Getting Christmas Gifts For The Baby

5:01 AM

All year long I was determined to have my Christmas gifts bought and wrapped by mid December. Now that November is almost over, I find that I haven’t even made a list of all the people I need to buy Christmas Gifts for. I’m in serious trouble. So I went online in the middle of the night after I failed to fall asleep. I spent an hour typing out the list of people I’d be buying gifts for and then printing it. I could’ve written it out but I have a habit of losing the list in two days. I needed back up.

During my online search for Christmas gifts I found that there are two types of very confused people out there. There is the type who wonders if they should get Christmas Gifts for the baby. Since the baby won’t remember getting anything, they wonder if it matters. Then there is the type of people who are absolutely losing their minds because they can’t find Unique Christmas gifts for their dog! If that isn’t two ends to a very broad spectrum I don’t know what is. I think you should definitely get a gift for your baby. Because the baby is going to grow up some day into a teenager who’ll need proof that you loved him/her from the day he/she was born. As far as the dog is concerned, sure if you love your pet, get it a gift. I kind of always thought the whole Christmas holiday gifts thing was more of a human to human deal.

I didn’t have much luck with the online shopping that night but I did place orders for some nice Christmas gift baskets for the people at work. It’s going to be a very long December.

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A More Appropriate Look For Christmas

4:59 AM

The one thing you don’t want to do around Christmas time is hurt someone’s feelings. We all avoid it, people are generally nicer on Christmas and I think it’s a really good thing. Of course it can lead to awkward little problems. I know this woman a few blocks away. My son and her son are friends. She used to have this really important corporate job. She quit it later and became a dedicated stay at home mom.

She may have had a great career, and she is certainly a terrific mom, but she just doesn’t do food tables. I’m not one of those stepford house wives and I certainly don’t upholster my own sofa. I’m about as ordinary as they get but even then I can’t bring myself to accept what she does to her food on Christmas. For a woman who has such excellent taste in Christmas gifts, I can’t get my head around what she does to the food. She dresses her food up! Her chicken has pigtails and her potatoes wear little shirts! And since we’re all so determinedly nice around Christmas, no one can tell her that food dressed like humans is kind of freaky.

But I’ve decided to do something about it. I owe her one. She’s a thoughtful person; she spends a good two months looking for unique Christmas gifts for everyone. She gets Christmas gifts for people she hardly knows, even the trash guy! You don’t get nicer than that. So I’m going to be sending her inspiration by way of Christmas gift baskets. I know where I can get some great Christmas fruit baskets and I’ll be sending her one two weeks before Christmas and one the day before. They make good Christmas holiday gifts and fantastic center pieces. I’ve centered a lot of my dinner décor around it. I know being as smart as she is, she’ll get the clue.

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I’m Not For The Cheesy Christmas Gift Baskets

4:57 AM

It’s getting really close to Christmas now and people have rolled up their sleeves to get down and dirty with the Christmas shopping. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming up. I’m still looking for some new Christmas gift baskets, I need something really original. Thankfully a lot of stores have rolled out their Christmas specials so it’s getting easier to narrow down the choice.

I have almost decided which basket I’m going to buy but I’m still looking around to see what new ideas for Christmas gift baskets are going around these days. And I found something new, Cheese baskets! I mean seriously. Are these people kidding? Baskets full of cheese? That’s like here, a smelly Christmas gift basket. It sounds like something I’d get for Mickey Mouse and since he’s not on my Christmas list I’m not buying one. Understandably people are found of cheese.

I mean if it weren’t for cheese we couldn’t eat our crackers and there wouldn’t be any cheese pizza. But baskets full of cheese are not my idea of unique Christmas gifts. I read somewhere that food items are going to be really popular Christmas Holiday gifts this year, maybe that’s what led to these cheese baskets. But there are better foods to put in Christmas gift baskets. People may like eating cheese but I don’t know how many will appreciate a whole basket full showing up in their Christmas gifts. It’s better if you just get Christmas fruit baskets. They come with chocolate. I’d like to see cheese top that!

So while I support innovation and all that stuff, I think people need to put a little more thought into what they decide to make into Christmas gift baskets.

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Christmas Gifts Of Real Value

4:50 AM

I’ve heard a lot of people say a lot of different things when they open their Christmas gifts. Like my brother, among the many Christmas Holiday Gifts he received from me last year, there were also three pairs of woolen socks. So he took them out and is like, ‘What’s wrong with ones I’ve been wearing for the past two months?’ what I have never heard people say is, ‘Really! You spent that much money on me? I’m so cheap I’d never spend that much on my self’

I came across something on the net that suggests people think their Christmas gifts cost less than they actually did. Here’s what I think; as long as they like the gift, who cares? Let’s say I get a huge Christmas gift basket and fill it with coupons. The basket might cost something like $75 and the person I give it to would hate it. That’s $75 down the drain.

The person I get the gift for might think, ‘She gave me coupons?’ they’ll think it costs something like $15. Or I might use my brain and get them one of those nice Christmas gift baskets or a take my pick from the variety of Christmas fruit baskets out there and the guy could go, “I love fruit! Must’ve cost a fortune!” and they don’t cost that much at all. I think the real value in buying successful Unique Christmas Gifts comes from how much the receiver likes their Christmas gifts. People really tend to ignore how important it is to get something that your loved ones will like. Companies count on this to sell their new shiny toys and gadgets. And that’s what can devalue Christmas gifts. Buying the newest most expensive things doesn’t spell great Christmas Holiday Gifts; but getting that people gifts that they like does.

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The True Value Of Christmas Gifts

4:24 AM

I’ve discovered that there is a science behind gift giving on Christmas. You can’t just walk into a store or browse to a website, say ‘Hey the guy across the street would really like this’ and make your purchase. Apparently people all over the world buy Christmas gifts this way, but it’s wrong! Or so I’ve read in an article based on some book that’s been published by Princeton Publishing Press.

Turns out there is this thing called Value and satisfaction per dollar. Seriously? Because buying Christmas gifts for Mom, Dad, your brother, sister, husband, kids, grandma, grandpa, aunts, uncles, people at work, and people in your neighborhood wasn’t hard enough. Now you need to stop and think about satisfaction per dollar. Now when we look for Christmas gifts online, we should Google Unique Christmas Gifts with high satisfaction per dollar. I kind of always thought it was the thought that counts. I disagree with the article, mostly because it ignores sentimental value of Christmas Gifts. I get my mom Christmas gift baskets.

She loves those things. I don’t really care how much I pay for them. I buy them because I know my mom will like them. I don’t know if my mom ever goes poking around to see how much I spent on her Christmas Holiday Gifts, but I spend generously. It doesn’t matter what the value is. People don’t spend hours online and days dragging themselves through malls to find something that says, “I bought a lot of satisfaction per dollar for you. Merry Christmas” they go looking for Unique Christmas gifts because they want to get something the receiver will like. If people actually have time to go find out how much their Christmas Holiday Gifts cost, or what they are worth in monetary terms to them, then I don’t know what the world is coming to.

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The Smell oF Christmas In December

3:52 AM

People throw the phrase, ‘It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas’ around a lot. I think the phrase, “It beginning to smell a lot like Christmas’ could do just as well. In fact I think it would be more universal. Have people ever really paid attention to how great Christmas Smells? All those wonderful cookies being baked, the gingerbread men, the peanut crunch and the hot chocolate. To me the smell of Christmas is more appealing than the look. The whole house smells edible.

