away, but we prefer to keep this holiday simple and quiet and to ourselves. Perhaps it’s because we don’t have children yet, or it could be that in the past when we’ve spent it with family members, we really didn’t like how they celebrated the holiday. On one side of our family, Christmas has been reduced to tearing open gifts without barely looking at what they’ve just received, the emphasis is on how many gifts can one child receive. In contrast, on the other side of our family, Christmas is a minimalist holiday with heated family arguing throughout the evening (mostly between two select people, my brother and my step-father!)

We’ve talked extensively about how we want to cherish Christmas and celebrate it, especially once we have kids. We don’t want it to be primarily about gifts, we feel it’s better to receive one thoughtful gift rather than 20 silly, thoughtless gifts. But we also don’t want to be Scrooge’s and completely dismiss the holiday altogether. So, we’ve come up with our own celebration for now; keep it simple and special. The past couple of years, we’ve created our own traditions as follows:

• Make a tasty breakfast for two. My husband enjoys cooking and breakfast is his favorite meal. We normally don’t eat breakfast in the mornings together, so this is something special we do on this day.
• Open a few gifts to keep it festive. We still have a few gifts that we open Christmas morning. These gifts are sent to us by our family. We discuss the frivolity of them, or how thoughtful a particular gift was. Then, we watch our cats play with the wrapping paper and boxes, that is almost more fun. (We’re not complete Scrooge’s, we also send our families gifts as well!)
• Call our family members. This works out much better than actually seeing them on this particular holiday. We don’t have to witness the children whining and can truly enjoy talking to them over the phone. Also, my stepfather usually won’t argue with my brother while on the phone, so it’s a much more pleasant conversational atmosphere. I know this sounds awful, our family members are really great almost every other day of the year! However, Christmas brings out the worst in some people, especially in our families.
• Plan an outing for the day. A few times this has equated to going to the movies, sometimes we’ve taken a drive to the beach depending on the weather.
• Make a fantastic dinner. Again, my husband the cook usually plans a delicious meal and we top it off with some beverages, usually of the alcoholic type.

I’m hoping that once we purchase our little house in the valley, we’ll be able to host Christmas at our house in our own tradition, focusing on quality time spent together. In the meantime, we prefer to celebrate it alone and visit family and friends after this holiday.

I like being generous towards people who’ve helped me this year, like my co-workers. Without them, my job would be so much more difficult, I’d never get a break! To thank them, I want to give them something I think they’d appreciate, but I can’t go overboard with my spending since I’m on a tight budget. Many years ago, a colleague gave me a delicious Tang Tea mix in a mason jar. She made the tea mix from an old recipe and canned it herself. I thought it was a great and inexpensive way to give thanks. This year, I’ve decided to give my colleagues homemade drinks in mason jars, sort of copying that gift I received years ago.

I just finished an assignment and worked with 2 teacher aides who were really helpful. Since I will be seeing them this week, I wanted to thank them before the holiday rush begins. I had two drink recipes in mind for their mason jar gift and a list of ingredients I needed for both. I went to the grocery store the day after Thanksgiving, a great day to go by the way. There was no one there, everyone was at the malls! It turned out that my grocery store doesn’t sell Tang anymore (needed for the Tang Tea recipe), so I narrowed my gift idea down to one recipe, a mocha coffee drink.

Chocolate Mocha Mason Jar Gift - Great Christmas Gift Idea!

There were a few more ingredients involved in the mocha coffee drink, so my total expenditure was a bit more costly (I realized after making the mixture, I bought way more cocoa than I needed). I purchased enough ingredients to make 4 jars. Since I am reusing old spaghetti sauce mason jars, I only had to purchase Ball lids. After gathering my ingredients, I estimated each jar costs about $4.00. Below are a list of my ingredients (I got the recipe from Tipnut.com):

• 1 cup Cocoa (I purchased unsweetened)
• 1 cup Sugar
• 1/2 cup Powdered non dairy creamer
• 1/4 cup Instant Coffee
• 1 tsp Cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp Nutmeg
• Mini chocolate chips as a topping (I added this to the existing recipe)

I decided to mix the recipe before putting it in the jar. The Tipnut.com image shows the ingredients in layers, and it looks pretty. The only problem I see with this method is using it without mixing it first. Since the ingredients aren’t in equal parts, you may end up with more creamer than cocoa in your cup, and that wouldn’t taste good. Each jar recipe should provide the recipient with about 7-8 drinks.

I taste tested the mix before sealing the jars, and it was very chocolatey with a hint of spice (thanks to the nutmeg and cinnamon.) My taste test revealed that each drink tastes best with 2 heaping tablespoons added to 8 ounces of hot water (I’m thinking you could also use warm milk, too.) You can see from my photo that I added mini chocolate chips on top of the mixture mostly for looks, but they can be a tasty addition. Whipped cream or a cinnamon stick can be added to the final drink as well.

Once I add a tag listing the ingredients and how to use the mixture, tie a pretty ribbon and some fabric around the top, these jars will make terrific Christmas gifts!

P.S. Each mason jar took a little bit more than one full recipe. I made 3 full recipes and ended up using 1/4 additional mix for each jar.