Movie Night Gift Package

I had an engagement party to attend last weekend and had such a hard time coming up with a gift idea. As I often do when I’m lacking inspiration, I turned to Pinterest. I follow a lot of my favorite bloggers on there and it’s a great way to see a catalog of unique ideas. I came across a pin in my archives for popcorn toppings from Eazy Peazy Mealz and the wheels started turning. I decided to build an engagement gift around the popcorn seasonings, and came up with a movie night date package. When planning a wedding, it can be easy to get caught up in so many tasks that a couple can forget to do some of the simple activities that they enjoyed together as they were falling in love. I hope this movie date night gift will be a fun night at home escape from wedding planning for my cousin and her fiancé!

Of course to have a movie night you need, uh, movies. I decided on an Amazon gift card so they can pick the movies of their liking on Amazon instant video… there are so many choices! If you know your gift recipient has a DVD player (some rely solely on internet movies), a red box gift card would be a great way to go. I discovered when buying the gift card that you can add your own pictures and print out the gift to give in person. Here’s my beautiful cousin and her fiancé when they got engaged.

Next up I picked up a large bowl from At Home to make a personalized “movie night” popcorn bowl for them. I made the stencils with my Silhouette and reusable stencil material, and filled in the stencils with Sharpies. Btw, I got my Silhouette for Christmas and this was only my second project with it, I’m so glad I got over the intimidation factor of this amazing machine… there are endless fun crafty times ahead in my future!

If you don’t feel like DIY’ing the bowl, this one is cute and serves the same purpose.

Of course they need some popcorn for a movie night! I got a box of movie theater style.

Next up, the idea that I built the entire gift around, the popcorn seasonings! I made Salted Caramel and Italian seasonings (I made 1 slight modification to the Italian seasoning (Parmesan Herb), substituting basil for the oregano. You know I looove some basil!)

I found these adorable mason jar salt and pepper shakers also from At Home… they’re perfect for the popcorn toppings!

I designed labels for the shakers with the flavor names using an Avery design software template for a 2″ label. I didn’t have any 2″ labels so I printed them out on white sticker paper and cut them to size.

To seal them for wrapping, I just twisted some Glad Press n Seal around the rim of the shakers and trimmed to size so the lids screwed back on easily.

I stuffed some paper into the bottom of the bowl as a base for the popcorn, then covered that with a package of popped popcorn (no butter for this one, it would be too messy!), then placed the box of popcorn and the popcorn seasonings on top, and tucked the gift card behind the popcorn box.