AA Gifts & Baskets Idea Blog

Whether your little princess is four or 14, and you're looking for a kids birthday party theme, consider throwing her a darling princess birthday party she will always remember.

Start off glitzy and go from there. The more sparkles, the better. Bring in lots of pink and faux jewels. Start with pink fabric. Get a few yards of shiny pink fabric that you can drape over the table. Finish it off with loads of sheer tulle, also from the fabric store, to mimic a ballerina’s tutu.

Tiaras are a must. Pick them up at a party shop so that each guest gets to wear one. Encourage guests via invitation to come dressed in their finest princess attire. Hand out magic wands. You can either make them yourself with wooden dowels and glitter, or buy them in bulk online.

Decorate the room as a princess’s palace. Bring in silk pillows for the girls to sit on on the floor. Drape curtains in luxurious fabrics like silk (you can pick up a faux silk curtain panel or two at the discount store). Create a room that’s filled with mystery and drama. Cover your coffee table with fabric and place a sparkly bowl on it filled with treats. The more glitter, the better.

Now, for the glass slipper. You can actually find glass slippers online in a plastic form to give out as party favors. But for the guest of honor, get her a pair of shoes in her size and then glitter them up yourself. Buy a cheap pair of low heels and use a paint brush to paint on white school glue. Sprinkle gold or silver glitter over the tops and let them dry.

Every fairy princess loves to have a pretty dress. Make or buy the fanciest dress you can. Often, you can find a Snow White or Cinderella costume in a store or online that’s perfect. Be sure to give her jewels to wear on her neck. Get her a fancy faux pearl wedding jewelry that she can wrap around her neck several times or rhinestones that sparkle.

When it comes time for the party, have a make up session. Paint nails, do hair, let the girls play with makeup. Be sure to ask the moms ahead of time if they mind. And you can ask the girls to wash their faces before pickup time. Provide wipes and make up remover.

Play princess movies on the DVD and let them run for the whole party in the background. Dance, sing, let the girls practice their best ballerina twirls. Read the story of Cinderella or let them style Barbie dolls’ hair during the party.

The more glamour and glitz, the better. You can find all the supplies you need at the dollar store from the makeup (which you can throw out after) to the wands and glitter. Go all out for the little princess in your life.

Take lots of photos and if you have a printer, let the girls decorate photo frames at the party with glitter and embellishments. Let them take home photos of themselves or a group photo as a memento. It will be a magical time for all, especially the birthday girl.

Creating a princess birthday party isn’t hard at all. And it will have a huge impact on the little guest princesses.

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When someone is graduating, it’s nice to write a thoughtful message in a card for them to go along with their graduation gifts. But what if you can’t think of the right words to say? You can always try just a heartfelt “Congratulations!” but if you want to write more, here are some ideas.

Quote Garden (www.quotegarden.com) compiles quotes in the public domain that you can use in your cards. These are sayings from famous people that will make you and your graduate chuckle. So, next time you’re staring at the blank white inside of a card, turn to Quote Garden for help!

Graduation Quotes

People will frighten you about a graduation... They use words you don't hear often:  "And we wish you Godspeed."  It is a warning, Godspeed.  It means you are no longer welcome here at these prices.  ~Bill Cosby

There is a good reason they call these ceremonies "commencement exercises."  Graduation is not the end; it's the beginning.  ~Orrin Hatch

Your families are extremely proud of you.  You can't imagine the sense of relief they are experiencing.  This would be a most opportune time to ask for money.  ~Gary Bolding

The tassel's worth the hassle!  ~Author Unknown

The fireworks begin today.  Each diploma is a lighted match.  Each one of you is a fuse.  ~Edward Koch

All that stands between the graduate and the top of the ladder is the ladder.  ~Author Unknown

A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that "individuality" is the key to success.  ~Robert Orben

Graduation is only a concept.  In real life, every day you graduate.  Graduation is a process that goes on until the last day of your life.  If you can grasp that, you'll make a difference.  ~Arie Pencovici

At commencement, you wear your square-shaped mortarboards.  My hope is that from time to time, you will let your minds be bold and wear sombreros.  ~Paul Freund

When you leave here, don't forget why you came.  ~Adlai Stevenson, to college graduates

Graduation day is tough for adults.  They go to the ceremony as parents.  They come home as contemporaries.  After twenty-two years of child-raising, they are unemployed.  ~Erma Bombeck

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.  ~Author unknown, commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin

You are educated.  Your certification is in your degree.  You may think of it as the ticket to the good life.  Let me ask you to think of an alternative.  Think of it as your ticket to change the world.  ~Tom Brokaw

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.  ~Aristotle

It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.  ~Brooks Atkinson, Once Around the Sun, 1951

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.  ~Theodore Roosevelt

Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.  ~Garry Trudeau

The future lies before you, Like a field of driven snow, Be careful how you tread it, For every step will show. ~Author Unknown

Just about a month from now I'm set adrift, with a diploma for a sail and lots of nerve for oars.  ~Richard Halliburton

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Many people give a bottle wine in a wine gift basket that has been aged. There are bottles of wine sold at auction that are hundreds of years old; they sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and age just improves upon this expensive perfection.  But wine doesn’t age after it is opened – it spoils.  The taste of wine begins to change as soon as it is exposed to air, and if you leave a bottle unfinished and put it in the refrigerator, you may find a very different wine waiting for you in your next glass.  How long does wine keep after you open it?

