Gift Ideas: My Favorite Products and Services in 2021
Unboxing my Baabuk Everyday Sneakers, one of my favorite finds of 2021. June 18, 2021.
While we’ve moved away from forced gift-giving in my close-friends-and-family circle, I recognize that most people haven’t had that same pressure release when the holiday season rolls around.
And holidays aside, I do give gifts—and love recommendations that spark ideas for them! After all, backing away from obligatory gift-giving doesn’t mean I don’t still buy presents when I find something just right for someone else.
In the spirit of sharing, I decided to draw up my list of the best products and services I’ve discovered in 2021, along with a few ideas for gifts that I may not have encountered for the first time this year, but that I still absolutely adore.
You can buy all the below products and services in the United States and in Europe. (I double-checked to make sure!)
As my regular readers know, none of these links and nothing in this post comes from sponsorships or advertising or commissions on sales. (True for everything in of my articles here on Observing Leslie, in fact.) Further, I bought (and still buy) each of these items personally.
In other words, I assure you that can trust that these recommendations are completely honest and unbiased.
AllTrails
Some people feel you shouldn’t rate nature—a critique I’ve seen more than once about this smartphone and web application that helps people find trails and maps in different areas around the world.
When it comes to nature in the grand sense of the word, I agree. However, I believe you can absolutely rate paths for walking, hiking, and bike-riding. Some trails have more to see and experience than others. Further, if a path follows a busy road or wanders mainly through a concrete wasteland, I’d rather avoid it.
Finding AllTrails helped me discover where to go and how to start hiking in Switzerland when I didn’t even know where to start. The trail guides I found in local the bookstores looked intimidating (and all of them required me to figure out how to get to the trail and how to navigate along it on my own—not something I have experience or equipment to do). When I asked for nearby trail guidance in the local tourist office, I got nowhere.
AllTrails helps you find trails near you or in your destination, helps you find the best path to getting to the trail’s starting point, and gives you guidance on what to expect along the trail, what to bring, difficulty level, elevation and obstacles, and weather and other considerations. Further, reviews of the trail from others in the community—especially recent reviews—have helped me know about shortcuts, tricky areas, or conditions that could make the trail unpleasant.
I now know about other resources for finding trails in my area and I know more people in Lausanne and in Switzerland who schedule hikes and walks I can join. However, I still refer to AllTrails when looking for a walk or a hike to take on my own, and I often use it to trace my path while on a hike planned by someone else, so that I can find the path again in the future (and share it with other AllTrails users, too).
If this image doesn’t spur you to get out in nature, I don’t know what will. A hike across the Swiss-French border through the town of Saint Gingolph. (Photo 100 percent unedited!) October 28, 2021.
I imagine that the app is more details and robust in the United States, though I’ve found tons of great hikes in Switzerland and France and have seen more added constantly.
The app has a free version, though I quickly moved to a paid account. I found the annual subscription cost of AllTrails Pro extremely reasonable for the features and services it makes available.
Baabuk Footwear
I can’t remember how I found this brand of footwear based in Switzerland making wool shoes. The company, Baabuk, makes its products via sustainable, ethical methods and has certified as a B Corporation.
Gotta love a company with ethics, I say. And when ethics come alongside amazing products, well. Need I say more?
I now have two pairs of Baabuk “Everyday Sneakers,” one pair in a practical blue and white and another in a fun red and teal blue.
You can wear Baabuk shoes with and without socks, they slip on thanks to their elastic laces, and I’ve found them incredibly comfortable. I haven’t had any blisters or chafing (with or without socks)—a common problem for me. And no, I haven’t had hot feet once, even during the summer. Finally, though I haven’t tried it yet, you can wash them in the washing machine with, preferably, wool detergent.
I have my eyes on a pair of the company’s slippers next.
Baabuk shoes are available in some physical Swiss stores and online and you can buy them via their on-line stores in the United States and Europe. (They ship internationally!)
