The Gift Exchange

Who says you need to only send corporate gifts during the holidays to your clients? Gift giving in the corporate world is a great way to show your appreciation any time of the year! Here are some great reasons to give a gift to your clients/customers/employees:

1. Holidays (not just Christmas) – Why don’t you send a gift for a less popular gift giving holiday, such as Independence Day. It will be unexpected and appreciated!
2. Birthdays
3. Thank You – Send something to show your appreciation for a job well done.
4. Welcome to the Team – Giving a gift to a new employee will make them feel welcome.
5. Good Luck –  Is your client up for a promotion? Starting a new major project? Send something to let them know you are thinking of them.
6. Wedding Anniversary
7. Thinking of You/Sympathy
8. New Baby
9. Congratulations – New position, promotions, etc.
10. Retirement
11. Clients/Employees’ Children’s Birthdays
12. Motivating or Encouraging Employees
13. Just Because – Who doesn’t like a present, just because?
14. Weddings
15. Keep in Touch – Haven’t heard from a client in a while? Send something to let them know you’re there if they need you.

Any way you look at it, there are several reasons to give a corporate gift. At GiftTree, we make corporate gift giving easy and quick with full service gift programs for all budgets and styles. Visit our Corporate Help Center for more information.

I know I have talked about baby names in the GiftTree blog before, but I have a real  dilemma and need some help! With so many siblings we have come up with some interesting ways that we were named as kids, but Matt and I just can’t seem to agree on any names for our little one. He seems to like more traditional names while I on the other hand like a more unique sounding name. Regardless if we have a boy or a girl it’s middle name will be James so that is the only thing we have nailed down so far, and our last name, of course. We have also stuck to our guns on not finding out what the sex of the baby is going to be so that makes it twice as tough.
With all this going on I have been looking for baby stuff and really want to get the Engraved Baby Shoe Keepsake, but what do I put for a name? I could use all the suggestions I can get right now so please help me out here! The baby name books are just not cutting it. Thanks everyone, I look forward to hearing your suggestions!

Showcased in one of our most popular luxury wine gift baskets, Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon is often said to be a wine that needs no introduction. While this may be true, there certainly is a rich history behind the wine and it all starts with one word: Charles.

Before there was Caymus, there was the Wagner family farm, which was a small plot of land in Napa that Charles Wagner purchased with his life savings after fleeing the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906. An immigrant from Alsace, this first Charles planted the crops that everyone planted in those days to survive: a bit of everything. Napa Valley had not yet come to the prestigious prominence that it enjoys today as a top American Viticultural Area, but lucky for Charles, he planted some grapes for good measure and decided to give winemaking a shot. Unfortunately for Charles, this was just in time for Prohibition, which put a damper on the first Charles’ dreams of winemaking.

In 1943, another Charles (Charlie) Wagner shared the foresight of his namesake and purchased some additional orchard land in the very heart of the Napa Valley. As the first Charles did, Charlie also planted edible crops like plums and walnuts, but by the early 60s, it looked like wine grapes might be able to sell more profitably. So Charlie followed the trend of many of the early pioneers in the Valley and planted his vineyards with Pinot Noir and Riesling.

Luck steps into this story again when a good friend up the road was making some pretty good wine out of Cabernet Sauvignon. When Charlie was offered some cuttings from the vineyard, he leaped at the chance.

Enter the third Charles in this story: Charlie’s son, Chuck. Up until about 1971 when Chuck was 20 and Charlie was 60, the family had been selling the grapes and not producing wines except for home consumption. Charlie made his son an offer to start a family business making wine and they named its winery “Caymus,” which was the name of a group of American Indians that lived in the area.

Their beginnings were modest. The two men and a single helper farmed 55 acres of vineyard by themselves. It took them four months just to prune. All winemaking procedures were done by hand, including pumping thousands of gallons of wine into 600 gallon tanks. In 1972, they released their first Cabernet Sauvignon. In 1975, a famous wine critic named Wilfred Wong tried the Caymus 2003 and said it was the best Cabernet he’d ever tasted. The telephone began to ring in the Wagner farmhouse, and everything else, as they say, is history.

I am so thrilled that GiftTree is now carrying cookies! These cookies are so good, I would drive to the airport and stand in line for them. But the best thing about these cookies is how affordable they are. Cookies are good for ANY occasion at all. It’s what I send my Dad now because at his age, he has 2 of everything and while he doesn’t want any more “stuff,” he still likes to eat sweets and he claims that they are easy to hide from my mother. Cookies are the way to go for me now because everything’s better with cookies!

