The gift that keeps on giving

It's that time of year ago; Christmas. I love Christmas, but I don't love shopping for presents. Besides the whole actually shopping thing (which I have never really enjoyed), trying to find the perfect gift for people I care deeply about is stressful.

This year I have the added worry of working and trying to find a time I can actually get to the shops. So I decided to try online. Once I started looking around I decided that I wanted all my gifts to be either handmade or fair trade. So far all but one of my gifts are unique fair trade/handmade.

I can't show what I have bought because that would spoil the surprise for some people :). But I wanted to share some of the places I have been looking for gifts.

Tribe and Nation; I found out about this store from Pulse, the NSW Presbyterian magazine. They have a small range of products - but it's different things from alot of the other fair trade online stores I was looking at. I especially liked that they have a little blurb about the organisations that are supported when you buy specific items.



This shirt sums up my feelings about shopping centres exactly.



New Internationalist; this is a store linked to a magazine I heard about from TEAR, which has the really useful gift shop that I've written about before. It's great if the people you buy for are into an actual present - rather than a card signifying a donation. They have a great range and also a whole heap of books and clothing which is about raising awareness of fair trade/ethical consumerism.

Oxfam; I love the actual store - great fun to walk through. Most of their stuff is also online.



This is one of my favourites at the moment.

 Etsy; While not exactly fair trade, most things on Etsy are handmade and totally unique. I especially love browsing their silver jewellery.   Because it's a range of smaller stores it can be a little confusing if you're not internet savvy and it can take a bit of searching to find exactly what you're after, but there are some really gorgeous stuff in there. (And it has changed a bit since I last was on there - finally Etsy shows the price in currencies other than USD!)