Stuffed Strawberry Cheesecake Bites

4 oz Cream Cheese (Softened)

3 Tablespoons powdered Sugar

1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract

20 – 25 Whole Strawberries

1/4 Cup Graham Cracker Crumbs

1 Pk Almond Bark Chocolate or Vanilla (Optional)

In a small mixing bowl combine cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract beating together until smooth. Set aside. Wash and dry strawberries completely then using a corer or paring knife, hollow out the center of each strawberry.  Fill cream cheese mixture using an accent decorator, pastry bag, or plastic storage bag with a corner tip snipped off. Fill strawberries with cream mixture, followed by dipping each stuffed strawberry top in graham cracker crumbs. Refrigerator for 2 hours before serving. Chocolate lovers can also dip stuffed strawberry in chocolate. Enjoy!!

Strawberries cleaned, dried, and hollowed.

I used my accent decorator to fill strawberries with the cream cheese mixture.

Berries stuffed and topped with graham cracker crumbs. The optional dipped chocolate would take place next.

I visited my local store and asked the produce manager if I could have a few plastic containers, which usually contain tomatoes. I was pleased with the response, “How many would you like”. I was blessed with 25. Thanks Albie!!

We packed two dipped and two non dipped in our container, but still needy to jazz it up little with some tulle and stickers from our craft box.

OOP….. for everything cost me about $14.00 for about 100 strawberries making 25 gifts.(My only supplies I didn’t have in stock $1.50 for 2 lb pk  I purchase 5) Cream cheese cost me $.30 from past Kroger sale.(I used 3  8 oz) I guess you can say I double tripled the recipe.lol  Other ingredients were pantry items. Don’t forget the plastic containers were FREE ans tulle left over from Christmas  and stickers from last year Valentine’s clearance.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!!!

My daugther Kenya has been home sick with croup for the last 5 days and it’s been raining. She not a happy camper, so to cheer her up I thought it would be fun for the two of us to break out the craft box. I had no idea what we should make until she reminded me it was the first day of February. (WOW seems like we just said Happy New Year yesterday.) So we stared pulling out all the craft hearts (foam, wooden ones) I seem to always keep poster boards on hand for school projects. We found ribbon, jewels, tulle, and paint. After playing with all the material here’s what we came up with.

Valentine’s Craft on a Budget.  Made these for my youngest child’s Pre-K class.  Got the pencils in the dollar section at Target and pulled construction paper out of my craft drawer.  Knocked out the “card” and “goody” at the same time for only TWO BUCKS!!!

This past Saturday we had two birthday parties we had to attend and I noticed my stash of gift bags consisted of birthday bags that were either too small or much to large for our gift. I really didn’t want to have to stop at a store for two gift bags. So I decided to look around and use what I had right in the house.

On hand I had the following:

Tulle (leftover from Christmas), Gems (leftover from craft projects), Comic paper (Usually saved for for my cat’s litter). Here’s the finished product topped off with a sweet treat.

What are your frugal ways to gift wrap?