Summer is Gone, And The Spirit of Christmas Is Upon Us
It's always a little sad when the warmth of the summer sun signals the end of a beautiful summer spent with family and friends. And while I love the out-of-doors, I always need a little transition period where I begin to put on my shopping "hat", as it were. I always try to find something truly personal, and alternately, something terribly practical for each person on my list. This year, however, I'm feeling like we all need to be just a wee bit more practical than usual, unless we can find something awesome that's within budget. The results of my first forays onto the web this year weren't very promising. I'm tired of seeing the same merchandise from store to store, each within a dollar of each other, some, rarely, with a free shipping offer or a small coupon. If the "buffet" isn't expansive and fabulous, this tells me we're really going to have to dig deep this year. Even the search results are turning up the same old usual stuff: Target, Sears, Martha, K-Mart....I mean, please. I don't need to find those stores in my carefully worded searches. Go on...
Christmas Ornaments Abound, But Where to Start for a Gift?
On a bright note, there are lots and lots of fun Christmas ornaments out there, perfect as Christmas gifts for young and old. I've decided to split things up here and break out my research in terms of who you're going to give the gift to.
For this first article, I'm going to cover the major players, all of which I've purchased from. You may notice a couple NOT mentioned here. I've chosen not to write anything bad about those few, but rather I'll simply refrain from mentioning them
altogether. In short, each had one thing in common: my hand writing is decent though not great, and they each sent me personalized Christmas ornaments of poorer hand writing quality than I could have done myself.
For hand writing, the best by far is Russell Rhodes Christmas Ornaments with approximately 2200 ornaments to select from. The majority arrive in a beautiful velvet bag, unless they're too big and require their own
custom box. This site is known for very fast turn-around for personalized ornaments (deliver usually within 5 days), beautiful, almost-calligraphy hand writing, and a large selection of higher-end, superior quality ornaments.
Another top-tier ornament shop is, known by its name Ornament Shop. Ornament shop offers somewhere close to 3000 ornaments, mostly resin. They do some glass, but it's not personalized. They have a
wealth of personalized resin ornaments to choose from. The personalization is OK, but not great, no velvet bag or anything, but their prices are rock bottom. You can also find a coupon for this site if you search google for it. Also note that if you need to
purchase 5 or 6 ornaments, they offer free shipping. The last time I checked, it was free shipping on 6 ornaments. It could be 5 now; they change according to their competition, a site that I cannot recommend with a somewhat similar name. Ornament Shop has been
around for ages. For inexpensive ornaments, great savings, cheap gifts, they're a great choice.
For divinely created clay dough ornaments, I recommend stopping by Calliope Designs. Their ornaments are on the cuter side of things, a little limited in selection because the artist makes all of her own
ornaments in China. She sells direct to the public instead of through outlets, so she can only design, import, carry and offer so many designs and then she's maxed out. Very, very nice hand writing on cute ornaments. Go on...