2016 SBTB Gift Guide, Part 8: Subscriptions of Joy

I’ve been saving this Gift Guide post and I am so excited to share it – especially because I have several coupon codes for you! Yay coupons!

If you are just joining us, previously on the 2016 SBTB Gift Guide, there were bookish and wonderful gift ideas, fuzzy and soft items for comfort and self-care, creative ideas for all your crafty friends and family, an assortment of unique items that charmed many of you, plus cozy, adorable housewares. We also featured Amanda’s sexxytimes gift guide, and last week brought the tempting tech and handbag edition.

This week: subscriptions of all different sorts! I personally love gifting subscriptions to different services, boxes, or publications. Several years ago, I bought many people in my family a year of People magazine, and I heard about how much that gift was enjoyed for months. I’ve also gifted subscriptions to sampler boxes like Birchbox, too. Subscriptions extend the gifting joy beyond the holidays, and I really like that. And in this gift guide, we have coffee, crafting, cooking, reading, and watching options for all! Let’s do this!

First, did you know you can gift someone a subscription to Amazon Prime? You can indeed – and damn does it come with a lot of perks, including the two-day shipping, Prime television and movie programming, and Amazon music streaming.

You can also purchase Kindle Unlimited gift subscriptions in three, six, or year-long increments.

And of course you can gift subscriptions to Audible, too. I’ve gifted Audible 3-month subscriptions before to people who have long commutes or in one case had a very long trip coming up, and it was much appreciated.

Driftaway Coffee!

I was sent samples from Driftaway Coffee to evaluate, and as someone who likes coffee, this was terrific. Driftaway is a coffee subscription service wherein you can gift someone (or yourself!) two months or a year of different coffees. There are a ton of customization options, including frequency of delivery and length of subscription, plus add-ons like grinders and coffeemakers, too.

The service also has an iOS app where recipients rate the coffees so future samplers are better tailored to their tastes and preferences. Each bag has a tag that says where the coffee is from, and what the tasting notes will be.

Subscription prices start at around $36, and the first delivery is a tasting kit (4 small bags of coffee, 2 oz each). So, for example, a monthly 3 month subscription has 1 tasting kit and 2 more deliveries after. I was sent a tasting kit, and so far we’ve really enjoyed the bold variety from Papua New Guinea.

And speaking of coffee, Bitchery reader Katie emailed me about Happy Cup Coffee Roasters in Oregon. They work with the Full Life Foundation to hire adults with disabilities and donate a portion of their profits to local vocational programming. They also have an online store for ordering if you’re not in Oregon, but if you are, there are a bunch of local sources.

Tea! 

There is no shortage of tea subscription options. First, I know Elyse adores Fava Tea, and while they don’t offer a subscription, they do have a gift box of six of their favorite tea blends for $24.

Elyse also wants y’all to know about these adorable silicone snail teabag holders, which are on sale for $1.18 for a set of five.

Now, where were we….

Subscriptions for tea? But, of course!

Simple Loose Leaf tea has subscription options starting at $9.00 per month, or $90 per year.

The Whistling Kettle has a ton of custom options for gift subscriptions, including flavored, caffeine-free, Oolong, chocolate lovers, chai, and breakfast blends. The prices range from $14 to $21 per month.

And Teavana also has a Tea of the Month club, though it’s pricier at $45 per month or $100 for three.

Spices and Cooking! 

We have been introduced to a few spice subscriptions this fall. If you have friends or family members who love to cook, and the entire-meal-in-a-box kits are a bit too much, spice blend subscriptions are a terrific option.

Raw Spice Bar sends three different themed spice blends as well as recipes for each one.

I received a sample package of the Oktoberfest Spice Box (each month has a unique collection). The kit included caraway, a fennel and anise blend for a soft pretzel recipe, schnitzel spices for, well, schnitzel (YUM), and a horseradish and mustard seed blend for a cabbage recipe. The packets are .3 oz and the recipe cards are in color with clear directions and steps.

After receiving my sample, I purchased a subscription to Raw Spice Bar to a friend who loves to cook as a holiday present, and I am so excited about it.

You can order a 3 month subscription for $26, a sex month one for $48, or a year for $84. Plus! We have a coupon for you! Use SBTBflavor for $5.00 off a subscription! 