I shared this thought with my brother and he says he too can smell Christmas. He can smell Christmas gifts and Christmas wrap. He predicts when mom is about to buy a new Christmas ornament or a very special Christmas gift basket. That isn’t really smelling Christmas, as much as it is smelling Christmas gifts but he’s lying. In all our attempts to find our Christmas holiday gifts, hidden by our mother, he has never really been successful at finding anything. Maybe it’s the tape brand we use. But all jokes aside, I do love the look of Christmas but I like the smell too. It could have a lot to do with my mom being a really great cook.

One of my other favorite Christmas smells is the scent of gourmet chocolate. We have a lot of gourmet chocolate around the house at Christmas time, but what I really like is the fruit covered in gourmet chocolate that my great grandma sends us. It’s like taking two of the greatest things on earth, i.e. fruit and chocolate, and making them into one. It beats all the Christmas holiday gifts that we get by a long shot.

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Pass The Christmas Fruit

3:23 AM

At Christmas Dinner, you hear a lot of stuff like, “pass the gravy” or “Pass the yams”. At our Christmas table all you hear is “Pass the Fruit”. We eat our Christmas dinner with quiet determination and then we all move on to our beautiful Christmas fruit.

I don’t know who invented Christmas gift baskets or Christmas fruit baskets but the guy/girl was a genius. I personally think they deserve to go to heaven. They’ll have the people who invented chocolaty stuff to keep them company. My family sends out these really great Christmas gift baskets as Christmas gifts. They’re fruit and covered in chocolate. People absolutely love them and they often reply in kind. They send us similar Christmas holiday gifts. So at our dinner table, we enjoy our wonder Christmas spread, the really great chicken that mom makes and the mashed potatoes and that think savory gravy. But the minute we’re done, all we can think about is the fruit covered in chocolate.

We all personally think the fruit is begging us to eat it. Unfortunately since we all love the fruit so much, instead of passing the fruit when someone asks, we say, “Get it yourself!” As far as the fruit is concerned it’s every man/woman/ child for himself/herself. Grandma used to think it was silly. She would point out vehemently that we were arguing over fruit. My brother would point out we were actually arguing over chocolate covered fruit. But we only needed Gran to try it once; she crossed over to the fruit side immediately. She now joins in and says, “Pass the Fruit”. Gran is old and she has a walking stick. If we say “Get it yourself” to her, she pokes us with it. Since she’s old and we love her, we pass the fruit.

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It’s Christmas, Blame The Government!

3:10 AM

I dated this guy for a while. He liked to blame everything on the government. It didn’t matter who was in government at that time. He could blame Republicans and Democrats with equal enthusiasm. I was okay with it for a while, because it seemed like they were screwing up but then his criticism began to get really dumb.

His mom had just had hip surgery and she was going to be in a wheel chair for a while. It was near Christmas so I thought I’d take one of those nice Christmas Fruit baskets over for her. She loved it and was wheeling herself into the living room to talk to me when she accidently bumped the wall. My boyfriend went off blaming the government for making substandard wheelchairs and for approving the design of his house. Three days later, my car started acting up and I asked him to drive me to the mall so I could shop for my Christmas Holiday Gifts. He blamed the government for my car problem and then drove to the mall. It took us fifteen minutes to find parking and he blamed the government. I was really beginning to feel sorry for the government and thought I might end up sending Christmas gifts to city hall, they deserved a Christmas gift basket at the very least.

I had to pick out Christmas gifts for my anti-government boyfriend and my mom. Mom would be a piece of cake, but what could I get for him? I guess everyone is thinking he’s some guy stuck in the seventies with big hair, i.e. a hippie but he is actually a huge Red Sox fan. So I thought I could buy a nice Red Sox jersey for him. He was a pretty huge guy and they didn’t have his size. And it was the governments fault. As much as I hated doing it, I broke up with the guy before Christmas. It was because of the government.

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Good Christmas Gifts are hard to find

2:56 AM

For a lot of years I thought the secret to shopping successfully for Christmas holiday gifts lay in a nice balance between the number of shopping mall visits and online purchases. I never really stopped to think how often lady luck had been on my side during all my online shopping. I’ve always had a one in fifteen chance of getting ripped off while shopping online. Now that I think back to the earlier days when the internet was my first choice for finding unique Christmas gifts, I do remember several tings that looked highly suspicious.

The worst thing is these scams hit harder on Christmas when people are looking for their Christmas holiday gifts. That’s like Scrooge gone cyber. What kind of people try and scam others on Christmas anyway? So this happens a lot with stuff like Christmas gift vouchers. The ones that have those extended expiry dates and stuff can be a total scam. I received a Christmas gift basket a few years ago and it had some of these ‘fabulous’ gift certificates in them. I only managed to use one; the stores wouldn’t pass the other three. I thought it was because of where I was shopping, like a location thing, but now I know better. Personally I don’t think gift certificates are a nice thing to put in Christmas gift baskets. I prefer giving Christmas fruit baskets that I can purchase from very reliable people on the internet. There are some companies out there that are dedicated to saving online shoppers from being ripped off. It’s good to know someone is on our side. So be careful where you shop online, apparently you can now get your pocket picked or your credit card pinched online too.

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Online Christmas Gifts: A Word Of Caution

2:17 AM

I was busy buying my Christmas gifts online like I always do. I shop at some very particular sites, they’re reliable in that they have really good stuff and bring in unique Christmas gifts for the online shopper. And although I am satisfied with them I decided to surf the net anyway and see if there was anything new. I came across this article saying that a lot off the Christmas gifts or any gifts that people buy online turn out to be fake. It’s really common in gift certificates and vouchers. And can happen with big name companies.

I was completely amazed. I remember a really long time ago, I had purchased some online gifts. They never made it to my doorstep. Since they didn’t cost much, I thought it was because of the holiday rush and I didn’t really do anything about it. I never thought for one minute that my gifts might have been fake. It makes me all the more glad that I now know exactly where I can shop safely online.

The article said something about always being careful about what kind of deal you’re getting. If something is too cheap, then it’s probably fake. The whole too-good-to-be-true thing. I thought this might be for really expensive and highly priced goods, but it can happen to almost everything like the very popular Christmas gift item, Christmas gift baskets. Yu could end up ordering one, an expensive one and might never show up at your door step. So I’m really glad I have my reliable list of stores to buy Christmas holiday gifts from. I know for a fact that if any of really important Christmas holiday gifts were not delivered I’d have something close to a heart attack.

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Truly Giving Christmas Gifts

3:39 AM

Around Christmas time, a lot of charities go into over drive. They work all year round and Christmas is show time for them. We have several charities working in our locality and we try and contribute to as many as we can and not just in monetary terms. We put in a lot of time and help out with the arrangements. For a few years, the charities have been teaming up around Christmas. They divide the work and that way they have more funds for different things. One charity takes over Christmas dinner, another takes over the Christmas gifts for the kids. Someone else provides for Christmas trees. They all come together to give the under privileged a better Christmas.