The best way to keep your wine from spoiling is to drink it all upon opening!  If you are more of a glass-a-night type of drinker (good for you!), then you are bound to have “leftovers.”  Let’s say you pull out the cork. This starts the time clock.  As soon as air is introduced, it will create changes in the wine, such as oxidation.  Even if you put the cork back in, it doesn’t reverse this process.

So what do you do, and how long do you have?

That depends on the type of wine you have and other esoteric factors, but in general, you can expect that three days will be the useful life of that opened bottle of wine. When you open the bottle, the air begins to soften the flavor of the wine, and it loses its subtlety and aroma.  Eventually, it will become very vinegary.  You have probably tasted wine that was more like vinegar, and chances are that it had been sitting in the refrigerator too long.

If a bottle of wine has gone “bad,” you will be able to detect the vinegar smell, and a sommelier or connoisseur can usually detect a change in the color.  It will be duller, and white wines may appear more yellow or brown in tone.

If you cannot finish a bottle, put the cork back in and refrigerate it for up to three days.  Make sure the cork is in tightly, and store the bottle on its side in a darker part of your fridge.  You can also try a wine bottle vacuum pumper.  This creates a vacuum that slows the rate of oxidation; it doesn’t stop it, but you can prolong your leftover wine’s life.  For white wines, simply take them out of the refrigerator and serve.  For reds, take out and let them get up to room temperature before you drink.

You also may want to consider changing the way you drink wine.  No, this doesn’t mean drink more!  But instead of a bottle, you might try a boxed wine.  These may have been a wine faux pas a few years ago, but wine packaging is evolving quickly, and this design has a stopper on the spigot that allows you to pour your wine without letting air in.  There are also single serve wine pouches that allow you to enjoy your glass (or pouch) of wine each night without worrying about leftovers.  OneGlass is one such manufacturer, and each pouch has 100ml of wine.  These are ideal for picnics as well because you don’t have to worry about breakage and spilling.

Remember the three-day rule for your upcoming holiday wine gift, and you should never have to drink a glass of vinegar again!

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Just about anything can serve as garden art these days. If you want to ornament your garden without investing a lot, create your own garden art from things you already have around the house.

Look at castoffs in a new way. Before you bring your recycling to the drop off, look through it and see if you might have anything in your bucket that could be used to decorate your garden. There are probably some amazing choices in there that could make your garden look like a folk art grotto. Bottles are especially good for garden art. Turn them upside down and put them on a stake or a piece of bamboo. Blue bottles or especially pretty glass bottles can be used to line a walkway in a unique way. Use large mouth glass jars and canisters as candle holders. Drop in a pillar candle and place it on a garden table. You can also create floating flower candles when you fill a mason jar with water and put in a floating flower candle. How suiting! When you’re dining outdoors, you’ll have lovely candlelight in a decorative container that cost you nothing.

Watering cans can serve as lovely garden art. Either set them out in groups and let them weather. Or paint them with acrylic paints and a coat of protective gloss. They’ll look adorable when painted in garden or nature themes as well as with animals such as garden critters or dogs and cats. Same goes for gardening baskets, dress them up and use them as tools, they're multipurpose!

Use old clay pots to create a garden statute. Stack them and glue them in place at odd angles. You can then plant in them, or leave them as is to collect rainwater for the animals. Paint them first or leave them in their natural state to grow moss and a patina.

Old shutters make perfect garden art. Create a little outdoor garden room by putting up shutters against a fence or a walled in area. You can leave them open or shut them for some shade. An antique metal bed frame also works well. Set it up and drape sheers over it for a dramatic look. You can also place an outdoor cushion on it so you can lounge away in glamour in the garden.

Of course you can always scout yard sales for wheelbarrows, bird baths, birdhouses, and other “junk” that you can turn into art. There’s nothing that can’t be used. The more weathered, the better. Any pieces of metal that will age nicely are perfect. Twist them into shapes or just stand them up and let them become abstract sculptures.

Mosaics are another fun way to upcycle your household junk. Any broken pottery or ceramics can become pavers in your walkway, a bird bath or just a pretty pot. Use cement to create a surface layer and then add in piece of broken china. Arrange it in a pretty pattern and then allow it to dry. Once dry it will work well in the garden and last forever. Check out crafting stores for kits that save you the work of finding all the materials on your own.

You can always add a garden seat. Instead of investing in expensive garden furniture, look for cast off seating at garage sales. You’ll often find unwanted chairs by the side of the road on trash day. Those can be turned into treasures. Repaint and seal, add a waterproof seat pad and you’ve got yourself a cozy place to sit with a cool drink and relax.

