Fifty Gifts Yule Love
Forget cactus-shaped fruitcakes and barbed-wire bookends. We searched far and wide and found unique Texas treats—from prickly pear soap to Concho River pearls—for everyone on your list.
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33. So what if Soular Therapy's products are suddenly all over the pages of InStyle, W, and Jane. I discovered them first! When company founders Kevin Elkins and Andrew Goodman went shopping for aromatherapy candles to sell at their now-defunct San Antonio antiques store, nothing on the market flared their nostrils. So they spent a year and a half in R & D and last year unleashed their astrologically based scented candles ($26) on a public obviously starved for heavenly guidance.
Soular Therapy, San Antonio (210-737-8811, 877-737-8844; soulartherapy.com). Or call for retail outlets.
34. As every know-it-all has told you two thousand times, this December 31 at midnight is the start of the new millennium. And since this time around airplanes aren't predicted to fall from the sky and clock radios aren't expected to explode, why not celebrate fearlessly with a New Year's Eve party for two at Rough Creek Lodge outside Glen Rose ($5,000 for a two-night "platinum package")? The price includes helicopter transfers from DFW, beluga caviar, Dom Perignon, a five-course candlelit dinner, a couples massage, carriage rides, and dancing to jazz (can you dance to jazz?) under the stars.
Rough Creek Lodge, 5165 County Road 2013 (call for directions), Glen Rose (254-965-3700; roughcreek.com).
35. Cross a Japanese teahouse with a Victorian parlor and you get Serenity Massage and Spa Retreat in Wimberley. "It's Tex Zen," says owner Sherry Elkin, a registered massage therapist with nineteen years of experience. After a whirlpool soak in the tiny Asian-style bathhouse and an hour-long massage ($60), my husband, Richard, had metamorphosed from stressed to mellow to contented mush.
Serenity Massage and Spa Retreat, 15401 Ranch Road 12, No. 400, Wimberley (512-847-8985).
36. My aunt Dot lived all over the globe and brought back tales of her worldly experiences on her Texas visits. When I was little, she showed me a trick for softening hands that she had learned in the Land Without Lotion: Pour a little olive oil and a little salt in your palm, rub your hands together, and rinse. Now Rosie Herman of Mommy's Magic in Houston has come up with the One Minute Manicure, improving on what I thought was a family secret by combining Dead Sea salt with jojoba, vitamin E, and essential oils like orange, rosemary, and peppermint ($29.95 for thirteen ounces).
One Minute Manicure, Houston (866-ONE-MINU).
37. Prepare to have your boots kissed by the foodie on your list if you enroll him in the Chef for a Day Cooking School at Dallas' Mansion on Turtle Creek ($1,600). He'll work elbow-to-elbow with chef Dean Fearing and his staff, cooking up lobster tacos and crème brûlée for the Mansion's lunch and dinner patrons. Then he and a guest (and it had better be you) will sit down for a grand meal. By the way, the price includes one night at this most elegant of Texas hotels.
Mansion on Turtle Creek, 2821 Turtle Creek Boulevard, Dallas (214-520-5846; mansiononturtlecreek.com).
38. As if I needed another excuse to visit Room No. 5, that homage to home style in Fredericksburg, it now stocks some of my favorite soaps: prickly pear, Hill Country rosemary, and mint-comfrey from Del Jardin in Poteet. Longtime soapmaker and organic gardener Grace Lovelace and her husband, George Thompson, grow all the herbs and roses that go into their fresh-scented bars ($5.50).
Room No. 5, 302 E. Main, Fredericksburg (830-997-1090; homesteadstores.com). For more retail outlets, call Del Jardin (830-276-4880).
39. It can take Jon Fish and Larry Osborn of Good Foundations in Wimberley a year (or two) to complete one of their one-twelfth-scale custom mansions with parquet floors, crystal chandeliers, elaborate moldings, and totally believable exterior details of brick and carved stone, so save this gift for someone with a mature sense of delayed gratification. (Anyway, we're not talking child's play here: Prices start at $20,000.)
Good Foundations, Wimberley (512-847-9699).
ARTS AND CRAFTS
40. Twenty minutes west of Austin, near Dripping Springs, sits a straw-bale building light-years from mall mania. Here, in the gift shop of Sunset Canyon Pottery, the on-site studio's extensive line of clayware is showcased alongside the works of other local potters and craftspeople. The vibrant dishware by San Antonio's JoAnna Amundson caught my eye, with its crisp bands of bright glazes etched with graceful designs. Even oatmeal would be elevated to haute cuisine when served up in one of her colorful bowls ($26).
Sunset Canyon Pottery, 4002 U.S. 290 E., Dripping Springs (512-894-0938, 800-846-6175).