When people see the charities working together like this, it makes them want to contribute more. A lot more people put in time to help generate funds. There were some really unique Christmas gifts for the kids last year thanks to the collective effort by everyone and people brought all sorts of Christmas gift baskets and Christmas fruit baskets for the big Christmas dinner. Our neighborhood was really proud of our efforts last year and we’re hoping to do something even bigger and better this year.

I think it’s the true spirit of Christmas, giving and sharing and while we are all busy buying Christmas holiday gifts, we should think of others. A lot of people might say it’s hard to be charitable with the times being so tough and all, but I disagree. We make allowance for everything else. It was in this spirit that I had three fruit baskets delivered to the Christmas dinner being hosted by the charities.

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Chocolate Fruit and Hot Cocoa on Christmas

3:31 AM

Our neighborhood looks like the perfect Christmas post card in December. We have snow piled on houses and icicles hanging from tree branches and lots of Christmas lights. Once the Christmas holidays begin, the place is full of kids running around with their sleighs and having snowball fights.

I don’t get to enjoy much of the scenery as I’m locked up in my room wrapping, labeling and coding Christmas gifts. My husband thinks it’s very unhealthy for me. Two years ago he made an incredible effort and helped me out with a lot of my work. We had the wrapping, labeling, coding done two days in advance. We had scotch tape stuck to our holiday sweaters and ribbon tangled in our hair. But as we sat on the sofa together and watched the snow fall, I felt absolutely tranquil. To add to this perfect picture, a group of kids showed up to sing Christmas carols. They were kids from around the block and my son ran to join them. We stood in the door way and listened. The kids were cute but rather off tune. My son hadn’t helped much since he didn’t know all the words. It was cold and most of them were shaking as they sang.

Although I was tired from all the work I had put into wrapping the Christmas holiday gifts, I felt the urge to make something for them, as a nice encouragement. Like hot cocoa or something. I went into the kitchen and whipped some up. I hadn’t got around to baking any Christmas cookies yet so instead I brought out the beautiful fruit bouquet I had received from my sister. She had sent it in place of the usual Christmas gift baskets that she sends. It was a really unique Christmas gift and I thought to share it with the kids. We all stood out in the cold, with the snow falling lightly and enjoyed the Christmas fruit and hot chocolate. I owe that wonderful experience to my husband.

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The Gift of Fresh Fruit On Christmas

3:25 AM

A year ago a group of farmers held a fruit exhibition in our local area. Everyone was crazy excited about it. We wanted to see some seriously fresh fruit; some people were even under the impression that there would be fruit trees. They weren’t disappointed.

There was a lot of fresh fruit and a few fruit trees as well. And while some of us wondered how they got the trees all the way here, what most of us wondered was, what were these little old ladies thinking when they decided to do this. All the farmers at the fruit festival were petit little old ladies. They looked so grandmotherly that you just wanted to hug them. And they had excellent fruit. Everyone bought a lot of it and for the rest of the week we received Christmas fruit baskets from a lot of the neighbors. There was even a local business there that bought the fruit. They made some really nice fruit bouquets and I guessed they were stocking up for the Christmas orders. Their Christmas gift baskets are very popular and I often buy them for Christmas gifts.

The ladies themselves had some really terrific fruits baskets on display and were even demonstrating how to arrange fruits in a basket to make your own unique Christmas gifts. Since people never tire of fruit as Christmas holiday gifts, they had a really huge audience and an even bigger profit from their produce. I bought some excellent oranges and gifted half to my mom who has recently taken an interest in making jams, the rest of the half were made into orange juice and devoured by my family.

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In Her Shoes To Buy A Christmas Gift

3:17 AM

I had one of those long weekends with nothing to do and I ended up watching old movies. Not old, old movies, just ones that are on Cable T.V., the old movies that you can see for free on T.V. I was watching ‘In Her Shoes’. It was fun to watch and I remember thinking if my sister would be upset with me for trying on/using her shoes, not that I can. We don’t wear the same size.

The thing is my sister loves shoes. I think she has more shoes than she does clothes. The other problem is she hates the shoes I pick out but I love the ones she gets. All this means that I can’t buy shoes for her as a Christmas gift. This is a huge problem since everyone knows what to get her, a pair of shoes, but I can’t buy them for her. One way would be for me to take her along when I go to buy my Christmas holiday gifts and ask her to just pick her favorite. But I really don’t like doing that.

So how do I get around to picking a nice pair of shoes for my sister? The answer to that is I don’t, I just give her the money for it. And I know it sounds awful giving someone money on Christmas but I have found a nice way to deliver my Christmas gift. I buy a Christmas gift baskets and put any shoe shaped ornament/keychain in it. Then I get a shoe catalog or magazine and put a decorative envelop for the money inside it. When I put it all together like that, it makes a really great and unique Christmas gifts. She gets shoes from me and everyone’s happy.

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Patterns For Christmas Shopping

3:09 AM

I don’t know which is harder; finding unique Christmas gifts, staying in budget or making Christmas gifts at home. Since I’ve managed the first one successfully, the second one partially and the third one not at all, I’d have to say you can almost always find unique Christmas gifts. The trick is to know where to look and what to look for.

Normally the place to look for nice Christmas holiday gifts would be anyplace your friends and family visit frequently. With so many new things out on their shelves and the frequent visits by your loved ones, they will have picked something or a few things that they really like. So I suggest you take a stroll around the mall with them. By the time you’re done you’ll come away knowing what has appealed to your friend.

The second thing is staying in budget. Your friend or family member might have picked out around twenty things that he/she likes but you can’t buy them all. So to decide on what would make a unique Christmas gifts for a particular individual, look at their entire selection. You’re likely to spot a pattern. I did this with my mom. She is pretty old fashioned and is beginning to settle into her role as a grandmother. She took me to about a hundred stores for Christmas gift baskets, holiday candy and chocolate. So it was a bit obvious she wanted chocolate, preferably gourmet chocolate. And she wanted it wrapped nicely. So when I went shopping on my own, I bought a really tasty fruit bouquet for her. It was like a super Christmas fruit baskets and I knew she’d love it.

And as for the third thing, making your Christmas gifts at home, you’ll need to Google ‘Making Christmas Presents At Home For Dummies’

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Buying Christmas Gifts At Optimum Efficiency

3:02 AM

I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as optimum efficiency. Everyone makes plans to work at optimum efficiency, doing the laundry at optimum efficiency, using fuel at optimum efficiency, completing office work at optimum efficiency. The reason I don’t think there is any such thing as optimum efficiency, is that no one notices if you’re working at optimum efficiency. If you get your work done before time, you will be judged as having ‘nothing to do’ and will subsequently be given something to do.

Like me and my Christmas shopping. I used get my Christmas shopping done at optimum efficiency. I had my Christmas gifts wrapped and well hidden a week before Christmas. I had mailed any and all greeting cards I was planning to send out. I had placed orders for various Christmas gift baskets to be delivered. I had made sure my gifts were just what everyone wanted. I had taken a lot of time and even more planning to buy the best and most unique Christmas gifts ever. By the third week of December I would be ready to sit comfortably on the big sofa and say, ‘Christmas, Bring it on’

And since I dared Christmas, it accepted. I had my family pour in to see me, announce their delight that I had finished my Christmas shopping so early and then ask me to wrap their Christmas holiday gifts. They would remind me not to forget the bow. I longed to tell them that the whole point of completing my Christmas shopping before hand was so I could relax and enjoy the holiday festivities. Not so I could wrap presents for Judy, Ann and Chuck. So like I said, there is no such thing as optimum efficiency. If you finish your Christmas shopping and wrapping early, you have your family’s Christmas shopping and wrapping to fall behind on. I now take as much time as possible to buy Christmas gifts and I am a proud Christmas slacker.

