A gourmet gift basket that looks good, tastes good and IS good for you! The Gourmet Organic Gift Basket is USDA Organic and unbelievably delicious. Continue Reading…
A beautiful gift for your most thoughtful friend or family member! The Thoughts of You Stationery & Tea Gift Basket is definitely one of my favorite gifts from 1800baskets.
In a soft woven Lavender basket that is completely perfect for spring, is an assortment of stationary including a large notepad, small notepad, and 10 notecards with envelopes. All are decorated with beautiful purple and green spring prints and the cards are printed with a “Thinking of You” message, handy for thoughtful recipient who loves to let those close to them know that they are thought of. Continue Reading…
Another great, unique gift basket that is begging to be brought out! One of my most exciting gifts to review was definitely the Wine Picnic Backpack Gift Basket. Continue Reading…
The best thing about spring has to be all the fresh flowers and gardens blooming to life. There is something about those fresh floral fragrances in the air that completes the feeling of spring for me. This past Mother’s Day, I decided I would help out my Mom in the yard and get her some pretty flowers and plants to add to her garden. To make the day extra special, I also included this wonderfully original gift, the Gourmet Garden Tote with Tools Gift Basket! Continue Reading…
Welcome back gift basket readers!
There were a lot of great graduation gift ideas in the comments this week (and obviously a lot of calls for cash!). I really liked the ideas for the personalized blanket for someone going away to school and the photo album. Of course we have a few gifts to get out for our lucky and random commenters. Congratulations to Donald Hayes (May 17, 2012 at 4:51 pm), Lori (May 17, 2012 at 7:13 pm), Claudia (May 21, 2012 at 10:04 am), Suzanne (May 24, 2012 at 10:02 am), and Ed (May 24, 2012 at 3:38 pm)! Send your shipping information to me at amariscal@1800flowers.com and I’ll send out your wine backpacks!
We have Memorial Day weekend about to begin with June and Father’s Day on its tail, and all I want to do is enjoy the warm weather instead of finishing all this work I have to do! Also, I’m (trying) to get a head start on my Father’s Day gift ideas…thankfully I have your comments to help me out with that last part.
I have a large gift I bought for my dad, but he won’t be getting it until September, and instead of me putting a bow on an email confirmation, I’d like to have something fun or delicious to present him on the day of…I just haven’t decided on what. Food gifts are always a safe bet for me with my dad. And for me, Father’s Day is always synonymous with summer grilling. It’s probably because the only meals my dad knows how to cook are all meat-on-a-grill-or-slow-cooker related. I usually try to pick up interesting spices or seasonings for him whenever I go somewhere. I brought home a Cajun seasoning home for him when I was in New Orleans, and he loved the Budweiser sauces I got him before. I think this year I’ll be going with our Award Winning Stubbs® Authentic Barbecue Gift Set. It’s great for summer, upcoming family barbeques and it will give him something new to try when it’s his turn to cook dinner.
If I wanted to win “Daughter of the Year” award, I’d probably pair it with some of our new Stock Yards® steak gifts (which are AMAZING by the way). We had an impromptu work barbeque the other week to sample these and I could cut my steak with a plastic knife; definitely impressed.
Stock Yards® is one of our new sister brands and we’ve picked up a few of their most delicious gifts for Father’s Day. Stock Yards® has been providing the very best USDA Prime and Choice steaks to America’s finest restaurants including: Chicago Chop House, Gibson’s, Morton’s, Tavern on Rush and Wildfire. Previously they were exclusively sold to restaurants but now are available for home ordering, which is great news for those who like to dabble in cooking restaurant quality meals!
I love that they only sell Prime and Choice; since I know the steaks and cuts I’m ordering will be top quality instead of sketchy meat from other companies who use their own terminology for “ratings” instead of “USDA Prime” or “USDA Choice” like Stock Yards does.
My picks for Father’s Day:
I found a few recipes for cooking a premium NY Strip Steak here, here & here that I am literally drooling over. And I found a great Filet Mignon recipe here. I love anything to do with Filet Mignon and may very well be trying out the recipe soon (plus YUM chive butter!).
