Supporting Small Businesses (And Not Amazon) This Holiday Season

As with all things in 2020, this holiday season is going to look quite a bit different this year.

The presents you might usually wrap under the tree don’t seem to make sense right now.

Our mini Christmas tree a few years back.

A cashmere sweater? Mary doesn’t leave the house and exclusively wears sweatpants.

New shoes? Bob hasn’t been to the office in months.

A nice pair of earrings? The last thing Wendy dressed up for was the dentist.

This is all coupled with the fact that we probably aren’t going to be seeing all of our family members and loved ones this holiday season. I know our Thanksgiving and Christmas will just be my immediate family.

So maybe you will be buying fewer presents because you will be seeing fewer people, or instead you want to spread a little more holiday joy because you won’t be seeing loved ones. Either way, you have a choice in where those gifts come from and who your purchases support.

Your dollars count.

While I used to love Black Friday (when it actually meant shopping in store), I have since changed my tune. Unless you are buying a TV, the deals are usually not as great as you think. Instead participate in Small Business Saturday on November 28th or better yet, shop small all holiday season!

I still haven’t gone shopping in a retail store since March, which automatically punts all my holiday shopping to the internet. Not my favorite, but it will have to do this year.

The good news is that there are still so many ways to do your holiday shopping without leaning solely on the big box stores and Amazon***. Our local and small businesses are in dire need of our help anyway due to the pandemic, so the best way to finish off your holiday shopping is by supporting them.

***Full disclosure: While I am hating on Amazon here, we do have an Amazon Prime account that we use occasionally. We have a baby and sometimes 2 day or same day shipping is super necessary when you run out of diaper rash cream.

Here are a couple ways to shop small this season:

Local Businesses

Cute, small mom and pop stores have lost the walk-in customers they used to rely on. I plan to order some gifts from some of my favorites for curbside pickups this year.

In Chicago, here are some of my top shops for the following:

• Cute homey items: Neighborly
• Soaps and lotions, like amazing solid lotion sticks: Taylor Street Soap
• Plastic-free cleaning supplies: Meliora Cleaning Products
• Gardening materials, virtual flower workshops, and house plants: City Grange and Flowers for Dreams (I got my mom their flower subscription for her birthday and she loves getting a fresh, seasonal bouquet delivered once a month!)
• Stationary goods and witty greeting cards: Steel Petal Press
• Yummy foods: Local Foods

Etsy

I love Etsy all year round, but I am definitely shopping here this holiday season. One of my favorite features is being able to filter by shops in the United States, and then even by state and city. It is fun to discover local, nearby shops that don’t have a brick and mortar location.

Etsy is a great option when you are looking for something specific!

Local Restaurants

I am sure you have heard or experienced in your hometown, the intense impact the pandemic has had on restaurants and bars. Pick your favorite place around the corner or down the block and purchase a gift card for those on your list. High on our list is Lucia’s!

While in some cities and states you cannot eat inside a restaurant, your recipient can still use it for a special takeout dinner or save it until they are comfortable and able to dine inside again. Something to look forward to, I suppose?

Additionally, everyone loves a good baked good or a special treat on a Sunday morning. Our favorite local bakeries to support are Floriole, Spinning J, Bennison’s, and Dinkel’s.

Experiences

The gift of an experience is one of my favorite to give. A sports game, tickets to a musical, a membership to a museum or zoo are my usual choices, but this year some experience gifts are not an option.

Not all are cancelled though! The zoos and aquarium here are still open, but operate on a reservation basis and there are plenty of virtual workshops and classes out there.

Virtual Maker Events

Often, I would check off unique, handmade gifts for my recipients from craft fairs, like the one sponsored by my high school to raise money for the athletic boosters, to the more upscale artesian maker shows downtown and throughout the city.

Made in Chicago Market

My personal favorite, the One of a Kind Show, is going virtual this year and you can still shop all of the vendors, but unfortunately miss the great interaction with the artists.

Two other shows that I have shopped at in the past are Show of Hands and Made in Chicago Market. They are online too.

So while the fun of wandering past booths and eyeing items across the room is out for this year, we can still shop!

That’s it! If you are a family member reading this, you got a sneak peak, because you will definitely be getting something from this list!

A Tiny Baby’s Big Impact: Part 2

A lot has changed since having a baby (see Part 1 here), but our lifestyles have also taken a double whammy by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Here’s how both a baby and a highly contagious virus have changed our lives.

