Holidays made easy: Windsor Essex Gift Guide features something for everyone
The treasure hunt for presents you’d love to give your favourite people is on — and you now know exactly where to head. Simply open the 2020 Windsor Essex Holiday Gift Guide created by Tourism Windsor Essex Pelee Island.
Our 2020 Holiday Gift guide is the epitome of supporting local, profiling over 175 local artisans, small businesses, or retail stores.”
With the Gift Guide’s great ideas organized into categories, it’s a snap to find something sure to please a plus one, friend, co-worker or kid. Just turn to the corresponding pages in the online or printed guide. Wondering where to shop in Leamington or Lakeshore? The guide directs you.
Either order online, by phone or get out and explore small-townmain streets, shopping malls and Windsor’s nine neighbourhood districts, all brilliantly decorated for the holidays and filled with fabulous presents.
Score a Windsor skyline handmade mug, Walkerville candles, local craft beer or a homegrown lavender relaxation package. Gift an experience, such as cooking with a chef, making a charcuterie board under a craftsman’s guidance or zipping over the county with a pilot flying a historic Harvard plane.
“People have challenged themselves to shop locally,” says Anissa Noakes, owner at Urban Art Market in Windsor.
Snapping up items by area artisans, customers realize that “even when they haven’t made it themselves, giving a handmade gift is special.”
With so many people growing things for fun, “macramé plant hangers are a big gift this year,” she says. So are COVID-19 Christmas keepsake ornaments. Sweatshirts printed with Windsor-essex “are being shipped to family all over Canada and overseas, so they can have a piece of home this holiday season,” Noakes says.
It smells like Christmas in Ocean Bottom Soap Company’s shop in Tecumseh, where owner and product creator Charmaine Gillis is filling gift boxes with her winter wonderland mint collection and holiday cheer spicy collection containing all-natural grooming items.
Like other area stores, “we are mindful that COVID-19 is hard for many people and so we have gifts for every budget,” Gillis says.
“Our 2020Holiday Gift guide is the epitome of supporting local — profiling over 175 local artisans, small businesses, or retail stores that employ your friends and neighbours. We’ve crafted the guide as a great coffee table piece to reference through the entire holiday season — from shopping to recipes, to discount hotel options for your visiting family and friends during the season,” said Gordon Orr, CEO of Tourism Windsor Essex.
“What’s even more user-friendly about the guide is our 40 Days of Giveaways contest where we are giving away the feature gifts throughout the pages of the guide. You can keep the prize for yourself, or re-gift it and make someone’s holiday extra special.”
Access your guide now at www.yqgholidays.ca.