Nut Gift Baskets

My mother lives in a senior apartment building. She moved there when she was no longer able to mange the upkeep of her yard and home. She enjoys the many activities that the apartment complex offers each week. She has always been a very social person and has made many new friends in the building, as well as maintaining friendships from the former neighborhood. My mother has always enjoyed giving gifts during the holiday season. As she and her friends have aged it is harder for her to come up with ideas to give to her friends. She enjoys baking so she gives holiday cookies to some people, but many of her elderly friends are diabetic. This year she decided to give out a nut gift basket. This would be something that her diabetic friends would be able to enjoy.

My mother receives many gift catalogs. One of the catalogs had an assortment of food baskets. The nut gift basket was very expensive to purchase as well as ship due to the weight. My mom is on a limited income so the price of the nut gift basket posed a problem for her. I suggested that we shop for the nut gift basket ourselves. This way she could custom make each basket and would not have to pay for the shipping costs. Most of the people that she would give the nut gift basket to lived in the same building with her so she could deliver them instead of having them sent. Mom though this was a good idea so we planned a day to go shopping.

We went to a discount store to pick out baskets. They had a wide variety to choose from. Next to the baskets was a display of holiday serving dishes that were very reasonably priced. There were also gift boxes of an assortment of nuts. I suggested that instead of doing the nut gift basket, mom should buy the holiday bowls and put a can of the assorted nuts inside the bowl. We could use holiday cellophane to wrap the dish and put a ribbon on it. Mom liked this idea because she thought the bowls were more useful and attractive than the baskets. For her close friends that she buys larger gifts for she purchased two bowls and filled the second one with holiday candies.

I liked the idea of the nut gift basket so much that I am going to purchase a few of them for some of our neighbors. Nuts are something that most people enjoy and they can easily be shared with others. It is also less time consuming than baking holiday cookies to give as gifts.