Gifts with Meaning and Purpose
/
One of my most favorite things to do in the whole wide world is to create meaningful gifts. That is my most dominant love language, and a great way to share LIGHT! As I get older these are mostly for my own friends and family, but once in a while I get to live parts of the dream I had when I was younger – that is the life of a designer and creator. Helping to give temporal things, spiritual meaning blesses lives and produces LIGHT. Have you ever received a gift and just felt warm inside? The reason is the thought and effort that went into personalizing that gift specifically for you!
Many of the gifts I come up with seem to have involve the following elements. LIGHT of some kind, beautiful flowing ribbons, something warm, and something that smells like heaven!!! I’ve mentioned this before, but the sense of smell is closely linked with memory. Smells can evoke memories and can trigger in recalling wonderful memories of time spent together with those we love! The sense of smell is highly emotive and has the ability to convey a vast array of emotions and feelings.
A few months ago, I was asked to help come up with some very special thank-you baskets for my cousin, Deanne, who is also my sister-in-law. Is that even legal you might ask . . . ? Actually yes it is!!! My cousin was relentless in her quest to line me up with her husband’s little brother. She pushed and pushed us for years to go out on a date. We both finally decided to get it over with . . . and the rest is history. Ron and I will be celebrating our 38th wedding anniversary this coming December! One of the best decisions I’ve ever made!!! Thank you Deanne!!! ☺
So back to the gift baskets . . . Deanne lives in the beautiful Morgan Valley, in the middle of acres of beautiful farm/ranch land. A neighboring family chose to sell their ranch. Land that had been in their family for many generations. Just like many places here in Utah these days, land like this is being gobbled up as quickly as it comes on the market and being turned into mega-mansion subdivisions. This family chose to sell it to my cousin/sister-in-law and her husband because they knew it would stay as it was always meant to be, fields of alfalfa and grazing cattle.
Deanne wanted to give each adult child a special gift as a thank you for choosing her and her husband, Malan, in acquiring the land. She called and asked me if I could come up with a meaningful gift-basket that would express their gratitude. I also love a good challenge, and it became just that as I tried to think of things that represented close family ties, love, togetherness, and many happy memories shared on that beautiful land.
Sometimes a simple paper gift bag will do, but this gift required something more. I considered ordering a lovely hand-made Amish basket, but then remembered a purchase I had recently made of a rustic gathering basket. Each basket is handmade by artisans at “Peel Furniture Works” in the tiny town of Mt. Pleasant, Utah. Peel Furniture Works celebrates and preserves local history by crafting heirloom-quality replicas of early Utah pioneer furniture, windows, doors and other household items. Everything made in the Peel workshop is made by hand using locally produced native lumber and the same fine joinery that is found in the originals. Check them out on Instagram as well as HGTV.
To soften the hardness of the basket and give it a homier look, I added a simple homespun dishtowel. The fun began as I thought of some of my favorite feel-good ingredients to fill it with! I started with a throw size, neutral color “Lush Blanket by Saranoni”. You won’t find a softer more comfy blanket, I even like them better than Minky Couture – both are Utah companies, and both produce wonderfully soft blankets! Blankets are a slight addiction for me. I love feeling warm, safe and secure wrapped up in a soft cozy blanket. Saranoni blankets come already nicely wrapped, but for the sake of everything fitting in the basket, I rolled the blanket up in a tight bed-roll fashion and tied it with my favorite May Arts brand ribbon.
I included a book by Charlie Mackesy published in 2019 – “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”. This book helped a lot of people get through the tough Covid year of 2020. It’s all about love, friendship and kindness – something this world needs a lot more of, and something small towns seem to have an abundance of as neighbors come together to serve and help one another.
A bottle of my favorite Frasier Fir dish soap as well as a Frasier Fir candle by Thymes. If you close your eyes, it smells like you are standing in the middle of a pine tree forest.
A candle jar holding a real wax Luminara remote control candle, with realistic flickering flame. And a skinny garland of eucalyptus circling the bottom of the candle inside the jar. Completed with ribbon streamers and beeswax ornament. Luminara candles look like a real live candle, but are safer and much easier to use. They cost more than most, but the realistic value is the deal maker for me.
