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Mudlark Bloom Memento Boxed Notes
Hunting around Scaredy Kat last week for some nice note cards, I browsed through the collection of cute, very fashionable letterpress cards, all for around $5. Then I saw these cute boxes of cards, the Mudlark Bloom Memento Boxed Notes. They weren't the most fashionable or rare of the bunch, but they're perfectly adorable, and at less than $15 for a box of 25, they're a steal!
Posted by georgia at 12:13 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
New babies might not be able to tell when you bring them a present, but how can you resist? I certainly can't, especially when there are so many cute things at Romp in Park Slope. We absolutely loved all the mobiles turning and swaying, especially these adorable elephants. They're bright, so he'll be able to see them as soon as he starts seeing colors, and we hope he'll love them as much as we do.
Posted by georgia at 02:51 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
A few days ago The Guy and I had a birthday party to go to, and since I have less money than time right now, I thougth I'd make some cookies as gifts (after all, who doesn't like cookies?) The birthday party was for our friend Emily, and I wanted to make sure to give her cookies that were a little retro and a little cute and a little classic, just like she is. This gave me the perfect opportunity to play around with some of my favorite cookies and give them a fun twist. I started by making classic peanut butter cookies, which are nice and retro, then dipped them in melted chocolate to make them a little more grownup. I also made snickerdoodles, which were The Guy's childhood favorites. I thought about using cookie cutters to give them fun shapes, but that would have wasted good dough, so I used the cookie cutter in a different way - by dipping them in colored icing (a watery mix of powdered sugar, water and food-coloring) I made cute heart shapes on the tops of the cookies, which were a hit with everyone.
Posted by georgia at 03:30 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Hip-hip-hooray for my new nephew! Nine pounds, born on the living room floor (my sister-in-law is a trooper!) So now I have an excuse to shop for all those great baby things I always gush over. This first gift, however, is for the parents - a fantastic book from Christie Mellor with a wickedly funny look at parenting. It's a hoot to read with items like Our Little Tot's First Martini Recipe ("All young children should know how to make this delightful yet deceptively simple cocktail for their parents..."), but there's some actual advice worked in ("Once it's time to go, it's wisest not to ask permission of your progeny"). I had great fun leafing through it months back when I first saw it, and I'm thrilled to have an excuse to finally go back for it.
Posted by georgia at 11:26 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
With all the time I've spent buying tea, drinking tea, and combing through tea shops, I thought I'd seen pretty much all the greatest tea items out there. Wow was I wrong. Today I saw this amazing book in the office, waiting to be shelved, and since I hadn't seen it before I took it back to my desk to browse. From the very first moment I opened it I was bowled over. Mariage Freres: French Tea is a gorgeous tome of tea images, tea info and bold photos. I sat at my desk leafing through it and drooling over the pictures of tea plantations, hundreds of styles of tea pots, and foods made with tea. It just got better and better and more and more beautiful. So if you have a friend who drags you into tea shops, collects old tea tins, and talks endlessly about the most recent teas she's found, this is the book to buy her - but only if you don't want to carry on a conversation for a few hours after she's opened it.
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Well, since we got April flowers I guess it only makes sense that now it looks like May showers. But the rain doesn't have to ruin your day - look forward to those cloudy days by following these simple steps:
1. Get some fun on your feet. Western Chief has all the great rain boots you wanted as a kid (frogs, bees, ladybugs, even cows) in big girl sizes.
2. Grab a cute patterned umbrella (Design*Sponge posted some beautiful choices, but for something about 1/3 that price, look for my favorite Chinese movie stars of the 20s umbrella at Pearl River in Soho).
3. Go outside and start stomping in puddles and swinging on lampposts - you know the song.
Posted by georgia at 11:09 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
I heard this piece on All Things Considered while driving back from Cape Cod on Sunday. Need a gift for the history buff in your life? Want to find a copy of that old cookbook your mother loved, but can't remember what it was called? Bonnie will hook you up with all the cooking-related reading you could ever hope for.
Posted by georgia at 11:40 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
So I'm behind the ball on this one (D*S posted it a week ago), but I just had to pass this along. These teacups and saucers are so beautiful, that for $30 for a set of four, I might just have to get some for myself (and build some kind of additional room out on my fire escape to hold all my tea paraphernalia).
