This week is your last opportunity to pick up unique, thoughtful, useful, delicious and beautiful handmade gifts from local artists and artisans. Some have re-stocked with new additions you may not have seen yet!
The weather has continued to be pleasantly warm, but cold is just around the bend, so don’t overlook these cozy winter warmers:
Hand-crocheted colorful hats and headbands, and fun faux-fur cowls and scarves from Sondra Finch. (Pictured right.)
Luxuriously soft machine-washable Pashmina hand-knitted socks in many colors and sizes from Engrid Winslow.
Nuno Felted neck-warmers – soft, warm, and one-of-a-kind, hand-dyed, and artfully embellished.
And we have awesome gifts for your favorite locavores, chocoholics, and party hosts, including:
Cultura Chocolate specialty, small-batch chocolate bars and hot chocolate drinks, all made locally in Denver with authentic south-of-the-border flair! These exceptional flavors and textures are among the finest expressions of traditional and contemporary Mexican cuisine!
Bee Squared Honey is the passion of Beth Conrey, a longtime beekeeper, supporter of bees and organic beekeeping, and friend of Harlequin’s Gardens who has served for decades with local beekeeping organizations and is currently President of the CO State Beekeepers Association. Starting small, her beekeeping passion grew exponentially and she now tends hives in many locations in Boulder, Larimer and Adams counties and produces some of the finest raw, unfiltered, chemical-free honey on the Front Range. Anyone who likes honey will love Bee Squared’s unique and delicious award-winning infused honeys, including Whiskey Barrel Aged honey, Rose-infused honey, Fennel Pollen-infused honey, Vanilla & Saffron-infused honey, as well as their superb Alfalfa & Wildflower honey and Clover honey. These products are available in several sizes and combination sets. And they will fit easily into a Christmas stocking!
Haystack Gardens Preserves (our long-time HG staffer, Engrid), brings you home-made preserves mostly made with local and organic fruit with a minimum of sugar, so the flavors sing! She makes the classics as well as many delicious originals, like Pear with Vanilla Bean, and Apricot Rosemary, to name just a couple.
We don’t know how she finds time to make them at all, but Eve’s Pecan Shortbread cookies are back (every year!) by popular demand: Scrumptious, rich, melt-in-your-mouth grain-free shortbread cookies, based on almond flour, pecans, and butter, subtly sweetened with a little maple syrup. Gluten-free, grain-free, mostly organic, no refined sugars. You don’t have to be gluten-sensitive to love these nutritious, rich and satisfying cookies! They will keep for a long time in your freezer or fridge (as long as nobody finds them!)
Chocolate-drizzled Crystallized Ginger, from Robin Chocolates of Longmont, is a classic after-dinner treat that blends succulent, spicy, and sweet ginger with just the right amount of high-quality dark chocolate for the perfect combination.
Anellabees Honey Candies. Fort Collins based Anellabees honey candies originated as a mother-daughter passion project in 2017, when Danielle and her young daughter, Anella, began testing hard candy recipes in their kitchen using an old confectionery press from the 1880s. The goal was to create a honey-based candy that everyone in the family would love, free of the unnecessary, unhealthy ingredients, like high-fructose corn syrup, soy, gluten, preservatives, and artificial flavors, found in most confections. Their honey is sourced from beekeepers in the U.S. and all additional ingredients – spices, butter, and dairy, are organic and rbGH-free. Anellabees gives back by donating a portion of their sales to organizations like PPAN, CO Farm & Food Alliance, and World Bee Project who are doing the essential work of protecting our planet, people, and pollinators.
ON SALE 30% off, Seed Ranch Flavors is a small-batch, ‘farm-to-bottle’ maker of ‘hot’ sauces (one is very mild) in Boulder, the passion of David Delcourt. David uses only non-gmo, gluten-free, organic, natural plant-based ingredients, and his unique, savory sauces are paleo and vegan-friendly. The delicious originality and complexity of the blended flavors, and their versatility wowed us – not just for tortilla chips, but in dips, for marinating, glazing or barbecue too! We have some of their amazing new Truffle Hound sauce in its own gift-box, as well as four flavors packaged together in an attractive box. These make great hostess gifts, stocking-stuffers, or components of an all-local specialty food basket!
St. Claire’s Organic Mints, Candies, Pastilles & Lozenges are great stocking stuffers! Totally organic! Made by our herbalist friend Debra St. Claire! No corn syrup! Sweetened with nutritious organic molasses! Delicious! Effective! Packaged in pretty, reusable tins! Incredibly inexpensive! Lots of flavors!