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A French-Inspired Garden and Home by Judith Stringham
Showing posts with label gift. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gift. Show all posts

G is for Gift Wrap

Monday, November 13, 2023

One of the Christmas traditions followed across the world is the exchanging of gifts wrapped in beautiful packages. G is for Gift Wrap is the seventh post in a series of 26 posts listing Christmas traditions from A to Z.  


is for Gift Wrap. 

Presentation, presentation, presentation.

Seeing pretty packages wrapped under a Christmas tree adds to the excitement and anticipation of the presents inside. 

A beautifully wrapped present takes extra time and thought which is cherished by the recipient. At least, adult recipients. Anyone around young children at Christmas knows they are so excited to see their gifts they gleefully tear open their presents and fling the gift wrapping aside.   



The first gift wrapping began in Japan in the 1600s. The Japanese began using a reusable wrapping cloth known as furoshiki when giving gifts. 

French Country Christmas Blue Dining Room

Friday, December 24, 2021

The French Country style dining room has blue handmade raised wood panel walls and a white painted wood joist ceiling. With no large Christmas tree this year, the English pine dining table holds blue and white Christmas packages around a tabletop Norfolk Pine tree. 


Blue and white gift bags collected over the years coordinate with the blue and white Christmas dining room.
The blue and white gift bags and boxes have been collected over the years and coordinate with the blue and white dining room. 

Valentine's Day Gift Ideas

Friday, January 18, 2019


Beautiful gift ideas for Valentine's day for mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends are beauty products, especially if they come in heart shapes. 



Valentine Day Gift Ideas For Mother Sister Friend

French Gardener Gift Guide

Saturday, November 17, 2018


Here are six suggestions as a Christmas gift guide for a French gardener in your life. Or for someone, who like me is not French,  but who loves all things in French-inspired gardens. 



French gardener gift guide includes paperwhite bulbs for forcing in a French style flower pot

A Christmas Cadeau

Friday, December 23, 2016

A Christmas cadeau 

for myself. 



Can you guess what it is? 

Quick, EASY Caramel Apple Gift Bag

Thursday, November 3, 2016


Quick, EASY Caramel Apple Gift Bag 


With November comes celebrating holidays with friends and families. Are you having guests for Thanksgiving or Christmas? Many of us are, and one thing that always is a nice surprise for a guest is a welcome-to-our-home gift. 

Snowflake Peppermint Chocolate Bark

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

What do you give someone who has everything? Or who has requested only consumable presents? Or who you need a present for his/her stocking? Or to give your family and yourself as a Christmas treat?

Snowflake Peppermint Chocolate Bark 






Snowflake Peppermint Chocolate Bark is much easier to make than it looks.  A beautiful Christmas candy made from two kinds of chocolate!  How can you go wrong with chocolate for friends who have everything, and who you know have a passion for chocolate? 



Each Christmas eight of us gather together to celebrate Christmas and our life-long friendships.  Five of us began teaching together thirty-six years ago, and the other three are also teacher friends with whom we began teaching with over twenty years ago. We all retired from the same high school, but not the same year. All during the year we meet periodically for lunch to celebrate each other's birthdays and to catch up on one another's lives. Then we meet in December for our Christmas celebration, including exchanging small gifts.  



The chocolate peppermint candy bark is a small gift, but was presented as a beautiful handmade snowflake with special wrapping and a snowflake cookie cutter. 



I have to admit I have a fondness for presenting small gifts in clear plastic bags tied with ribbons and/or gift tags. Presentation, presentation, presentation! 



After making the candy, I placed one piece inside a clear plastic bag and tied the bag with a color coordinated ribbon. While the snowflake candies are not extremely delicate, a metal cookie cutter inside the bag with the candy could scrape and mark the piece of candy or possibly break one of the branches of the star.  



Therefore, a snowflake cookie cutter that was used to make the chocolate peppermint bark was tied outside the clear bag to the back of the bag using red and white kitchen twine.



I made a few extra to give to other friends and to place inside some Christmas stockings. 



Served on a beautiful Christmas decorated plate, the candy would be great for seasonal parties or even for parties all during the winter. 



The super easy recipe is from Rachel at Baked By Rachel.  She used a silicone mold that makes six snowflakes, but I used a cookie cutter as described in the recipe.  The hardest part of my recipe was removing the snowflake candy from the metal cookie cutter.  Rachel describes how easy it was to remove her snowflakes from the silicon mold making me want to buy a silicon mold for making this recipe again in the future. 

Joyeux Noël 
~~~~❦~~~~ 
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