I totally get you! I’m a last minute shopper too and there are still a few places you can shop and get what you need in time for the big day. Now is the time I start shopping at places that use shoprunner two-day shippingor who have the ability to order online with in store pickup (Nordstrom, Gap, Anthropologie, Target…)and I check amazon to see if there’s anything that will arrive in time with Prime. I remember the old days pre-internet shopping spending hours in a crowded mall frantically looking for the perfect gift-it’s amazing how easy it is now for us to find last minute gifts in Seattle and beyond.
In Seattle our drugstore Bartells has a great selection of locally curated things and Met Market my neighborhood grocery store has fun gift ideas too. These types of places make it easy to buy last-minute without looking like a last minute shopper and I’m usually pretty happy with the thoughtful gifts for my loved ones that I can find.
Subscription gifts are some of my personal favorites because you get the surprise of finding out about the gift and then it shows up at your door a few months later. Who wouldn’t love a sock of the month club(stance), or a few months of books (book of the month) a makeup subscription(Birchbox), a box of food from a place you want to travel to (Japancrate) or something awesome for kids to make (tinkercrate)?
Memberships to local museums are pretty awesome gifts too and these are some of our Seattle favorite museums. If you still want to give a tangible gift, it’s always fun to pair something like this with a book and you can easily get books at Amazon in a day or two. I recently received this Dinosaur Atlas and the Incredible Cabinet Of Wonders from Lonely Planet kids and both of these books are suitable for my 9 year old boys and fit with a museum theme. For younger kids, I have a list of travel themed gifts and we still love a lot of these things like the Seedling Earth Ball that’s been part of our home for a while now too. These airplane books would pair nicely with a membership to the Museum of Flight.Also, if you’re in the Seattle area, we tried out a cool Tacoma Pass recently that might make a great gift too!
So are you a last minute shopper like me or do you finish your shopping reasonably early? And do you have any suggestions that could help others who are scrambling to find gifts for there loved ones too?
(PS. As stated above, I received a few books from Lonely Planet Kids for review and as always the ideas in this blog and post are my own.)
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)