They say you can give without loving, but you can’t love without giving. Suppose there’s a special occasion coming up and you need to get a gift for a special person, but what if you don’t know what that person likes? It may seem that everything you think of buying makes you wonder whether he/she is really going to like it. Should you just go into the mall and blindly buy a present anyway?Welcome to the horrors of gift shopping for a special person. But while shopping for someone who’s particularly hard to shop for may be a harrowing experience, it’s not impossible to find gift ideas that would make anyone smile, even if you don’t know your recipient all that well.What makes this kind of gift special is that it gives you the freedom to choose many different gift items, presented as one gift – a gift basket. A gift basket is basically a collection of closely-related gifts intended to be presented as a whole.You might wonder, “Gift baskets? Aren’t those popular only around Christmas?” Well, they may be more popular during the most wonderful times of the year, but gift baskets are so flexible that they can be prepared and given all throughout the year. Gift baskets are your best friends when it comes to gift giving, since it makes gift buying a lot more fun, and it multiplies the “Ah!” factor when you finally present the gift.The beauty in giving gift baskets is that you have total freedom with what you can put in the basket. You’re limited by only your imagination. Even if you don’t know the person really well, the slightest idea about their hobbies, their personalities, and their career is often enough to get started in preparing unique gift baskets.Of course, it doesn’t mean you can throw in the first few items you can think of and expect the gift basket to be “memorable.” A carelessly-prepared gift basket might scream, “I threw in a bunch of random stuff because I’m too busy to figure out the things you really like.” It gives off the bad image of not really caring enough about the recipient.As mentioned above, even if you know just a little about the person you’re buying a gift for, it’s often enough to give you an idea of what should be go into the gift basket. Let’s say your would-be recipient would like to try gardening, but never had the time. You can grab a gardening bucket to serve as your basket, serving as the base for a gardening supply gift basket. Fill the bucket with the usual gardening tools that you can find like, a mini rake, soil scooper, hoe, pruner and gloves. Throw in a few packets of vegetable and flower seeds, plus a gardening magazine, and you’ve prepared a gift basket that’ll surely make your recipient smile!Your gardening enthusiast would be thrilled when they receive the gardening supply gift basket. Every time that they go gardening, they’ll remember you. And when the seeds you gifted begin to bloom, they’ll appreciate you more and more. You can say it’s a gift that keeps growing!Try to think of one single theme you can base your gift basket on. Let’s say you have a friend who’s dreaming of visiting a particular country, such as Italy. Then you can start gathering things related to traveling to Italy, like fact books, a mini flag, a map, a useful phrasebook, and whatever else you can think of that encourages a visit to Italy. It’s a thoughtful way of saying that you know about their travel dream and that you’d like them to fulfill their wishes one day. When they do visit Italy, they’ll surely bring your gifts along and remember you.Of course, not everybody has that creative touch, and you may not have enough time to gather the gift items to complete your gift basket. If this is the case, there are specialty shops out there that can prepare the gift basket for you. Just tell them what you want the gift basket to be all about, and they’ll come up with an appropriate gift basket idea for you. Even if you don’t have any idea what the theme will be, they usually have a wide range of ideas you can choose from. The best thing about specialty shops is that they can even deliver the gift basket for you. This is an important service to consider, especially if your recipient lives out of town and you can’t make it to the party.The Internet is the best place to look for specialty gift shops. There are a whole lot of shops to choose from, and you can pick the one you like best by checking the photos of gift baskets they’ve made in the past. As mentioned before, they won’t only prepare the gift basket for you, but they can deliver it as well. The better shops out there have special tracking methods to make sure the gift basket makes it to the intended destination.It’s really quite easy to come up with a special gift basket for anyone. Whatever your relationship may be with that person, there’s always an appropriate gift to give. Do you ever worry that the gifts you give will be inappropriate? Don’t worry – it’s easy to prepare an inexpensive yet thoughtful gift basket. For instance, you can give an art gift basket to a young painter – with a canvass, brushes, oil pastels or watercolors, etc. For somebody who loves cooking, a gift basket with a new cookbook, pans, ladles, and pot holders can do the trick.These are but a few ideas of how versatile a gift basket can be. The sky’s virtually the limit when it comes to what you can put into a basket. Whatever you choose to give, you can be sure that you will be remembered fondly because of the thoughtful effort you gave into putting unique gift baskets together.