The season of shopping like mad is upon us and the holidays will be here before we know it. They always are.

I love the holiday season more than any other time of year and I always make a huge ordeal of trying to find the perfect Christmas gift for everyone on my list. For me, it’s important for gifts to be relevant. I hate settling for a toiletry set or a pair of slippers because I couldn’t think of anything better. This year, I have quite a few vegetarians on my list, as I make more new vegetarian friends and help convert more old carnivore friends. I’m also trying to do more of my shopping online this year, so I’ve been doing a lot of research on great gifts for vegetarians and vegans. I’ve found some great ideas.

Some of those ideas came from a new blog discovery, “Wantist”.

It’s a shopping and great finds blog and they just recently posted “16 Great Gifts for the Vegetarian in Your Life“. It’s a terrific collection of stuff that I haven’t seen anywhere else and some ideas I hadn’t thought of. They don’t actually sell anything, they just tell you where to find it.

One gift idea that I love is a beautiful vegetable cutting board, with a gorgeous vegetable pattern that reminds me of French kitchen prints. It’s from Epicurean.com and is just one of the items pictured in the article.

They also suggest several fruit and vegetable bowls, baskets and hangers, which I think is a great idea.

Like the blog says,

Vegetarians, by definition, don’t eat meat. So that means they have lots of veggies on hand. They’ve got to go somewhere, right?”

Check out the article for a ton of really nice, unique products they’ve scrounged up around the web.

I have a few ideas of my own to suggest, too.

CafePress.com has a ton of vegetarian and vegan themed tee shirts, coffee mugs, muse pads and other products. You can even create and design your own for free. Last year my husband and I were going to a vegetarian weekend retreat and I made us tee shirts that said, “I’m with the gorgeous vegetarian.” He thought it was silly and refused to wear his. I persevered and they were a hit, with several people asking me where I got them. You can even make your design available to the public and designate a charity to receive any proceeds.

There are a ton of great vegetarian cookbooks out right now. Two that I highly recommend are “Herbivoracious” and “Dirt Candy”. Both have been reviewed on this blog recently and they’re both fabulous.

Why not make a gift basket for your vegetarian friends?

You could include utensils, gift certificates to markets or vegetarian restaurants, cookbooks, spices, recipes on cute cards or anything else you can think of. You could even make herb garden baskets, with small pots, seeds and instructions for growing a windowsill herb garden.

These are just a few ideas that I’ve had. I hope they help you and I’d love to hear any great vegetarian gift ideas that you’ve run across, as well!