Teacher Gifts

If your family is anything like ours you have a ton of teachers, we have school teachers, we have Sunday school teachers, we have activity teachers...  all-in-all this year we counted 10. 

So the question became, as it always is, what will we get them for the holidays?  I've always thought that giftcards are nice, because it allows them to get a cup of coffee or buy a book or whatever.  But even if we did $5 a person we were looking at $50 which was about double what I wanted to spend.  Cookies are always fun but I don't have the time this year to spend a couple days dedicated to baking, I wish I did but I don't.

So that put me on the search for a fun gift that was also affordable.  That's when I came across this recipe in Everyday by Martha Stewart.    Now normally I find Martha's recipes a little more than I like to swallow, a few too many steps or a few too many exotic ingredients that I can't find or cost too much. 

But this recipe was FOUR, yes FOUR ingredients, two of which being salt and a cinnamon stick.  So I purchased the apples and pears and got to work.  Now I doubled this recipe and boy am I glad I did, because even doubling it I only yielded nine jars full. 

The steps are pretty easy, peel and core both the apples and pears.  My apple corer nicely did that for me with the apples, sadly the pears were too soft.  Chop up in the food processor and then cook in your slow cooker all day!  Not hard at all!!!!  And let me tell you, my house smelled YUMMY! 

While I was sad that I only got nine jars I was very pleased with the simplicity of this project and the final project.  We now have nice handmade presents to hand out to everyone and we didn't break the bank making them.

I like showing my kids that Christmas isn't about the biggest, the most expensive, the best - it is about sharing Jesus' love and celebrating and what better way than with a homemade gift that says I value you and what you do and I show that by giving you my time to make some from the heart.