Guest Blogger: Jordan

You see them at work, at home, or when you’re out on the town. They’re everywhere you don’t want them to be. Everybody knows at least one, and if you claim you don’t, then chances are you’re one of them. I’m talking about pranksters. Those wonderful (or not so wonderful) people who can make our lives either entertaining or frustrating, depending on which side of theirs you’re on.

While I’ve only worked at GiftTree for a short time, I have come to two conclusions. One, the place is full of pranksters, which means everyone seems to have a great sense of humor, and two, this place can be a prankster’s dream. You wouldn’t think it right away, but with a decent imagination and a wealth of options, just about any gift offered can be turned into a prank. That is why I’m creating this guide. To help you, the prankster, create more entertainment in your daily life and the lives of those around you. I’ll be providing you with tips, ideas, and possibly a true story or two, throughout multiple blogs to help you in your efforts to make this world a more amusing place…for you.

Tip of the day:  Keep it simple

When it comes to a gifting prank, sometimes the simplest of gestures can be the most effective, and good pranks don’t require a very expensive gift, either. Sometimes all that one needs is a great message on the card. Imagine your special someone receives a nice bouquet of balloons or a simple but beautiful arrangement. They wonder what they did to deserve such a wonderful gift. They open the card expecting a message of love and devotion, and BAM! That’s where you hit them!

Now, clearly the message will differ from person to person, and as this is a company blog, I won’t post suggestions of what to put as a card message, but we’ve had some pretty good ones role through here from many different people. And all you pranksters out there I’m sure have the wheels turning and a smile creeping up on you as ideas begin to form.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:
1.Know what’s off limits. A good prank in jest can turn into a very bad situation if you pick a sore subject.
2.Keep it simple. Long elaborate stories on a card take too much time to read. Simplify your prank message to one sentence, tops.
3.Know you can get caught. Don’t think there are ways to keep from getting found out. Plus, it’s likely the recipient will know it was you anyway.

Lastly, I’d like to hear about your pranking endeavors, both gifting and otherwise, first hand or from others. What’s the best prank you’ve heard that was actually pulled off?

Until next time, happy pranking!

“Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.”  – Carol Bishop Hipps

I have always been a fall lover. Ever since I was a kid I would always offer to rake the leaves in the yard just so I could get them all into a big pile and jump into them. The colors of orange, red, and yellow everywhere you look, the crunch of the leaves as you step on them, the crisp smell of the air after it rains. Just thinking about it right now, as we edge into fall, gets me excited. The time of the year when I really start getting into fall mode is Halloween. I know fall starts a ways before this but for me it’s just like a realization that fall is in full bloom.

One of my favorite things to do in the fall is going to the pumpkin patch. Every year we go right before the sun goes down. After me and my family argue over who picked the largest, biggest, and most orange pumpkin of the bunch, it is dark and we go into the haunted corn maze (my favorite part!). At night the maze turns haunted and there are ghostly creatures and people trying to scare you every turn you make.

Something else that fall time wouldn’t be the same without is pumpkin carving. Sitting on my kitchen floor, with my hands messy as can be. I don’t think anyone is ever too old to carve a pumpkin or enjoy halloween. This year, I am still going to go get a pumpkin and carve it. Something I really love on our website is the Great Pumpkin Cake. It is the perfect cake to eat while you are carving your pumpkins! Or if you are going to a Halloween party, it’s a perfect thank you to give to the host! Also, the Halloween Petits Fours are adorable! They would be a perfect dessert to put on the table for your fall or halloween celebrations!  As fall comes to a close this year, I know I will have enjoyed all the wonderful things that fall brings, and will be excited for next year when the leaves start falling once again!

When I was a little girl, I would always count down the days until Halloween. Halloween meant trick-or-treating, dressing up in fun costumes, and family parties where we would bob for apples and listen to the Monster Mash. Now that I’m a mom of two, I can’t help but get caught up in their excitement! I’ve decorated the house, we’ve picked out this year’s costumes, and we even got a costume for the dog. We also are planning a trip to the pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins, and a night in with popcorn and hot chocolate, while watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!”

