DIY Christmas Gift For Neighbors

Being a good neighbor isn’t just for State Farm. This DIY Christmas gift for your neighbors is perfect when you’re on a budget but want to show those that live around you that you’re thinking of them this holiday season.

Anyone else singing the State Farm theme song now? “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is therrreeeee.”

When we moved into this house, weird things began happening. People kept coming to our house and introducing themselves and welcoming us to the neighborhood. People kept bringing us things like food and cookies and pies. A STRANGE NEIGHBOR EVEN MOWED OUR GRASS THE FIRST DAY WE LIVED HERE. Weird right?! It’s like, did we just move back into the 1950s??

If you can’t sense the tone, I was being totally sarcastic about that being weird. Our neighborhood is amazing. People are actually friendly, they wave at you, stop and talk with you, and on our street, they even do things like taking turns hosting Christmas brunch and invite everyone on the street. It’s so great. Although the thought of never giving them a gift was something that ever even crossed my mind, it has since living in this neighborhood.

When you’re in the south, I feel like every gift is either in a mason jar or involves a mason jar in some way, so why should this be any different? I decided to create some (shocker) mason jar Christmas potpourri. If I’m being honest, this start off as a selfish project because I really just wanted some for myself and then I fell in love with it so much I thought it would be a super easy way to bring some Christmas cheer into someone else’s home! Heck, maybe even the host house could put a pot of this on the stove during our Christmas brunch this year.

This Christmas gift idea is great for neighbors and friends! Or neighbors that are friends! This would even make an inexpensive DIY gift idea for teachers!If you wanna know a secret, this idea came because I wanted to make it for me. Oops. But I loved it so much, I thought it would be a great thing to share with others because who doesn’t love their house smelling like Christmas?

Here’s all you need:

1 cup cranberries
2-3 sprigs of rosemary (I actually took some off of our trees on our back porch that’s all decorated for Christmas!)
2-3 slices of orange
1 tbsp cloves
1 tsp nutmeg
2-3 sticks of cinnamon

I ~~slaved over the cutting board~~ sliced up the orange which was the most amount of work I had to do for this project. Whew. How exhausting. I then whipped up some easy little tags and printed them out to have some type of a “label” on them.One side says “Merry Christmas” and the other side says “Just pour in a pot and simmer for the smell of the season!”

Since I was planning on adding water into the jar, I knew that I didn’t want the cinnamon sticks, cloves, or nutmeg floating around in there because it would be all brown and yuck looking.

I put the oranges, rosemary, and cranberries in the jar and filled it to the top with water. I put the cloves and the nutmeg in a little bag and tied it on the side of the jar with twine. For the cinnamon sticks, I decided to use some mini ribbon I got on super mega clearance after Christmas last year at Michael’s and tie it on top.That’s it! But I couldn’t make this for my neighbor and not try it out for myself. It made our entire house smell like a Christmas tree farm and I was just so so much in my happy place. Other reasons I was in my happy place: both babies were napping and I had crime shows on in the background. TIS THE SEASON!