Men Like
Gift Baskets for Christmas Too!
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A Gift Basket Makes a
Wonderful Present for Office Workers or
Family
This year, lots of us are
finding our gift budgets are not as ample as in
years past. While that cashmere sweater you'd like
to get for your Mom may be out of the question,
gift baskets for Christmas are making a
well-deserved comeback.
Unlike the 1950s gift baskets
for Christmas, filled with little jars of
preserves, summer sausage and cheese, today's
Christmas gift baskets are far more imaginative.
Here are some ideas to get you started.
1. Decades ago, supermarkets
didn't stock items like lemon pepper herring,
smoked oysters in tins, artisan breads and other
luxury items. Today, the average supermarket
carries between 9,000-10000 different products.
This means you have hundreds
of unusual, delicious foods from which to choose to
fill your gift baskets for Christmas. Most families
can't afford to stock up on these treats, so if you
know the tastes of your recipient, you can make an
affordable, yet memorable gift.
2.A gift basket filled with
tissue-wrapped, fancy Christmas ornaments is one
that's universally well received. Tie it up with a
fancy wired ribbon and some fresh pine greens and
you've got a winner!
3. We can never have too many
Christmas decorations to enhance the festivities.
Try filling a rectangular
basket with potted plants suited to the season,
such as poinsettias, cyclamen and Christmas cactus.
String some battery-operated lights around the
basket's edge, along with some peppermint candy
canes for a lovely, living gift.
4. Kids also love gift
baskets for Christmas. Art supplies, including
markers, acrylic (water-based) paints, watercolors,
brush sets and the super-size box of crayons will
keep kids happy for months!
5. Teen girls often allocate
a significant amount of their pocket money to
beauty products. Nail kits, lipsticks, facial
masks, bubble bath and lotions are always popular.
Barrettes and other hair ornaments, diaries and
costume jewelry are other good choices that please
teens.
6 .If you've got an avid cook
on your gift list, pay a visit to an herb shop or
supermarket that sells herbs in bulk.
Check out the library for
books on herb mixtures and make up a dozen spice
jars of some of the more unusual recipes. Use
canning labels to mark the possible uses of each
mixture.
Try to cover the bases with a
variety, some for fish, poultry and meats, with
others for salads and veggies. Include a jar of an
herbal salt substitute, which gives the impression
of salted food – without the salt.
7. There's plenty of free
downloadable software available on the net, with
which you can create terrific gift baskets for
Christmas, no matter what the age or interests of
the recipient.
Burn the software to a disc
for a custom made gift. Here, a small basket will
do. Wrap the disc and case in pretty paper and
cover with individually wrapped candies. Put a card
on top that says, “Search the bottom for the
treasure”. Good things do come in small
packages!
More Ideas
There aren’t any
restrictions on what you can put inside them
(except how much you put in), which makes them
suitable for almost any recipient during any
season—friends, family, business associates or
whoever during New Years, Easter, Valentine’s
Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, a
birthday, or whenever else an occasion for gift
giving arises.
You can buy these presents at
tons of places but of course you can always make
your own if you want to make it extra special and
save some money. All it takes is a basket, some
goodies and stuffing, and some time and effort.
Some ideas for a basket are,
flowers, fruit, chocolate and candy, and Easter
eggs, the quintessential holiday basket. Easter egg
baskets are obviously good for Easter. Flower
baskets are nice for Valentine’s Day.
Holiday baskets with food
offerings are usually good any time of the year.
The kind of food they contain can be tailored to
the occasion, like fresh fruit for Thanksgiving,
bat shaped cookies for Halloween, and candy canes
for Christmas.
But really, what you decide
to put in yours is up to you. There’s no need
to segregate gift basket content—why not
flowers and fruit, or food accompanied with
beverages?
If it’s a birthday gift
basket, you should put in whatever the recipient
likes to eat, which might be outside the scope of
typical holiday gift basket offerings.
Also, the contents don’t
necessarily have to be edible. Candles, ornaments,
beauty products and potpourri are examples of
non-edible goodies that make good gifts. Feel free
to mix and match according to your preference and
what the recipient would prefer.
If you’re not entirely
sure what they would specifically like and
there’s no way of discreetly finding out, you
can include a variety of things out of which
they’re bound to like something. That’s
another perk.
Here's a Story from Someone
Who Makes Them For Men
When I decided to go into
business making gift baskets for men, my family was
pretty skeptical to say the least. It wasn't that
they didn't trust me to come up with good gifts.
As a matter of fact, since I
was five or six years old, I was known for my
excellent gift suggestions. Whenever one of my
siblings was trying to pick out a Father's Day
present, they would come to me.
I would intuitively know the
perfect gifts for him when no one else could shop
for my father. I used to make the most beautiful
handmade gift baskets and send them to my
grandmother. She was delighted, but a little bit
jealous. You see, my presents were even better than
hers!
Nonetheless, people were a
little bit less optimistic about my gift basket for
men idea. My mom said that if anyone could do it I
could, but she still wasn't quite sure that I
could. Gift baskets for men, after all, just
weren't the way things were done.
Everyone knows what kind of
gifts men are supposed to like: pocket watches,
pocket knives, golf balls, gadgets and gizmos. You
don't get men nicely decorated, frilly gift
baskets! It just isn't done. Nonetheless, I saw the
opening, and I decided to go for it.
It turned out to be
surprisingly easy. As I soon found out, there are
plenty of gift baskets for men that go over quite
well without insulting the intended recipient's
masculinity.
You see, there are many thing
that men like that can go in gift baskets. Cigars,
sausage, cheese and other food products are all
perfectly serviceable ideas. These are all things
that you might get for a man anyway, so why not
wrap them up nicely and send them in the mail?
As it turns out, my gift
baskets for men went over incredibly well. I
introduced them around Christmas, and from that
point until New Year's, I was making a new gift
basket for men every week. I had variety baskets,
ones that matched the right wine with the right
cheese, baskets for pipe smokers, baskets for cigar
smokers – if you could name it, I could put it
together.
Not only was it lucrative, it
was fun too! Starting my own business meant that I
got to be my own boss, and I didn't have to answer
to anyone. Who doesn't dream about that? I was
living the dream!
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