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The Scent of A Christmas Present

2:57 AM

Last weekend I was watching an episode of Mr. Bean where he went shopping. There was this scene where he walks into the perfume section and nearly suffocates because of the fumes. I’m not a big fan of Britain’s humor but I like Mr. Bean and his antics. I can actually relate to him suffocating from too much perfume.

I have a colleague who wears so much perfume we can still smell her fifteen minutes after she has left the room. At first I thought she must use a lot of perfume, like an entire bottle everyday. I was wrong. I went shopping for my Christmas gifts a few days ago and wandered to the perfume section. There were so many scents in the air that I felt a little light headed. There was a sales girl showing off a perfume to some women. She said one squirt of the stuff and the scent would last for three days. If used consistently, it wouldn’t even wash out. I was rude enough to ask her what I would have to do if I wanted to change my brand. Would I need to bleach my clothes? I don’t think perfume makes a very good Christmas gift.

In my opinion it says, ‘Here, you stink. Merry Christmas’. I visited all my usual stores, they get great stuff. Most of my widely complemented unique Christmas gifts come from them. I was done with the day’s Christmas holiday gift shopping by lunch. But I had been saving the time because I needed to look for a new store. It was for Christmas fruit baskets. I usually ordered them online but this time I had a coupon. Christmas gift baskets were a major part of my Christmas holiday gifts. They were what I usually gave at work. In fact we even sent them out as corporate gifts. It took me an entire thirty minutes to find the store. It was really pretty inside and they had so much more variety than I saw on the website. I redeemed my coupon and got a box of chocolate strawberries for free. On my way back to my car, I passed the perfume section again. I thought, ‘What the hell’ and bought the everlasting perfume for my colleague. She was delighted to receive it.

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Car Lifting Christmas Gifts

2:42 AM

I have sworn never to be part of a car pool. I was part of one once and came away with the conviction that I don’t do carpools. Unfortunately my lady boss who likes to pretend we’re best friends asked me if she could car pool with me for a week. She isn’t exactly my boss, but she is at senior position in another department. It was near Christmas so I felt bad saying no. Besides, it was my car and she was one person. It didn’t have to be so bad. In fact it didn’t have to be bad at all.

On day one we made a lot of formal talk. We asked about each other’s kids, mine were excited abut Christmas hers were spending it with her ex-husband. I changed the topic immediately. Day two; we discussed Christmas trees. It was a lot of small talk. On the third day our conversation skills began to pick up. We discussed Christmas gifts and she complemented me on the Christmas gift baskets that I usually brought to work around the holidays. She said she had given them to friends since they made really unique Christmas gifts. Her Christmas holiday gifts were bought mostly online and she complained about having to pay extra for them to be wrapped.

We were getting along really well; much better than I had thought possible. Until day four hit and she brought her mother with her. Her mother was very old and she asked if I would drop her off at the shopping mall. In my opinion that little old lady shouldn’t be dropped off anywhere on her own. I couldn’t say no, even though I really wanted to. It wasn’t about the gas or anything, it was about the fact that I, that is to say we, would be late for work and I don’t like being late for work.

But we took a very long thirty minute detour and dropped the little mother off. We were late for work and over lunch, I gathered we would be picking up little old mom from the shopping mall. When we arrived at the shopping mall she was standing there with a lot of shopping. It looked as if it would outweigh her. We piled the stuff into the car and then fit little old mom in as best as we could. The fifth day passed in absolute silence. On Saturday a wonderful Christmas fruit baskets was delivered to me. It was accompanied by a note written in shaky hand writing saying, ‘Thank you for helping me with my shopping’. Good deeds pay off.

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Christmas Gifts In A Stanger’s Car

2:35 AM

In December you can split the cars on the freeway into two broad categories; people going to work and people going Christmas shopping. People going Christmas shopping will go over a long list of Christmas gifts while they are stuck in the traffic jam. People going to work will honk horns and curse under their breath while they are stuck in the traffic jam. The thing is, you can usually tell the two apart. And you meet them on your to work and on your way home from work.

Identifying them on the way to work could be harder, especially if you’re going to work yourself and are busy hating the traffic for just being there. But they are very easy to spot on the way home. Their cars are full of the day’s shopping and while I’m stuck in the traffic jam on my way home, I often look at what Christmas holiday gifts they have bought. It’s a fun distraction and sometime you come across unique Christmas gifts stored in the cars. Often there are people taking home big Christmas gift baskets, a timeless gift in my opinion, some have bags of clothes and boxes of shoes and toys. I like looking at the Christmas gift baskets the most and I love seeing what kind people are getting.

The Christmas fruit baskets are always fun to look at and I see more than a few of them. So while I may hate the people going Christmas shopping on my way to work, I think I could positively socialize with them on my way home. From what I can tell about their taste in Christmas gifts, we would get along very well.

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Car Pooling Around Christmas

2:30 AM

People who commute to work know that on the way to the office there will be a traffic jam. They have a rough estimate of how long the traffic jam will be and they will know where the traffic jam will occur. So they make allowance for it by leaving home early and getting a head start. Then there are people who are stuck car pooling. My guess is that car pooling works for eleven months of the year, but not for December. During December there are more people on the road. People headed to shopping malls to buy Christmas gifts. They are the Christmas shoppers.

A few while ago I was stuck car pooling for two week. It was the longest two weeks of my life. It may have been fuel efficient but it was bad for my nerves. I didn’t like my fellow car poolers. They were frequently late and wore way too much perfume. Since they were so late and we had the added number of cars on the freeway, the commute to work for those weeks was hell. I was late everyday. I tried my best to get along with them or to blend in. I didn’t have much luck. They had this annoying game they played in the car. While I worried about being late for work, every three seconds someone would say, “Hey, You know what would make a really Unique Christmas Gift?” and the whole car would start off. Not that I don’t appreciate unique Christmas gifts, it’s just ideas for unique Christmas gifts hardly occur on the freeway while you’re stuck in a traffic jam. But they talked about their Christmas shopping, their Christmas holiday gifts and what not.

Then one day they broke my restraint. The rather plump woman who usually sat next to me brought two Christmas gift baskets with her. She was taking them to work and while the sentiment was very nice, carrying them in my lap was less than pleasant. One of them was a fruit basket and the other had chocolate and wine. We hit a bump somewhere and the bottle cracked and spilled on my brand new cashmere sweater and the pomegranates left a dark stain on my sleeve. I arrived at work looking like I had been mugged. I quit the car pool day and decided I’d sleep in the office before I tried it again.

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Inventing Christmas Gift Baskets

2:25 AM

There are some really great inventions out there. And there are some really weird ones too. I’ve always been a fan of the wheel; it’s what my car sits on. Then I really like the microwave and microwavable dinners. But as I watched ‘Maid of Honor’ with Patrick Dempsey and his ‘Coffee collar” I realized that there is a lot of potential for a lot of dumb inventions to make it big. Take for example the guy who motorized his easy chair and then sold it for a lot of money on eBay. I just didn’t get that.

