Do you need any last minute Christmas gift ideas? You can easily put together a gift basket of soaps or candies, crackers, or toys by visiting a dollar store. Do it now before Dollar Tree prices go up to $1.25. In some areas of the country, they may have already raised prices. Of course, $1.25 is still a bargain in most cases. If you have more to spend, go to Walmart where you can find something nice for everyone on your list.
My old standby is Amazon. In fact, this year, almost all of my Christmas shopping has been done on Amazon except for what I bought my sister. She loves the Titanic so I shopped the ship and bought her gifts from the Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri.
Good morning! Today is day nine of this infernal cold with tons of coughing. I did online Christmas shopping all weekend so if you need some Christmas gift ideas, I have them!
Today is our company pay day and I will have to write the checks from home because I am still sick and I don't want to pollute our employees. It makes me so angry that I got this cold in my home from sick visitors and now I have to waste two weeks out of my life staying at home during the Christmas season. I know, I have whined about this long enough but I still feel so miserable.
Today, I need to finish decorating in here and then wrap up the Christmas gifts I have. Yesterday, I unboxed them and got them ready to wrap but I just couldn't make myself actually wrap them.
A cold front blew in this morning and afternoon with lots of wind and very little humidity. It feels great.
Today is payday but our accountant did not get our pay stubs to us until around 4pm. Some of our people left without their check by the time I got them all written.
This year, because so much is out floating in the Pacific Ocean, waiting to be unloaded, people are saying to buy local and buy handmade.
So maybe you need to find the small mom and pop businesses in your local town and buy from them. For instance, David and I own David's Garden Seeds®, a company that we started in our living room twelve years ago. We are a small business, currently employing 14 people. We count, pack, and ship our Non-GMO seeds all over the USA every day so you can grow your own food. We do everything in house here on our farm. We have a farm store where you can shop our seeds, hats, strawberry preserves, pickles, eggs, and more. Seeds in collection gift bags make beautiful Christmas gifts with the excitement of learning how to garden, a skill that not many people have in these times.
Look for local companies to find great Christmas gift ideas this year. That way, you don't have to worry if something is in stock or if it is made in China. You can be sure that it was made right here, in the United States of America.
Good chilly morning. It is 50° on this Pearl Harbor Day. Yes, it is a day that will live in infamy. I am feeling much better but you can still tell I have a cold by the sound of my voice. Maybe I will go to the store today but I don't want to get our team members sick.
Tomorrow we have our Christmas party so I need to be better to go. We have no December birthdays this year.
Living out in the country, we have met a lot of small business owners who have items in their shops that you would enjoy getting under your tree this year. There are homemade food items, soaps, real animal fiber yarns, homemade spices, knitted and crocheted items, handmade jewelry, and so much more.
So I did work in the store all day long. I finished decorating our farm store and cleaned up some of the clutter under the counter.
Nacho completed the new deck. The pool got filled the rest of the way.
Two of our workers came to us through an employment agency. Every week, the employment agency brings by their paychecks on Tuesdays. Then I give them to the workers. Today, the lady showed up and gave me the paychecks just before 5pm and the workers had already gone home. I told her so she said they are not supposed to get the checks until Thursday. This is the first time I heard that. I told her that they come asking every Tuesday. She said they know payday is not until Thursday. I told her they will not get them until Thursday from now on.
Today the chickens gave me 15 eggs. It is supposed to warm up so maybe we will get more again soon.
Baked goods made in your kitchen are wonderful Christmas gift ideas. I love to bake loaves of bread, muffins, cookies, pies, and make candy like fudge, divinity, and penuche. My grandmothers used to make a lot of fudge, divinity, and penuche at Christmastime. It was wonderful and always appreciated. My grandmother Yorgensen always made tollhouse cookies at Christmas and would give us a huge tin of them.
So get to cooking and baking in the kitchen now.
Good chilly morning. It is 45° and I am cold. The sun is shining bright at 8am. Today is our (early) Christmas luncheon. We do not have any December birthdays this year for the first time in a long time.
We went to Salt Grass. There were 30 people at our table. Some I did not know. David invited various people he has met. Unfortunately, with a crowd that big at one long table, you don't get to visit except for those right by you. I would rather just sit down with a few people and enjoy getting to know them. So I had zero fun at that event which is sad.
After that, we went to Sam's to get some sodas and chips for the farm store. It was so crowded. I rushed out of there pretty quickly. I hate crowds.
While we were at the luncheon, the folks at Marken Media brought a beautiful Christmas box to us, pictured above. Inside were all kinds of fun goodies, all sourced from area businesses. We are honored that Marken Media chose some of our seeds to add to their Christmas boxes!
Christmas gift ideas include personalized gifts this year. You can find a lot of them online made by people who have Cricut machines. I have one but so far have not had the time to do anything but make two projects. Etsy is filled with stuff made on a Cricut. My hope is I get good at it so I can start selling things I make in the store and on our website.
Good foggy Thursday morning. It is 65° and will be a hot and humid day. My assistant does not come in today so I need to be here and at the farm store today.
It is 3pm and hot at 82° with a lot of humidity. The pond was just cleaned for algae and it is all murky right now. I was out there cleaning with the net and you cannot even see the fish. I am also refilling it since the water depth is down quite a bit again. It is amazing to me how quickly the string algae grows on the rocks and how quickly the water evaporates out there.
Aaron picked all of my tangerines and lemons that were on my trees. I was waiting for them to ripen, carefully checking them. He just went out this afternoon, picked them and took them to David. David sent him over to the store. I also found out that every day they have been harvesting garden vegetables and taking them to the break room so I do not have harvest photos of beets, okra, radishes, and all kinds of peppers. I have no idea why this would be going on without someone telling me since I take all of the photos and do the social media. Fun times when you get new people and they do things without being told or telling you...
