Gluten Free Gift Basket with Stamped Tea Towels

Only one week until Mother’s Day!  This year I am on top of things; no waiting until the last minute for me.  This year I decided to put together a gift basket for my mom filled with some yummy tea and lots of other goodies.  Easy peasy, right?  Well, sort of.  Unfortunately, my mom can’t have a lot of the things in a typical gift basket.  First of all, she is allergic to chocolate.  (Sooo happy that isn’t hereditary!)  Secondly, she found out ten years ago she has celiac disease which means she has to be extremely careful not to eat anything with even the tiniest amount of gluten in it. So a lot of candies and snack foods are out.  Luckily, finding gluten-free snacks is becoming easier and easier these days which made this gluten free gift basket easy to put together.

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Griffin and I made a trip to Walmart to stock up on supplies for the basket. (He was not happy about it).

Of course, I couldn’t make a gift basket, without including something handmade, so while I was at Walmart, I bought a five pack of plain white tea towels to fancy up.

These were so fun and easy to make.  Before you do anything, make sure to wash and iron your tea towels.  Then I used some craft paint I had on hand and mixed it with fabric medium. I stamped a favorite saying onto the first tea towel using two different sizes of stamps.  And I painted a bird onto another tea towel using a little bird stencil.

My mom is a huge lover of tea and happy day, tea is gluten-free.  (If you have ever tried to eat gluten-free before, you know it is in almost everything.  Even weird stuff that have nothing to do with bread, like soup and salad dressing).   My childhood memories of her pretty much always include a big ole glass of iced tea at her side so I knew tea was the perfect thing to include.

The tea aisle was kind of intense – who knew there were so many kinds of tea to choose from!  I knew I wanted to get something high quality so I went with Bigelow Tea.  (It turns out that Bigelow tea is an American, family-owned company which is a major bonus. Plus it is sealed in a foil pouch so it is extra fresh.)   I was having a really hard time deciding between all of the enticing flavors, so I went with an assorted box with a bunch of new flavors to try along with a box of peach tea.  Because nothing says summertime like a big glass of peach tea.

I also wanted to include some gluten-free snacks in the basket.  Walmart has really been stepping up their game lately and has a whole section of gluten-free stuff now.  I grabbed a box of cranberry almond gluten-free granola bars to include.  I also added a box of Reese’s Pieces.  A lot of the best (and most inexpensive) gluten-free snacks aren’t even in the special gluten-free section.  You can find gluten-free stuff in almost every aisle – just be sure to check labels carefully.  Reese’s pieces are one of my mom’s favorite candies and they happen to be gluten-free and chocolate-free.  Double score.

I also picked up a super cute mother’s day tumbler to add.  Ok, well to be honest Griffin picked it out and had great fun playing with it for the rest of our shopping trip.  It’s the little things. ;)