So what triggered my comparison of useful and useless inventions? That would be my visit to a local Christmas fruit baskets exhibition. There were just about the dumbest things people had put in their baskets. Some had really good ideas too but the bad ones made me cry with laughter. There was this one guy who had put a Christmas gnome in his gift basket. The gnome was heavy and went through the frail basket. Then there was this other guy who had filled his basket with beer caps. I think they missed the fact that Christmas gift baskets are supposed to be Christmas gifts, not a collage of useless thing lying in your home. The men had more bad ideas as compared to the women.

The stuff women had put in their baskets was jars of homemade jams, cookies etc. they looked nice but some of the cookies were crumbling before the many eyes of the visitors. The Christmas fruit baskets were really popular, and in my opinion they would have made great Christmas holiday gifts. The men would just have to keep trying. They had a competition for ‘Best Christmas Gift Baskets” and the winning basket was raffled off. I was disappointed that I didn’t win it.

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The Christmas Gift Giving Spirit In An Elevator

2:13 AM

A few years ago I was temporarily shifted to a new office. I didn’t like it one bit. They promised me I’d be shifted back in time for Christmas. I missed my old office so much. I missed my friends and the coffee machine. We had a coffee machine at the new place but the coffee at my old office was still better. As I sat at my new desk and thought of all the secret Santas being chosen and Christmas gifts being given out I was seriously miserable. And I don’t like being miserable during the holidays. You wouldn’t like me when I get miserable around the holidays.

I was angry at everyone from the mailroom guy to the vice president. I sat at my desk and sulked. Usually I’m very social around the office. I like to make friends and to welcome new people on board. But here I kept disturbingly to myself. I didn’t know anyone’s name and I didn’t bother to learn. I was seriously put out when the Secret Santa thing began. I ringed up my old office and reminded them I was supposed to be back in time to open Christmas holiday gifts at the old office. I was put on hold. When it was my turn to pick a name I got landed with some guy named Harvey. I didn’t realize then that I didn’t know who Harvey was. Everyone looked like a Harvey to me. So I just ordered a Christmas gift baskets for him. It wasn’t an ordinary basket; it was a really great Christmas fruit baskets that I ordered for a lot of people around Christmas.

The day I was going to put it under our ‘tree’ I started talking to this guy in the elevator. I never did that but I was upset so I began ranting about the office and that at my old office we had really unique Christmas gifts and we went all out to celebrate it. I mentioned Harvey quiet a few times and held up the fruit basket. Two days later I was allowed to return to my old office. I cleaned my desk with relief. What surprised me was a little package with a card. The Card read, “Merry Christmas, it’s been great having you here. From Harvey P.S. Thanks for the Christmas Fruit baskets” Harvey was the guy I had ranted to in the elevator.

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Greetings Cards On A Gift Basket

2:04 AM

A while a back I was someone big on giving greeting cards. That’s all change now, but back then I found the cute and (in my opinion) expensive things to be as necessary as Christmas Holiday gifts. I would put them everywhere and on just about everything. One time I took a meat pie over to my mom’s and put a greeting card on that too. My mom thought I had obviously lost my mind.

When I wrapped presents I did them in three steps. I’d tape the box shut from every side. Even the box lid. I’d tape it with long pieces of tape from one corner to the other. Then I’d pick three different warping papers. One would plastic, the other would be patterned paper and the last would be something metallic. The paper would go on first, followed by the plastic and then add corners with the metallic one. My husband often said my Christmas gifts were hard to unwrap and I though it was because he was afraid of getting emotional about my really great Christmas gift. The third step was the bow and a greeting card. I’d just address the to: and From: and that was it. My Christmas holiday gifts were something I was proud of. Not just because they were really unique Christmas gifts but also because I had put so much time and energy into wrapping them.

I began holding back on the greeting cards and the tape when one December my husband announced we had exceeded the tape roll quota. We had bought sixteen rolls and the store wouldn’t sell us any more. So I started to conserve tape. I slowed down with the greeting cards because of my mother. I had bought her a Christmas fruit basket and was about to take it over to her when she showed up for a surprise visit. I told her I was going to bring the Christmas fruit baskets over. She said she’d take it herself and thanked me. I ran to get a greeting card for and that’s when my mother with the kind motherly patience told me ‘Greeting Cards are not shoes that go with everything’.

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Welcome back In Time For Christmas

5:17 AM

A few years ago a friend of mine went on a sabbatical. She had been reluctant to go in the first place but she needed it badly. She was afraid she was going to burn out. But she was also afraid that if she left it would rub off on her progress report. We convinced her to take some time off for herself, which she finally did.

She came back in early December all fresh and full of life. We decided to throw her a welcome back party. The office was already beginning to look like Christmas and a few early Christmas gifts had also been given out. So we decided to make it a ‘Welcome Back in Time for Christmas’ party. There would be cake and balloons and pizza and cookies. Our menu was full of variety, the weird kind. But we were all generally excited about welcoming back our friend. We had decided to give her a small Christmas gift of some kind. We weren’t looking at any big spending, some one was getting a snow globe someone thought of a ceramic angel. I was indecisive about what to get her.

We had all set a limit on what we would spend on her gift. Everything that was affordable in the budget didn’t appeal to me and I wanted her to get Unique Christmas gifts. The easy and obvious stuff was already taken. There were two other colleagues who were stuck with the same problem. Everyone else was done wrapping their Christmas Holiday gifts. The three of us decided to ‘team up’ and get her one really awesome present. Someone suggested we get her a Christmas gift basket. We were a little apprehensive about it. The woman who suggested it had a habit of gifting a baby cactus plant to new people and it seemed a bit early for Christmas gift baskets. We settled on a nice box of fruit with gourmet chocolate sauce. We got her a box with a dozen pieces and she loved it. The party made her feel like she had truly been missed.

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My First Christmas Gift Giving

5:13 AM

I remember my first Christmas after I got married. Actually I remember the days leading up to Christmas more vividly. I remember being up all night wondering what I’d get for my in-laws. The neighbors were new and I didn’t know anyone very well. I had no shopping partner. I was in the formative years of my shopping life. I worried about Christmas gifts, Christmas decoration, Christmas dinner and Christmas wrapping paper.

I still had a bit of teenage perspective on things. To me an ordinary Christmas gift was a pair of jeans and unique Christmas gifts were designer clothes. When the early Christmas holiday gifts began arriving I got a bit worried. It was mostly food like pies, cookies and Christmas gift baskets. I couldn’t make Christmas cookies and stuff back then. It’s a talent I acquired only after my children were born. As more and more early Christmas gifts began to arrive I really began to panic. I didn’t know what would make a good early Christmas gift and I had less time to shop now. I was still trying to balance my work and domestic responsibilities. But as the gifts kept pouring in for the newly weds, and I felt an increasing obligation to respond in kind, I decided to go with the old copy cat routine.

Since I couldn’t bake or cook very well, I bought Christmas baskets like the ones I had received. But I didn’t buy the ones full of coupons and mugs. I had grown tired of finding mugs with ‘Merry Christmas’ and “Newly Wed’ written on them in the gift baskets. I couldn’t inflict similar torture on anyone. I didn’t have room for one more cup. So I bought Christmas fruit baskets. They were better because everyone loves fruit, they look better than the other baskets and because it’s something to eat. I even found some baskets that came with chocolate sauce. They proved to be a very fail safe and widely liked gift.