I have no words, certainly no words that I can put on my website for the way I feel right now regarding harvesting without me knowing.
After this happened, we went to the alpaca ranch to buy some more Christmas gifts and then came home. I sorted out gifts on the island for different families and people! I had to change clothes three times today because it was so hot and humid. It got up in the 80s.
One of the Christmas gift ideas I had today is one that popped into my mind when I saw the harvest from my backyard garden over in the employee break room on a table for my employees to take. (I did not know this was being done so I did not get to even have first dibs on my own stuff. But that is not the Christmas gift idea...)
I saw some pretty reds, greens, oranges displayed and thought that they would make an attractive gift for someone who loves vegetables. Get a pretty farm basket. Wash your colorful winter produce. Put some tissue paper or raffia in the bottom of the basket and fill it with your vegetables. Stick a bow or a tied ribbon on the basket handle with a card wishing your loved one a very Merry Christmas! A gourmet chef would love this idea. Maybe add a bottle of olive oil in the basket.
Another of my Christmas gift ideas today would be to bake a batch of cookies, muffins, or a few loaves or even several mini loaves of quick breads, like pumpkin, walnut, or banana bread. Wrap them in plastic wrap and put them in a pretty basket. Add a bow and you have another wonderful gift for a neighbor, a teacher, a friend. The gifts you give do not have to be fancy or expensive. They should be packaged nicely and, of course, they should taste good.
I also saw on Facebook that some of my friends are making things like Chex Mix or candied nuts and sending those in holiday containers in the mail to their loved ones in other cities and states across the United States.
One year, I bought some dried fruits and dipped them in melted chocolate. I sent chocolate covered dried fruits as a delicious snack in the mail to family members and they tasted really good.
When I was in San Diego going to college, my grandmother baked and mailed toll house cookies to me for Christmas. This is a very good Christmas gift idea for a college student. The students with the good tasting gifts from home become very popular!
Good Friday morning. It is 73° which is ridiculous for 7am on December 10. It should be cold with frost in the air. Instead, it is hot and humid. I had some farm fresh eggs this morning. They are so good.
We have been invited to a New Year's Eve wedding so that should be fun! One of our former employees, Seth, who left us to go into the Marine Corps this past summer is getting married! We are honored that he invited us and we can't wait to celebrate this new chapter in our favorite Marine's life!
Speaking of Christmas gift ideas, David loves fire. He loves to do bon fires. He loves to light the grill and sit by it. So I have ordered him a fire pit. It was supposed to be delivered today but something has been delayed so now Amazon says it will be here on Sunday. I am placing it out close to the greenhouse.
For quite a few of our 34.5 years together, I have bought David various barbecue grills and smokers. He uses them for a while and then he sees something better so he gives away the one he has and gets another. Grills make great Christmas gift ideas for men.
And speaking of Christmas gift ideas, lawn furniture. I have four chairs coming to go around it but they won't be here until December 20. We have four acres so we might as well enjoy some of it.
Happy Saturday. I got caught up on a lot of things today including laundry, dishes, sorting and wrapping Christmas gifts, and decorating the tree and the house. We moved our portable fireplace heater back into the den. We moved it out this past summer into the guest room and forgot to put it back. I filled the mantle with nativity sets and a candle.
It was cold and warmed up a bit but got cold again. Two of my outdoor Adirondack chairs arrived but I still need the other two that I ordered. The chairs are not supposed to arrive until December 20 so I was surprised to find them out on the loading dock this afternoon. My firepit has been delayed again. Now it won't come until Wednesday. I don't think they have a clue.
Happy Sunday! It has been a chilly day starting at 38° this morning when I went out to feed all of our animals. When I got to the bunny cages, I looked at our new babies and one was dead. I called David and let him know because I don't do dead...It was so sad.
We went to church although my voice is still not back to normal from my cold. After church, we came home and had some more brisket, although I am truly sick of it by now. I froze the rest of it in four freezer bags.
Tonight, I will have some soup.
Today, I got caught up on folding my laundry and on reading for my Jon Acuff online course. I need to read ten more pages and I will be caught up until tomorrow. I finally finished a book I was given last year by the author. I read it more than half way and had not touched it since...
Last night, I put together our neighbor gifts. I think this was one of my better Christmas gift ideas. I included some small soaps, peppermints, chocolate candies, candles, handmade soap covered in felted alpaca wool that acts like a washcloth, old fashioned taffy, two kinds of handmade pickles, a jar of homemade strawberry preserves, two packs of flower seeds from David's Garden Seeds®, and some banana bread. A little bit of everything in a lovely gift bag with a Christmas card.
Delivering the gifts out here in the country is a bit of a challenge. You can't just walk up to the door and ring the bell. Everyone has locked gates so you can't go in the yard. Even when you text or call, they tell you they already have the gate locked and can't come out now. Sometimes, we leave them at the fence but then we run the risk of them being stolen or ripped apart by wild animals or dogs. I delivered one last night but the gate was already locked. They got it this morning and liked it. I was just glad it was not ripped apart. I still have one more to deliver.
Christmas gift ideas can be anything that you make and can give away. This can be something you cook, sew, crochet, knit, make with clay, personalize something with a Cricut, etc.
Return from Christmas Gift Ideas to Business Growth
Since 2009, over 1,500,000 home gardeners, all across the USA, have relied on David's Garden Seeds® to grow beautiful gardens. Trust is at the heart of it. Our customers know David's Garden Seeds® stocks only the highest quality seeds available. Our mission is to become your lifetime supplier of quality seeds. It isn't just to serve you once; we want to earn your trust as your primary supplier.
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Peppers and peas
And lots of yummy greens
You can't go wrong
With Squash This Long
At David's Garden Seeds
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