Last week I celebrated fall with my sorority sisters! This is an annual tradition for us, and we always do some sort of gift exchange. Usually everyone brings enough $10 items for each person who will be there, but this year we changed it up and everyone brought three identical $25 gifts to exchange. I thought this would be a fun alternative, and give us the chance to select different things than we had in the past with a higher budget.
My favorite fall thing is super original – pumpkins. I love pumpkin decor, pumpkin scents, pumpkin food. If it has anything to do with pumpkins, chances are, I love it. So I decided to put together a pumpkin basket with all sorts of pumpkin goodies!
I found the galvanized buckets at Michael’s and thought they would be the perfect vessel for my pumpkin gifts. I filled them with brown paper shreds to add height to the gift. I find the trick with shredded paper is to make sure it’s packed in really tight if it’s serving as a base. If you don’t, your items still just sorta fall to the bottom. I used about one bag of shreds per bucket.
The first item I selected were these adorable camp mugs from Etsy! I love how big they are and I can just picture my friends enjoying a pumpkin latte at home on a rainy Saturday morning. And maybe there’s a fire going, and a they’re watching “You’ve Got Mail.” Or you know, whatever they want to do! Ha!
I filled the mug with my favorite pumpkin mallows that I repackaged into a cellophane bag and tied with an orange buffalo plaid ribbon.
Another Etsy find was the most amazing smelling pumpkin patch candle. These candles are incredible and the packaging was equally so. I love the wooden candle top, painted to look a little mossy, and the simple, classic label. Perfection.
I also found the pumpkin shaped and scented bath bombs on Etsy, and packaged those in cellophane and tied them with a buffalo plaid ribbon.
One of my most favorite finds from the Target Dollar Spot is the little ceramic pumpkins that they had last year and again this year. In fact, I love them so much that they were incorporated into our wedding decor! I added a little white one to each basket.
I picked up some pumpkin scones from Starbucks and wrapped those up in cellophane, and also found some pumpkin soap packaged in a perfect pumpkin gift wrap from Marshall’s.
I was really happy with how the basket turned out, and I hope the recipients are loving the pumpkin overload!
For the gift exchange game, we did three rounds. Each round, everyone drew a number and then got to pick out a gift in order. The same was repeated in the second and third rounds. It was really simple, and everyone liked that there was no stealing. We also had the chance to explain our favorite thing when the first person opened it. It was really fun to see what everyone brought and hear the story behind it.
I always love celebrating fall with my sisters! If you want to see how we’ve celebrated before, check out this post.
Party on!
JW
So fun!! Great basket!