Just place a few vanilla beans in an air-tight jar and fill with sugar.  Allow to sit for a few days and the sugar takes on a wonderful vanilla essence.  This vanilla sugar can be used in place of regular sugar in everything from baked goods to coffee.

For added elegance, print out a white mailing label and punch the top and bottom with a decorative edge punch before applying to the jar.

Note: Martha’s cookie recipe is a bit spicy for younger children.

I thought I would link to a couple of my Christmas posts from last year.  Here are a couple of simple melt and pour soap tutorials that are fun to make, give, and receive.

Christmas Tree Soap

Snowflake Soap

Here are two of the projects.

Using the same techniques of layering punched and decorative papers and embellishments, I made Christmas cards and gift boxes today.

That holly edge punch is from Martha Stewart Crafts.

Did you know that Christmas is only 5 weeks away!  Yikes, I had better get posting and crafting!

Above is the cold process soap I made for Christmas this year.

First, I made the trees in a tree-shaped silicone muffin pan.  When I was making soap, I made a bigger batch of soap than I needed and colored the extra with green chrome oxide and scented it with Holly Berry fragrance, both from Brambleberry, and poured it into the tree mold.

After the trees were hardened and unmolded, I embedded them in a loaf, again scented with Holly Berry, and colored with gold mica and a burgandy oxide swirl.

Here is the loaf before I cut it.

I can’t wait to box these up in white boxes decorated with punched craft paper.  I’ll be sure to post a picture of the packaged bars.