Spending a lot of time inside…

Ordering

We are still doing some online orders when we need stuff, but I have been using curbside pickup more. It is also a reason to get me out of the house! Target Drive Up is also really great.

Our grocery shopping is still 100% online. We get our produce and meats from a local grocer here, called Local Foods. They are still completely closed to customers and do everything by delivery and pickup. Other basics and staples get delivered as well.

K used to love grocery shopping in person, so I am not sure if he would have stuck with delivery for so long if there wasn’t a pandemic, but it was definitely helpful in those first few weeks at home with a newborn.

The super annoying part of all these deliveries is the packaging. The basics and staples get delivered in plastic bags every time, despite a note on our account asking for paper bags. Thankfully Local Foods always uses them!

This means my bag of plastic bags gets full very fast. Just last week I finally took the last 4 months of plastic packaging I have collected and brought it to Target to recycle. I had to make two trips into the store because 1.) I could not carry them all and 2.) I did not want to look like a crazy person.

We have similar issues with ordering takeout. A gracious family member gifted us a Grubhub gift card to help keep us fed in the first few weeks of newborn life. We have been using it to support local restaurants in the area, but pretty much every order we get includes plastic silverware and napkins and things we specifically requested not to include.

Self Care

Pre-baby and pre-pregnancy, I would shave with a safety razor, but since I barely have time to shower lately, I have gone back to using disposable razors for efficiency reasons. I hope one day, when I can devote a bit more time to myself, to go back to it.

While gyms and exercise studios were closed for a while, they have opened back up, but we don’t plan to partake in any inside exercising. Unfortunately, the yoga studio I frequented for prenatal yoga was unable to sustain itself after going virtual and has closed. So for now, I mainly focus on getting in a good stroller walk during the day and the occasional yoga video. I may venture and try an outdoor yoga class if I can find the time.

Taking a walk on our shared street, which gives neighborhoods more space to walk, bike, and run during COVID. 

Back before we got married, I started getting monthly massages to deal with headaches and it was wonderful. I kept it up through pregnancy, switching to a massage therapist who was certified in prenatal massage. They closed sometime in March and opened back up in July. I did go back once because my neck and back were so sore from breastfeeding and picking up and holding the baby. It was nice and they had what seemed like good COVID precautions in place, but I was pretty uneasy the entire time being in an enclosed room with someone, even if we both were wearing masks. So I have put a hold on my membership for the time being and will have to survive without my monthly treat for now.

Working from Home

For at least the rest of the year, both my husband and I will be working from home because of COVID, not because of the baby. I only had 12 weeks of leave (unpaid mind you), while my husband had 6 weeks (paid). Not going into the office removes our commuting impact, saving us on not having to purchase gas as often, equals less time on the road, and no money spent on parking.

Once I start working again and after my husband has done a few weeks of paternity leave, we made the decision to go with a nanny for a few days a week instead of sending our child to daycare.

Having a nanny, a baby, and two adults in our two-bedroom apartment is a lot of people in a small space. K and I are going to end up co-working in our bedroom to give the nanny space to place and care for our baby in the living room and nursery. He already has an office set up in our bedroom, so we now need to buy another desk for me.

The plan is to get the same desk as his so we have a matching set. I am already thinking about resale value! We have not purchased any office chairs and are currently using our kitchen chairs, which are cushy and do the trick for now.

While we certainly expected life to change once the baby arrived, I don’t think we thought it would look like this! 

 

Buying Local: Week 21

We are in the middle of a CSA box from last weekend, and it is one of the last boxes we will receive. Our CSA ends at the end of October. 😦

Some homemade chili tied us over for most of the zombie jetlag last week and we did not eat at home a couple nights.

Now that we are a week and a half out from vacation, we are fully back in our regular schedules, and getting back to eating regularly and normally. Eating 6 large pretzels over 3 days is not normal (I am looking at you Munich and Oktoberfest).

 

Our first real homemade meal back. 

 

What We Bought:

• From Local Foods
  • Whole chicken
  • Milk
  • Sausages
  • French bread
• From Nichol’s Farm in Marengo, IL
  • Carrots
  • Broccoli
  • Green beans
  • Mixed Greens

What We Learned:

• Don’t keep compost in a paper bag outside when it is 90 degrees outside…
• Carrots can get rubbery fast

Buying Local: Week 19 and 8th CSA

This week we had to do a lot of cooking, storing, and preserving of our CSA box. That is because we are going to be out of town (and the country) for the next 10 days. More on that tomorrow.