Posted by georgia at 02:36 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
We've been fans of Faye Passov's products ever since we first saw her Demerit Badges last year, and we died over her new "Choose Your Daily Disaster" strips. They're a deliciously campy cross between the Pick Your Mood grids people paste on their refrigerators and good old fashioned Pick Your Adventure books, but much, much more fun. We can't choose which we love more, the falling piano, the little yippy dogs, the Japanese Monster, or any of the other dozens of options on the thirteen strips. We found them at Scaredy Kat (which again proves that it's one of the greatest stores ever), but you can get all of them on her website.
My disaster for today? I think I'll go with runaway monster truck (it has to be better than easy listening music!)
Posted by georgia at 11:42 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
I'm not usually one for fill-in-the-blanks - when faced with the option of using a system or product that someone else designed or coming up with one that fits my specific needs I almost always opt for the latter (driving my family crazy every time). But when I saw Pamela Barsky's Cooking Journal, it was love at first sight. While I may have decided to write down all my favorite non book-bound recipes, Pamela took that idea and added fabulous features that give you space to write down when you served each dish and what changes you might make or things to look out for next time. While I'm cramming notes into margins and creating a sloppy mess, the lucky people who buy her book will have a neat book with notes that will help them remember all the wonderful dinner parties they threw.
And it's not her only book - she does tons of great journals, everything from museum journals to the "Him" book, a version of the little black book that's finally big enough for the modern woman. While I might not be the type of person who keeps notes about every film I see, I know a few hosts of wine-tasting parties who would love the wine journal, and the restaurant journal would come in very handy for practicing those reviews I want to publish.
Now here's the real question: may I please give up my current food journal and start over with hers?
Posted by georgia at 10:42 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Valentine's Day is about two things: red and chocolate (oh, yeah, and love too). There have always been lots of ways to do red, but chocolate has been something of an old dog (the one with no new tricks). But now if you want to indulge in chocolate, you have some alternatives:
My favorite, the Cocoa Therapy Comforting Cream Bath ($27.50):
A quick fix: Origins Cocoa Therapy Instant Chocolate Fix ($13.50):
or a long lingering seduction: Greenergrassdesign Taste of Scent Candle- Bitter Sweet Chocolate ($12):
Posted by georgia at 09:13 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Valentine's Day demands tradition. Even if you give your Valentine a very individualized gift that you know she will love, you still want to add a small box of good chocolates or a bouquet of red and pink flowers to the mix so that you can benefit from the inherent romance that these symbols bring. Of course, these gifts come with a built-in pitfall: if you do them wrong, it will look like you didn't put any effort into buying the gift. To avoid this problem, make sure that everything you get is really high quality and individualized. If you're buying chocolates, make sure they're really good quality (Godiva and Scharffen Berger are both good, but something from a local chocolate store like The Chocolate Room in Brooklyn is even better), and make sure you get the kind of chocolate that your honey likes. And if you're giving flowers, avoid picking up a bunch of red roses at the market, since that obviously doesn't take much time or thought. Instead, mix the roses with other pink and red flowers like tulips, anemones, and peonies, or go to a good florist and splurge on one of the beautiful arrangements that they've already put together (like the one picture above, from everyone's favorite domestic diva). That way you'll get credit for giving a perfectly romantic Valentine's Day gift and for putting a lot of thought and caring into it as well.
Posted by georgia at 07:49 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
What's better than giving your Valentine a piece of beautiful, original artwork? Giving your Valentine a piece of beautiful, original artwork that costs less than $20. PBCB had beautiful watercolors with natural and romantic themes by L.A. based artist Christin Ciaccio Briggs (she and her artist husband share the studio). The pieces are priced mostly by size, so while her larger pieces run for up to $125, her lovely 2.5 by 2.75 and 3.5 by 5 inch pieces run from $12 to $20. I particularly like the "Love Will Set You Free Valentine" and the "Be True Valentine" (above). View the whole collection and order here. via design*sponge.
Posted by georgia at 06:13 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
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We saw these adorable notebooks by Chronicle Books when we were browsing for cooking supplies in Soho. The idea is one we've seen before - we got some great magnets by the same artist for The Guy's mother a couple years ago - but these were too cute to pass up. They're flexible, and the pages are lined on both sides, like a reporter's notebook, and they have great little vinegary quips inside, like "she refused to let common sense cloud her judgement," and "am I living happily ever after yet?" |
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I needed the Domestically Disabled notebook for myself, to remind me to feel glamorous when cookies burn and the apartment feels like a hovel, and I'm sure I'll be getting many of the others for friends in the near future. |
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The notebooks are all available online here, and more of the artist's stuff is available here. |
Posted by georgia at 07:37 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Some of us are not at our most graceful in the kitchen. In fact, some of us are just plain clumsy anywhere near a hot stove and a rack of sharp knives. You know us when you see us; we're the ones with the band-aids on our fingers and the scars of baking projects past on our palms. Our successes go unnoticed, and we wear our failures as badges of cooking honor.
