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Dog Days of Summer Image via Wikipedia I have often wondered where the expression Dog Days of Summer originated. Could it somehow be associated with National Dog Day which is celebrated on August 26th? Something to think about I guess. Today is also Women’s Equality Day, the anniversary of women getting the right to vote. Also something to think about. So, whether you’re a dog lover or suffragist, today is a good day for remembering to cherish our pets, loved ones, our rights and our freedoms. Why not pamper that special “pooch” with a few doggy treats he or she will enjoy. A great gift idea for man’s best friend would be a travel pet basket. The one shown here is loaded with toys, a travel pet bowl and their own bottle of drinking water. A convenient way to make sure your pet stays hydrated when you’re out and about. While you’re at it, take time to indulge the hard-working women in your life with a few sweets and treats too. This home spa pail will be just what a girl needs after one of those long dog days of summer at the office. for more gift ideas visit http://www.basketsbyconsuela.com
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Back to School Lunch Box Ideas Image via Wikipedia As you read this article reprinted from Fancy Food Magazine, “think outside the basket” with these back to school lunch box ideas. Liven up Lunch Boxes with Distinctive Snacks, National Association for the Specialty Food Trade Offers Picks for School With the school year about to begin, the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade is presenting suggestions to liven up lunch time, whether with new twists on nut butters or convenience packs of emerging favorites like hummus. “Kids Lunch Box Snacks,” a new article on foodspring.com, the NASFT’s website for consumers, presents top picks from four specialty food retailers. Their choices favor items that are organic, healthful and locally made. Yogurt is hot, and so are nutrition and cereal bars. Retailers report that parents want easy-to-pack choices, but also want larger sizes to re-pack themselves. Among the picks on foodspring.com are Stringles from Organic Valley, fruit and nut bars from KIND, Chocolate Alphabet cookies from Newman’s Own, and individual packs of Cheddar Cheese Crackers from Late July. “Specialty food makers are increasingly catering to children as Mom and Dad become more adventurous in their own food choices,” says Ann Daw, president of the NASFT. “Parents want to share the excitement of great food and new flavors with their kids.” According to NASFT research, sales of specialty foods that are lunch box staples showed big growth last year in the $63 billion specialty food industry. From 2007 to 2009, sales of yogurt and kefir shot up 38.6 percent, and sales of chips, pretzels and snacks grew 15.4 percent. Parents can add some star power to lunches by selecting honorees from the NASFT’s 2010 sofi™ Awards for the outstanding specialty foods and beverages of the year. These 140 products were selected from 2,257 entries by specialty food experts. They represent the best of the best across 33 categories, including, Outstanding Snack Food, Outstanding Cookie, Outstanding Jam, Preserve, Honey or Nut Butter. “sofi” stands for Specialty Outstanding Food Innovation. sofi honorees kids might like include: * Food Should Taste Good, Inc.: Multigrain Tortilla Chips in snack packs No matter what school year your children are in, offering them healthy food choice alternatives makes perfectly good sense. Whether they are newly enrolled college Freshmen or returning students, think about periodically sending them a “Dorm Gift Basket” filled with healthy treats and school supplies. Especially during exams. We’ll ship your gift basket right on time for them to go to the head of the class. Baskets by Consuela specializes in custom gift baskets for every occasion. Visit us online at http://www.basketsbyconsuela.com and http://giftbaskets.cartfly.com for more gift ideas. Baskets by Consuela Related Articles
Tea and Cupcakes Tea Gift Basket Food for thought. A good cup of tea can be enhanced with something sweet to go along with it. Cupcakes are a delicious addition while sipping your favorite flavor of tea. You won’t have to add sugar or honey to the tea because the icing from the cupcake is all the sweetness you’ll need. Taking an afternoon break from the norm is what we all need from time to time. Skip the coffee, soda or other mid-day pick me ups and instead opt for a warm cup of relaxing tea. Recently, I had a cup of blueberry infused tea along with a red velvet cupcake. While I was waiting for the tea to steep in the French press, I sat and relaxed for a moment. What a treat! Think about this. The next time you are invited to someone’s home for dinner your hostess might enjoy a gift of cupcakes and tea. It will be a great end to a good meal, not to mention a great conversation starter. Just like we pair a bottle of wine with dinner, we can pair a delicious tea blend with the perfect cupcake flavor too. How about it, tea and cupcakes anyone? Try it. For more gift ideas visit us at: http://www.basketsbyconsuela.com 10 Tips to Simplify Your Life