As I said earlier, I’m looking for all your great answers and gift ideas for Father’s Day! In the comments section (1-2 paragraphs), tell me what you think a great Father’s Day gift would be! FIVE lucky and random winners will receive our Award Winning Stubbs® Authentic Barbecue Gift Set.
Have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend!
Welcome back readers!
I hope you all enjoyed my Mother’s Day quiz last week! My mom would probably be an A. She’s tried to be more of a B, but let’s just say I feel safer being the one in the kitchen most times. There were a lot of great mom stories and memories in the comments section; sounds like you all grew up with some very special women in your lives. And for five of our commenters, they get even luckier with a delicious chocolate gift basket! Congratulations to Mary Cummings (May 4, 2012 at 5:06 pm), Janice Sloan (May 5, 2012 at 12:53 am), Janine White (May 6, 2012 at 1:19 pm), Jordan Robbins (May 8, 2012 at 3:06 pm), and Chris Hughart (May 10, 2012 at 4:42 am)! Please send your shipping information to me at amariscal@1800flowers.com and I can send out your Happy Mother’s Day Godiva Gift Basket.
Mother’s Day is this weekend! And if you remember from a couple of weeks ago, I promised my mom I would dedicate some labor time to her and help with gardening and some slight landscaping (yes, I’m already dreading waking up this weekend). Of course we all love our moms, they’re great and they do a lot of nice stuff for us. But no matter how much you like your mom, at some point this weekend you will be stressed out or go a little crazy (except for maybe all of you lucky spa-goers). It’s just the way that most holidays go, I didn’t write the rules! This is a mom’s world and we’re just living in it.
So for all of you who will be just as exhausted as I will be this Mother’s Day, I found a few really fun drink recipes for you to enjoy (and I guess even share with your mom).
Tea Tini
A great drink for spring! You can use any sweet tea you prefer, but I think a nice fruity or floral tea would make this even better. I’m currently obsessed with Passion flavored Tazo Tea, which you can buy from any Starbucks.
Ingredients:
Directions:
White Sangria
This is another great spring drink that will be refreshing and fun to drink. You can combine this with brunch or dinner. This recipe will serve 6 people.
Ingredients:
Directions:
Mango Iced Tea
Here is our non-alcoholic spring drink that the whole family can enjoy. I love anything mango, so this may be a repeat drink for me for the rest of the warmer months. This recipe is for one glass, but you can just double, triple, etc. the ingredients to serve more!
Ingredients:
Directions:
Moments of Relaxation Spa Gift Tower & Mom's Wine Picnic Backpack Gift Basket
If you’ve beat me in the category of procrastinating on picking up a Mother’s Day gift, don’t worry! Some of our select Mother’s Day gifts are up to 30% off when you order before 3PM EST tomorrow 5/11/12! My three picks are below:
Mother’s Day Mira Luna Wine Gift Basket: Fits perfectly with our plan to relax this weekend! A beautiful chocolate and wine gift basket, need I say more?
Moments of Relaxation Spa Gift Tower: Bring the spa home with this gift tower. The spa products are a relaxing cucumber melon scent and this gift also provides tea, cookies and spa accessories.
Mom’s Wine Picnic Backpack Gift Basket: You’ve all seen this previously for our picnic blog, but it includes tasty foods and wine so I have to put it back on the list! Plus, we all agreed that picnics are the best, so really this gift is a no-brainer.
I hope you all have a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend with a lot of great memories and some relaxing time with your loved ones. I’ll be getting ready to turn in my delicate writing hands for a pair of green thumbs. After you’re done enjoying the weekend, let me know in the comments section (1-2 paragraphs) how you relax. FIVE lucky and random commenters will win the Mother’s Day Mira Luna Wine Gift Basket!
Happy Mother’s Day!
To me, spring means a lot of bright happy colors, fresh flavors and sweet treats. All of this and more can be found in the Happy Mother’s Day Deluxe Sweets Gift Tote.
The very first thing you noticed about this original gift design is that it comes inside a bright and sturdy green tote bag and a bright yellow bow on top. The perfect spring tote is enough to make you fall for this delightful gift. Obviously this is going to be a very reusable gift to give. Looking at the gift basket gives me warm visions of beach trips, picnics and a cute new accessory for the upcoming warm months. I already have so many plans for ways to reuse this gift!
