Gift Guide

Do you need an idea for a nice gift?

Who has time to think through gifts, whether they are for your husband, wife, kids, or a friend’s new baby!

Nowadays, many people take the work out of buying gifts by registering for themselves. That is nice, but I always find it hard to give a gift that someone knows they are receiving.

So what is mom’s favorite solution to finding gifts?

Finding unique, and many times personalized, gifts for people.

From where?

Believe it or not a lot of museums have great web-sites that have online gift stores. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has some wonderful items to purchase at http://www.metmuseum.org/ This site and others have a large array of interesting, and unique gifts for the whole family.

We have also found that a lot of catalogs, have some unique gifts. Go to Acorn Online for some great general gifts.

PBS also has tons of unique gifts at ShopPBS.org!

Kids Gifts

Some of mom’s favorite gifts for babies and children are also unique and come from a variety of online sources including:

“I See Me!” at www.iseeme.com has of the most unique kids’ and babies’ gifts we have ever seen. We have ordered several of their items for our friends, and they adore them! These are wonderful personalized children’s books which actually incorporate the child’s particular name into the story of the book.

For more and beautiful and safe children’s products, a couple more of mom’s favorites include:
Bella Organics - this was a store created by a mom for children - and all her products are 100% organic!

One of mom’s favorites is also handcrafted gifts which are now readily available on e-bay.

Another one of our favorites is site Etsy: “Your place to buy and sell all things homemade” at http://www.etsy.com/. They have so many cute and unique items! Similarly, check out Quilt Baby, at http://www.quilt-baby.com/ for lovely and reliable gifts for babies.

Gifts for Family and Friends

When you are really stuck, mom’s favorite tip is to think about a “gift that keeps on giving,” such as subscriptions to magazines or some sort of monthy delivery service.

Mom’s favorite tip about giving these sort of gifts is think about what the person would love to receive once a month - is it flowers, chocolates, wine, a subscription to Netflix, Blockbuster, or The NY Times? If this seems too much, think about a one time delivery, including dinner delivery - which is a very nice touch!

Another idea is to give a magazine subscription for the full year. We have given and received magazines, in and this is a fun gift that reminds you of the gift giver every month.

We also love giving gift certificates to our friends and family - especially for stores that sell a wide variety of items, such as Amazon.com

For those who prefer to give rather than receive, there are so many wonderful charities that allow donations to be given as gifts. Look at Heifer International at http://www.heifer.org/ to donate a very much needed animal for someone in need, in someone’s name.