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12 Days of Handmade Holidays Giveaway: Day 4

Elizabeth — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 14:00:18 +0000

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I got to help one of my friends, Kathy, launch her shop, Happy Elephant Jewelry, back a couple months ago. What gets me excited about her jewelry? Well for one, look at it:

Chunky ring, bright colors! What’s not to like? Personally, I think the best part is that it is made from Tagua, also known as vegetable ivory. Vegetable ivory is the reason why the elephant in her shop name is so happy! Tagua is a nut/seed that is sustainably harvested in the rain forests of Ecuador. And all of the dyes used to color the jewelry are natural dyes. No funky chemicals here!

Additionally, everything she sells is priced fairly. You won’t find a better price for the quality, design and style. Not to mention how unique each piece is.

Kathy has graciously donated this beautiful ring to be given away as part of the handmade holidays. She is still in process of loading inventory in her shop, but be sure to favorite it and check back often!

This would be such a fantastic gift for that trendy girlfriend in your life. Although you may have to pry the ring out of my fingers first.

So how do you enter for Day 4? Three different ways:

Leave me a comment and tell me who this ring would go to as a gift. It’s ok, you can say yourself, I mean, I would totally keep this ring.
Reblog the giveaway and leave me a separate comment with the link.
Subscribe to my blog via RSS Reader or e-mail and leave me a another separate comment saying you subscribed (top left corner of the blog) or tell me that you already subscribe.

What are you waiting for? Enter now because this giveaway will end on Thursday, December 9th at 10pm. This item will only be shipped to a winner within the US.

Good luck!

Spicy Caramel Popcorn

Elizabeth — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:43:18 +0000

The next several recipes that I have to share are all from our New Years spread. You can see world peace cookies, French bread, Gorgonzola honey toast points (which are simply slices of toasted bread with melted Gorgonzola and honey drizzled on top), and then two other items that I didn’t feel were good enough to share with you guys. I was a little disappointed in them (… we ate them anyways …). But the salted brown butter crispy treats and feta salsa more than made up for the two disappointing recipes and will be shared on another day.

We decided to take it easy and stay home for New Years only because we had been running around Dallas for over a week straight and we were tired. Staying in, drinking champagne and stuffing ourselves silly at home sounded nice. And of course that meant I finally got to spend some time in my own kitchen cooking to my heart’s content.

Deb did it again: she posted this recipe for spicy caramel popcorn and I already had all of the ingredients on hand to make it. I’ve never made caramel corn before so I thought I’d give it a go. I’m intrigued with uncommon flavor combos like salty sweet, sweet spicy, or in this case, salty sweet spicy.

Let me start out by saying that it is a lot of fun to pop popcorn on the stove in a lidded pot. I’d never done it before (only in a brown paper bag in the microwave and of course the prepackaged weird buttery stuff that we all grew up on). I will definitely be doing it again. I mean, really, I’ll be making this whole recipe again. I love how quickly it comes together and how impressive it seems. I’m finding that I really enjoy making caramels and this one is no different, although it’s fun to add the baking soda mixture to the caramel at the end because it bubbles up like a science experiment. Yes. I was the child that used to steal my mom’s baking soda to mix with vinegar so I could watch it bubble and make a mess all over the kitchen.

OK. Anyways. This is a great recipe. The outcome is really impressive and a perfect gift item. The unexpected spice comes at the end of the bite and is lovely (I used 1/2 tsp of cayenne). Make some! Pass it out to your neighbors!

Recipe for Spicy Caramel Popcorn

Coffee Toffee

Elizabeth — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:13:42 +0000

I really like trying to make candy but the results are often disastrous, messy and not as tasty as I’d like. Don’t even get me started on tempering chocolate. Ugh. Well, Deb at Smitten Kitchen did it again. We seem to have the same taste buds because I adore toffee. Heath bar with ice cream? Yes please. Shoot, I’ll eat just the ice cream CONE dipped in chocolate and rolled in heath bar. But again, who the heck knows what is really in heath bar. I don’t know that I want to know. Well it turns out that toffee is so easy to make as long as you have a candy thermometer! So this batch turned out perfect. I subbed honey for the molasses since I was using ingredients I already had in the house . . . no need to buy molasses since I had honey. I also doubled the recipe. I couldn’t stop eating it – to the point that I gave my self a bit of a stomach ache while eating the pieces that ‘weren’t quite perfect’ while breaking up the big sheet of toffee. Hehe.

Recipe for Coffee Toffee

So after making all of this toffee, I decided this would be a great holiday sweet treat for our neighbors. I saw these pyramid gifts boxes (you can download the template and instructions here) and I thought they would be perfect for wrapping up a few pieces of candy and heading over to the neighbors.

Super easy to make and perfect for small sized gifts. I was kinda lazy so I didn’t decorate the card stock I used, but I was thinking the white is reminiscent of snow. Right?

I’m pretty sure I’ll be making this toffee and these little gift boxes many, many more times!