Without further ado, the brands and products that you find below will focus on handmade, local and regional brands that are making their mark on the marketplace through their inspiring products and sustainable practices. 

​No Tox Life- Vegan bath, body and cleansing products. These guys are taking sustainability to another level with their packaging free products- check out their zero waste lavender earl grey lip gloss.

Kindcraft collection- I'm a fan of their looped together woven jewelry collection made by artisans. 

Patagonia, now has a recycled wool collection featuring beanies and headbands that make great gifts!

Domecil- chic linen aprons for the chef or artist in your life. These can be found in person at Domecil at Fig Earth Supply for those local to Los Angeles. Linen is widely considered the most sustainable fiber on the planet due to it's low water consumption. 

Art of Essentials- handmade skincare by Aromatherapist Flin K. Grant. My favorites are the face serum, charcoal scrub, and Love Letter essential oil roller blend. These can all be custom ordered via her Facebook Page through direct messaging. 

Ground Up Nut Butters- I had the pleasure of meeting the founder Caroline this weekend in Seattle and sampling her awesome nut butter blends. This Portland based business is all about supporting women from the "ground-up!" I highly recommend the Holiday Tasting Flight for gifting which comes with a cute wooden spoon. Individually, the Golden Milk, Snickerdoodle, and Salted Eggnog flavors are delicious.

John Kelly Chocolates make a yummy teacher gift! I found them here in L.A. at Whole Foods on 3rd. 

This weekend, I sold every single one of my Shibori hand-dyed scarves and I have limited gold threaded holiday collection & hand loomed organic cotton shawls for you! All are ethically sourced and naturally dyed by me, in my dye garden. These are high fashion, low impact pieces that are a pleasure to gift. 

Last but not least, I shared a booth with Samantha Slater Studio and became a big admirer of her work. Personally, I love her earring collection which is totally minimal, hip and unique. 

I am entering the holiday season feeling grateful to have met so many seekers of handmade in Seattle, and pleased to make a mindful impact through my own holiday shopping. 

I hope this guide helps you to find fantastic one-of-a kind last minute gifts, if you are still shopping! Keep in mind these are small business like me, so get your orders in now for gifting. 

Hit reply to share your favorites with me, so next time around, we can make community guides and spread the eco-friendly & handmade love collectively. 

Happy Holidays, 

Hilary ​

I had great luck this year with last minute shopping, so go ahead and procrastinate if you feel like it, it will all work out, it's fine! I thought I would share my top finds last minute gifts and online finds with you. With the holidays fast approaching, I had to kick it into high gear from the sofa and my bedroom. We needed teacher gifts and to finish up most of our shopping before leaving for our holiday trip. The sheer number of items that I was able to scoop up between Whole Foods, Anthropologie and Amazon was quite amazing!

I know it's already Tuesday, but with Amazon Prime, many of these items can arrive within 2-3 days and if all else fails, then you can run to the nearest Whole Foods (where I found many good things) and you can finish up your shopping there! Here is my collection all laid out prior to wrapping.

5 of my favorite last minute gifts are:
Amazon gift cards, soy candle set, a mini-facial kit, Rosebud lip balm and a pair of binoculars. 

Since, my husband loves to research all the best photo technology which helps me to stay current with my blog, I asked him to recommend gift ideas for bloggers who wish to upgrade their photography equipment. While some of these items are a serious investment, I just loved the flexible tripod for taking all sorts of iPhone photos!
His top 5 photography accessories for bloggers are: 
Jooby GorillaPod 3K kit, Canon digital camera, Canon STM Lens, tripod, and Canon 50mm Lens.

You guys, I hope that you are excited about the holidays as I am! If you can not wait to wrap some gifts, then please check out my Furoshiki fabric gift wrap tutorial. I think you may also enjoy my Gift Guide for Creatives, and my Toddler Gift Guide too! Happy last minute hunting!

Need gift ideas for inspiring children ages 2-5? Good news! This year, I put together a straightforward last minute gift-guide for you. Today I am sharing, toddler holiday and birthday gift ideas that our family enjoys. Most of these gifts are available online (#winning!), you can kick back and relax while these trickle in to your front door one-by-one. If any of you are wondering, I have worked in art education over the years and we have a 3 1/2 year old, so many of these toys are tried and tested by us. I also love gift-giving, so I have spent ample time online browsing and researching these. 
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As a family, there are 3 types of toys that we tend to gravitate towards during play time. They are: imaginative toys, adventure toys and educational toys. I wanted to share our favorite with you!

A while back, my son asked for a dollhouse, so for this year's holiday gift, we are planning to find a vintage wooden dollhouse to and fix it up. This is also a project for me as well that offers me a chance to get out my detail sander and refinish the wood. I figure that he will use it to play with everything from dinosaurs to animals and dolls. I like that it creates an opportunity for endless imaginative play. The figurines: the people, farm animals, and little cloth dolls can all be used. Full disclosure, when my son saw me typing up this gift guide, he told me that he liked the farm animals set below, the most of all. In fact, a farm house was one of his big gifts last year and he still plays with it all the time. 

Lastly, I have always loved these rainbow hand kites as something that inspires explorative movement and dance. We own a similar ribbon toy and although my son is 3 1/2, he still uses it. Really, it is something that I think he would have enjoyed sooner! 

This next bunch of toys is for the toddler who loves wildlife and adventure. As a family, we try to spend as much time outdoors as we can and we like to travel often. I like toys that inspire that sense of adventure. We recently gifted these binoculars. They are smaller than I imagined, which is actually the perfect size for a child and the image is quite clear. Next up, the other day, I saw a picture of kids playing with Lincoln Logs and it took me waaay back. I used to love playing with my all-wood set of those and building for hours on end.  

We have some favorite educational toys too! You might notice that this list contains 2 train sets. We have both and we like each one for different reasons. The Duplo train is electronic, and runs on it's own, whereas the wooden train set by Brio offers endless opportunities for imaginative play. I feel like the Brio could be for a child who is slightly older. My son loves playing with his bells. I came across this set, when momducator showed us how her 3 year old was able to follow musical notes and play songs using individual bells. I think that it could help younger kids to recognize musical notes, and we had my son earn each bell one by one, so that he became familiar with the sounds. The Picasso tiles are another hit, that I see gets played with a lot. The tiles could be great for collaborative play with siblings and friends too.  

I hope you have enjoyed hearing a little bit about our family's favorite types of toys for kids ages 2-5. If you are still in full on holiday shopping mode (like us;) then happy online shopping to you!
I hope the little one in your life will enjoy a few of these too.

What are your favorite toddler toys around the house? I would love to hear your gift ideas too!

If you liked this, then you will love our Nature Boys Bedroom reveal!