Of course, the gourmet sweets inside just add the pleasure of this unique gift basket. Inside this delicious gift are Cheryl’s® Chocolate Chip Cookies (probably some of the best cookies anywhere!), DeBeukelaer® Pirouline® Wafer Rolls (I dare you to only eat two without devouring the rest), Jules Destrooper® Belgian Butter Crisps, a Daisy-shaped Iced Vanilla Sugar Cookie, a large bag of Spring Pastel Taffy, Eurostyle Biscuits (or a fancy word for more cookies), Robert Rothschild® Pomegranate & Tart Cherry Preserves, and Twinings® English Iced Tea.
I really enjoyed the Robert Rothschild® preserves, mostly because the only place I can seem to find this brand is usually at Fresh Market or Whole Foods. I thought it went best on the biscuits; a great mix of the buttery cookie and fresh fruit spread. I enjoyed this little combination with some of the iced tea. It made for a very relaxing Sunday afternoon and immediately felt like spring.
The daisy shaped frosted cookie is in a few other gift baskets that I’ve found here and I’m very happy about that. It’s not an ordinary, throw-away sugar cookie, but it actually had ingredients that you know! Wheat, eggs, milk, sugar, and flour all top the list of ingredients, and you’ll find other ingredients you can recognize as the list goes on. A very impressive cookie! I used this excuse to not feel bad when I demolished the cookie in less than a minute. The rest of the cookies have been added to my ever growing cookie jar where they are kept safe away from me. Thanks to the many gift baskets I’ve been receiving, I’ll never go cookie-less again.
I would highly recommend this gift basket for any kind of occasion, whether it’s a birthday gift, housewarming present, Mother’s Day, or a “Just Because” or “Thinking of You” gift. Whoever receives this beautiful spring gift basket will love the goodies inside and be very happy to use the tote bag afterwards!
Welcome back readers,
I hope you all enjoyed the picnic post, because I seriously loved reading all your own ideas and recipes (I will definitely be remembering that frisbee/plate tip)! I feel very confident that all FIVE lucky and random winners will be putting this picnic gift basket to good use. Congratulations to Melissa (April 12, 2012 at 1:40 pm), Sharon R (April 12, 2012 at 1:59 pm), Riyan (April 12, 2012 at 8:44 pm), Shannon Schulte (April 13, 2012 at 8:44 pm), and Diana (April 15, 2012 at 9:18 am)! Email your shipping info to me at amariscal@1800flowers.com and I’ll send out your picnic gift basket!
As I’m sure you all have starred on your calendars, Earth Day is this Sunday! It’s truly important for all of us to know and be aware of how we impact our home and figure out ways to be more environmentally friendly. At 1800Baskets.com, we try to be as environmentally conscious as we can be. We love that our gift baskets can always serve another purpose when the products are gone, and most (if not all) of our gift basket content can be recycled! We even try to sell eco-friendly gifts at affordable prices.
Recently I was looking around for a small cleansing gift for a friend, so I figured I would check out our spa gift basket section. I just noticed that we started selling products and gift baskets from Crabtree & Evelyn! All natural materials, very environmentally conscious, and they come in such cute and stylish containers. Obviously, I have to have these (especially the avocado products!).
We also have a ton of Source Vérité gift baskets in our spa gift baskets collection. I wanted something a bit smaller though, and I saw these eco-friendly soaps that I thought could be a cute host/hostess gift or just something I could add to my stock pile for Mother’s Day gifts.
If you want to have fun with this weekend (or even week!) check out our friends at Cheryl’s who have an awesome idea for an Earth Day Party!
Want to get started on how you can do small or large things to help the environment this Earth Day without having to drastically change your life? Small changes help just as much as large changes, and it will be easier to stick with when it doesn’t affect you or cause extra work! We found this cool list of how to help here, so I’ll just highlight the very simple ones:
So tell me in the comments section (1-2 paragraphs) in what ways you give back the environment or ways that you plan to start! FIVE lucky and random winners will be taking home Crabtree & Evelyn Avocado Sampler!
Happy early Earth Day!