That is, until today.
Today, we know the truth: that even our most egregious errors can be smoothed away in a matter of days.
And how did we come to discover this great and powerful truth? By accident of course. One day a particularly clumsy member of the group was tending to a burn - a burn that was not behaving, a burn that had split and had to be tended to with Neosporin (a burn that was caused by forgetting to put eyeglasses on before basting the Christmas turkey). This poor accident-prone cook had despaired of ever having beautiful hands again when she stumbled upon a small container of shea butter tucked into a gift box of treasures from L'Occitane. Unsure what it was for, she smoothed some of it on the burn to keep it from drying out, absentmindedly reapplying over the course of the day. But by the time evening came, a miracle had occurred. Where a hideous red scar-causing burn had been, only a faint pink spot remained. It was a miracle! The clumsy cook jumped for joy. No longer would she be forced to carry the stigmas of her kitchen mistakes forever on her skin. Thrilled, she ran right out and told all the other clumsy cooks about the miracle balm she had found.
So now we can rejoice and return to our klutzy cooking, for scars have been banished from the kitchen for good.
Posted by georgia at 11:30 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Forget to send out your holiday cards this year? Don't worry, it's not too late to salvage your social reputation and win the holiday card came. All you have to do is send out New Years cards. They're appropriate for your Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim friends and everyone in between, and best of all they're still appropriate for another couple weeks, so you don't have to throw yourself into a panic. There are lots of appropriate, cute designs out there, like this one from Paper Source, but another of the great things about New Years cards is that any card you want to send will be appropriate, so you can use the cards you haven't had a chance to use yet. So compile a list of all the people who sent you cards this year and start writing "Happy New Year" - it's one resolution you can easily follow through with.
Posted by georgia at 10:58 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Running out of wrapping paper and don't want to brave the throngs of shoppers downtown? Use up your last decorative bag at midnight and there's still a stack of presents waiting to be wrapped? Don't panic - the plain white paper sitting in your computer's printer will make a perfectly suitable wrapping paper at a moment's notice. Just take two pieces of paper and tape them together, overlapping them just 1/4 to 1/2 an inch, wrap the gift with the tape on the inside of the package, and align the ribbon so it camouflages the visible overlap. If you want to make the package a little more festive, just use a bit of whatever confetti or glitter you have sitting around, gluing them on the top of the package. Your gifts will be just as pretty as they would have with regular wrapping paper, and if anyone notices the difference, they'll probably just complement you on your ingenuity.
Posted by georgia at 11:31 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Christmas poses a giant gift-giving dilemma: you want to give everyone something personal, but with so many people to buy for, the easiest thing to do is give all your friends the same thing. The solution to this yearly problem? The Signature Gift. The Signature Gift is a gift that you give to everyone on your list (except family) that your friends look forward to every year. Pat Carlson of Redding, California introduced me to this concept with her yearly truffle delivery. Every year Pat makes pounds and pounds of melting, mouth-watering truffles and delivers them to all her friends (and her children's friends). Sure, everyone gets the same thing, but if Pat or gave us something else for Christmas one year, even if she picked gifts exclusively for each of us, we'd be a little disappointed. So find that one cookie recipe that everyone swoons over, make a flavored vodka and pair it with the perfect holiday drink recipe, or treat your friends to the handmade cheese from the farm you loved in Vermont; when you find the perfect gift that everyone loves, you've found something that you can give again and again - and your friends will look forward to your visit every year.
Posted by georgia at 10:53 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
While you're making up your gift list this holiday season, consider playing Santa to the less fortunate. Stockings with Care collects gifts to give to the kids served by a number of NYC charitable organizations; just sign up to "be a santa" and the organization will give you the gift wish list of a child. And if you're feeling extra generous, you can also sign up to volunteer.
Posted by georgia at 11:58 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Have a long Christmas card list but no money to spend on all the cute cards you see in the stores? Take a few minutes out of your evenings and make them yourself. Cut one-of-a-kind snowflakes while you're watching your favorite tv shows (don't worry, they'll be a lot better than the ones you made as a kid) and glue them to colored paper or card-stock.
