It's A Gift

I wasn’t sure exactly which category this post fits best, so checked off two. I started to think about the gifts I’ve received that I enjoyed most, and it turns out, they are mostly gifts from Ma Nature. A good part of what made these some of my most memorable "gifts" was the fact that they were completely unexpected. I have often told my clients that a "just because" gift has more impact than one given for a particular occasion, for the same reason.

This morning, I had a ten minute time slot to try to bring the rest of my networking group (Profit Rockets BNI) up to speed on using gifts as part of their business marketing. With a guiding philosophy of “Givers Gain”, you’d think that most members would get the connection, but all too often, when the subject of gifts and gift baskets comes up, my fellow entrepreneurs immediately think of gift needs they might have in their personal lives, but fail to think about how gifts might work for them in their business pursuits.

Here’s another recipe, especially for chocoholics. My husband is one, and, in addition, he does not like what he calls “airy-fairy” American cakes. (He also loathes frosting, but will eat that overly sweet thin icing as that’s more like what he grew up with in England.)

I found this recipe for chocolate pound cake on the Food Network site, but the last time I checked, it was no longer there. The original recipe calls for unsalted butter, but, as usual, I used my regular salted butter. Since the salted butter keeps better, that’s what I normally have on hand.

As I was working on one of my websites today, I noticed a link to this blog that promised more information on caring for silver jewelry. I may have mentioned in prior posts that this is the third or fourth incarnation of my blog as I’d managed to crash it beyond repair on at least a couple of occasions. I am offering my apologies to anyone who has followed that link to find that the promised information was missing! This post is meant to rectify that problem.

I don’t know what the weather is like where you live, but here it’s pretty chilly at the moment. Since I have quite a bit of stale bread to use up as well, it’s the perfect time to make a big batch of chocolate bread pudding. (Actually, I made some last week, but should have made at least a double recipe. Be forewarned, this pudding will disappear like magic!)

2 cups milk, scalded*
3 Tbs. baking cocoa (NOT instant chocolate milk mix!!)or 1 square unsweetened baking chocolate
1 cup bread crumbs
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1 tsp. vanilla

Since I’m a gift basket designer, it makes sense that I’ve been spending a fair amount of time recently, thinking about the kind of gifts that others might want for Valentine’s Day this year. That also brought back a few memories of past Valentine’s Days, so I figured I’d share some of my thoughts and memories — for what it’s worth!

The holidays are over and so, thankfully, is my annual inventory at the hobby shop! This year will be a year of profound change for me and my family as I’ll be closing the retail shop and moving the gift basket portion of my business to our home. Annual inventories should be much easier for me from here on.

This recipe was originally printed in our local newspaper many, many years back. (It was long enough ago that we had two newspapers a day, the Worcester Telegram in the morning and the Worcester Evening Gazette later in the day. Later on, only one paper was printed daily, called the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Exactly which paper printed this recipe? I’m afraid I haven’t a clue!)

At any rate, this is a personal favorite. It’s a nice buttery rolled out sugar cookie. If you like, you can use cookie cutters to make holiday shapes instead of cutting the dough into diamond shapes by following the recipe directions.

So, you’ve decided to take the plunge and put your products or services up on the Web. Perhaps you’ve used one of those quickie website builders offered by various hosting companies. You sit back and wait for those customers to come flocking in, and you wait, and wait some more . . . Chances are your website is not well optimized and the problem is that nobody even knows that your site exists.

If you’ve read some of my blog posts or visited my websites, you probably have already gathered that I live and work in New England. Normally, Autumn is my absolute favorite time of the year as it’s not too hot, not too cold, and the turning foliage adds a treat for the senses. I even love how the outdoors smells in the Fall!

This Autumn, however, Ma Nature treated us to a spectacular “Special Event” that many of us would rather have missed. Our early Nor’easter weighed down all that lovely foliage with heavy, wet snow until many of the trees either lost branches or even uprooted themselves.