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But Mr. Scrooge, It’s Christmas

5:07 AM

Around seven years ago we used to have a manager who was no joy to work for. He was the kind of guy who would breathe down your neck while you were working. On any given day of the year, he would go around and visit as many cubicles as he could. He poked annoying questions at everyone, asking them what they were doing and why they were doing it. But around Christmas time he was even worse.

A lot of people use office hours to look for Christmas gifts. and I know that’s not right but as long as the work gets done on time I don’t see what the big deal is. So in an attempt to make sure no one was buying Christmas holiday gifts during office hours, the manager appointed ‘deputies’ to help him keep a watch on everyone. These deputies were a bunch of suck-ups that monitored our online activity since we didn’t have CCTV or cruel people in the IT department. This made us unable to shop online for Christmas gifts and since we were pressed for ideas for Unique Christmas gifts we began discussing them in any spare time we got. This was unacceptable to our manager. If it weren’t for free speech and the necessity of communication, he would ban all speech in the office. Finally someone in the accounts department snapped. The guy was determined to give the manager a piece of his mind. He went to his office and yelled for fifteen minutes and was fired for ‘insubordination’.

The accounts guy said it was worth. When he came back the next day to pick up his things, his mood had changed. He knew he wasn’t getting his job back but he felt bad about yelling at someone during the Christmas holiday season. He had said a lot of things that would have hurt anybody’s feelings. So in an attempt to apologize he brought two Christmas gift baskets to the office. The big one was for all of us and the smaller one was for his now ex-boss. He also put a DVD of ‘A Christmas Carol’ with it and gave it to the boss. The effect was astonishing. He got his job back and the manger eased up about our online activities.

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Falling For A Christmas Gift

5:03 AM

I used to have a neighbor, George, who was far from light on his feet. He could snag his foot on just about anything. Around the Christmas Holiday, people would refrain from having him over because he was likely to trip on the Christmas holiday decorations and end up setting the house on fire. George knew his falling down rate was very high and he tried to take as many evasive measures as possible. When everyone gave out early Christmas Presents to the neighbors, he would place his on the porch and back away slowly and cautiously. George’s bad mortar skills made it hard on him because not only was he very friendly, he could easily be the life of any party. He was a very thoughtful person and always gave very Unique Christmas gifts.

As careful as George was, one December he fell really bad. I had just delivered a beautiful Christmas fruit basket to my neighbor and she was taking it inside. The fruit basket was big and maybe a little heavy for her. While she tried to get a good grip on it, her keys fell on the pavement. George was walking by and he ran to help her. I don’t know what it was that tripped him, but he fell and took the woman with him. The whole pavement was splattered with fruit and chocolate and the remains of a shattered ceramic container. She yelled at him for a good fifteen minutes. The Christmas fruit baskets that I sent as early Christmas gifts were one of her favorites and she had always been very excited about receiving these Christmas holiday gifts.

I felt really sorry for him. He had just been trying to help. Watching him walk back to his house covered in fruit and chocolate with such a sad look on his face was heart wrenching. But like I said, George was very thoughtful. The next day he bought an even bigger Christmas fruit basket. He was just setting it down on the woman’s porch and backing away cautiously when she came out. She saw the fruit basket and started laughing and crying at the same time. She invited him in for a cup of hot chocolate and some Christmas cookies.

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What Will The Christmas Gifts Be Like?

4:57 AM

The way kids ask about their Christmas presents has changed over the years. There was a time when they would ask what they were getting for Christmas, or try and guess it. Their guesses were centered around modest things that they heard about in school. Later kids began to demand that they be told what they were getting for Christmas holiday Gifts, so they could let parents know before hand if they wanted it or not. And then there are today’s kids. They pick through the various magazines that are delivered to the house during the Christmas Holiday Season, they watch all the T.V. campaigns for toys with the utmost concentration and focus. The ones who know how to write make lists. The ones who don’t know how to write draw big circles around pictures in the magazine and yell ‘I want that!’ at the T.V. when a toy commercial is running.

There are several ways of dealing with this. One is to cancel all magazine subscriptions and pull the cable cord. But then what would my husband do while I prepare dinner? He would hover around the kitchen and that is something I can’t stand. And in all honesty I have to get Christmas Gifts for my kids and I need to get Unique Christmas Gifts ideas from somewhere.

I find holiday food a good way to pacify kids over excited about Christmas gifts. I don’t have a lot of time to bake cookies and I can’t have them eating candy canes all the time. So I give them Christmas Fruits to eat. We receive a lot of Christmas Gift baskets and I put them out for the kids. Often when they don’t feel like eating the ordinary fruit and crave something more festive, I order them a special fruit bouquet. It has fruit dipped in chocolate and they like it more than the conventional Christmas fruit. And it keeps them pacified. Apparently if you’re a kid, chocolate covered fruit means you’re getting something very special for Christmas.

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Work Place Politics On Christmas

1:24 AM

The one thing I don’t like about work is office politics. And by office politics I don’t mean who’s a democrat and who’s a republican. In a work place issues are like are too far in the background. Our office politics revolves around ‘whose idea for the Christmas party is the best?’ We literally take sides and run actual campaigns to promote our favorite idea. We are a ballot box away from having our Christmas Party theme democratically elected. Right now we just see which side of the room has more people.

I remember a few years ago when we had one such party idea conflict. Someone wanted a Santa Clause theme and someone wanted a snowflake theme. Lines were drawn and we chose sides. My support was with the Snowflakes, not that I have anything against Mr. Clause. But I was working at a junior post at the time and my supervisor was leading the snowflake campaign. The only thing missing was a debate. So people began sending out Christmas holiday gifts like little candy canes to anyone who was still neutral. Some one baked cup cakes and passed them around. There was enough food to feed an army. Other small Christmas gifts were given out as well. My supervisor went around asking for ideas to ‘make our snow flake party happen’. We were slowly forgetting the whole point of the Christmas party.

That’s when I had an idea. But it would be very hard on my resolve. A new store had opened downtown for Christmas Gift baskets. But they weren’t the ordinary Christmas Gift baskets. They came in decorated containers; and held fruit cut magnificently and dipped in gourmet chocolate. My husband was going to buy one for me. After giving myself a very long pep talk I convinced myself to bring the Christmas fruit basket to work. I brought it and placed it by the water cooler; the border between Santa clause and Snow flakes. I have never seen so many thirsty people in my life as I did on that day. Throughout the day people began to see the Snow Flake side of the story. By the end of the day, it was decided that the Christmas party theme would be snowflakes with a Santa Cardboard cut out by the food table. My supervisor was really impressed with my silent efforts for her campaign.

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The Christmas Fruit Tradition

1:19 AM

Christmas as I remember it from my childhood was very different from the ones my kids experience. It was a much calmer time. My mom didn’t work until we were all grown up and moved out of the house and our Christmas holiday gifts were normally a surprise. We always thought they were the best most Unique Christmas Gifts ever. Mom would wrap and hide Christmas gifts while we were at school. I have to wrap them in the dead of night so that my kids don’t see them and then hiding them is even harder. My kids can wiggle into the smallest of places to search for their Christmas gifts.