Or, if you're short on time too, use a holiday-shaped cut-out like this snowflake hole-punch from Paper Source (for around $6) to cut the shapes out of paper and line them with a contrasting color of paper (the resulting confetti can be glued on card-stock). The two layers of these cards are held together by ribbons and metallic thread.
For Hanukkah cards, you can make Stars of David the same way you make snowflakes in nine easy steps:
1. fold a paper circle in half
2. fold the half-circle in thirds
3. fold the third in half lengthwise, then open
4. fold the third in half the other direction, then open
5. mark where the folds meet with a point
6. draw straight lines from the upper corners of the triangle through the point
7. draw straight lines 1/4 - 1/3 of an inch below the fist set of lines
8. cut out the resulting shape
9. unfold, and you have a star
(click above for larger image)
Posted by georgia at 10:58 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Every year around this time a few thousand people head to the yarn store and start knitting scarves to give to loved ones at Christmas. Seven months from now an almost equal number of people look at the still half-finished scarf and try to decide whether it's worth working on for next Christmas.
Fortunately, a good friend pointed me toward a solution: The Giant Knitting Needles.
Ok, so they look weird and it takes a few minutes to get used to working with them, but by the end of a not-too-long afternoon I had a complete scarf ready for a gift box. Mine was made of three layers of yarn, which made it both impenetrable and expensive, but thinner yarns work just as well and produce a beautiful open stitch.
So go on, head to the yarn store - you won't be stuck looking for last minute gifts on Christmas Eve.
Posted by georgia at 10:00 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
For most cooks, most of cooking consists of following recipes. Cookbooks, cooking magazines, and sites like Epicurious.com inspire home chefs, teach them to make new dishes, and introduce them to new cuisines. But as any good chef knows, the mark of a really good, confident cook is the ability to create dishes using instinct, experience, and imagination, not recipes.
Pam Anderson, author of How To Cook Without A Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know By Heart, astutely bases a cookbook on this premise. In a book geared toward novice cooks, Anderson gives a lengthy cooking class that covers everything from soups and salads to ravioli, pad thai and desserts. She picks a type of food and shows cooks how to embellish a basic recipe to create endless spinn-off dishes.
For instance, in the chapter "Simple Tomato Sauce, Scores of Possibilities" she starts with a Simple Tomato Sauce, then lists multiple variations, basing each variation on the "master recipe"; for instance for Tomato-Basil Cream Sauce she lists a handful of new ingredients and instructs the cook: "Follow the Simple Tomato Sauce Recipe, adding cream and basil to the fully cooked sauce. Continue to simmer until heated through, 1 to 2 minutes longer." This same technique is used to teach the reader to make sauces with artichokes and olive, mussels and garlic, and many more. For "Weeknight Stir-Fries" she uses the (longish) rhyme "With onion, garlic and ginger, stir-fry a pound each of vegetables and meat, Then stir in a flavoring sauce for a meal satisfying and complete" as the base for everything from Stir-Fried Chicken with Snow Peas and Water Chestnuts to Stir-Fried Tofu with Haricots Verts and Eggplant, and Sweet-and-Sour Pork with Peppers and Pineapple.
The idea is obviously that once a cook works his or her way through a few of these variations, he or she will understand the basic principals behind the dish and be able to create new recipes. Not a bad way to learn to cook, huh? And maybe a great Christmas or Hanukah gift for the college student or budding chef in your family.
Posted by georgia at 11:36 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Now that we're kind of starting to get into the swing of the holidays, we can get our feet wet in the gift giving pool by looking for holiday cards. The MoMA Design Store has tons of cute, creative, and beautiful cards for Christmas and Hanukah, as well as my favorite, "Seasonā€™s Greetings" cards with winter themes that you can send to your Christian friends, Jewish friends, Buddhist friends, and everyone else on your list. My favorite is the Pop-Up Skater, the perfect symbol of winter fun (and at just over $2 per card with added discounts for larger orders, the price is pretty perfect too).
Posted by georgia at 07:50 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Going to a friend's for Thanksgiving but not sure what to bring the hostess? If she doesn't want you to bring a side dish and they've got the wine covered, try bringing an after dinner drink like a nice bottle of cognac or a bottle of amaretto for the after-dinner coffee. After dinner drinks are not something most cooks think about on Thanksgiving, but it will complement the holiday dinner (or, if everyone's too full of turkey and red wine to partake, it will make your hosts very happy later in the week).
