Sunday, November 30, 2008

Give a Gift Basket

One of my favorite holiday presents to give is a Gift Basket. I give at least one, if not more each year at Christmas time. The great thing about gift baskets is that you can personalize them to match the recipient. The one I have given the most often is a Wine basket and I am making one up this year to give to a friend.

Gift baskets can be fairly inexpensive to make, but beautiful when done right. I did a search today for Wine Gift Baskets on Google and what I found were baskets varying in price from $29.00 to over $200.00. You can bet that my basket did not cost $200.00, but it sure will look expensive.

Let's take a look at my basket. I spent $4.00 on the basket at Wal-mart, $1.00 on the shredded tissue paper at The Dollar Tree, $2.00 on the wine glasses from The Pottery Barn, and $9.00 on the wine at Wal-mart. The wine I bought was from a local winery and very good. In addition, I added a romantic movie from Wal-mart's $5.00 bin (can you tell I love Wal-mart) and added some chocolates to finish it out. I'm not sure of the price of those because I already had them at home. Once everything is arranged in the basket, I put it in a gift basket bag that I got at The Dollar Tree for $1.00 and I'm finished. Total cost $22.00, plus whatever the chocolates cost. Oh, and I usually buy a big bow to put on it from the Dollar General Store for a dollar or two.

Once it's put together, it is beautiful. I'd love to show you a photo, but I haven't assembled it yet. The only room in the house I have to store my gifts is a room that is closed off from from the heat and I don't want a frozen bottle of wine.

As I said, you can personalize your basket in any way. I've seen baskets for a car buff that is in a bucket with all kinds of car wash soap and waxes, keychains, anything for a car. Then, there's one that I did for a friend's birthday that was a big bowl filled with popcorn, cheese flavored salt, and a DVD. If you have someone who is hard to buy for, I guarantee there is a themed basket out there for them. The sky is the limit when it comes to making a Gift Basket.

Need some ideas? Just do a Google search and see what you come up with.

Carol

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gift baskets are wonderful ideas. If you're looking to do another with flavored salt this year, I recommend Secret Stash Sea Salts in Seattle. They have a wonderful assortment of flavored sea salts that can be found online at:

www.secretsalts.com

Andrea said...

Great idea! I've been thinking about making a gift basket for my brother-in-law and his wife. They love kettle corn, and I found a great recipe on allrecipes.com. I thought of making a batch and finding a nice way to package it, then maybe buying all the ingredients so they can make it themselves. And your romantic movie idea sounds nice, too. :)

Thanks for the suggestions.