November 20, 2018
Happy Holiday Season! My focus for the holidays is always to find gifts that are beautiful, useful and primarily from local or small independent shops. I also care about giving quality, meaningful gifts that don’t clutter up our loved ones’ lives—thoughtful giving, in other words. Here are my 10 favorite gifts this holiday season with some awesome discount codes too!
1. Waypoint Goods Travel Scarf
Waypoint Good Travel Scarves are beautiful scarves that have a hidden zipper and pocket — perfect for holding a passport, phone, money, or keys. These scarves are genius for moms, solo female travelers or sports fans. They have gorgeous designs — I own the Paris city series pictured above and they recently launched a stadium series with your favorite team colors.
2. The Adventures of Lily Huckleberry in Scandinavia
The Adventures of Lily Huckleberry in Scandinavia is the story of a little girl and her fun-filled adventures exploring Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. The story is charming, empowering, and educational. There is a map inside the book that shows Lily’s route, a page of hidden treasures to find throughout the book and tons of fun facts about Scandinavia. Plus, the illustrations are unbelievable – you can get prints of some illustrations too. My girls and I can’t wait to see where Lily goes to next!
The women behind Lily Huckleberry, This Little Street, are offering 20% off anything in their shop through midnight December 31 with the code “WANDERINGRUMPUS20”. (After you’ve bought a book for every adventurous kid on your list – buy several to store away for birthday gifts and more!)
3.Wee Society GO! Travel Journal
Wee Society is another amazing company that I adore — last year I wrote about their fill-in journal, Me: A Compendium — and this year they’ve published the GO! Travel Journal. This journal is perfect for traveling kids. The book design is lovely, plus there are a bunch of thought-starters and writing prompts so kids can capture important stuff, like cool things they spot, new things they try and people they meet on their adventures. It also becomes an awesome trip souvenir!
4. Gunner & Lux Necklaces
Gunner & Lux is a dad & daughter duo who create kids’ jewelry and other products — we, of course, adore the travel-themed “I Love New York” and “I Love Paris” necklaces, but I’m also swooning over the Neverland, Sunshine, Hummingbird necklaces…okay, I love them all! And check out their t-shirts too — we’ve been huge fans of the “My Dad is a Feminist” Tee for years!
5. Ticket To Ride Game
We love a good old-fashioned family game night and Ticket to Ride is our current favorite. We like that it is travel themed and also helps the girls learn a little about U.S. geography — or world geography depending on what edition you use. A game is a regular family gift we like to give along with game night snacks, hot cocoa, and popcorn!
6. Framebridge Framing
Framebridge is an incredible, easy and affordable custom framing service for framing your art — perhaps a poster you picked up on your travels or a photograph you love — or other fun or memorable objects (think jerseys, love letters, family recipes, textiles and much more). It’s easy to do — you can pick out a frame online and if you’re sending in artwork, they send the pre-addressed packaging to mail it to them — or they will print a photo for you. Everything is beautifully made and great quality — plus they have designers on staff to help. I’ve framed several art pieces from our travels and have always been over-the-moon with the price and quality.
Through my Framebridge link, you can get 15% off your first order.
7. Socks
I recently participated in an interview where I shared that the one thing I never travel without is socks! Whether on a plane, in a hotel or Airbnb, or staying with friends, I always pack an extra pair of socks. My girls gift me a fun pair of socks for every mother’s day, birthday and Christmas — some favorites are my Frida Kahlo socks,my pancake socks, and my colorful Merino wool smart socks! I also like to find fun socks for them – that are especially good for travel.
8. Parnassus First Editions Book Club
I am a huge advocate of supporting Independent Bookstores, and Parnassus in Nashville of one of my all-time favorites. The Parnassus First Editions Club is a subscription service wherein Parnassus delivers a signed first edition of a book to your doorstep 12 times a year. The subscription is also available for 3 and 6-month intervals. The selections are hand-chosen by the staff of Parnassus and include a mix of established authors and potential new literary and non-fiction stars. If you don’t love the books they choose, you can return a selection within two weeks of receiving it. They also have a subscription club called Parnassus Next that is all Young Adult books, again curated by the staff. The books are always first edition hardcover books and always signed by the author.
I gifted this to my mom a couple years ago and she loved getting new books every month curated by someone else!
9. Júwon Enamel Nail Polish
Júwon Enamel creates cruelty-free, high-quality nail polish with a mission that they “meet the needs of all regardless of race, religion, sex or gender and create to enhance inner beauty to represent one’s true self.” Júwon means beautiful in Kurdish. And, the colors are amazing! I had the please of meeting the founder, Klavish Faraj, at an event earlier this year and absolutely fell in love with her story, her nail polish, and her personality.
Júwon is offering 20% off all of their products with the code “WANDERINGRUMPUS”.
10. Gift an Experience
Whether gifting a family trip or a local class, a concert or adventure, I love the concept of gifting an experience (for budgeting purposes too). You can even pair the experience with something related to the gift. For a trip, this could be some luggage tags — check out these luggage tags from Lily Huckleberry and get 20% off with code “WANDERINGRUMPUS20” — a gift card to Airbnb, some airplane socks or a travel journal. Here are some of our favorite local Nashville experiences that would be awesome experience gifts for adults and kids, alike — and I bet you could find some similar organizations in your area if you’re not in Music City:
- Goo-Goo Cluster Chocolate Class (paired with some Goo-Goo clusters, of course);
- The Old School Farm Pottery Class (paired with an Old School farm pottery ornament or some pottery tools);
- An experience in the trees at The Adventure Park at Nashville (paired with some Grab the Gold energy bars or glow sticks if you want to do the twilight climb). The Adventure Park Nashville is offering 30% off passes through Monday, November 26;
- A painting class at Painting with a Twist (paired with a bottle of wine – or sparkling lemonade for kiddos);
- Tickets or a gift card to a movie or show (paired with movie candy);
- A candle pouring class at The Candle Bar (paired with a pretty book of matches);
- Brush Pen Lettering, Terrarium-Making or other creative classes and workshops from The Perfect Little Store (paired with a candle or other gift from The Perfect Little Store).
Check out my 2017 Favorite Gifts too for endless thoughtful giving ideas! What will you be gifting this year?
This story includes affiliate and referral links for which we receive a small commission at no extra cost to consumers.
