Five Holiday Gifting Options When You’re in a Pinch
The holidays are here! We’ve reached the week of Christmas and by this time, if you haven’t already placed your order to Amazon, you better get prepared to pay surge-price level shipping costs. Shipping companies were already spread thin before even going into the holiday season. Venturing into book and mortar stores feels different this year, curtesy of this seemingly never-ending pandemic.
However, there is no need to panic. Help is on the way. I am providing you with five last-minute gifting options that anyone can do. Although these are geared to the holidays, they are also applicable for any time of the year when you get into a gifting pinch.
Five Last-Minute Gifting Ideas
1. Curbside pickup: Many stores are allowing online ordering and curbside same-day pickup of your purchase ideas. Be sure and check your store’s website to make sure this is an option. Curbside pickup has been around for a while, but became much more common this year with the pandemic.
A wide variety of stores offer this service. Here are just a few examples:
Curbside pickup is expected to continue even after the pandemic gets under control, because people enjoy the speed and efficiency of this service. Restaurants have jumped aboard as well, with food and alcohol to go (bring your ID for the latter). A margarita or a martini-to-go, anyone?
2. Homemade Products: DYI continues to be all the rage, particularly with Etsy. We live in the digital age, so it only takes a couple minutes of time to hop on Pinterest and you’ll find plenty of ideas to make your own hand lotions, lip scrubs, and more. It’s the perfect gifting time of the year for these types of products if you live in cold-weather areas where dry winter skin is a legitimate issue. You should be able to easily find ingredients at Target (i.e. shea butter, olive oil, vitamin e oil, fragrance, etc.).
3. Healthy Treats: We are in a season of candy overload. But some recipes were created healthier than others. It is possible to indulge without overdoing it. I recommend checking out Clean Eating Couple’s website for a wide variety of recipes, including healthy holiday desserts.
4. Subscription Boxes: Another popular gifting option becoming increasingly popular are subscription boxes. You may already have heard of many of them, such as FabFitFun, StitchFix, BirchBox, and on and on. One that I recently heard about that is geared toward a wine-loving female is VineOh! which is a quarterly box with a couple bottles of wine and a variety of 5-6 full-size fun and surprising products to go along with it. Full disclosure: I haven’t tried that box yet to have first-hand experience, but I’m interested. (Hint, hint!)
5. Coupon Books: You can make these as generic or personalized as you like. Even better, the possibilities with this are endless (cooking a homemade dinner, coffee run from favorite coffee shop, mani/pedi day, Christmas baking party, get out of one chore for a week, a hug, a day of hiking at your favorite local spot, etc.). For free coupon book templates which are printable in MS Word, check out Hloom.
Now, Go Get Gifting
So, if you’re like me and a little behind on your holiday shopping, there’s no reason to panic. You still have plenty of options available to you. Most of all, gifting should be about the spirit and love behind that gift. If gifting gets to be too much pressure, consider having a family/friend discussion and suspending gifts. There is nothing wrong with doing this and having a simple discussion helps alleviate any potential hurt feelings or misunderstandings.
What is most important is the time we spend with the people we love, not the “things”. I can tell you when I’m at the end of my days, I’m going to be thinking about the time and memories I shared with the many magical people I have encountered and loved in this life, and I won’t give two hoots about material things. It took me a while, but once I made that realization, it made all the difference in taking off the pressure to accomplish life and allowed me instead to really live it.
Questions, comments, or just need to chat? Send me a direct message via LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram.
Cheers until next time,
Crystal
