If you are looking for a kid-made gift idea, here is our favourite from this week. Did we ever have fun, creating these rainbow spice mixes. Caution: very spicy!

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Toddlers have a stage when they cannot get enough of pouring water from one cup to another, and for Budster this obsession has stretched over this whole year. So, it seemed right to let him practice this skill, while making presents for our relatives and friends. Since a lot of men we know favour cooking as a hobby, it is a great gift for uncles and grandfathers, as well as aunts and grandmothers!

We often buy spices in bulk, so I did not have to do any extra shopping, but checked our pantry and took out oregano, parsley, rosemary, red pepper, garlic and sesame seeds. A perfect festive mix for making a turkey or chicken! If you do not think the recipient will enjoy sesame seeds, or you are out of rosemary, create your own unique mix.

I am sure I could have found something suitable for a container kicking around, but I saw a couple of pretty oil bottles at a dollar store. I remembered spices sold in bottles like this in the Italian street markets, and with this pleasant association, I got them.

A funnel and a measuring spoon come next. If you want to create a spice mix with an older kid, you may want to get a spice recipe and practice using different volumes of spoons. But I rarely measure my spices, adding them “according to taste”, and I let Budster decide what his taste was. For a little guy like him, working with a funnel and a spoon was good fine motor skill practice.

Materials

– Bulk oregano leaf

– Bulk rosemary

– Bulk parsley

– Bulk garlic powder

– a bottle or jar

– a funnel

Process

Why has’t anyone invented a way to send a smell attached to pictures and videos? It was a unique olfactory experience for my son! The spices smelled divine, and Budster enjoyed giving each of them a sniff before starting to fill the bottles. I was wondering if he would decide to mix them by alternating one spoonful of each at a time, but he was keen on making layers. He would scoop about ten spoonfuls from one bowl before switching to the next.

It was a pleasant pastime. In addition to the smell of dry herbs, I enjoyed the rustling of scooped and poured leaves. It looked beautiful, too.

Budster sure liked it hot. The other day, he was in charge of spices while Daddy was making a soup, and was it ever a spicy! His enthusiastic for red pepper flakes hasn’t flagged!

After both of the bottles were full, I printed a couple of labels “Spicy Spice: made by Budster”, cut tags out of brown card stock paper and tied them to the corks. Here is my template for the tag. Our gifts were finished! I hope their recipients will make use of all this spiciness. We gave our mix a little test as well.

When he was done filling the bottles, Budster kept on playing with a handful of spice that did not fit into either of them. He kept pouring it from one bowl into another and seemed very pleased with his new game. It continued for a good half hour, and I was happy that he was enjoying himself so much. Afterwards, I put his leftover spices away, and when we had turkey the other day, sprinkled them on top. It was spicy, but good!

What spices do you like to use most often? We often create some sort of French or Italian mixes with different proportions of garlic, parsley, oregano and rosemary. I am also of an opinion that soy sauce can improve anything, but have not been able to convince my husband, who teases me about my soy sauce obsession.

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