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Christmas Shopping, Consider your hometown |
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| FTLComm - Tisdale - Tuesday, November 26, 2002 | ||||||
 This morning after getting the mail I dropped in for a tasty Bee Sting (right) and had to make the painful decision not to go for a Rum ball (second picture below) with its cherry centre, but the BeeSting was safer and I just savored the Rum ball's delicious appearance for a moment when I noticed that Zoerbe's Baker had |
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 these sumptuous looking cookie assortments done up as Christmas gifts. Now these things look terrific (above and below) and so often with a Christmas gift we are aiming for appeal in the first place. On Sunday my wife and I discussed a trip to one of the cities for a Christmas shopping excursion on the weekend before Christmas and it occurred to me as I gazed at the cookies that could I find |
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 cookies like these with this quality, this appearance and this value at Sam Walton's little store in Prince Albert, Saskatoon or Regina. What we need to think about is that those shopping trips into the city and the frenzy in the stores, the noising and really awful Christmas music, do we really need that to get ourselves into the Christmas mood and is there any cost benefit for this kind of trip. Across the street from Zoerbe's baker is Lamb's Hardware and in the middle of the front window as the scene |
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 seen here. Resin made fairies, the little ones are $1.75 and the big ones around $11.95. These brought me inside and I spotted the great pile of wicker (top of the page) that would make really great gifts for the right situation then there were these rows of items all reasonable in cost and as I looked around it seemed odd for anyone to need to drive for an hour or two on winter roads and have to deal with fuel costs and rush to get it all done on a trip or two. With many stores right here in Tisdale and most larger Saskatchewan towns we |
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 really don't need to put ourselves through this trial by Christmas Carol ordeal. As I looked over these little containers there wasn't a single hint of bad Christmas music. (Heah I love Christmas music, well I used to but there is a time and a place and while shopping is not the time nor is the place) |
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 I lurched down the street and for the upscale shopper the two Jewelry stores in town have that market covered, if you want some snappy clothes there are men's, women's, work wear, specialty and children's clothing shops. Two florists in town have the living and almost live available as this stuffed bunch peer from the window of Tisdale Florists. |
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 "The Ole" Country Store" had evolved, the ever changing stock and the widening range of outstanding goods simply had outgrown the name and it was time to change the name and so "Elements" is the upscale gift and home goods shop that has something for everyone. The two pictures bellow were taken through the front window and show the kind of amazing products on display. |
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 Elements really had a huge and high quality stock as the rest of the pictures on this page show. However, there is a limit as to how many images I can cram into a page for you and I limited myself to three stores out of the many in Tisdale. Both of the downtown drug stores have special Christmas stock on their shelves and Martins has the latest in music, fine furniture and electronic equipment. Pearson's, the mall dollar store and Zellers have a wide range of items that rival anything you will find in a trip to |
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 the city and you have the time to compare products take your time and stop into any of the great places for coffee while you work your way down the list. Tisdale has a very healthy market place this year with only one store front downtown not occupied full time. A new Melfort based video rental outlet is presently renovating the former Inchworm storefront and will open soon in that location. So save some money skip the trip to the city do your shopping at home. Though this little picture page was here in Tisdale I could have done the same tour in Nipawin or Melfort. Merchants are on top of the market and the huge urban big box stores really have a tough time competing with the good locally provided items. Wally's keeps those prices low not by offering a huge selection but having high volume and when you add it up the lower quality products and the cost and danger of the trip do not add up to the value you can get right at home and one top of that local merchants are here to provide you with year round service in a whole wide range of other products. Buying at home makes cents. |
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