The Beginnings of Jo's Baskets

  Jo’s baskets began as a way to give unique, individualized gift baskets to family and friends for many occasions.  Two years ago Jo designed her first two gift baskets for her dad and father-in-law as Father’s Day gifts.  Each of these baskets was designed with each man’s favorite snacks and beverages, which he enjoyed in the evening after work and on weekends while watching TV.  After Jo heard how much her family liked each of these gift baskets she began designing them for other family members and friends for special occasions. 

   Jo next designed a chocolate gift basket for her sister-in-law’s birthday.  This gift basket included her sister-in-law’s favorite chocolate treats for her to enjoy in the evening after teaching sixth grade.  This basket once again was a success and Jo began to regularly design gift baskets for family and friends. 

   Each year for Christmas she has designed personalized gift baskets for the ladies that contained their favorite scent of personal products.  These have contained shower gel, bubble bath, soap, lotion, body spray and sometimes cologne or perfume and shampoo.  For the gentlemen, at Christmas, she has designed two types of gift baskets.  The first type was a gift basket that included their favorite cologne scent, shower gel, aftershave and other personal products.  The second gift basket was for her father-in-law and brother-in-law who both work in a factory where work boots are required.  Jo designed a gift basket that contained foot care products such as callous smoother, callous cream, foot lotion, foot soak, foot file, cracked heel cream along with other useful foot products to sooth tired feet that spent all day in work boots. 

   In the past two years, Jo has also designed gift baskets for baby showers and children’s gift baskets.  Jo designed two baskets for baby showers that contained items for new baby.  One of these baskets focused on everything duckie.  The duckie gift basket was designed with items that had ducks on them.  It included a blow up duck bathtub, duck faucet cover, duck diaper bag dispenser, duck books, duck rattle and of course plastic bathtub toy ducks.  The second baby basket was designed for a mom who already had baby stuff from her first baby boy but the new baby was a girl; therefore, this gift basket was designed with a variety of items for a baby girl.  For her two year old nephew Jo has designed three different gift baskets for his interests.  The first gift basket was for his first Easter and contained baby items such as diaper wipes, lotion, bath soap, baby shampoo along with a stuffed bunny and a character blanket.  The second basket was for his second Easter.  He liked to take baths so this gift basket was designed to feature tub toys and bubble bath that made bath time fun.  The third basket Jo designed for her nephew featured Thomas the Train items ranging from a lantern to books to a blanket and Thomas the Train characters. 

  The most recent and only gift basket Jo has designed that was not targeted for a specific person was one she designed for a silent auction at a church.  After the gift basket received wonderful reviews by people ranging in age from 16 to 60, she decided to take a leap from making personalized gift baskets for her family and friends to offering what she has been doing the past two years to you, personalized gift baskets that are specially designed for the recipient of the gift basket.

 

Who is Jo?

   Jo is an energetic, creative person who describes herself as a non-extreme environmentalist with a sense of reality.  She has a Bachelor’s of Science degree in journalism from Southern Illinois University located in Carbondale IL.  She is currently finishing a Maters of Science Degree at Southern Illinois University in the area of Educational Administration and Higher Education with a specialty in Community College teaching with an emphasis on Geography.  When Jo is not working on her research or teaching, she enjoys spending time with her husband Daniel E. Cook who she has been married to for four years.  They enjoy doing a variety of things together from paying racket ball to spring, summer and fall activities such as boating, hiking, biking, camping, going on picnics and going for daily walks.  On cold winter nights, they enjoy watching movies and having together time.  Both Jo and Dan like to travel and spend time with family.  Jo and Dan have two female guinea pigs for pets.  The first one they purchased is named Spice.  Her fur colors are that of common spices such as white for salt and sugar, redish brown for cinnamon, tanish brown for nutmeg and she has red eyes for chili powder.  Spice’s name came from Jo and Dan both liking to cook.  Their second female guinea pig is named Lillie.  Lille is cuddly, loveable and sweet.  She is very likable by everyone compared to Spice who has a spicey personality and has been known to nip people if they are bothering her.