Once we got home from the farmers market with our box, K got right to work making a pepper sauce and a tomato sauce. We sliced the corn off the cob and froze that for later.

What We Bought:

• From our CSA in Marengo, IL
  • Honey Crisp apples
  • Mixed Cherry tomatoes
  • Roma beans
  • Sweet colored peppers
  • Eggplant
  • Korean or tropical melon
  • Mirai Sweetcorn
  • Leek
  • White kennebec potatoes
• From Local Foods
  • Bread
  • Chicken
  • Sausages
  • Sprecher’s root beer (yum!)
  • A soft pretzel
  • Onion

What We Learned:

• K is really good at accidentally making tomato soup. He originally was going for making a sauce with all the tomatoes we got, but it ended up being really amazing.
• There are still some veggies we have to freeze or give away!

Buying Local: Week 18

We are rolling a bit behind this week. We lost some produce due to mold (peaches, eggplant, tomatoes). Going out to eat for two meals over the weekend also did not help and kind of set us back on using produce.

What We Bought:

• Hamburger buns from Evanston, IL

What We Learned:

• Real food can get moldy FAST. Some of my peaches did not even make it 5 days, and some of our tomatoes and peppers had to go straight to the compost bucket.
• Potatoes and onions should not be stored together. We are a bit tight on kitchen storage so we had both of them in the same drawer. Now we have them separated.
• You’re not supposed to store cucumbers in the fridge. No wonder they didn’t make it.

Buying Local: Week 17 & 7th CSA

These CSA boxes/bags ARE GETTING HEAVY!

That’s also because we got a melon this week! 

What We Bought:

• Mixed Cherry tomatoes
• Assorted slicing tomatoes
• Red Cabbage
• Shishito Peppers
• Tropical melon
• German Butterball Potatoes
• Mirai Sweetcorn
• Kohlrabi
• Japanese eggplant
• Zestar apples
• Peaches from St. Joseph Michigan

 

K’s homemade corn chowder used up some CSA potatoes and corn

 

What We Learned:

• More about vegetarian cooking. K bought a new cookbook so we could further utilize our boxes instead of relying on vegetables only as sides.
• Meal planning is so important in order to use what we have available without wasting it.
• Our compost game is STRONG! The last two months we have overflowed our bucket and had to have extra containers at pick up time.

 

K’s new cookbook

 

Buying Local: Week 16

We are ALMOST FINISHED WITH AN ENTIRE BOX!!

The cauliflower is on the meal plan for tomorrow, and I eat an apple every day. Now what to do with all those cucumbers?

Sixteen weeks into this journey K has finally figured that we should take a closer look at a more plant-based diet. We shall see where that takes us.

Our CSA box runs through October and it is already time to start thinking about signing up for a fall box that would last through December. It is definitely something to consider!

What We Bought:

• Brussel sprouts from Marengo, IL
• Spring lettuce mix from Marengo, IL
• Oberweis milk from family farms around IL and WI
• Turano bread from Berwyn, IL
• Corn from the Midwest (grocery store was not very specific…)

What We Learned:

• How to freeze apples, beets, corn, and tomatoes. The apples and beets will be used in smoothies and the tomatoes for sauces.
• How to blanch tomatoes.
• K tossed some of the frozen corn into our chicken and bean quesadillas the other night and it was super convenient to have cut up corn on hand.
• We did end up getting additional corn from the grocery store, but both of us have declared that farmers market corn tastes way better.

Buying Local: Week 15 & 6th CSA

We have really been rolling with our box this week.

K made a tasty veggie ragu Saturday night, then we used the cucumbers in a tangy yogurt sauce Sunday, and we also tried our hand at cooking green beans two different ways.

We are going to attempt to finally get through an entire box without any of it going to waste. I will keep you updated if we accomplish that. Fingers crossed.

What We Bought:

• Bell peppers
• Red thumb potatoes
• Mix tomatoes
• Jersey mac and pristine apples
• Mira sweetcorn
• Candy onions
• Newhall Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Assorted cucumbers
• Green Beans
• Jalepenos
  

  veggie ragu sauce

What We Learned:

• Thank goodness we have compost because we are creating a lot of food waste when we don’t get to something on time.
• To use up some of the veggies from the previous week and a couple of the new ones, K made a fantastic red vegetable sauce. We ate some and then froze the rest.
• You can freeze corn! We got 6 ears of corn in our box so we are going to save a few by cutting the kernels off the cob and freezing it for later.