A bar of Lilac Blossom soap from World Market to give a little color and scent.
Two bags of Jelly Belly Jelly Beans in my two favorite flavors – Juicy Pear and Red Apple, wrapped in paper bag brown tissue paper and tied in lovely ribbons.
As I filled the basket, it needed a little more “soft”, so I added some realistic faux eucalyptus and lavender from World Market. I love the natural look of a soft heathered purple and green together.
To tie it all together I ordered some cinnamon rubbed blackened beeswax ornaments on Amazon! These are hand-made in Colorado by Rocky Mountain Wax Works. I needed a smaller one to tie onto the Luminara Candle Jar, and so I contacted Rocky Mountain Wax Works to see if they had a mold for a smaller one to match the bigger one. She sent me all the small ones free of charge!
As I assembled the baskets it seemed there was something missing . . . ? The idea came to add a bottle of rich dark dirt with a tag that read “A little piece of the Thurston Ranch”. I just happened to have the perfect heart shaped bottles with cork lids. I wasn’t sure at first if this was a dumb idea on my part? Sometimes I get a little too attached to things with meaning, even if it’s a jar of dirt or sand from a special place I’ve been. I pitched the idea to Deanne, and she loved it! She asked Malan which part of the new land had the richest most fertile soil, and then she took her little grand-daughter out and together they gathered a bucket of dirt to fill the bottles with. I had some black book binder’s tape that was perfect to secure the cork to the bottle, then it just needed the tag and some ribbon. This part of the gift was one of the most treasured. Now I wish I would have thought to add a small vintage picture frame of the original Thurston ancestors to go with the bottle of dirt. I’ll tuck that idea away for another time.
I love using nice thick cellophane to wrap these types of gift baskets up. If all the edges don’t fit in the gathered part, you can use clear shiny packing tape to hold those edges in place, and it doesn’t show at all. The cellophane holds everything in place, and allows sneak peaks of the individual gifts inside the basket.
The finishing touch to any gift is the bow and the card, and these baskets deserved the best! I’m a firm believer that you can’t ever have enough ribbon!!! For years I’ve used lengths of ribbon streamers folded in half, then tied with a larkspur knot in the center to keep the set of streamers all in one beautiful array of layered beauty!!! The key to the perfect ribbon streamer set is using many different widths, colors and textures. I wanted this ribbon streamer set to be used after the gift was opened, and so I added a metal clip to the top and printed up a little sheet that I placed in the bottom of the basket letting them know they could clip the ribbon streamer set to a wreath and enjoy it that way. Nestled under the big bow I tied the cellophane together with, I added a larger cinnamon scented blackened beeswax ornament to the ribbon set. Sometimes I add a rosette I make on my Silhouette Cameo. I’ve wrapped my gifts this way for as long as I can remember . . . now there are stores that actually sell these sets already made up to clip onto wreaths!!! Who would have ever thought you could make a business out of something I’ve been doing for years and years!!! Knot + Spool in Salt Lake City is one of my favorite places to go for ribbon!!! I prefer to make my own ribbon sets. At Knot + Spool you can buy pre-made ribbon streamer sets, or ribbon by the yard. There is something so satisfying about creating a thing of beauty that didn’t exist before!
The card was made on my Silhouette Cameo, and I made it as “farm-y” and “ranch-y” as I could. My favorite place to find nice quality card stock is Bennion Craft right here in Kaysville. I love the perfect prints they had for these cards!
Gifts like these are a labor of love! Time intensive, a bit pricey, possibly even a little over the top, but oh so worth the time and effort. When you give a well thought out gift to someone, and they see the personal meaning in each and every part of it, the gift becomes more than a temporal material thing. You are a giving part of yourself to someone you care very much about. You are giving some of your LIGHT to someone else. Each time they look at it, or use an item you have included with it, they will be reminded of how they felt when they received the gift – they felt LOVED!!! This is when a gift becomes so much more!!! You will soon realize, as you give of your LIGHT, you will be blessed with even more LIGHT! It is a never ending supply given to us to serve others, help lift heavy burdens, and bless the lives of those around us.
Love Ya, Les ☺