Posted by georgia at 11:59 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
With Thanksgiving in just over a week and holiday parties around the corner, chances are you're going to be a guest in a few people's homes in the next few weeks. To show what a good guest you are, you can show up with flowers or a bottle of wine, or, if you have an old Polaroid camera lying around, you can take an idea from my friend Lea Fredrickson and do something a little more unusual. Instead of showing up with a gift in hand, bring your camera and plenty of film; camp out near your hosts and take pictures of them interacting with their friends, and by the time you're ready to go, you'll be able to hand them a stack of pictures that will help them not only preserve their party but laugh and cry about it while they're doing dishes too.
Posted by georgia at 12:13 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
I don't know how I got on their list, but a catalog from Red Envelope arrived on my doorstep yesterday and all I can do is drool. What fantastic gift ideas! Okay, maybe this isn't the place I'm going to get gifts for the majority of my friends this Christmas, but for the people I want to splurge on, they definitely fall into the catagory of most bang for the buck. A gallery frame set that would cost a couple hundred at Crate and Barrel is only $95 (and there are smaller ones for only $65), and I can give people beautiful and innovative martini sets for under $60 (they're so cute - you carry the cones in cubes of ice to keep the drink cold, then lift them out to take a sip). And for the rest of my friends, they have cute flasks and mini martini shakers and heart shaped measuring spoons for $20-$40. I'm so excited - I'm ready for the holidays and it's not even Thanksgiving! What a miracle!
Posted by georgia at 10:53 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
To continue with the dim sum theme:
Sometimes the key to finding the perfect gift is simply to come across it by accident. You can rack your brain for gift ideas for weeks, but you'll never come up with as good a gift as you'll find by stumbling on something that reminds you of one of your friends. A couple weeks ago we saw these Flash Postcards by Chronical Books in Scaredy Kat and immediately thought of our friend Lane who loves to go out to dim sum (for a long time we had a standing Sunday morning date in Chinatown with her). Obviously, we just had to get them for her. So now the next time we want to thank her for something she's done or apoligize for a broken date, we have the perfect little gift. Or, if we come across more items in this same theme (anyone know where we can get dim sum refrigerator magnets?) we can bundle them up into a little stocking for her for Christmas.
(Sorry to spoil the surprise, Lane.)
Posted by georgia at 11:34 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Looking for something to give the girl who insists she can't live without her takeout menus or the guy who jokes about how he can't even change a light-bulb? Browsing through Scaredy Kat in Park Slope the other day we came across these adorable "Demerit Badges" by artists Jenny Schmid and Faye Passov. Overprepared, Unprepared, Unhandy, Shopaholic, Can't Cook-- we love them all! And for less than $5, they'll make perfect gifts for some obstinately un-domestic friends.
(Just be tactful about who you give them to, or they'll have to make one that says "Insensitive Gift Giver.")
Posted by georgia at 01:43 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
The other day I wandered into The Gap looking for a sweater. Though all the clothing was uninspired, there was one thing that caught my eye: a bowl of key-chains in the form of brightly colored letters. At only $10, they're adorable. Unfortunately I can't find them on the company's website, but I had to get one for my sister, who just moved into her first apartment, so I picked up a bright S (for Suzie). Maybe I'll throw an F in her stocking at Christmas so she can add her last initial to her keys too. (Sorry to ruin the surprise, Suz.)
Posted by georgia at 02:00 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
I tend to suggest ways of turning photos into gifts, but I've never suggested the most obvious: putting a picture in a frame. Why skip this obvious choice? Because most of the time when people give photos as gifts they're a little boring and unoriginal.
Neither of those things is true about the picture my friend Elizabeth gave me today! The picture she chose is both funny and original and I'm grateful to her for giving me such a great slice of our life to treasure.
How can you get the same results she did? Follow her two simple (but not always easy) steps: 1) find an unusual picture -- not a posed or smiling picture -- that tells a great story (like this one of me and my guy being frustrated by the size of our first tiny kitchen), and 2) put it in a really nice frame, something with character that is a piece of work in-and-of itself. If you can manage to do it right, your gift will become as much of an heirloom as any picture of your sweet-sixteen or your senior prom.
Posted by georgia at 02:00 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
At the party you went to last weekend, you talked to a freelance editor, a freelance photographer, and a waitress who wants to be a freelance writer. And today at lunch your friend the publicist told you she's leaving her job to be a freelance cartoonist. Is everyone you know going into business for themselves? Your friends may be following their dreams, but they're leaving behind important things like pensions, health insurance, and... business cards.
