Looking for a cute summer gift for a bookie friend, or for yourself? How about a monogrammed bag for toting all the summer reads to the beach?
Bob Shirilla, owner of Simply Bags, owned a traditional brick and mortar stores before moving his store online and focusing more on personalized items. I had my pink tote monogrammed with “LuxuryReading.com” and there are countless possibilities!
Simply Bags is a specialty monogram and embroidery shop offering personalized tote bags. Beautiful, personal and useful gifts. Colorful and bright combinations. Creative gift ideas … unique laptop totes for women, couples wine tote, fashionable travel totes, monogrammed boat totes for the beach and so much more. Finished with fine detailing and professional embroidered monogramming.
Have you ever fumbled with a bulky travel guide while visiting a new city? Or had to stuff a Frommer’s into an already overstuffed purse? Or had to leaf through page after page without finding any useful information?
The adorable and compact Luxe City Guides are perfect solutions to all of the above problems! Less than half an inch thick, these guides unfold to a wealth of information on everything from accommodations and restaurants, to fun activities and relaxing spas. To add icing to the cake, the information is relayed with a great sense of humor and quirky remarks galore.
I looked over the LUXE London and wished that I had this guide in my pocket when I visited the city a few years back. The most important advice in the guide is this: “On a budget? Don’t come to London.” I couldn’t agree more. However, if your budget is in fact limited, the guide does provide “good value b&bs” while warning that some accommodations are “opulent”. There are also handy tips on getting around via “the tube”, London’s subway system, calling codes, as well as deciphering “Brit-speak”. Who knew that “quite good” actually means “rather disappointing”?
Luxe City Guides are available for dozens of most popular destinations, and are also available for cell phones with ayear of free updates included. Here are my gift suggestions using the Luxe guides:
Pick the recipient’s favorite destination and give a Luxe guide or two as a stocking stuffer.
Give Luxe City Guides Mobile to a techie who plans on traveling. They will appreciate the instant access from their handset, as well as the free updates.
Luxe City Guides also come in sets of 5 or 12 packaged in beautiful handmade boxes. Pick the destinations and Luxe will gift wrap and mail the package directly to the recipient. Perfect for clients, colleagues, or even as bridal party or guest gifts at a wedding.
Know someone who plans on traveling to China, Thailand or Europe? Luxe City Guides are available in travel sets of 3 covering each destination. For example, the Europe set contains guides for London, Paris and Rome.
Every holiday season, we run around buying gifts for our family members and friends. Some of those gifts are afterthoughts, something to give just because gifts are expected. In fact, John Waldfogel, author of Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays, estimated that in 2007, Americans spent $12 billion on gifts that were not wanted or valued by the recipients.
When I came across the World Vision Gift Catalog, I instantly loved the idea of giving poverty-fighting gifts in the name of someone rather than giving them a gift that would simply collect dust in the closet. The catalog features gifts ranging from $16 to $39,000 and is full of beautiful photos and inspiring stories. For example, instead of giving your child’s teacher a stale gift set, you can buy art and music instruction for a child in a third world country for $20. A mere $75 buys a goat for a family in need, and $30 buys five ducks. There is a myriad of gifts to choose from, and each will make a difference in someone’s life.
Devin Hermanson, the national director of the World Vision Gift Catalog, took the time to answer some of my questions about the catalog and its unique gifts.
Where did the idea for the World Vision Gift Catalog come from? Devin: The World Vision Gift Catalog was created in 1996 as a way for parents to teach their children about charitable giving. A married couple worked with World Vision to come up with specific items that would illustrate the needs of the poor, their children were given an amount to donate, and they were then allowed to choose where their donations would go. Since then, the World Vision Gift Catalog has grown to help hundreds of thousands of people. Since 1996, World Vision’s Gift Catalog has raised over $130 million.
How can people verify that their gifts are in fact making a difference for someone? Devin: We’ve heard very clearly from donors over the years that they want as much of every donation as possible to benefit children. We honor that by focusing our efforts on keeping our overhead very low (only 11% in 2009).
So, while we can’t afford to report on the impact of every chicken, goat, or malaria bed net, we do provide excellent reports on the overall work that World Vision does. For details, visit our website at http://www.worldvision.org/content.nsf/about/why-donate.
