Holiday Gift Guide

Gift giving is my love language so it should come as no surprise that Christmas is one of my favourite times of year. I love finding that perfect gift for someone, you know, that gift they had no idea they wanted but somehow, it’s exactly what they needed. I spend the whole year making little mental notes to myself when chatting with family and friends, picking up on all the things they say so that I can surprise them at Christmas with a gift that puts the biggest smile on their face or joyous tear in their eye. It gives me all the warm and fuzzy feels to make someone’s Christmas Day super spectacular.

On the flip side, you have people like my husband, who are totally clueless when it comes to gift giving. You know, those people that you drop almost a million hints for and still they haven’t the slightest idea what you might want.

My husband needs a lot of help when it comes to gift giving to say the least!

Realistically however, most people probably fall somewhere in between those two extremes and a good gift guide can be a great secret weapon going into the holiday shopping season.

This year, given the current pandemic and lockdown situation in many parts of the world, a lot of small businesses are getting hit the hardest, having to shut down their brick-and-mortar locations for several weeks or even months. Now more than ever we need to help our local businesses out and it’s for this reason that I have included several local options (either locally made products or local stores that sell items made elsewhere in the world), from Ontario, the place I call home. I have also included gifts that are not local as I realize not everyone lives in Ontario and there are cool gifts made elsewhere too.

Regardless of where you live, I do encourage you to do at least some of your holiday spending at local businesses around you as it could mean the world to those shops and ultimately help get them through these tough times.

I’ve organized this gift guide into 6 different categories: mama friend, baby friend, man friend, foodie friend, fitness friend and clean beauty friend. In addition to adding local items, I have also included one splurge item for each category if you are feeling extra generous this holiday season. If I have missed some great local options in any of the categories, please comment below and share :) Wishing you a cozy holiday season and sending you all a big virtual hug!

If you would prefer to download a PDF with clickable links, please download here.