gifts | Chrystina Noel

Archive for the ‘gifts’ Category

gifts about wine for under $30

Posted in gifts, wine and cheese, tagged gifts under 30, housewarming gifts, wine accessories, wine gifts on April 16, 2013 | 4 Comments »

Well, we’ve done it, we’ve made it to the end of wine and cheese week. Thank you so much for playing along with me and I hope that you had as much fun as I did along the way. If you missed any of them, here’s a recap for you:

5 rules to find a perfect wine pairing by talula’s garden
understanding 8 basic wines with help from tria
wine and cheese party of 4 under $80, which features my newest wine toy, the Corkcicle
pairing wine with pizza with zavino

To complete this week, I want to leave you with ideas for awesome gifts about wine for under $30. Of course, you could also get a bottle of wine to go with it – but that sounds like a series for a different week. Check it out:

gifts about wine under $30

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

Which one’s your favorite?

Have you received anything cool that you would suggest?

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housewarming gifts under $35

Posted in gifts, tagged gifts, hostess gifts, housewarming gifts on December 3, 2012 | 2 Comments »

A friend IMed me today and asked me a question, “what can I get as a housewarming gift for under $35?”. I absolutely love this question – probably because I love “home” things so much, but also because we are right at the beginning of gift giving season. And because my friends and I just went through this question in buying a “thank you for inviting us” gift for a few friends that we stayed with in Atlanta this past weekend.

co-workers at a first birthday party. yes, we like each other enough to hang out together on the weekends.

Here are some suggestions:

Glasses – This could be wine glasses, fancy stemware, champagne glasses (with the bottle of champagne?), regular drinking glasses, mugs, etc. Check TJMaxx.
Cutting Boards – I love cutting boards, maybe that makes me weird. Also, if you’re willing to spend more, you can go to etsy and get one of the shape of the state they live in.
Coffee Table Books – You know those large books that are +$25 plus with the pretty pictures that you rarely buy yourself? Those books. Think photography, think travel, think design, think famous people, think history. You can absolutely personalize this.
Pictures Frames filled with memories – The key part about this one is the filled with memories. Frames are kind of stressful when you don’t know what you’re going to put inside. We actually ended up getting a photo cube to give as our thank you gift.
Beverages – Usually you think wine. Sometimes you think beer… or cordials… or just straight hard liquor. You can also also take the route of fancy drinking chocolates, expensive teas, expensive coffees, or sparkling non-alcoholic beverages.
New-to-the-Area Gifts – This could be a book on great restaurants or history, this could be a gift certificate, this could be a map that’s personalized, or really anything unique to a specific place.
Other ideas – Aprons (of course), kitchen gadgets, vases, flowers, your favorite recipes, or holiday-oriented houseware decor.

Do you have any other suggestions? Or have you moved into a house recently and been given a gift that you really enjoyed?

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hostess gifts

Posted in gifts, tagged gifts, gifts for parties, hostess gifts on April 30, 2012 | 3 Comments »

I recently read a really awesome article on “Should I Bring a Hostess Gift?” on Emily Post. This article talks about six different scenarios you can encounter:
(1) Casual Dinner Party
(2) Formal Dinner Party
(3) When there’s a guest of honor
(4) When you’re the guest of honor
(5) Housewarming
(6) Weekend Visit

She does a great job breaking out each scenario and explaining what’s appropriate for each occasion. My favorite tip given is for a housewarming. “If the housewarming is for a neighbor new to your town, consider putting together a welcome kit containing area maps, the town paper, restaurant menus, bookmarks from your favorite bookstore, transportation schedules, and information on local parks and recreation facilities- anything that will make it easier for her to feel welcome and at home in her new community.” Such a great idea.

Hostess gifts are something I’m trying to get into. A lot of it doesn’t even have to do with the money – it’s the remembering and the time to get to the store. I think some great places to get hostess gifts include (the usuals) West Elm, Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie because they all have a collection of “stuff” and you can usually find something for any cost. And when in doubt, who’s going to turn down a bottle of wine?

For a casual dinner party that I recently went to, I thought about the hostess and what her likes and dislikes were, and my first instinct was to get her something cool that she wouldn’t usually buy herself. I ended up settling on a Wilton assortment of sprinkles, which – let’s face it, as bakers we all LOVE, but usually aren’t willing to spend the money on.

As for weekend visit gifts, this past autumn I visited two friends in the Boston area. I didn’t bring them anything during my stay (which may have been wrong of me?), but I looked around their apartments while I was there and came up with something they might need or use in life. I ended up getting one friend a cutting board (long story…) and another friend a spoon rest for her stove (which I noticed she didn’t have as we were making soup). Maybe I was supposed to bring gifts before I arrived, but hey, who doesn’t love getting gifts in the mail?

Have you ever received (or given) a fun hostess gift?

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thank you postcards for my birthday party

Posted in basic cards, gifts, greeting cards, tagged birthday thank yous, desserts, postcard thank you cards, postcards, recipes, thank you cards on April 18, 2012 | 3 Comments »

So. Yes, my birthday was December 30. Yes, my birthday PARTY was January 28th. And YES, it is now April. However, I didn’t get around to writing thank you notes until March… better late than never right?

I decided to pull a classic Chrystina and go with the Post Card approach. Put some pictures of the party on one side, write a message on half of the other side AND you only have to pay for a postcard stamp (which is now 33 cents, thank you, America). I didn’t have any pictures from the event though, so I decided to try something different. Johanna brought a dessert to this party that we ended up calling “crack”. It was SO good. It’s sort of caramel meets chocolate meets matzo… and it’s bite-sized.

I hope you appreciate that I used my blog background as the background of this card. The colors are just too good to pass up.
Also, I’ve only got one comment so far from a friend that somebody that they lived with was slightly confused that they got a recipe for crack in the mail (that seemed to be more like toffee).