Another way to understand the impact of donations on the lives of those we serve is to hear their stories in their own words. You’ll find several videos on the Gift Catalog’s Facebook page that feature brave people from several countries who have seen their lives transformed with the help of generous donors.
What is your most popular gift? Devin: Goats continue to be the most popular gift selection. Last year, more than 50,000 goats were purchased by donors. Other popular gifts include: sheep, chickens, soccer balls, ducks, and an education for a child. You can give a goat for $75. Many items are priced under $30.
How many gifts do you sell throughout the year? Devin: Last year 100,000 donors purchased more than 600,000 items that raised over $28 million.
Some gifts offer matching contributions from corporations, but note that amounts may vary throughout the year. Do donors know how much of a matching contribution was made on their particular gift? Devin: The value of some donation items is multiplied through the combined impact of grant funds and donated goods. Through these items, we are raising money to help implement and supplement programs that are funded primarily by grant or corporate donors. Over the course of a year, some grant projects may be completed, and others may be awarded. In the same way, the corporate donations we receive can fluctuate throughout the year. These variations can result in a change in the overall leveraged value of a donor’s gift, and at times the change can occur between the time of publication of the catalog and the time of donation. However, our hope is that most donors are interested simply in knowing that we partner with others to help as many kids as possible, and that they want to be a part of that.
Do you disclose which country a particular gift is going to? Devin: Most often, many countries will receive a particular type of donation, such as a goat. It simply isn’t cost effective to track an individual donation to a specific country. It’s all part of our focus on making sure that as much money as possible is spent on helping children and families.
I hope that readers will realize that it takes very little to change a life with a donation. I know that people are feeling strapped, but for as little as $25 someone can donate a pair of chickens to a family. Those chickens can change generations of lives in a community! There are plenty of other choices in the World Vision Gift Catalog that are both inexpensive and tremendously powerful in impact.
September is the Photo Book Month, and I decided there was no better time than the present to finally put together our wedding book! We recently celebrated our one year wedding anniversary, so I figured it was about time to get working on the photo book.
The process of making my wedding book was easy and fun, and took a lot less time than I expected. I simply uploaded the photos, and went to work at arranging them on the pages. Here are just a few things that I loved about Snapfish:
There are dozens of different layouts and you can choose to have 1 large photo on the page or many small ones, and anything in between.
Many layouts allow for some writing to be included on the page. If you want to only include photos, you can use the Magic Layouts tool (my favorite) to get rid of the text boxes and allow for more photo space.
There are many options for photo book covers ranging from leather to linen to customized covers with photos. There are just as many options for page designs – I chose to go with the pre-set page designs and they turned out fabulous.
If you pick a photo with a low resolution, a handy warning sign will pop up letting you know that this photo is not recommended to be printed in the size you selected.
The undo tool allows you to reverse unwanted changes. There is also the handy safe area tool – when you preview the finished photo book, you can select the safe area tool and see exactly how the photos will be printed on the page.
I received my photo book in about a week, but there are expedited options available. Here is the packaging that the book arrived in:
I knew that the book was 12×12, but I did not realize how large and absolutely beautiful the photos would be! The quality was amazing and the finished product easily rivals the photo books that my wedding photographer offered. The trend in professional photography is going towards having the journalistic type of photo books with photos printed directly on the page, and that is exactly what I got with Snapfish. Except, instead of spending over a thousand dollars, I spent under $100!
Here are some photos of our wedding book:
With digital photos, all of us have files upon files of photos that never see the light of day. Photo books are an excellent way to display those photos and they also make great gifts. I’ve given a “Grandkids” book to my grandmother for Christmas, and a “Photos of Us” book to my husband and both were a hit!
I would love to hear about your experiences with photo books! If you have any questions about making one, leave a comment here and I’ll reply.
Welcome! The ultimate luxury for me is curling up with a good book and a warm blanket. The next best thing is reviewing books and sharing them with others.
My new luxury: Apothica. Beauty indulgences from Too Faced to Oscar Blandi!
SheKnows Book Club
American Heiress' plot jumps off the pages as you follow Cora Cash on her journey to finding what she thinks will be her happy ending -- ultimately determining that money can't buy happiness.
Looking for a cute summer gift for a bookie friend, or for yourself? How about a monogrammed bag for toting all the summer reads to the beach?
