Douglas and Manjula sneaked out of work to check out the American made Christmas gifts at Brattleboro’s Vermont Artisan Designs today.

American Made Christmas Gifts

We drew names for our Secret Santa gift exchange here at Vermont Woods Studios today.  Christmas, Hanukkah and the holiday season are always pretty festive in our office.  This year we’ll again be focusing on promoting the idea of giving American made gifts to each other and to our families and friends.

You may remember that last year we launched a Made in America Holiday Shopping Challenge.  We asked our friends to pledge to buy American made gifts– to look at the tags on everything they bought for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and other holidays and to choose the ones that were “American Made”.   We found it wasn’t a new idea around here.  In fact most people told us they go a step further and purchase only locally made gifts, handmade gifts and items that support people and businesses in our community.  Anyway, we  had so much fun with our project last year that ABC News caught wind of it and came to Vernon to film a segment about it for World News with Diane Sawyer.

Vermont Made Gifts

So this year we wanted to carry on with the tradition.  Heather Barrett has posted some great American made gift ideas on our Pinterest Board and Facebook page.  Jump on board and share your own finds with her– we’d love it.  You’ll see that we’re leaning pretty heavily towards Vermont made items, but certainly not exclusively.  I do find that Vermont’s warm winter wear always goes over pretty well on a cold, snowy Christmas morning though.  Johnson Woolens, Turtle Fur and Vermont Flannel are favorites in my family.

Local Handmade Gifts

This weekend we have several local craft fairs to shop our way through.  One is the 17th annual “Home for the Holidays” craft fair with 50 local vendors at the Vernon Elementary School and another is the 14th Annual Cotton Mill Open Studio and Holiday Sale in Brattleboro, VT.  Hope to see you moseying your way through one of them.  Our friends and neighbors who’ve been crafting all year long in preparation for the holiday season are depending on our support!  Let the shopping begin.

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