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Published: June 28, 2010 There’s a new reason to get a little bit weepy looking through the greeting card aisles. It’s not the heart-warming poems on a Mother’s Day card, or tearful “atta-boys” for a first-born’s graduation. There’s a new breed of multimedia electronic cards coming on the market that more closely resemble something you’d buy in a BestBuy store than at Hallmark. Cards with recordable karaoke soundtracks. Cards with augmented reality links online. Cards with animated color LCD screens that display snappy vignettes from “Star Wars” about fatherhood – for Father’s Day. Cards with a sticker price of $10 to $30 and a do-not-recycle-with-the-newspaper warning on the back. A mere “Thinking of You” card with a kitten-in-a-basket photo, these are not. Perhaps it’s our HDTV-loaded culture that judges everything in dots-per-inch and megabits-per-second. Or perhaps this is an inevitable overture by cardmakers to the snap-and-post phone/camera/Facebook nation. But multimedia greeting cards are selling fast, and they’re well on the way to becoming standard, and expected. “The more elaborate the electronics, the more people want them,” said Tim Carlin, owner of Sara’s Hallmark in south Tampa, Fla. Case in point: He first wondered about stocking audio cards the size of a clipboard that play “Bad to the Bone” with booming bass. Price: $9.99. “But they sell out fast as we can stock them.” On one level, these cards represent the state of the art in an escalating arms race between rival superpowers of the greeting card industry: Hallmark and American Greetings. With each passing holiday, these arch-enemies introduce new cards with more electronic features to one-up the other. Last Christmas season, American Greetings launched a card with an LCD screen and USB cord the giver plugs into a PC to upload personal photos – blurring the line between a greeting card and a digital picture frame. Meanwhile, the retail industry remains tenaciously bleak, putting a pinch on card companies that operate stores in shopping centers and strip malls. So card companies are looking for thicker profits from each card sold, and investors who desire ever-more profit are closely watching for a payoff from electronic cards. Multimedia cards also let a card company tap into the brand recognition of celebrities, shows and movies. Why not a “Twilight”-themed card for Halloween that stands out against a landscape of mere pumpkin-print paper cards? Why not a Lance Armstrong-themed video for congratulations greetings? “What we’ve done is expand the world of communications,” said Shelly Lulow, creative director in the writing studio of American Greetings. “As people become more technologically savvy, they can communicate more than ever. And we’re finding technology is an important part of what we do as a business.” Like it or not, these cards also come with an unexpected obligation for the recipient. And they may well become something of a squatter on the mantle piece. For one, there’s the cost. Etiquette author Jay Remer notes he used to spend 60 cents on a card when he was a kid. When he thinks of exchanging a card, it’s merely a way to connect with someone, or acknowledge a milestone – a sign of friendship or love. If he receives a card from someone close, he may keep it indefinitely. But as for electronic cards, “This has all gotten way out of hand,” he said, and it blurs the meaning of “gift.” The elaborate production, cost and effort the giver invests into a multimedia card can pressure recipients to keep the card much longer than a generic birthday card. These cards also bring up another quandary. How long must recipients wait to throw out a card that Grandma loaded with a slide show of photos of the cousins’ last Christmas? What about a Father’s Day video card, like one from Hallmark for $30, that takes AA batteries. Even arbitrary one-week or one-year rules for birthday cards don’t seem to apply for a disposing of a silicon message. “We just haven’t come up with any rules yet as a culture on this particular subject,” said Lizzy Post, direct descendant of etiquette icon Emily Post and author at the Emily Post Institute. Post said she’s only received about 10 paper greeting cards that were meaningful enough to keep permanently. Will we all have shoe boxes full of cards with little LCD screens, she wonders? Electronics like that can’t go in the paper recycling bin, and it seems a bit strange for card companies to tout their recycled paper cards while selling electronics, too, she said. “Personally, I’d rather just e-mail something to a friend,” she said. “I don’t want to be sent some-thing in the mail and then have to bring it to an electronics store for recycling.” If the message sent through multimedia is heartfelt, and happily received, then that’s all for the good, she said. But as for recycling electronics, “That’s just a pain.” Readers, I’d like to hear from you. Tell me what you think about this movement in the greeting card industry. Baskets by Consuela“we think outside the basket” Phone: 678.499.2765 Email: baskets.byconsuela@yahoo.com Website: http://www.basketsbyconsuela.com Blogs: http://Basketsbyconsuela.wordpress.com & http://basketwrapup.blogspot.com/ |
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