I remember one such episode where in an attempt to hide presents I pushed a long thin box too far under a dresser and we had to use a broom to force it out on Christmas Day. We all looked forward to Christmas dinner. My Mother, who is an excellent cook, would make roast, meat pies, and mashed potatoes with cranberry sauce. At that time Christmas fruit baskets were very popular. We would receive a lot of Christmas fruit and mom would put it out for us to snack on. It was one of the greatest and most peaceful moments in my life. I’ve tried my best to give my kids the same experience. I feel guilty when I’m busy at work and they’re fixing lunch for themselves during the holidays but they are very understanding kids, and don’t complain about it.

I have however managed to keep the Christmas Fruits tradition alive. Christmas fruit has changed too over the time. Instead of the fruit bunched together in those brown baskets, they now have fruit bouquets and fruit dipped in gourmet chocolate. My kids love these Christmas gift baskets and it takes away a bit of the guilt I feel for not spending as much time with them.

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Christmas Fruits On A Farm

4:02 AM

A few years ago we were invited to spend Christmas on a farm. I was a bit reluctant to go because to me ‘Farm’ means no indoor plumbing but my husband assured me that the place was as up to date as anything. It would be a unique experience for us. City life was hectic and I wanted my children to see how people enjoyed life without shopping malls and traffic jams. The family that invited us was very nice. We had only known them a few months. But the problem was what to get them for Christmas Gifts? I wanted to get something really chic and modern. But my husband pointed out that they wouldn’t like it. Their roots were not in city life. He wanted gifts that were small enough to fit in the car with the kids. I turned to my friends for help.

But no one had any experience with buying gifts for non-city people. Someone suggested I take fruit for Christmas.That would be a problem since we were going to drive to the farm. The fruit would freeze, and then get soggy. It wouldn’t be in any condition to give as a gift. And I couldn’t just give them ordinary fruit. It had to be some kind of exquisite and extremely fresh fruit. They would not like processed sugar and preservatives. But the fruit idea appealed to me.

I went online and searched for a company that could deliver a nice fruit basket to the farm. Not only did I find someone who could deliver the fruit but I found some really gorgeous fruit baskets. They were special Christmas gifts baskets available online. The Christmas fruit was arranged to look like flowers and came with chocolate sauce for dipping. In my opinion they were perfect. The chocolate was a nice touch and I could place the order from my home and chose the date of delivery. The fruit was delivered fresh to the farm the day we arrived and my hostess loved the fruit bouquet.

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Finding Unique Christmas Fruit

4:01 AM

I like getting really unique Christmas gifts for everyone. It’s the main reason why I need so much time to pick out Christmas Gifts. Buying the newest and latest product on the shelf has no appeal for me because I know it’s just a momentary hype around some new product. I like to go with something that has general appeal and doesn’t burn a hole through every single purse I own. So while people are standing in long lines waiting to get the latest doll for their kid or are being run over by people who want to buy the latest phone I sit in front of my computer and look for useful Christmas gifts. But that doesn’t mean the gifts for Christmas that I buy are mops and detergent supply.

I buy things that people will actually enjoy while they use them. One such gift is the fruit for Christmas that I send. It’s a great Christmas gift for people who live far away. And by Christmas fruit, I don’t mean the ordinary farmer’s market fruit wrapped in green net, placed in a brown wicker basket and topped with a bow. I buy my Christmas fruit from a store that makes beautiful fruit bouquets; a very appealing way to gift fruit for Christmas. I can buy them online and the store can have them delivered anywhere in the country. It makes a good early Christmas gift and even though it won’t last the whole year, it will still be enjoyed.

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Sending Fruit Gifts To Texas

4:00 AM

I have a friend who lives in Texas. We met in college and were very close until she moved away after getting married. Ever since she began living in Texas, her tastes have changed a lot and I find I have to get to know her all over again. She used to like getting crystal ornaments and other delicate things but not any more. I guess some of her husband’s attitude has rubbed off on her. The biggest problem is getting Christmas gifts for her since I don’t know what she likes anymore. We call each other a week after Christmas and discuss our Christmas Gifts, our favorites and the misses.

She never brings up mine. It really began getting to me so I thought I would either buy her the perfect Christmas gift or start sending her gift certificates. I tried to find something that was really popular in Texas. I couldn’t afford most of the stuff and the stuff that I could afford didn’t seem to make an appropriate Christmas gift. I decided I’d end up sending her a gift certificate after all. The thought was depressing and I decided to cheer myself up with a box of chocolate strawberries. They had been an early gift from my sister. She knew how much I loved them.

The Strawberries got me thinking. I had sent this chocolate fruit to almost all kinds of people and they had loved it. It even came in fruit bouquets that were very appealing Christmas Fruit baskets. I decided to take a chance and ordered a big chocolate fruit bouquet for my friend. I scheduled the delivery so that it would arrive early for Christmas. The very next day after the delivery was made my friend called me up. She was raving about my Christmas gift and wanted to know where I had ordered it from. After teasing her for a while, I finally told her where she too could buy the delicious Christmas fruit.

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Christmas Fruit For The Kids To Enjoy

3:59 AM

We have a system for buying Christmas gifts for the kids. They get one toy each, two items of clothing and something healthy or educational. The first aren’t a problem. Catalogs and magazines start pouring Christmas Gift Ideas into kids’ heads as early as November. They already know which toy they want. Actually they have a list and I pick out the more reasonable one and clothes are never a problem. But the most important gift for me and my husband is the healthy one. We look online and in stores for something that will help build our child’s health or brain.

For a long time we’ve been giving them fruit for Christmas. But it isn’t easy getting kids to eat fruit over candy, especially if the fruit is wrapped in green net and placed in a wicker basket. The kids will always want candy canes over it. So I try and make the fruit look attractive and that has proved to be very hard. I can’t think of a whole lot of things to do with fruit and I end up wasting most of it. I gave up trying to do anything myself and searched for a nice Christmas Fruit basket online. I found some wonderful Christmas fruit on the internet. It was something that my kids would be tempted to eat. The fruit looked so wonderful, it had been cut and arranged like flowers, the pineapple was cut into daisy shapes and the strawberries had been dipped in chocolate. The whole effect was very appealing and made my mouth water. The kids loved the Christmas fruit gift even more than the toys they had received.

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Wrapping Up Christmas Shopping With Christmas Fruit

3:55 AM

One of the greatest joys in life come from buying gifts for loved ones. Sure it’s money leaving your pocket but it’s also putting a smile on a loved ones’ face. This is why I like Christmas shopping so much. I get to buy Christmas gifts and every time I make a purchase I think how happy my gift will make someone. I have a long list of people who I get gifts for Christmas and while Christmas shopping is fun, wrapping Christmas gifts is not. I usually always find myself short of wrapping paper and my favorite wrapping paper is the first to run out. That’s why I like gifts that don’t need wrapping and I applaud the companies who make their product look like a gift in its packaging, like fruit bouquets.

