Unusual birthday gift

  All my family know that they will get either beer, a bottle of wine or flowers I grabbed on the way to see them. It worked for a while, but now it seems to be just too expected. Looking for a totally different birthday gifts can take a lot of time. Today I went looking for my best buddy which should be easy. I know exactly what he will like so it should have been very easy. I ended up just heading to a big box store and finding a gift card. They used to have small cool wooden crate type things to put the gift card in but not anymore. So that was adequate but really boring. Last Sunday my wife was out of town and asked me to go out and get items to put in a basket for her cousin who was bringing her daughter to Colorado to start college. My wife emailed me a list of all the things to buy for the basket so I went to find it. She puts in mostly Colorado products like chocolates, chips, salsa, tortilla chips, peanuts, Colorado water, tea drink, gourmet coffee, beef jerky, cheeses, crackers, and honey sticks. First I could not find a basket in the grocery store and only a few of the merchandise. I finally threw in the towel because it was taking forever to look and be sure I had Colorado made foods. My neighbor was also shopping and I shared my irritation when she recommended just going to our downtown and going into the big home specialty store and having them help me. I did that and it was helpful but I was shocked at how much it price, including the basket. They proposed to help me put it all together in the basket and put on a nice big bow. It looked great and my wife was not shocked at the cost of buying the stuff there. She goes to 5 or 6 different places to buy all the merchandise and helps save about twenty dollars. Now that is just way too much effort. An better way is just to go online and find a gift basket shop that will do it and deliver it. My wife and I argued over the expense, so to demonstrate my point I found a several of baskets at Baskets by Rita which is a Colorado based company. They have a Colorado wooden crate that is cooler than typical baskets. Even after the delivery cost, it turned out it was cheaper than us doing it ourselves. So getting back to the birthday gift idea I saw the crate and decided to order one and have it delivered to my house so I could see how it looked. It came and was excellent. My wife and I decided that they do a much more professional job of putting it together and it looks amazing. Plus it turned out to be less expensive than doing it ourselves. They have a great selection so that is my plan from now on when buying Beer and Nut Birthday Gift Basket. http://www.basketsbyrita.com