Creating Urban Botanic Gift Baskets

Charity Auctions, Gifts, and fundraisers are great places to up the ante with your UB product and create an Urban Botanic Gift Basket. Sometimes coming up with those great ideas on the "theme" for the basket can be a challenge. I went ahead and "borrowed" some of these ideas and then added in the products that I would use to enhance it!

Make Your Own Gourmet Gift Baskets by Donna Monday

Everyone loves to receive a gift basket. Corporate gift baskets are often given by businesses to their customers as a token of their appreciation. However, most gift baskets are person to person expressions of love and friendship.

You can find a great selection of online gift baskets from the very expensive to the cheap. Or, you can come up with your own unique gift basket idea and surprise a cherished friend or loved one.

It's not difficult to make your own personalized gift baskets. Most gift baskets involve a theme. Here are some sample ideas to get you started:

** Cookie Gift Basket - bake up some homemade cookies and enclose them in colorful plastic wrap, include a personal card or poem. - For UB product use the Cinnabon recipe: 1 Vanilla, 1 Brown Sugar, 1 Allspice, 1 Cinnamon or the Just Baked is my favorite: 1 Almond, 2 Vanilla, 2 Allspice, 2 Brown Sugar, 2 Cinnamon for your cookie inspired lotion and shower gel (perfume is great as well)

** Chocolate Lovers Gift Basket - include individual fancy chocolates, boxed chocolates, or the person's favorite chocolate bars along with hot chocolate mix.** - A chocolate inspired UB product is perfect here. My suggestion is cocoa cabana from our Sample Recipes in the UB Library or Lauri Hetzers Chocolate Truffle: 2 Chocolate, 2 Vanilla, 1 Almond, 1Raspberry, 1 Brown sugar - You might add a brown teddy bear as well. - Another scent that I love for kids is called Minty Fun - It's 2 Chocolate and 1 Peppermint.

Holiday Gift Basket #1 - a Christmas holiday gift basket idea could include small stocking stuffers, candy canes and homemade Christmas cookies. - You could refer to the earlier cookie scents but for Christmas I like the following as well...

Cinnamon and Coconut make a candy cane type scent. Something with Pine can be really good - only 1 drop off pine to 4-5 drops of other scents. Refer to McKenna's earlier Cmas email if you still have it (I couldn't find mine).

** Holiday Gift Basket #2 - a Halloween holiday gift basket can be stuffed with candy, throw in some plastic skulls, spiders, cob webs and assorted creepy items. - Mandarin and Brown Sugar can smell like Candy Corn with a titch of vanilla. I love the Green Apple, Cinnamon, Allspice mix and call it Bobbing for Apples. I'm hoping that we get a pumpkin seasonal scent for this year but pomengranate with some spicies can get you close.

** Wine Country Gift Basket - wine and cheese baskets are favorites, include two bottles of choice wine from your favorite winery or wine shop, add cheese and crackers. - Any of your floral scents you like such as whimsy and the linen one from the samples would be great with this. I would also use Get Lucky which is 2 Grapefruit, 1 Mimosa, 1 Violet, 1 Jasmine or Beach House which is 5 Naked, 2 Green Apple, 2 Violet, 2 Honeysuckle.

** Coffee Gift Basket - Your favorite coffee lover will enjoy fresh gourmet ground roasted coffee (or their favorite brand), flavored creamer, cookies and a fun coffee mug. - Use the more food scented or spicy line for this basket. Vanilla and Chocolate would go well with some Almond top it off. I would focus on the lotion/shower gel combo here or bubble bath vs. the perfume.

** Italian Gift Basket - include a variety of dried gourmet pasta like spinach, whole wheat, or dried tomato, two jars of pasta sauce, fresh mozzarella and parmesan cheese, garlic bread and fancy olive oil. - Any combo with Tomato Leaf would be fun for the perfect "Herby" personality. Kelsey's blogger recipe would work well: tomato leaf 3, cucumber 3, oakmoss 1, white tea 2

** Tea Lovers Gift Basket - you can include several varieties of black tea, green tea and herbal teas, a mug and homemade butter cookies adds a nice finishing touch. I would use Green Tea and Freesia or White Tea and Honeysuckle for a simple and clean tea loving scent!

** Champagne or Beer Gift Basket - the champagne basket would be elegant: includes a bottle of fine champagne, cheese and crackers, and fancy chocolates; the beer basket includes several domestic and/or imported beers, lagers, or ales, chips, pretzels and nuts. - You could also use the Chocolate Truffle recipe here or something very elegant and yummy. With the beer basket you could actually go a little beachy and add in a scent with Pina Colada or Coconut. Cocoa Cabana might be fun as well.

** Pet Gift Basket - dog and cat gift baskets are the most popular. For a dog you can include: homemade doggie biscuits or cookies, a doggie collar, doggie toys. For a cat you can include: cat treats, cat nip and cat toys. Now you know that all it takes to make a unique gift basket that will be treasured is a little ingenuity and your personal touch. - On the UB product side the shower gel would make a great pet wash and the perfume spray in something woodsy or citrus would tone down fido's overly zealous "dog scent" with something fresh. The tea scents could also work well but I would suggest Get Lucky or something with Cedar Wood/Pine as well.