Here’s a great way to enjoy the beauty of candy in your holiday decorating. Examiner.com has a craft to make a heart-shaped Christmas tree ornament. This makes a great frame to display a child’s photo or another loved one’s photo. Not only that, but once you decide to take the tree down, you can easily recycle this frame by munching on the peppermint treats, thus giving you a little snack to enjoy during your labors.
What do you do with candy canes? Simply hang them from the pine boughs or do you have a craft like this you like to do?
I love this simple candy cane centerpiece idea from Better Homes and Gardens magazine (courtesy of their You Tube page) for a number of reasons.
While I have a tendency to not be overly excited about red roses during the rest of the year, there’s something wonderful about a deep red rose at the holidays.
You can make it with a pickle jar and a rubber band.
It’s a great use way to use traditional candy canes in a non-traditional way.
This is a great craft to make, using the beauty of candy canes, a nice floral centerpiece. The red and white peppermint sticks go really well with the red roses in the video. What’s nice is that the centerpiece is reusable when one set of flowers withers. The best part, if course, is that the peppermint sticks are still wrapped and thus edible. That means even more candy cane goodness for all!
One way to save a bit of money and look fancy in the process is to make your own chocolate and candy gifts. We have a whole mess of holiday recipes on the CandyUSA site, and Susan shared her favorite and even gave a recipe for her signature peppermint bark. But first, how can we take some homemade stuff and make it look nice enough to be a gift for someone?
Find decorative tins to put gifts in.
Usually a tin holds only one or two homemade items. Especially if you are making something with a strong flavor or scent, like Susan’s peppermint bark or else your own concoction of bacony chocolatey goodness, it’s best to separate the sweets you make. Refer to our tips for storing candy when you package your goodies. Put the cand in a tin, along with some colored tissue paper and you have a nice gift.
Make your own gift baskets.
This can be a fun way of incorporating your homemade candy treats with something else, possibly a commercial product from the store. For example, if I were Susan and wanted to give Carl (that’s me) a holiday gift, I would put some of the peppermint bark in a gift basket with a package of Trung Nguyen coffee or maybe Luzianne coffee with chicory. Either way – I’m not picky. Include a fun holiday mug and a chocolate bar for extra sweetness and voila – your own gift basket. Wrap it in cellophane and you have a nice-looking homemade, custom made gift for less than it would cost to order a gift basket.
These supplies – baskets, tins, tissue, cellophane – can all be found at your local craft supply store.
What would you want in your gift basket if Susan were making you one?
Ladies and Gentleman – I’m excited to share with you that June is National Candy Month! Get out your party clothes, it’s time to celebrate.
Actually, the hows and whys of the origins of Candy Month are lost to time. It’s very easy to to get a national calendar of special observances to declare a day or week or month in honor of something or someone. Just about anyone can do it (and has!). Here’s some information about special observances and how they come to pass. We do know that Candy Month was not originally celebrated in June. We also why it was moved to June.
In 1998, NCA was planning the very first ALL CANDY EXPO. It was to take place in June. The support from the industry was overwhelming. We’d been waiting for a trade show of our own for a long time. Everyone wanted a central place to buy and sell candy and the event was finally around the corner. One of the trade magazines in the industry (called, at that time, Confectioner) found out about National Candy Month and decided that with such a big celebration of candy taking place in June that Candy Month also should be in June. So, they asked Chase’s Calendar of Events to change it.
Yeah, it’s not the most spectacular story … but it still gives us a 30 days to celebrate this wonderful treat.
Another set of gummy lessons from our pals over at Instructables. This time, instead of making a gummy shot glass, we learn how to conduct various Frankenstein-like surgeries on gummy bears, such as heart, head and limb transplants.
It takes a steady hand to do this kind of thing, as you can imagine. One false move and the bears could perish. Give this a shot yourself and upload some photos to our Flickr pool.
These glasses would be a lot of fun at a party and would certainly generate a lot of conversation. Even better, this set of plans can be used to make any sort of gummy object you can find or build a mold for.
What gummy creation are you going to make to keep cool in the June heat?
Here’s a great way to enjoy the beauty of candy in your holiday decorating. Examiner.com has a craft to make a heart-shaped Christmas tree ornament. This makes a great frame to display a child’s photo or another loved one’s photo. Not only that, but once you decide to take the tree down, you can easily recycle this frame by munching on the peppermint treats, thus giving you a little snack to enjoy during your labors.
Actually, the hows and whys of the origins of Candy Month are lost to time. It’s very easy to to get a national calendar of special observances to declare a day or week or month in honor of something or someone. Just about anyone can do it (and has!). Here’s some information about 