This year at GiftTree, we have a ton of fun Halloween gifts to get you in the spirit. I think my favorites include the Candy Corn Surprise bouquet and the Halloween Boo Berries. I have to say, the Boo Berry white chocolate howling ghosts are so cute, you’ll almost feel guilty for eating them!

The term “wine thief” is a clever name for a glass pipette that winemakers use to extract a small amount of wine from a cask for testing. Typically a wine thief is anywhere from 12 to 24 inches in length and is easily inserted through a hole in the wooden barrel where wine is fermenting.

We are lucky to have obtained the famous and highly allocated Leonetti Cellars Reserve for our upcoming launch of luxury wine baskets, and in the process of researching it, I came across an interesting story. In 2007 during one of Leonetti’s selective “invite-only” tours through their winery and barrel caves, a group of visitors happened upon a wine thief and took the liberty of sampling wine straight from the barrel.

Not only did this rude gesture get them tossed off the property, but it also forced Leonetti to dump that barrel because they could no longer account for what was in it. Seeing as how a barrel holds approximately 25 cases of wine and that a modest Leonetti Merlot runs $75 per bottle, over $22,500 of wine was discarded.

Needless to say, those ill-mannered visitors are no longer allowed on the property, but the story does add a interesting and memorable twist to the concept of a wine thief.

Guest Blogger: Derek

Your birthday is coming up, and that means one thing for me–panic. I’ve suffered enough holiday faux-pas to last me a lifetime. The tongue-in-cheek gag gift that hit a little too close to home (Sorry Dad about those over the hill balloons and the cane on your 50th, you weren’t thrilled) to the old standby romantic gift of: “its our anniversary..?” Okay so I’m not the greatest gifter, I’ll admit it. Its not in my nature–I’m a minimalist. A guy of the “does it work?” mentality. Example, my only question to the victims–I mean recipients–of my cooking is “is it edible?” That’s my standard, if you can call it a standard. Well, I’m finding that unfortunately for me and everyone like me (sorry guys) no one has ever been thrilled by our sincerest lack of effort.

Not to say we don’t try, gentlemen, because we do! There’s a certain level of expectation in our minds when we want to show someone our affection through a gift. Especially with our significant others. There’s a vast amount of frustration that occurs when we are failed by gifts who fall repeatedly short of our expectations. An expectation that somehow an object, a gift, is supposed to sum up our affections for another. So if you’re me, you give up and hope for the best.

Fortunately for us though, there are a lot of simple ways to send a complex message. I’ll never forget my favorite romantic card I’ve ever received as a teenager. I was 15 and deeply in love, back when love was something I couldn’t fully grasp the profoundness of.  I came to school early one morning to find a card in my locker littered with song lyrics and quotes that she identified with me. No special reason for it being there other than to let me know. What an amazing gift. There weren’t hours in department  stores, ambling through aisle to try and find something that somehow fit our love, she had already heard it in poems, songs, and passages in books and felt it resonate within her. They spoke to her and her gift was sharing it with me.

You’re not going to be able to pigeonhole your affections into any gift and it is the reason why we feel like birthdays/holidays/anniversaries and presents in general are a colossal ordeal. The truth is what’s important is that you find a way to communicate what you already know is in your heart, and believe me, once you pick up a pen and tap a sincere and wholesome resource as the human heart–you’ll be surprised what comes gushing forth. That, with any present, is the true gift.

May 4, 2004… I will never forget this date. This is when I got the call from my mom. She got a call a couple of weeks earlier from her doctor. She had a routine mammogram which showed a dark spot. She went in to get a biopsy done to fine out if it was malignant or not. It was. She had breast cancer – but thank goodness, they caught it very early. She was able to get the tumor removed, and go through radiation. She’s been in remission for a few years now. She’s a survivor.

In 2009, it’s estimated that there will be 192,370 new cases of women diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States. That’s a very sobering thought. Ladies, make sure you are doing your self breast exams every month, and if you are over the age of 40, go get your mammogram!

My mother is a hero to me. She’s amazing and she’s a survivor. In honor of her this month, I’m going to send her something special to pamper herself, and to remind her of how strong she really is.

Here at GiftTree, we know how important breast cancer awareness is. We have a wonderful selection of Breast Cancer Awareness Gifts to honor the special person in your life who has been affected by this disease.

Education is key. I encourage you to stay informed and don’t forget to do your self breast exam!

(2009 estimates on breast cancer from http://www.nbcam.org)