It is time once again to break out the Bonne Maman advent calendar, host festive dinner parties, and snuggle up on your green Joybird couch with a chic, overpriced blanket. With the holidays inevitably come gift guides. While we’re no Wirecutter (yet???), I’ve been an avid gift-guide consumer for most of my adult life. And you, dear reader, can’t stop me from making my own.
Last year, I recommended 10 perfect gifts for the single, childless women in your life. It truly included everything your daughter or ex-girlfriend (please don’t text her!!!) needed to babysit her nephews and save the world. I still stand by all those recommendations. Especially the “undiagnosed but i’m pretty sure” baseball cap and the matching pet owner sweater set.
But I’m thinking bigger this year. As you pop that Hot Dr Pepper with lemon into the microwave (you heard me) and get ready to watch “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” you can rest easy knowing I’m covering more than just your ambitious sister who’s recently deleted Hinge, again.
To assist me in this effort, I asked folks at The Barbed Wire and online what they absolutely loved receiving in 2024 and 2025 — and why. (Preferably in Texas, or from a Texas store, but these were loose restrictions.)
It’s not always what you’d expect.
Oh, me? …Sure, I’ll start!
Last Christmas, my mom gifted me a membership to the Wild Vine Flower Club. The Austin-based business offers $50 for monthly bouquet deliveries of wildflowers. They are fresh, colorful, and change by the season.
It’s important to me to feel good about the businesses I’m supporting, and this one is committed to composting, recycling, and organic gardening. They also choose flowers carefully — harvesting from their own local gardens and supplementing that with the best blooms from local, organic growers. You can pay extra to get the delivery more often (once a week even!), and you can cancel, skip, or reschedule at any time. It’s been truly lovely. Every month I forget about it, and every month I’m both surprised and delighted to find a bouquet of flowers on my front porch in fresh water and a mason jar.
One year I was given a spa gift certificate at Austin’s Ace of Cups, which hit both my love of massages and my growing interest in Tarot. Chicago-based artist and comedian Winslow Dumaine did some of our Barbed Wire merch, like our “my other truck is an even larger truck” bumper sticker, but he also gifted me one of his hand-drawn and deeply spooky Tarot decks.
I’ve been proud of a few unusual gifts I’ve given in recent years, too, including an actual royal title to the Principality of Sealand for my mom, who is now a baroness. My dad loved this cordless screwdriver designed by Hoto Tools, which combined his hobby of home improvement with his appreciation for sleek design.
Last year, I had some Etsy artists create items for the kitchen of my mom’s vintage dollhouse, like a tiny charcuterie board and bottle of wine. For my brother, I found this handmade mosaic wooden serving tray with mother of pearl and a piece of quartz that matches his counters for a too-heavy-for-a-toddler-to-lift large-scale coaster for his living room, also on Etsy. There, I’ve also had my late grandmother’s handwritten pecan pie recipe printed on a ceramic pan. (It could even go on a tea towel!) Since then, I’ve put photographs of friends’ pets on everything from stamps to pillows and baseball caps. You can even make legos out of family photos and monogrammed ice cubes.
And you, my holiday angels, received some great gifts.
Like me, y’all enjoyed items or activities that unexpectedly combined two or more of your interests at once.
For example, Jennifer, 52, received a framed portrait of Willie Nelson taken by Scott Newton, from Modern Rocks Gallery. The store is dedicated to rare, iconic rock n’ roll photography and curated shows, and you can shop by musician — David Bowie, The Beatles, Dolly Parton, The Rolling Stones — or famed photographer. Jennifer calls it “an incredible place to pick up other limited edition and iconic images, plus great music books, PBS Austin City Limits posters, etc.” (The unique, screen-printed posters benefit Austin PBS directly.) She calls the gallery her “very favorite cool Shop Local place.”
At The Barbed Wire, we’ve written gift guides for outdoor lovers — hikers, climbers, and campers — and for discerning, handsome millennial men who want a sophisticated dress shirt to wear to film screenings.
But many of the gifts folks told me they most enjoyed receiving were not just practical or stylish — they were also sentimental and profoundly meaningful.
J.B. Sauceda, the host and executive producer of Texas Country Reporter and founder of Texas Humor, said his wife, who “has an uncanny ability to give gifts that are unbelievably thoughtful and sentimental” got him an all-time favorite for his 40th birthday.
His wife “had quietly reached out to my dad and asked for something I’d almost forgotten existed: a handwritten prayer my mom wrote for me years ago,” he said.
I’ll let J.B. tell the rest himself:
She wrote it during a season of life when the business I’d founded was growing faster than I could keep up with, and I was as busy as I had ever been. It was during this period that she began showing the earliest signs of what would become her long fight with Alzheimer’s. One that has, unfortunately, today robbed her of most memories.
I was incredibly close with her, yet I didn’t go home nearly as much as I wish I had. Looking back, I know some of that “busyness” was really a reluctance to face what was happening to the parent I was closest to. It’s something I still carry a lot of guilt about.
So when I opened that envelope and saw her prayer that was steady, hopeful, and full of the kind of faith only a mom can have in her kid, it hit me harder than anything I’ve unwrapped in years. It was a reminder of the love she could no longer profess for me, her understanding that knew no bounds, and her belief that I would find my way, no matter how chaotic life felt at the time.
