EASY CHRISTMAS GIFTS FOR NEIGHBORS AND FRIENDS // DIY SIMMER POT BAGS // CHARLOTTE GROVE FARMHOUSE

Hello

friends

and welcome back to my channel. My name is Tiffany and in today's video we're going to make some beautiful slow cooker

gifts

for my

neighbors

and

friends

, if you're not sure what a slow cooker is. I'm going to go ahead and create one now, it's designed to make your home feel and smell cozy like Christmas and it does exactly that. Now there are many different flavors that you can prepare for your slow cooker, but today we are going to go traditional Christmas with oranges cranberries cinnamon sticks vanilla and a little rosemary what you do is you simply put all these ingredients in a pot, you turn them on with a little bit of water and you let them

simmer

and it makes your whole house smell fantastic.

I have this beautiful, clear

simmer

. pot from Amazon. I will link it below for you and this will also allow you to see what is inside which adds to the convenience. We are going to put together some

bags

with these ingredients that I will leave at my house.

neighbors

in addition to taking my friends to work so that they too can have their house smelling delicious and cozy for Christmas. Foreigners for our

bags

Today we are going to dry some oranges, so I will start by turning on my oven. at 200 degrees if you have a dehydrator, you can use that too.

I don't have a dehydrator so I'm using my oven. I'm also going to sharpen my knife here. It needs a good sharpening which is also from Amazon. I can link. that for you too below and my knife there's a six inch chef's knife and I've talked about that before, it's my favorite kitchen tool. Today I'm going to be using navel oranges and if you're having a hard time finding navel oranges but you can find a different type of orange that works to have these however they are the ones I'm using today so I'm just going to cut them into about a quarter slices inch thick.

I'm going to go ahead and put the ends in a trash container and then we're going to place them on an ungreased baking sheet, so that's what I'm doing here, you want them to be flat, you don't want them to be on top of each other at all and just keep cutting the oranges until you fill the cookie sheet with the orange slices. Fun fact: this piece of fruit I'm cutting up now is actually a grapefruit. I'm not sure how it ended up on my oranges, but I did well with it. delicious taste and smell for my slow cooker thank you, thank you foreigner, once you have the oranges placed on the cookie sheet, go ahead and grab a napkin or paper towel and pat the pieces dry, now this is done ready.

To help remove some of the extra juice in the slices, they don't have to be perfect. You don't need to drain them, but you will want to turn them over and do this again on the other side just to remove them. as much excess juice as you can, this will only help your oranges dry a little softer and leave them perfectly dry when you're done, once you're done drying all the slices they'll be ready to pop. In the oven, you'll bake your orange slices at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for about two hours, making sure to turn them halfway through as they bake.

I'm going to go ahead and cut out our little labels for our slow cooker bags. I bought them on Etsy. I talk a lot about Etsy. I find most of the things I'm looking for for this type of thing on Etsy. I have used Etsy for years. I actually used to be an Etsy seller so I always go to Etsy first when I'm looking for something like this now, if you're super good with canva or cordial you can do it yourself of course Pinter or sorry not Pinterest PicMonkey , you can make your own label, however, I love giving my business to other moms or creators.

I remember how excited I got every time I heard the little dollar sound or money sound on my phone, so I'll have them linked below. They were really affordable and I just printed them. on white cardboard and then I cut them out. I love how he says that it starts to smell a lot like Christmas and then he tells you about adding the water and a splash of vanilla. Now there are other recipes for a slow cooker that includes cloves and things like that. I don't love that scent so I keep mine super simple, but you can always add whatever you want to yours.

We will also make a hole in the top of the tag so we can tie. At this point, it was already halfway done, so I'm going to turn our orange slices over so they can bake for another hour. On the other hand, you can see that they look absolutely beautiful, they are drying perfectly and my entire house. It smelled so good between these oranges in the oven and the slow cooker going to my house smells incredibly strange to put together our bags. I picked up these cute little gift bags from Michael's, they say Merry Christmas, the reason I bought these instead of just bags was Because these were $60 off and the plain bags weren't, I was able to get them for about a dollar, which which was perfect.

I didn't want to spend more than that and they had 50 bags inside so I thought they were perfect, maybe not 50. maybe it was 25. So I started with blueberries, added about two handfuls of blueberries, added two or three cinnamon sticks depending size and then I also added two or three sprigs of rosemary, now that it's fresh rosemary. At that point I just repeated this until I had a few bags made like four or five and then what I decided to do was make some with uncut, undried oranges. I thought they would be good if people weren't ready to use them properly.

There are only two different ways to do it. You can dry them if you have time. If you don't have it, if you want to make this gift and for your neighbors or friends right away and you don't have time to cut and dry. Take out your oranges, this is a perfect way to do it, you can just add the orange without slices, it looks just as beautiful and your friends can slice the orange when they are ready to prepare their slow cooker. I'm adding the tag here. with some red and white twine which I also bought at Michael's again this was not on sale I found it in their party section and I will say it was pretty expensive the twine was around 750 which I thought was a little pricey if you are .

As a teacher or educator you get 15 off at Michael's, so keep that in mind if you're buying things there that aren't on sale. However, I liked the way this twine looked. I could use a tape, which I did. I ended up adding some of the Pom-Pom ribbon that I showed in my Christmas cookie exchange video and you know it was an option, however, I wanted this little piece of twine and it also looks great when wrapping Christmas

gifts

. so the twine will be used a lot, so I'm just tying this up. I wrapped it up a bit.

I put a little bow on it and then just cut off the excess and I think this looks really really sweet. You could leave it like that, you could add another piece of ribbon if you wanted, you could even add, you know, just the ribbon that you curl with the scissors if you want, if you don't want to use twine, however, for mine I did have some. leftover this Pom-Pom ribbon that I bought at Michael's, so I'm going to tie a little piece here just to give it a little something extra and I love this little Pom-Pom ribbon.

I think it's really sweet and adds a really nice quirky touch Once my oranges finished drying in the oven and I let them cool, it was time to put together the rest of our bags. I made half the bags with unsliced ​​oranges and the other half with sliced ​​dried oranges. oranges and they both look absolutely beautiful and like I said they smelled absolutely fantastic so again to make these bags I did exactly the same thing I started with a couple of handfuls of blueberries these are fresh blueberries two or three cinnamon sticks a couple of sprigs of rosemary and Then, on that pile of oranges, I put about seven to eight orange slices in each bag, then I wrapped them, put on the label, as well as the twine and Pom-Pom ribbon and voila, I had a nice little assembly line.

I cut a bunch of tape at once so you wouldn't see it here on camera, however I made about 22 of these bags that were for my neighbors and some coworkers. I made one for my mother-in-law. sister-in-law so that way they can have it in their house too and I love the way they turned out foreign laughs and that brings us to the end of this video my friends if you found these adorable simmer pot gifts to be motivational or something that you are interested in doing. I'd love to see how yours turn out. If you make them, tag me on Instagram at Charlotte Crow Farmhouse.

I would love to see how yours turn out and I hope you have a lovely and beautiful holiday. See you next time. Have a great day my foreign friends.