Neighbor Gifts

For the past several months I've been preparing for our neighbor's Christmas gifts. I knew that I wanted to make white chocolate popcorn - it's fairly easy, fairly inexpensive, and it's a crowd favorite. But the two things I really needed were loads and loads of white chocolate chips and containers to put it all in. Since the chocolate chips have to be Nestle, they can be pretty expensive. But I started offsetting the cost of buying 15 bags at once by buying one or two every time I went to the store... except when Albertson's had them on sale back in October... then I bought about 8 of them.

 

As for the containers, I realized around September that Harrison's formula containers were a great size for our neighbor's gifts. So every time he emptied one (which is quite frequently since the kid is a tank!), I would take the label off and wash it. I sort of looked like a hoarder for a few months since you'd open my pantry and it would be filled with empty containers (15 to be exact).

 

Last Monday morning I woke up and popped popcorn for what seemed like an eternity. The picture below shows four bowls of popcorn, but there were actually 7. The other three bowls didn't fit on my counter, so they are behind me in this picture. (And the sun is fading out the other half of the chocolate chip pile). It took me about 3 hours, but I made enough popcorn to fill all 15 containers (and enough for us to snack on til we were all sick).

 I wrapped the containers in some scrapbook paper and topped them with a bow.

We were originally going to load up the stroller and walk around to deliver them all, but since it had snowed just a few days before and was hovering just about 5 degrees, I scratched that idea and we loaded up in the car. We cranked up the Christmas tunes and Weston road in the back - unbuckled - so he could jump out at each house and come with me to deliver them. He was so happy every time I pulled up to another house. He wanted to deliver one to every house on the street and was on the verge of tears when we delivered the last one.

 

I can definitely tell this is going to be one of our favorite traditions in the coming years. Weston's face was full of joy as we drove around that night. I know it was just some popcorn, but it made me feel good to do something nice for our neighbors and that Weston could be a part of it.

 

It certainly put us all in the Christmas spirit!