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If you have a green thumb on your gift list, you’ll want to give them a garden gift that really suits their tastes. Gardeners are a special breed. They love working the earth and seeing the fruits of their labor. It’s not a chore, it’s a privilege for them to get out there and weed and keep their plants healthy and happy.

What can you gift a gardener with this spring that will make her really happy? How about a new sun hat? Gardeners need extra protection from the damaging rays of the sun. Because most gardeners love being out there under the sun’s rays, they don’t even realize they may be doing damage to their skin. Even slight exposure to the sun can cause damage. Gift her with a sun hat that has sunblocking properties. The fabrics and materials that are used in certain sun hats now qualify as sun protection extraordinaire. Check out various hats at garden stores and look online for stores that sell fabric hats that are treated with sunblock.

You could also create a gardening gift basket. Include that all-necessary sunblock, new gardening gloves in a pretty print, kneeling pads, a hoe or hand trowel, gardener’s hand lotion (Crabtree and Evelyn makes a lovely one) and a pretty water bottle. Wrap it all up in a garden trug or other basket that can be used to gather vegetables and fruit.

Many gardeners love to read almost as much as they love to garden. Give them a gift certificate to a book store along with a pretty garden themed coffee mug. Wrap it all up with a pretty ribbon and a little garden pin such as a ladybug or bee. Of course, this all makes for lovely Mother's Day gifts as well.

Gardeners can be picky about their plants. So, instead of going over with a bunch of plants, give them a gift certificate to their favorite nursery. They’ll have so much fun picking out the plants they love.

Give a gift of garden statuary or a gazing ball. Any ornament that would make their garden prettier will be appreciated. You might give a special garden bench with an inscription or paint it yourself with decorative details.

Garden clogs that can be sprayed clean with a hose are always welcomed as are mud boots. You might also give a gift of a gardening magazine that your friend doesn’t already subscribe to. Or you can extend her subscription by calling the company if she already subscribes.

Make up a gift basket of herbs so she can add to her herb garden. She might choose to grow them indoors or out. Keep it to a theme like Italian culinary herbs or tea herbs or calming herbs. Whatever your theme, make sure that all the herbs relate back to it. If it’s calming, you might also choose to add a lavender filled eye pillow or something soothing like an herbal candle.

Gardeners tend to spend more time on their plants than they do on themselves. So gift a gardener with a massage or a special manicure that can take the roughness off their hands. Anything pampering will be greatly appreciated after a hard day’s work in the garden.

Expert gardeners and dabblers alike will love getting a pretty present that you took the time to really plan out.

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If you’re a novice gardener, you’ll need to know what your gardening zone is before you can start planting. What’s a zone? It’s a number that tells you which plants will thrive in your area at which times of the year. You can find zone information at sites like Better Homes and Gardens online at http://www.bhg.com. Look on the map and you’ll find your area along with its zone. You’ll also find this information on most seed packets or plant starts in the nursery. Understanding where you are is an absolute must to developing that perfect green thumb.

Create a calendar for yourself, and you’ll know which plants will grow best at which times of the year. Once you know your zone you can devise a year-long gardening calendar that works for you. No two gardeners have exactly the same plans or tasks ahead of them, so create a calendar based on what you like and what you need to accomplish.

Get a blank calendar template off the web at a site like http://www.great-printable-calendars.com/. Print out each month in a format that you like. Make sure there’s room enough to write so that you can jot notes about what you want to do in your garden.

It is going to be up to you to research your zone and find out exactly which activities to add and which plantings need to go in the ground at certain times. But you can easily look up a favorite plant—for instance daffodils—and see that you should plant them in late fall and expect them in early spring. That will go for most areas. But specialized plants that are affected by climate will need more research.

Here are some examples you might add to your gardening calendar.

January:

Feed birds and set out water in a bird bath

Prune trees

Start plants indoors for early spring planting

February:

Start looking through seed catalogs and ordering

Visit garden shop for planting suggestions

March:

Get ideas for flower beds

Start any cool season vegetables outside

Get strawberries, grapes and strawberries planted

April:

Prepare the soil

Start planting frost-hardy vegetables

Trim back bushes

Start planting flowers

May:

Get the rest of the plants in the ground

Mulch and weed garden

June:

Water plants

Buy discounted plants at garden center

Start harvesting vegetable and fruit

Weed

Take care of any garden pests or diseased plants

July:

Water early so sun doesn’t bake off water

Deadhead flowers

Continue to harvest vegetables and fruits

Put together nice fruit gift baskets for friends or family

Can fruits and vegetables in abundance

August:

Start saving seeds you can use again from annuals

Label any seeds that are saved after drying them

Continue to can vegetables

You can see how you can add tasks by month. For the fall, depending on your area, you might want to include the covering or bringing in of plants that can’t stand the cold. You may also want to plant bulbs that will bloom in spring and dig up and store any of the less hardy bulbs that need to come indoors. Other tasks would include putting your garden to bed and cleaning your gardening tools for the winter.

Because each zone is unique, research the facts for what needs to be done in your area. You’ll be able to tell a lot by the zone you’re in.

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