Downtown Cary is known for having the charm of a small town, where everyone is your neighbor and strangers on the street don’t stay strangers for long.
In light of the neighborly, local spirit of downtown, many of the small businesses in Ashworth Village are hosting a Jingle Bell Hop on Thursday, December 5, from 5-8 p.m.
“We had a good turnout for our Grand Opening,” shares Paula Higdon, co-owner of City Garden Design. “The Jingle Bell Hop is a great way to meet the community on a more personal level. I’d love to see our customers and wish them a happy holidays.”
Downtown Deals, Drinks, & Prizes
The Jingle Bell Hop is a holiday shopping event put together by many of the merchants of Ashworth Village. Each business will offer holiday sales and specials to help you find that perfect gift. Plus, as crowds “hop” around to each business, they’ll find free treats and drinks from Once in a Blue Moon Bakery and Chatham Street Wine Market.
“To encourage guests to visit all the stores, each location will punch a card for each visitor. When a guest has their card marked by each store, they can drop it into our raffle, with prizes donated by all the merchants involved!” explains Higdon.
For example, Peak Olive Oil has added a bottles of their luscious olive oils to a gift basket. Once in a Blue Moon Bakery has opted to donate a gift certificate for an entire cake to the prize pool. Everything’s Better Monogrammed has put forth the perfect gift for any proud Caryite, a set of beautiful wooden coasters, engraved with some of our town’s most popular landmarks.
A Brief Shopping Guide
The participating small businesses and shops are overflowing with homemade, eclectic, thoughtful and unique gifts that support local artisans.
1. Monroe26
Monroe26 offers everything from funky, artsy flannels to flowy, boutique-style trends. Shirts, skirts, jewelry, and even novelty gifts like kitchen towels with funny quotes, or lipbalm sets made specifically for teachers.
2. Peak Olive Oil Company
Peak Olive Oil offers way more than just olive oil! With dozens of rich flavors of olive oils, balsamic vinegar, and fruit spreads, this place is a foodie’s dream.
Impressively unique flavors like Cranberry Pear, Honey Ginger, or Grapefruit White Balsamic pepper the shelves. One very fragrant section of shelves is dedicated to olive oil-infused products like smooth OliveCure hand and foot cream with olive and tea tree oil, and lusciously scented soaps.
3. Everything’s Better Monogrammed
Everything’s Better Monogrammed has the coziest selection of bright and bold, striped or polka-dotted Christmas jammies you’ve ever seen. Better yet, they can be monogrammed for every person in your family!
The vivid fuchsia, yellow, and orange decor promises deeply creative gifts, like beautifully monogrammed purses, enormous initials for personalized home decorating, fun boutique-style clothes, and even baby blankets and plushies. There also have Cary and North Carolina-themed wooden art with engraved images of popular icons from Cary, North Carolina, or even local universities.
As the company’s name suggests, they’ll be happy to monogram and personalize whatever gifts you have this season, whether you bought them elsewhere or in-store.
4. City Garden Design
City Garden Design has ornate indoor and outdoor plants, unique garden sculptures, delicately beautiful glass terrariums, and fun plant-themed decor.
Their luminous pear candles make for magical winter or fall decor. They’re almost too lovely to burn, and they give off only a very faint smell, so their fragrance won’t overpower the smell of your holiday home cooking.
They have large and small plants, adorable elephant planters and fuzzy mice decorations, and even small rustic ornaments — all perfect gifts for creating a simple, picturesque holiday.
5. Chatham Street Wine Market
Chatham Street Wine Market has a massive selection of wines — enough to help cover any and all upcoming holiday events. Each week they hold a free wine tasting to educate guests about the flavors, regions, and types of wine.
With everything from dry, bold reds to light, sweet dessert wines, they will be serving up samples of perfect holiday flavors for the Jingle Bell Hop.
6. Once in a Blue Moon Bakery
The treats from Once in a Blue Moon Bakery make holiday parties so much easier; plus, they make sweet gifts! For under $10, guests can purchase an entire loaf of their historic, multi-generational Pumpkin-Apple Bread, which is an enormous crowd-pleaser. Sometimes, the best gifts are edible.
Their cold case rotates through out the year, with classic flavors and unique twists on cookies, whoopie pies, cupcakes, birthday cakes, miniature pies and cheesecakes, and holiday favorites.
Growing Our Community while Holiday Shopping
As customers and Caryites, our holiday shopping has an enormous impact on our local economy. For every $100 spent at a locally owned business, $68 stays in our local economy. Less than half that amount is re-invested by national chains.
Shopping at local stores is like buying a holiday gift for our whole town.
This kind of shopping experience calls back to simpler times, when locals knew their shop owners by name, and gifts were handmade by artisans and workers in the immediate community. Instead of fighting crowds of strangers at large stores, holiday shopping itself was tradition of strolling through downtown, waving to friends and stopping in to say hello to your favorite shop owners.
Let’s bring those days back, starting with the Jingle Bell Hop, then at the other local shopping events through out December.