The gift wasn’t just the prayer itself. It was the feeling of being understood by my mom, years ago, and by my wife now. It was a moment that brought both of them together for me in the best possible way.
Last year, Brian, senior editor at The Barbed Wire, wrote a whole beautiful essay about the 1987 gift he never forgot unwrapping (a Nintendo) and a gift guide for people who miss Texas, including bluebonnet seeds, H-E-B candles, and spicy ketchup from Whataburger.
More recently though, he received a lava lamp from his daughter. Bespoke Post has a really chic one, and you can find tons of vintage lava lamps on Etsy.
“I have loved lava lamps since seeing one at my grandfather’s lakehouse cabin, years and years ago,” he said. “They’re so relaxing, and it’s great to have a little one on my desk as I go about my day.”
Relatedly, I’d like to recommend these incredible night lights of sci-fi and fantasy scenes — like this spaceship, this fire-breathing dragon, or this xenomorph from the Alien universe. Do you know a kid who loves sharks? (I’ve been mulling that one for my nephew.)
Brandon, 50, was given tickets to see “Wemby and the Spurs play the Nuggets” in Denver, when his family spent a year as Texpats there. When he was homesick, his wife delivered him the experience of watching the San Antonio-based NBA team win dramatically in the last few seconds.
Desiree, 39, has been feeling this set of blue geode bookends she got from Austin Gift Company, which sells all kinds of cool rocks and crystals. I also recommend Nature’s Treasures of Texas for folks looking to populate their shelves with shiny objects.
Juliana, one of The Barbed Wire’s Trending News Fellows, loved the gourmet gift basket a friend gave her from Agnes Cafe & Provisions in Houston, which she visits routinely. The shop is co-owned by life-long friends Carolyn and Molly.
“It was a special gift because I love to cook,” Juliana said.
Karin, 37, is an avid birder from Dallas who received a several-hundred-dollars-nice pair of binoculars from her partner by Vortex, the same brand as these $239 Diamondback HD binoculars at Cabela’s. Nocs Provisions also has some really cool-looking ones.
“I take it with me on all my walks so I can get clear IDs on birds, who are notorious about wanting to be far away from us!” Karin said.
Cara, our managing editor at The Barbed Wire, is the only member of the editorial team who doesn’t live in Texas. She travels down a fair amount, which can be hard to explain to her 5-year-old son.
“I usually try to pick up a peace offering that won’t add clutter to my house, and is educational (dream big),” she says. “That’s how I ended up with the book ‘This is Texas, Y’all! The Lone Star State from A to Z,’ by Misha Maynerick Blaise. It’s full of colorful illustrations and clear labeling, which my son loves. So much so that I’ve since hit a parental right of passage of hiding it once or twice when I couldn’t read it one.more.time.”
“It’s been a gift to learn more about Texas alongside him, like we’re on this journey together,” says Cara.
“I appreciate the variety and diversity Blaise included. There’s a quote from Eva Longoria about the border crossing her family in South Texas, not the other way around — which I didn’t know before I started editing here. And a blurb on Sweatt v Painter, which saved me from embarrassment when The Barbed Wire published a story with the headline: ‘If You Don’t Already Know Heman Sweatt’s Name, It’s Time to Learn It.’ I could thankfully say that I did, and so did my son.”
Isabella, another Trending News Fellow at The Barbed Wire, said she and her mom bought these handmade ceramics from Nelly Home Goods at an arts market in Dallas.
“All of her pieces are handmade and hand-painted, and we loved the unique style of the mug and the cup!” she said. The owner named the business after her abuela and wanted to inspire “Third Culture Kids, like myself, to find a connection with their spaces,” she says on her website.
She produces small-batch ceramic goods that combine traditional Latin American and modern touches.
Leslie, our Deputy Managing Editor at The Barbed Wire, wrote a gift guide last year for shoppers who’d rather give their money to 22 businesses owned by Texans of color than Amazon.
Since we are a remote newsroom, her daily work uniform is throwing on a sweatshirt over her workout clothes, and she can’t get out of the Take Care Crew from Austin-based Cuídate, a Latina-owned business.
She also just discovered Dollface Accessories, which is owned by Melynda Rivas. She’s been wearing their gold charm bracelet with evil eye protection charms. (In this era — and in this economy — we need all the protection we can get.)
Billy, our Director of Operations, got married in March, so he’s had a year chock full of gifts.
The most memorable he received was also the most unexpected: A day before his wedding, he was running around trying to make sure every last detail was in order. In the midst of the pre-wedding chaos, he got a call from his Uncle Dave. “Make sure you’re home in 15 minutes,” Dave instructed without context. Then, to his great surprise, a man in a pickup truck pulled into his driveway with a giant, full-sized freezer in tow. “Where is this thing going?” the man asked a visibly-confused Billy. “The garage, I guess…”
While it may have been totally out of the blue (and not remotely close to anything on the wedding registry), that freezer is now filled to the brim with wild game Billy was able to harvest on a recent hunt in South Texas, fittingly accompanied by his Uncle Dave.
If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ve found an unusual, spooky, or creative gift idea for someone in your life. I’m committed to endlessly scrolling for the perfect, customized item in order to watch someone’s face light up on Christmas morning. But when they actually use it for the rest of the year? That’s the real magic.
Happy shopping. xo