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Amanda sampled the Spiced Up Bourbon Chocolate Chili Sugar and included it in her Covers & Cocktails recipe for Some Like it Hot.

Spiced Up sends a monthly box of four spice samples plus recipes for $20 per month. Three months is $60, and six months would be $120.

We have a coupon for you for Spiced Up, too! Use Coupon Code Freebie16 to get a “Surprise Spice Sample” with your order. 

And while this isn’t a subscription, I can’t talk about spices without mentioning Penzey’s, who make some of the best spices and spice blends. Elyse loves their Baker’s Assortment, and they have so many lovely gift boxes.

Crafty Treats with a Coupon from Kitterly!

Awhile back, Elyse gave away a pattern from Kitterly for a spider cowl – it was nifty. And it turns out that Sara, who is the mastermind behind Kitterly’s product and operations, was pretty thrilled because she had designed it. She was so excited that we featured it, she’s offered us a coupon code to anything Kitterly sells for the gift guide. Thank you, Sara!

You can find kits and patterns for all sorts of beautiful projects – and you can get 15% off any item they carry with code SBTB15!

Kitterly also offers a project-of-the-month Kit Club subscription for $45 per month, which includes a selected pattern and all the yarn you’ll need to complete it! They’re intermediate skill level, but the past patterns are gorgeous.

British Television, Anyone? 

If you’ve purchased a tea subscription, you might want to gift Acorn TV to go along with it!

Acorn TV is a subscription service to a veritable cornucopia (and there are only two things that can be “veritable,” as I’ve learned: smorgasbords and cornucopias) of British television, particularly dramas. If you know someone who might be addicted to BBC programming and using (*ahem*) nefarious means to get it, you can gift them with a year of Acorn for $50.

The program list is pretty substantial, and there are several apps that allow folks to access their veritable smorgasboard (SEE?) of programs on phones, smart televisions, and tablets.

Plus, if you gift a year and are a subscriber, you get a month for yourself free. Nice!

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Magazines are an obvious choice when it comes to gifting a subscription, and there are often great deals at the end of the year, though I should caution that they frequently include a discounted price with an annual auto-renewal. You can cancel, however, before the renewal (I usually make an appointment on my calendar a week before the renew date to ask myself if I wish to cancel).

Children’s magazines are fun gifts, and as I discovered this year, often serve multiple purposes. Said young person can hit their daily reading target and have material ready for cutting out pictures for assigned scavenger hunts or crafts projects.

Plus, magazines for kids target a lot of different interests, like Sports Illustrated Kids, or Ask, which has themed issues that focus on various topics in the arts and sciences. And for older readers, Teen Vogue has had some of the most incisive political coverage this year. Yup, those are the right words in the right order – and a year’s subscription is only $10.

And there’s no shortage of magazines that I sometimes think of as fun indulgences, like Entertainment Weekly ($30 for a year!). I gift myself with that subscription annually. A year of O – The Oprah Magazine is 12 issues for $15. Not bad!

A year of Real Simple is $11.94 with auto-renewal, which is a great price, and I gift my husband with a year of National Geographic Traveler ($10 for 1 year/6 issues), which is his favorite.

(Also, as an aside: I will never stop missing Sassy magazine, no matter how old I get.)

There are no shortage of craft subscriptions on Etsy. Here are a sampling of a few that I found that might interest you:

• A year of stickers for $18 from RADdoodads
• Just Write subscription of paper goods at $50 for 3 months from PickMe Subscriptions
• Three months of card making kits from FoundWithin for $36
• Three months of Paris Letters, handpainted art and a letter, at $62 from artist and bestselling author Janice MacLeod (author of the book Paris Letters ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au ))
• A month of planner stickers, customizable by planner type and sticker style, for $25

And of course, then there’s snacking subscriptions!

I’ve been a Graze subscriber for almost two years now, and have added my kids to our subscription account, too. If you use this link to sign up, your 1st and 5th boxes will be free (and I’ll get $1 to donate to their school of farming or as a discount off my next box). You can gift an individual box for $10, and subscription boxes are $12 each.

There’s also Nature Box, which I haven’t tried, which is $20 per month, and you can gift subscriptions for that one, too.

What subscriptions have you received or gifted? What do you recommend?