41. If the clerk at the Austin Museum of Art gift shop hadn't been watching me, I would have licked the fused-glass bowl by Austin artist Kathleen Ash ($290), because its vibrantly colored polka dots reminded me so much of lime, blueberry, and cherry lollipops.
Austin Museum of Art Museum Store, 823 Congress Avenue, Austin (512-477-0766; amoa.org).
42. The outstanding photography in the Days of the Dead Calendar from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth ($14.95) perfectly captures the animated personalities of the drunken, pensive, exuberant, or befuddled skeletons in the museum's collection of Mexican folk art. The clever three-dimensional calendar opens up like the retablos found in churches throughout Mexico and Latin America.
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 1309 Montgomery, Fort Worth (817-335-9215); and the Modern at Sundance Square, 410 Houston, Fort Worth (817-738-9215); mamfw.org.
43. After slogging through Houston's renowned shopping districts, I'd almost despaired of finding any local crafts in Pottery Barn-Gap Land. Then I revisited the Heights neighborhood. (The last time I was there, in 1959, I was busy being born at the Heights Hospital and had no time to shop.) At the October Gallery, an eclectic store full of Texas-made stuff from furniture to fountains, one of Kathy Wheatley's vases bejeweled with frosty blue and amber beach glass caught my fancy ($30). I love the fact that the Texas shore where she collects the translucent nuggets is her closely guarded secret.
October Gallery, 244 W. Nineteenth, Houston (713-861-3411).
44. In a woodsy studio in Wimberley, Heather Carter makes finely crafted journals and notebooks ($16 to $32). Each features imported paper, hand-stitched binding, and her signature little window in the cover, filled with tiny leaves from Spanish oaks or other native plants. If I had one to write in, I think even my shopping notes for this story would read like poetry.
Heather Carter, 15401 Ranch Road 12, No. 300, Wimberley (512-847-0192; hcarter.com).
45. I stood in Fort Worth's Earth Bones far too long, staring dumbly at Carl Crum's four-foot-long 3-D photo montage of Fort Worth icons ($675). The layered images of Cowtown's signs and landmarks made me sound stupid too: "Look, the Flatiron Building," I exclaimed. "Oh, and Griff's Hamburgers and the Water Gardens. I've seen those. Look, Mr. Sno-Cone." But I still like Crum's work, despite its harmful effect on my I.Q.
Earth Bones, 308 Main, Fort Worth (817-332-2662).
TEX ED
46. Even shopping can take on deep historic significance if done beneath the watchful gaze of the pterosaur hovering in the entrance of the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin. (Okay, so it's a reproduction of the museum's 70-million-year-old fossil.) For a memento of ancient local history, check out the gift shop's coffee mugs ($7.95) decorated with drawings of Texas points (arrowheads). They're made by Antigua Designs, an Austin company formed by two women archaeologists with an obvious fossil fetish.
Texas Memorial Museum, 2400 Trinity, University of Texas campus, Austin (512-232-4278; texasmemorialmuseum.org). For more retail outlets, call Antigua Designs (800-776-9256; antiguadesigns.com).
47. The book of county road maps from the Texas Department of Transportation, in color and about seven hundred pages long, provides reassurance that deserted country roads—free of construction and congestion—do still exist in our car-crazed state ($32.55).
Texas Department of Transportation Map Sales, 118 E. Riverside Drive, Austin (512-486-5014).
48. For those haunted by the ghost of Texas past, how about a gift membership to the Texas Historical Foundation ($35), which helps fund projects ranging from archaeological digs to documentary films? The membership comes with a subscription to Heritage magazine, a quarterly publication featuring history-rich articles on such subjects as the state's painted churches and the turbulent past of the border town of Candelaria.
Texas Historical Foundation, Austin (512-453-2154; thfonline.org).
49. Help a loved one truly find his place on this earth with the gift of perspective: an aerial photograph from Aerial Viewpoint in Houston ($85 for a twenty-by-twenty-inch black and white enlargement, $95 for color). Simply fax the lab a map—say, a city map for an urban locale or a U.S. Geological Survey map for rural spots—with the desired location clearly pinpointed, and the staff will dig through their extensive archives for a bird's-eye view; they claim to have every square inch of Texas—past and present—covered.
Aerial Viewpoint, Houston (713-532-7301, 800-784-5801; aerialviewpoint.com).
50. Late at night, while the rest of San Antonio sleeps, a lone Alamo ranger is busy running as many as thirty U.S. and Texas flags up and down the flagpole. Choose a date, choose a flag, and buy a certified piece of history, however contrived, at the shrine's gift shop (three-by-five-foot nylon flag with certificate, $39.95).
Alamo Gift Shop, the Alamo, Alamo Plaza, San Antonio (210-225-1391; thealamo.org).
My Library
