The dog claiming the bucket for us.

My good friend Amy is pretty incredible: she spent all of fourth year, even the hardest parts, training for two races for Dana Farber, and on 4/18 she’s ran the Boston Marathon. 26.2 miles of dedication. I’m pretty impressed. She’s a good person, and is going to make a great surgeon. Go Amy, you should be proud of yourself!

Unfortunately I wasn’t be in Boston to support her in person on Marathon Monday, but I wanted to get her a ‘treat yo self’ gift. So the other day when Tyler and I were passing by an epic yard sale, I saw this old metal bucket, and had the brilliant idea of a gift bucket. Well, not exactly my idea but rather years of seeing these things on pintrest. Either way, I made it happen, and it wasn’t that hard and turned out pretty cool.

All you need is:

-1 Metal bucket – you can get this from your local craft store if you want, but usually you can usually find it for cheaper at your local hardware store like Home Depot

-Spray Acrylic Paint – pick your favorite color

-Paint brushes and acrylic paints – these are really optional. I wanted to paint on the front of it, and so I used these. You can also use a stencil and a different color spray paint.

-Item to fill it with – I went with a pre-/post-Marathon relaxation idea. So I had candles, cake mix and frosting, homemade lime sugar, some chocolate, and a bath set from the Body Shop.

Steps are pretty simple:

1. Outside, turn the bucket upside down on a towel or something and spray it with the spray paint. It might take two coats. Spray paint dries pretty fast (around 15 minutes), so leave it after the first coat, come back after that and spray it down. Do this until you get a thick coating and cover up all the metal-parts on the outside

2. Flip it over and do the same thing on the inside.

3. When it’s dry, using a stencil or free-hand, draw whatever pattern you want on the front. Then pick your acrylic paints and start painting.

4. When your bucket is dry, fill the bottom with old newspaper crumpled, or any gift basket filler. I’m a fan of newspaper for its utility.

5. Put all the gift items in the bucket!

And viola! There you have it, a gift bucket. Doesn’t take much time, and at the end of it the person you give it to will not only have the goodies inside, but also something to keep and use!