Holiday Shopping Tips
December 10, 2007 by Andrea 
Filed under Shopping Tips
Happy holidays! Today I am featuring two places that can help you finish your gift shopping.
Chef’s Catalog specializes in high-end products and usually has the price tag to match; however, their Sale Items usually have some good deals and hidden treasures. Right now they have the following in their Sale area:
- Holiday Snowman Cake Pan, for making a 3D snowman cake (reg $35, sale $17.99)
- Children’s Cooking Apron, ice cream stripe, (reg $15, sale $9.99)
- Valrhona Cocoa Powder, 250 g (reg $9.00, sale $4.99)
They have a free gift wrap deal on orders placed before December 12. Their recipe collection is also worth browsing.
Christmas Forest has been making and shipping beautiful handmade wreaths since 1976. I first heard of them in 1996 when I was living in Saudi Arabia (go figure). One of the teachers at the school placed several of their brochures in the workroom and said that she had been buying the wreaths as Christmas gifts for her family ever since she moved overseas. She said the wreaths were beautiful, and they certainly looked good in the photos. I took her advice and ordered wreaths for my family. All the recipients raved about how beautiful they were and how *good* they smelled when they arrived. They also said that the wreaths held up well throughout the holidays.
I ordered one for myself the first year I was back in the U.S., and I have ordered them every year ever since. They have lots of styles available, but the Cascade (pictured) is my personal favorite. The wreaths are made from boughs that are trimmed from the trees each year to help promote growth, so they are sustainably harvested.
These holiday wreaths are a wonderful idea, especially to send to people far away. But I also love the idea of sending or giving memories of Christmas’s past. How does one do that? Simple. Buy the person or the whole family the Limited Keepsake Edition of The Original Christmas Classics. These animated features, Rudolph–The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and Santa Clause is Comin’ To Town, are sure to bring back the magical Christmas’s we all shared with our families and friends. This is our childhood, for most of us. And the CD includes 4 other animated features as well as a bonus music CD. What a delight! It is sold wherever CD’s are sold or you can keep it simple, like I plan to, and order it online. http://www.christmasclassics.tv I work for them but I plan on ordering several as gifts as well as for myself. Make Christmas a special one by reminiscing with the family and this set of movies and some hot cocoa. You will be everyone’s hero, especially the kids.