Chocolate covered cherries

Chocolate sampler

fruitcake

brownies

cookies

mixed nuts

spiced nuts



slippers

cozy socks

perfumed soaps

anything lavender or rose scented

Perfumed body powder with a puff (The elderly seem to love this stuff. I do, too.)

Any place in the area selling holiday whoopie pies?

Pumpkin pie and gingerbread.

great ideas! Thanks!

What about a gift for the man...on the order of the beauty stuff but more, you know, manly?

Maybe stick to food items? I can't think of any manly equivalents.

Handkerchiefs? Crystallised Ginger? some aftershave? a bottle of brandy or whiskey?

Hmm... this is hard.

Maybe a gingerbread house. It's both decoration and food.

"treats" sounds like food, and "decorations" sounds like decorations, that they can't deal with digging out their accumulated decorations. So chocolate and sweets for the treats, and disposable things for the decorations - Party City or Dollar Store - really tacky - kind of stuff even older folk won't want to store. Or offer to decorate for them, if you are super motivated - I'm sure they can tell you where their stuff is. Yay. Good for you guys.

Peppermint bark! And maybe one of those little potted rosemary plants all decked out like a Christmas tree? That way after Christmas, they'll still have something green and smelly good. And definitely cookies.

Manly stuff: slippers work, nice leather ones. Sears usually has decent ones on sale at xmas. Do you know them? Does he shave? Maybe a nice shaving kit will do.

Reading what they asked for - I'd stick to the food stuff (great ideas above), blankets and maybe slippers. Maybe they have to keep their home cooler than they'd like due to the cost of heating.

Don't know them - it's an anonymous donation sort of thing.

I bet you're right about the heat, deborah - it's a major problem around here.

Incidentally it's why my home is at 60 at this moment...but that's a big improvement over the 10 that's outside....!

Some traditional holiday foods in my family:

Dried fruit, fancy nuts
Sweet breads and rolls
Moravian spice cookies!

In Sweden we have a tradition of sticking cloves into oranges for Xmas (and perhaps some ribbon around it). Smells nice, looks good and when you're hungry you can eat one! Also, we make giant gingerbread hearts with lots of icing illustration on it (names, dots whatever) and hang them in red ribbons in the window. Again, a decoration you can eat. Pop the hole in the gingerbread while it is still warm or bake with a hole already in it, it'll break of you try to pop a hole after it cools. Smaller gingerbread hearts with ribbons go on the Xmas tree.

I just want to say that I love how you started this post:

"We get to give a gift ..."

We've never met but I think you're really neat. I wish we were neighbors.

Holiday treats:
Christmas M & M's
Box of mini candy canes
Box of big candy canes - can also be used for decorating
Hot cocoa packets for sure, and maybe hot cider packets
Nice assortment of tea bags
Bag of those little Clementine oranges


If you live near a Target, check out their holiday section - tons of inexpensive candy and decorations.

For the older gentleman, maybe a couple of pairs of warm socks would be good. And a couple of throw blankets for being cozy while sitting and watching TV.

It's fun shopping for people you don't know, isn't it? I always liked "adopting" a kid and buying toys at Christmas from their wish list. But I think I'd like buying for the seniors even more somehow.

Thanks, everyone! There are some great ideas here for our little shopping list.

Kangaroo, they had choices for families and little kids as well. But I always feel a little lonely for seniors at this time of year - kids can have a great holiday with some toys and special events and a lot of charities seem to cover their needs pretty well...but it bothers me how alone a lot of seniors are in our culture, and how Christmas for them is probably a time of memory, etc. I can't help but wonder if their families are around, or if they ever had children, or who takes care of them and gives them stuff besides this organization. And it's touching that their requests are so simple - so I want to do a nice job on the treats and decorations part.

When you're doing the treats beware of nuts and seriously crunchy stuff, stick to soft stuff that doesn't take a lot of chewing. Chocolate truffles and things like that are awesome; peanut brittle not so much. I know you're not a chain store kind of person but I will second the Target recommendation - their Choxie chocolate is really good and very cheap. I just got my aunt some truffles - she is a sweets fiend and never puts her teeth in, which is how I thought of this - and she adored them.

Might wanna put some/all of the little goodies into nice stockings.

PS: Don't forget to tell us what you end up getting for them!