Don't laugh; business cards are the key to networking and are crucial for freelancers, but when they're just starting out, most don't have the time or the resources to have them made or even think about designs.
Enter you, the thoughtful friend. With a little time and a decent printer, you can give them a stack of personalized business cards and help their business grow. Avery makes sheets of cards you can print on (we particularly like model #8879 because they don't show any perforations once they're separated) and has templates you can use with either Word or Photoshop.
Bonus Tip: Have a niece's birthday to go to and don't know what to take her? Business cards aren't just for grownups; make some nice pink cards that trumpet her status as the queen of the neighborhood or an official fairy-princess and you'll be the talk of the tea party.
Posted by georgia at 02:04 AM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
This summer, our friend Susan, who takes care of our cats when we're out of town, had one of the smartest gift ideas I've ever heard of: when she went to dinner at a friend's apartment, she took a gift for their dog. She knew how much they loved their dog, as most pet owners do, so instead of bringing flowers or a bottle of wine like most dinner guests, she brought a dog toy. She even asked their daughter what kinds of toys the dog favored so she could get a good one.
I cannot believe what a brilliant idea this is! Not only did Susan get major points with her hosts, she didn't even have to spend much to do it since presents for pets are so much less expensive than presents for people. I can't wait to use this idea myself (or for someone to bring a fun toy for our kitties). Bravo, Susan!
Posted by georgia at 01:44 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
This might sound strange, but when it comes to presents for cooks, I'm all about the MoMA Design Catalogue. I'm totally fascinated by the Stainless-Steel "Soap" that takes intense smells like garlic off your hands (only $12.00, or $10.80 for members) and the New York Coffee Cup that looks like the paper cups you get in diners for the same price. For a few more dollars there are great salt and pepper shakers, Riedel "O" Wine Glasses, and a fun Apple Slicer. And of course, since it's MoMA, everything's beautiful too. (Now if you can just avoid looking at the Philippe Starck inspired Luis Ghost Armchairs.)
image yanked from moma design store
Posted by georgia at 01:01 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
A few days ago I had a gift-giving breakthrough. When the renewal form came for the gift subscription of Gourmet I gave a friend last year, the company gave me the option of adding a second gift subscription -- for only $4.
So, of course, I took it.
And next year, when they offer me another $4 gift subscription, yet another of my friends will enjoy a year of Gourmet's fabulous photos, recipes and adventures.
Okay, so it's not the most original gift ever, but I have lots of friends who love to cook, and I know they'll enjoy it as much as I do. And hey, if they want to reciprocate with a subscription to their favorite food magazine, I'll be thrilled.
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Don't want to add clutter to your friend's over-crowded apartments? Take a cue from our friend Dora who turned a present into an experience by treating us to the prix fix at one of Brooklyn's nicest restaurants. We had a great time, got to try a place we wouldn't have otherwise, and didn't empty her bank account. And if you're worried your gift won't last long enough to be remembered, bring your camera and give your friend copies of the pictures.
(Worried about how to issue the invitation without getting stuck paying for a friend's three course dinner by mistake? Just be very specific. Our email from Dora read, "Patois is one of the nicest restaurants in Brooklyn, but they have a very affordable prix fix I want to treat you guys to.")
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Finding a gift that's personal, useful and affordable is hard. Finding one with "the wow factor" is even harder (and usually has to do with jewelry, which is way out of my spending league).
But digital photos have saved me. With my digital camera, which is not the good kind (or my guy's, which is), I can take a picture of my mom’s roses or my friend’s favorite beach and turn the image into notecards.
I did this for the first time with pictures of my godmother's ranch after she hosted a big event there for us. I used pictures of the ranch we had taken over the course of the year and printed them as 5x7 greeting cards with the name of the ranch below the picture. Now whenever she wants to write a thank you note or wish someone a happy birthday, she can do it on her own personalized cards.
Lots of online places do this at fairly affordable prices. Snapfish.com quotes 5x7 folded cards at $1.45 -$1.99 each, depending on how many you buy, and Imagestation.com has sets of ten for $12.99. But if you have a good color printer, why not do them yourself like we did? Redrivercatalog.com has great, affordable paper in lots of sizes that work wonderfully (about $20 for 50 cards).
Posted by georgia at 01:28 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
