An Easy Gift for Any Occasion: DIY Candy Bouquet

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This past weekend, some of you might have seen some beach posts on my Instagram…

To catch you up, I took a brief trip to Topsail, North Carolina to spend some time with a few favorite DIY pals. It’s kind of weird; considering that we have so much in common and feel like we know each other well, we have very few interactions in person except for an annual conference or two. To change that, Brittany (Pretty Handy Girl) suggested we all join up at an island condo and just have fun. It was off-season, but the beach sounded perfect. No projects, no demands, just relaxing with friends. Despite my lonely 7-hour drive to get to there, it was a great recharger. I took mostly embarrassing photos that Brittany, Sandra (Sawdust Girl), Karah (The Space Between) and Leen (Leen the Graphics Queen) have already forbidden me from posting, so I’ll just refer you to a video that Brittany took of us freezing our asses off in the ocean instead. We had a great time that wasn’t at all blogworthy, spent a ridiculous amount of time on our computers (can’t pry bloggers away, I guess), and drank way too much coffee, beer, and wine. It makes me really, really want to consider a beach condo makeover as a future DIY project. Anyone know of some inexpensive real estate?

Like, oceanfront for $5? A girl can dream.

Anyway, I’m back at my completely beach-less house and working on a few things, so more on that soon. In the meantime, I thought I’d share a quick project we whipped up as a thank-you to the owner of the condo for letting us stay (Brittany’s aunt, who is also a famous author and had Brittany do the condo’s makeover a while back, was going to be visiting the same condo not long after we left).

In the simplest of terms, it’s a potted flower plus sugar coma that’s propped to look like it’s exploding out of the plant. It’s barely enough work to even call it a project at all, but I’m 99% sure I’ll be using this as a go-to present idea at future get-togethers, so why not pass it along?

We got the idea while out shopping, but the store versions were $15-20 or more for candy no one would really want to eat, so we decided to DIY something with the name brand stuff that Brittany thought she’d like more. Even better: you can get all of these items at the grocery store, so it makes an easy last-minute present when you’re already on your way and realize you forgot that thing you wrapped back at home.

All you need are:

• an inexpensive indoor potted plant (next to the flower bouquets at most grocery stores)
• wooden bamboo skewers (the kind you use on the grill)
• candy large enough to hide the skewers from the front (from checkout or the candy aisle)
• duct tape (or if you have more time, maybe hot glue)

The assembly is pretty straightforward. All you need to do is tape the end of the skewer to the back of each piece, then skewer the end into the dirt.

The plant should hold the candy upright on its own, but water the plant (to get the dirt less likely to crumble) and tape the candy lower down on the skewer if you’re having top-heavy issues.

The back won’t be pretty, but people probably won’t care. Free chocolate is free chocolate.

Feel free to dress it up as festive as you like (in our case, the pot already came with the foil dressing). As I thought more about it, I realized you can do plenty of versions of this for whatever holiday or event is coming up, such as a housewarming or family get-together. Candy canes in a poinsettia or amaryllis, turkey lollipops in a pumpkin and mums, chocolate hearts in some roses, etc. Though I’m pretty sure a bouquet of Twix and Snickers is always appropriate… just sayin’.

Is anyone else, besides me, craving a Snickers now? Sorry about that!