Gift Guides

A Selfish Guide to Gift Giving

A Selfish Guide to Gift Giving

A Selfish Guide to Gift Giving: A Gift for the Boyfriend, a Gift for Me, One for Mom, One for Me... 

Have you noticed this trend when doing holiday shopping?  You start shopping for the holidays and before you know it, you’ve spent more money on yourself than on other people!  And all the shops out there that are luring you in with their advertising are banking on this, too.  I almost never do Black Friday shopping, but this year I got soaps, some new clothes, a new laptop (for the office of course), and a washer and dryer set.  The latter was an unplanned gift to myself; the result of the unfortunate yet not ill-timed demise of both machines within just two days of each other.  At least I got a $600 rebate on the new ones!

Back to the subject of gifting.  As you may have noticed, we created a section in the shop for gifts under $200 for you.  We tried doing “gifts under $100” but the section was too small to bother.  Not much by way of stocking stuffers – if “under $100” can even count as that.  In my family that would be the main gift!  

Stocking stuffer-wise, I do have a couple of suggestions for you though: our new cleaning product is great, and for those of you who faithfully read our blog and have gotten to this paragraph, here’s a bonus for you:  If you’d like an extra polishing cloth or pad, just ask us and we will throw in another one at no charge.  They are quite handy!  

Another somewhat underappreciated gift in the lower price point of our shop is our earring jackets which come in both silver and gold.  They are super cute and rarely bought – I have no idea why:

Finally, our gold chains are currently very well priced because when we initially set those prices up, gold was $900 per ounce... now it’s at $1500!  Next year we will have to change our prices on those, but for now, they're a steal!

We are still working on adding a few silver pendants and silver stacking rings.  They should go up this weekend, as soon as we are finished coming out from under the sale we just had, which was quite successful if I may say so myself.  

Now, on to some recommendations I have from “not my shop,” a few of which fall squarely into the “gift to self” category, ahem.  

First off, let me flag the Etsy shop of my new graphic designer, Johanna Wood (her shop is Metal, Cloth & Wood), who makes lovely bug jewelry like these copper earrings with an etched ant motif:

 

I own one of her hand carved moth pins, which I pinned on my cloche hat, purchased from Artikal NYC, who also sells locally and offers hat making classes. 

Since I love art deco anything and everything, I purchased this clock for the office when the previous one bit the dust (it’s probably old fashioned to be into clocks but I love them):

Shipping for this item was very fast, and the seller also has this cat clock which I almost got instead:

I love all things cats!  Like I would totally buy these if I didn’t lose gloves too often: 

For a stocking stuffer that’s truly priced as such, I’ve purchased this shampoo soap:

I did stuff my own stocking though, as I am a frequent traveler and this soap beats having to put your shampoo into the suitcase or using those travel packs which I think are wasteful (they're more plastic than shampoo!)

My all-time favorite clothing seller on Etsy is Xiaolizi.  She lives and makes clothes in China, and will tailor anything to your size.  I’ve bought so many clothes from her that she has all of my information stored.  (There are periodic changes to size though, mostly upwards…).  Some of you may have seen me in my Tucson video wearing this dress in a red-orange color scheme: 

Or, for an LBD (little black dress) that would flatter almost any body type (it did wonders for mine), how pretty is this one?!

 

Xiaolizi’s dress care instructions suggest hand washing, but I toss them into the washer and dryer and so far they’ve all lasted better than a lot of commercially bought stuff!  They have even outlasted the washer and dryer itself, it appears...

On the more comfy side, I’ve gotten lots of use out of these cotton Gaucho pants; they wash well, they don’t shrink, and they are both flattering and comfortable: 

And I have been staring at this listing for weeks; I love it but I am not sure it would love me back: 

Actually, while we are on the subject of weight, I haven’t bought this but I got a kick out of it: 

For my philosophy friends, this one would make a great gift too: 

And I was thinking of giving this to my dentist Dr. Marian Farag, because I see her so often that I have suggested we should try having dinner sometime instead, it would be all the fun without the pain.  

I could go on, but I don’t shop as much for real handmade stuff on Etsy as I should, and I'm sure Amazon doesn’t need my help!

Happy shopping!

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