Hostess Gifts For Any Occasion

Since we have had a few showers recently, I've spent lots of time thinking of appropriate gifts to get the hostesses.  Budget friendly, thoughtful gifts can be hard to find but here are a few ideas:

For the hard working mother of the mommy-to-be:

This gold initial necklace, found on Etsy from the shop Sara Gal Studio, is a thoughtful, affordable and unique gift.  You can use the initials of the gift recipient, or in my case, I put the initials of the three kids in my family since I was gifting this to my mom.  Bonus...you can add more initials if need be (more kids in the family!) and you can customize the length of the chain. Sara Gal Studio was easy to work with and ships right away!


For the best friend:

For the best friend, or brides maids if that is the occasion you are looking for, I purchased this gold-plated initial bar necklace.  Something a bit more modern and youthful, but also personal. Again, another purchase from Etsy, but this necklace is from the shop Custom Brites.  Similar to the shop above, you can customize this necklace with a few different fonts, add more letters and change the length.  Custom Brites was easy to work with and the necklace arrived at my door step a few weeks after I made the order.

For the other friends throwing you a small, casual couples shower:

Continuing with the monogram theme.  Yes, I'm going to a whole other level with the monograms, but I truly think they add a personal touch.  These Anthropologie monogram pouches are currently on sale for $15 and were originally $38!  Not only is that a steal, but for the quality of the pouches, that is money well spent in my opinion.

You can never go wrong with a candle!  Everyone loves candles, but can't always justify the purchase...or at least that is how I feel.  The candles above from Anthropologie smell heavenly.  I also love this scent that I recently discovered and my absolute all-time favorite scent.  

A few other ideas:

-Terrain has a whole section of gifts for "the hostess". It is worth glancing through.  I love this gift idea.

-Can't go wrong with copper.

-Everyone loves a good throw, and these are on sale! Also, a nice way to warm up the winter months with this throw.

-Spa and mani/pedi gift cards are always a hit!

Good luck in your hostess gift endeavors!

Review of Myregistry.com

Two weeks ago we had a big shower that my mom, along with two best friends' mothers hosted.  The shower was beautiful, the food was delicious and a good time was had by all.  For my main registry, I used myregistry.com and had a fairly successful experience with it. But, since this is a review, I have to add a few cons  :)

Pros:

I loved being able to add gifts and desirable items to my registry from all over the web.  I had items from Amazon, Land of Nod, Pottery Barn, Target, etc.  Adding gifts from all different stores allowed me to really get all the necessary items I wanted in one place.  Another bonus...myregistry.com keeps track of all your thank you notes!  It can be a bit of a spoiler in a sense, because you can see who bought what, but it is so nice to have a reliable source to reference as you write your thank you notes. You can also access "inspirational boards" to get ideas about different themes for a nursery or items you want to get.  They also have a tab dedicated to popular items that others are putting on their registries.  This helps you get ideas and see if there are any major things you could be forgetting. Based on my experience, I recommended myregistry.com to a friend who is not using it for her wedding registry.

Cons:

Not everyone invited to your shower, wether it is a wedding or baby shower, will be technically savvy.  I do think there was a bit of a generational curve when it came to purchasing items.  But let's be honest, grandparents are not always going to be the best at using the internet, let alone a registry site.  On myregistry.com you have the ability to "sync" other registries to your myregistry.com page so viewers can see the registries all in one site.  This actually is a pro, but has a con looped into it.  Myregistry.com does not support all other sites.  I was able to sync my Land of Nod and Pottery Barn Kids registries but not my Carter's, which created some confusion with the masses.  Finally, if you wanted to add a bunch of items from one store, make a registry at that store and sync it into myregistry!  This is important because it may be more convenient for some people to go to a store location as opposed to purchasing an item online.

For example, if Aunt Suzie walks into Pottery Barn because she saw a ton of items on your registry from Pottery Barn, she will be out of luck and probably purchase something random for you.  This is because you don't actually have a Pottery Barn registry, you have Pottery Barn items on your registry, which confused Aunt Suzie. Although this point is obvious to some, it is not obvious to others.  So help your attendees out and create several registries to sync into myregistry, it will be more work for you in the beginning, but will help you and your buyers out at the end.

*Why the bottle of Burt's Bee's shampoo?  My mom used some Burt's Bee's baby and Mama Bee items as center pieces on the tables at the shower.  I loved this idea because it gave me practical party favors to take home!

Post Cards

I have a new obsession when it comes to the mail.....post cards!  Post cards have clearly been around for decades, but in the past six months a light bulb went off in my head; post cards are WAY easier to write, they save time (ain't nobody got time for envelopes), and they are cheaper to mail.  Genius!

Knowing that we would have a great deal of thank you notes to write in the upcoming months with the baby on the way and several showers, I went ahead and researched some options.  I chose the post cards about and ordered postcards that could be downloaded, so I would always have access to the pdf.  I purchased the cards above from this store on Etsy. The owner, was sweet and easy to work with.  After purchasing the pdf, I uploaded the postcards to Vistaprint and printed 250 for $32!  I had a coupon code that gave me a discount and provided free shipping, what a deal!  I have already used over 50 of the cards, and I'm sure I will be writing plenty more thank you cards after the baby is born.