I used to get a lot of fruit for Christmas, and I sent some out myself. But the fruit can get cliché after a while so when I was looking for nice Christmas fruit I didn’t want the ordinary fruit in wicker baskets. I wanted something more appealing. And I found it in the form of the edible fruit bouquets. They were fruit arranged to look like flowers in ceramic containers. I loved that they weren’t in wicker. The ceramic container was shaped like a sleigh. There were other arrangements available in the shape of a snowman’s head The best part was they didn’t need to be wrapped. When I sent these Christmas Fruit baskets to people, they were delighted. Like always I happy knowing my gift had made someone smile.

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Finding Fruit On Christmas

9:35 PM


This story is by my neighbor, Betty who I helped with her Christmas shopping last year:

I used to think online shopping was for workaholics. To me workaholics are people who would rather sit at a desk and work than see their families. In my opinion, gifts should be bought after careful consideration. I go to every store there is for the item I want to buy. I interview the sales person, sometimes I even ask fellow shoppers for their opinion. You can just imagine how important it is for me to find the perfect gift for everyone. And for years I thought the perfect gift could only be found after many long visits and tours of every shopping center that fell within an hour’s drive. I was mistaken. I came to realize the reality behind online shopping this year.

I’m a substitute teacher at the local elementary. I work a few hours a week but this winter, one of the teachers went on maternity leave and I was called in for an extended period of time. I was working the whole week and my hours were longer too. Add to that the fact that I have three kids all under twelve, and I found myself behind in my Christmas shopping. I was late with dinner most nights and the laundry was piling up. I suddenly realized how wrong my definition of workaholics had been. Here I was, sitting late at night checking notebooks while my kids didn’t have someone to tuck them in. I would easily have traded work to be with them but that wasn’t an option.

So after a stressful month like this during which I got no shopping done, I went to see my neighbor. She had been a career woman since day one. She had two little kids of her own and yet the Christmas gifts we got from her were always wonderful. She was just as dedicated to her family as she was with work and I wondered how she did it. The answer was online shopping.

I didn’t believe her at first. It seemed impossible that her gifts could actually be the result of the ‘internet’. It took her two hours to convince me to try it and I did. Since I was new at the online shopping thing and very behind in my Christmas shopping she told me not to waste time browsing and directed me to some of her favorite sites. Her picks were excellent particularly this one site about unique Christmas gifts.

I liked their suggestion about fruit baskets for Christmas. The baskets they featured weren’t the usual wicker baskets with fruit in them. They were these arrangements of fruits cut and arranged in to flowers. They were assembled in special ceramic containers shaped like a snowman or a sleigh. I loved them. They became my favorite in seconds. As I began sending them out to everyone who lived out of state I found myself receiving thank you notes. I had never gotten any thank you notes before when I shopped till my feet were sore. It felt wonderful to know my gifts had brought so much joy. I have kept every single thank you note in an antic jewelry box. I proudly admit that I shop online.

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How I got Hooked on Christmas Fruit

9:26 PM


I’m impervious. Nothing on earth makes me sick. I don’t catch the flu from people. I don’t even get headaches. Diseases fear me. I’m one person whose medical cost the President doesn’t need to worry about. Well, he wouldn’t need to worry me if diseases were all that could harm a person. There is also this thing called breaking bones; a fracture in medical terms. After twenty-seven years of impeccable health, I fractured my right little toe. Usually I don’t even remember I have a right toe but now, that toe is all I think about because it won’t let me go Christmas shopping. Apparently it might get stepped on during the holiday rush. So I’m stuck doing my Christmas shopping online like a tech junkie. Someone please tell me what is the point behind the 2X button on my mouse? Why would I bother to move my finger that far in the first place?

Since I can’t go Christmas shopping, I can’t choose my wrapping paper. I don’t trust anyone else’s choice. I always buy my own wrapping paper. I know it makes me come off as a bit of a ‘control freak’ but this mode is only when I’m getting gifts for Christmas. The reason is I love Christmas and I love getting people gifts. My Christmas gifts say a lot about who I am and how I feel about the person I’m getting a gift for. A lot of thought and consideration needs to go in to my gifts. If it didn’t matter, people all over the world could tie a bunch of candy canes together and be done with it.

So my problem begins with my right toe and ends with me not having too much success with online shopping. I mean I find good stuff but I don’t like the packaging and the wrapping. If you have someone wrap a gift online, it costs a lot of money. I don’t know how my mom does it but since I’m out of ideas and sick of royal blue banners flashing ‘Unique Christmas Gifts’ at me, I took a crash course in online Christmas shopping. It isn’t the easiest thing when you look at it but my mom has a method called her ‘Traditional gift’ selection. She has a few good sites picked out where every year they bring in really good and affordable stuff to add to their gift suggestion list.

My mom got me hooked on to a few of them. They had some great stuff but only one managed to solve my wrapping problems. It was this site featuring Christmas fruit baskets. Usually I don’t think fruit baskets are an appropriate Christmas gift but these fruit baskets for Christmas were a completely different story. The site featured fruit cut and arranged to look like flowers in special Christmas containers. They were edible bouquets. The greatest thing about them was that they didn’t need to be wrapped. I would save money and my gift would still look great. Mom’s been sending these to people she knew from high school and from work and they’ve always been loved so I’m definitely going with them.

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Shopping Online For Christmas Fruit

9:08 PM



Shopping online is supposed to be easier than going to the mall. At the mall there are millions of people who all have to go to the same store as you do. And if there is a sale anywhere, you’re lucky if you don’t get run over. But shopping online isn’t as easy as everyone says. Try doing your Christmas shopping online, where there are lists by people suggesting things that cost over $2000. And these are supposed to be the perfect gift. In my opinion $2000 should equal to at least forty perfect gifts! And the websites themselves take forever to load and an eternity to process your sale. Then you wait around for weeks. When what you ordered finally arrives, it won’t be wrapped because you didn’t pay the extra charge for it.

Despite all of this I still shop online particularly for corporate gifts. The reason being, if you have a good head on your shoulders, and I do, you can find some really neat stuff and great ideas for unique Christmas gifts. Most people suggest shirts with the corporate logo as a nice corporate gift. To me that is ridiculous. Who on earth wants to go around on the holidays wearing a shirt with the corporate logo? It looks too much like a cheap escape.

The trick is to find decent gifts for Christmas that are between the $20 and $ 100 price range. They need to be presentable. People suggest great homemade gifts but if you work in corporate America a jar of white chocolate orange crunch will prove you are distantly related to the Mad Hatter. Pricing is also important because if you get someone at work a gift that’s too expensive they will diligently look for an ulterior motive.

At times like this and with people trying to tell me that my boss might like the new Playstation because she’s really a kid at heart, I go for the tried and tested stuff. In my many years of looking for and buying gifts I have found some really good stuff to gift people. If the response to something is exceptionally well, I gift the same thing again next year or buy something similar.

With my boss, who I have a great working relationship with; I repeatedly turn to Christmas fruit baskets. I know she loves fruit and so I look for unique fruit gifts for Christmas. I’m lucky enough to find them. There is a whole world of edible fruit bouquets out there that meet my corporate gift needs. It also goes great with my peers. And giving a gift to your peers is tricky.

If you buy a really expensive gift, they might think your showing off the fact that you make more money than them. I go with the fruit again. And compared to the ordinary Christmas gift baskets and the conventional Christmas fruit out there, my Christmas gifts stand out. Way out. The greatest thing of course is that they don’t need to be wrapped. That is a lot of time and money saved.

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