Welcome back readers,
I hope everyone had a fantastic Easter and didn’t eat their way into an early coma like I did! I asked that if any of you had some great desserts or decorations you made for Easter to send me a picture and thankfully one reader, Sharon, sent me a picture of some creative and delicious chocolates she made! Seriously awesome decorating skills on these chocolates! It’s never too late to send it your own pictures if you still have them, especially if you tried out any of the recipes we’ve posted. Now, on with the show…
Last week I asked you all to vote in the comments section on what you wanted me to write about and the clear winner for the week has been picnics! Coffee and tea came in second with fitness following close behind, but clearly everyone is very excited about this nice Spring weather and can’t wait to get out and enjoy it (without breaking a sweat that is).
Picnics should be fun and easy, something you can throw together in a few minutes. So I have a couple of sandwich recipes that would be perfect for a Spring picnic, as well as a few suggestions to make your time outdoors a little more comfortable. 
Peanut Butter Banana Sandwiches
This is an absolute favorite of mine! All you need is some bread, peanut butter (I prefer smooth), sliced bananas and you’re good to go. I like to add a few extras to my sandwiches for more flavor and components. I usually add some honey and granola mix, gives it extra flavor and a little extra crunch.
Peanut Butter Apple Sandwiches
Are you sensing a theme or my love of peanut butter? You can always substitute peanut butter for any other nut butter (almond, sunflower, etc.) or if you want to make it a super sweet treat you can add Nutella. For this “sandwich” I don’t actually use bread, instead I slice apples to be the holders. You spread peanut butter (or whichever you prefer) on the apple slices, add granola or chocolate chips (or both!) and stack the slices together to form a sandwich. It’s a fun and healthy treat that is very easy to make!
For picnics, you can generally use any kind of outdoor blanket or mat and you’ll be fine, but the problem always lies with where and how you’re sitting. Sitting outside is probably one of the more uncomfortable things since the invention of the sofa, so it’s hard to get used to (especially if your knees are about 40 years older than you are like some blog writers). So I have two cheap options for outdoor seating to make your picnic a bit more comfortable! Our first one is from Target, a reclining picnic seat. It seems like it would be nice for back support and easy to pack up and go with. I’m probably the clumsiest person around though, so I would find some way to keep falling back on myself. So I have a second option from IKEA for us…balance challenged people out there. It’s technically a stool, but it’s also very sturdy, wide and doesn’t seem like it would fall over on you! All the makings of an easy picnic seat (for me at least!).
If you want some great picnic gift baskets that are all ready to go, we have some seriously amazing picnic options on our site right now! My three picks:
Well I hope you all enjoyed this picnics post and have some more ideas for the rest of us! In the comments section (1-2 paragraphs), tell me some of your picnic ideas and recipes! FIVE lucky and random winners will receive the Impromptu Picnic Cooler & Snacks Tote Gift Basket!
Happy Picnicking!
Welcome back gift basket fans!
You all had really awesome ideas for desserts in the comments! Have any of you tried out the festive cakes yet? Don’t forget to send me pictures of your Easter decorations or displays and I’ll post them here on the blog! Anyway, on to the winners of last week’s blog: Congratulations to Rachel V (March 29, 2012 at 5:24 pm), Pamela Hansen (March 30, 2012 at 9:56 am), Heather Garity (March 31, 2012 at 12:12 pm), Jenny (April 2, 2012 at 1:41 pm), and Cathy P (April 4, 2012 at 3:09 pm)! Send your shipping information to me at amariscal@1800flowers.com and I’ll send out your truffle cake pops!
Holiday weekends are always busy ones, lots of planning and cooking and shopping and worst of all, cleaning. So today is going to be very short, so short even that we’re near the end of the post! Sure, this might feel like when you were in school and the teacher would roll in the stand with a TV strapped onto it and call that the lesson for the day while they caught up on grading, but… well yes, this is actually kind of like that. No worries though, I’ll have a nice, detailed post ready for you all next week with great giveaways as soon as you all decide for me!
Vote in the comments section: Which topic would you like me to write about for next week with a giveaway?
Whichever topic gets the most votes in the comments section will win! Our staff here is patiently waiting for your replies:
Have a happy and safe holiday weekend!