Books: Always Great Gifts
If you have a reader on your gift list (even an occasional reader), books make a fantastic present.
One year, I went through my list of my favorite reads over the past twelve months and matched up my favorite books with different people on my list who I thought would like them. It gave book-giving an even more personal touch, provided a different way to connect with people, and gave me fodder for conversations with my close contacts later in the year, once they’d finished the read.
For book ideas, check out my favorite reads of 2020 and the best books I read in 2019. While on these two pages, click through the lists of books I read each quarter for that year; I bold my favorites for each three-month period. (I always have more favorites every quarter than make it into my annual best-of-the-best list.)
Curious for my absolute-latest favorites? Click through my lists of the books I read in Q1 2021, my reads in Q2 2021, and my books read in Q3 2021. I’m still working on my Q4 2021 list!
L’Occitane Immortelle Facial Care
This year, I went on the hunt for new facial care, as what I’d used for years started to irritate my skin. After trying a few other product lines, I got a sample of an eye and a face cream after a soap purchase at L’Occitane.
And I loved it.
I went back to buy full-sized versions and then returned to buy the day versions (with sunscreen) of the night lotions I’d sampled. I’ve since expanded to buy face wash from the same product lines and love them as well.
If you would like to treat someone to gorgeous new skin care, you might want to try items from the “Immortelle” line of L’Occitane products.
These products nourish and support my skin without irritation and they’ve healed small rashes and lingering problems I’ve had since I’ve needed to wear face masks regularly during the COVID-19 period.
A caveat: Of course, everyone has different skin—and our skin changes over time. Further, the climate and environment in which you live will change your skincare needs. (Moving from hot and humid Houston with soft water coming from the spigots to mild and dry Lausanne with a high-calcium water content has brought this fact to the forefront for me in recent years.) Therefore, if you choose to buy skincare for a gift or for yourself, determine which of the products in the line work best for your circumstances or your recipient’s situation.
Need More Gift Ideas?
Though I wanted to share my favorite finds of 2021, I love so many more things that you could turn into fabulous gifts.
Products and services that I found before this year and that I adore (and that your recipients might love as well) include the following items:
My subscription to Glo: I took out a subscription to Glo in 2018 and have only grown more in love with it the deeper I get into my yoga practice. I credit the service with turning me into a practitioner, in fact. It has hundreds if not thousands of live and recorded classes of all sorts of lengths and types to fit every style of yoga and need—along with HIIT, Pilates, and general fitness classes as well.
My Kobo Forma e-reader: I reluctantly moved to an e-reader back in 2019 and painstakingly researched all my options before choosing the Forma from Kobo. I still use it for hours each day and now literally go nowhere without it—which extends to moving from one room to another in the apartment. Its form, functionality, and durability continue to impress me. Further, the e-bookstore covers all my bases (and for a voracious reader in two languages, that says something).
Our Aarke sparkling water maker: We drink fizzy water in this family. To save the cost of buying bottled sparking water plus the ecological damages of all the trash associated with disposable bottles, we moved to carbonating our own. We tried a competing brand in 2018 (and went through more than one of the company’s rickety models in less than a year). In 2020, we purchased an Aarke. The Aarke carbonator doesn’t require electricity to function, has a beautiful form factor, and features a solid metal construction. When we travel, I miss it!
Also, you can check out a post I wrote a couple of years ago listing products and services that I’ve loved for years and still love today. (I freshly updated it for you ahead of this article going live!) Some of the items there could be great small gifts—and others could cover the big-gift people you have on your list this year.
As a final note, I’ll mention once more than none of my endorsements or statements comes as advertising or via sponsorship. These ideas are 100 percent genuine personal recommendations of products and services I discovered on my own and purchased (and continue to purchase!) with my own cash.
So, you can have confidence that these recommendations come completely, utterly unbiased.
(And hey, if this article helped you find that perfect gift, you can always hat tip me a coffee to help support the site!)