What I Gave: Handmade & Local Gifts

This is a really late post, but I still wanted to show it off! Last year for Christmas I made a promise to myself and the world that I would do all of my shopping for the Holidays through handmade and local sources.  I was lucky to be able to find some really awesome holiday gifts.  I had to put this post off a little while too, because I hadn't given everyone their gifts yet!   
In the spirit of handmade I ordered a lot of things off of Etsy.

My Mother, Sister, and Sister-in-law all received a box of goodies I ordered from Stella Kenton Body Shop.  They each got a body scrub, lip balm, lotion bar, and a cuticle butter.  Mom got Vanilla Caramel everything with Lavender cuticle butter, Shayla got Pumpkin Spice everything with Lemon cuticle butter, and Ari got Orange Cocoa everything with Grapefruit cuticle butter.  It was a big hit-and they all loved them! 

My younger brother received this awesome Dirt Bike Key Rack from ArtbyJack. He's usually pretty hard to please but he really loved it (score one for me!) and said he'd be hanging it up in his garage when he got home! 

My littlest brother got this Secret Zillionaire shirt from ShirtNic.  Which is so him because he's always talking about how he's going to be rich one day-and I chose red since it's his team color.

I ordered these four Dirty Dinosaurs prints from My Only Regret (besides dying) on Etsy, and then went and got some cute frames to put them in.  Julie is obsessed with Dinosaurs so it made the perfect gift for my dirty minded friend.

For Kristina I chose this Mother's Steampunk Ring from Inspired by Elizabeth with Ruby and Sapphire for her kids' birth months.  

For Kailee I ordered her a personalized necklace (this exact one!) from isewcute.  It's adorable! And for Kaden a set of handmade Lego Man crayons! 
When I went out looking for other gifts, I came across an adorable little local gift and gourmet shop called Two Dancing Cats in Sugarhouse.  The owner was such a nice little lady with her elderly chihuahua hanging around the store (she came and let me pet her while I shopped) and I spoke to her about maybe doing some consignment work next holiday season.  A lot of what was in there seemed really overpriced, but there were a lot of great finds as well! 

source For The Roommate I found this awesome invention called the Corkcicle.  You freeze it and then put it in your wine bottle to cool it down!  He thought it was pretty neato!  For Jon and Meggy I picked up some goodies to make a basket of yum.  Imported French Chestnut & Clementine jam (Ortie is getting a bottle of this too!) which I'm going to put with some local bread, and a box of Aspen Cider Spices which I'll put with a jug of apple cider.  I found a comic book wallet there for Max, a cute bear baby hat for Katya, and some other goodies! :)   All in all it was an extremely successful holiday shopping season, and I think I'll stick with the handmade and local for all gifts from now on.