Gift Ideas For The Real World 1

November 25, 2008

I’m looking in magazines for gift ideas. The suggestions run about $200 and up.

Not.

I don’t know anyone who gives, or expects to receive, $1000 bar sets as gifts. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong magazines. I should look in Bob and Doug McKenzie’s Guide To Giving For The Frozen North. Unlimited bounty that you’re still paying for in March is my idea of what ruins Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong. I adore shopping above all activities. As you can read in 20 Features Of A Perfect Shopping Partner, I take it bloody seriously : ) and won’t go shopping with just anyone. Shopping for gifts can be even more fun than shopping for myself. It puts a new spin on a familiar activity. It challenges we sultans of shopping to showcase our talents.

Gifts that do something are the best. I like fluff as much as the next woman but I can’t use it for anything. If it doesn’t perform a service, hopefully it can be hung.

As much as I have enormous fun writing all the articles, this one is dear to me because of my love of shopping. If I post all the ideas at once, it will be a 37 page article. So, I’m going to do groups of 10.

Got ideas ?? I speak for the group here, we’d LOVE to know them.

The first 10

1. Wicking socks. Men LOVE these. Some men anyway. Every man I know. From Mark’s Work Wearhouse, venerable Canadian institution that it is.

2. A Bluetooth. Has this happened to you? You’re driving along and your cell phone rings. Damn. It’s at the bottom of your purse. You’re digging around for it, it’s ringing away, you look up and swerve to avoid the hydro pole. You answer but it’s gone to voice mail. You toss it back in your purse. It rings again!

The other scenario is to have the child in the passenger seat look for it. But they’re in no hurry, they’re finding all this interesting stuff in your purse. Same ending. And there’s a police car behind you – hands free legislation is coming or is already here.

With a Bluetooth, there’s a tiny earpiece in your ear. The phone rings in your purse. You leave it in your purse. You serenely push a button on the earpiece, and voila, you’ve answered the call. To make an outbound call, push the same button and say “Call Laura”. It has voice recognition and can recognize what any name on your phone contact list would sound like. If it’s not sure, it will ask “Did you say “Call Laura”?”

Your phone need never come out of your purse again. These make life BETTER!

Some are big and obnoxious. Mine is little and comfortable.

It comes from a fave store, Future Shop. It’s Best Buy in the US, same store, double branding. This one is a Motorola H681. There are many styles, many prices, many features. These things are fairly inter-compatible. They pair with any phone or computer system, most of the time. The people at the store will help you and might even pair the devices for you. It is truly simple to do it yourself.

3. A heated mattress pad. Hey, it’s Canada!

4. Seriously warm, dry gloves. They may cost $100 but that’s less than the bar set. Warm and dry really feels good. The bar set is wet and cold when in use, most unpleasant.

The Wicked Good Shearling Gloves at LLBean are irresistible. Sore cold hands goodbye.

These are the Ascent Gloves with Gore-Tex. They’ve been independently rated Tops For Warmth.

5. Beautiful cooking oils and spices in re-usable bottles and containers. A bottle of 1 of the 9 very best premium vanilla extracts would be treasured by a baker, or even by me.

6. For the BBQing man, discover Ted Reader’s cookbooks. Really. Learn about this guy.

With book names like Hot, Sticky, and On Fire, and books about grilling on planks, stones, and vines, these are the foods that guests put in their mouth and stop for a minute. This is guy food, complicated in ways a man can get with, with a Beer-O-Meter difficulty scale with each recipe. Men LOVE making and eating and talking about this food, as they stand around the BBQ and discuss. You will be thanked for these books.

This video comes from YouTube.

You have got to go look at the BBQ equipment mounted on the red trailer on wheels. Now what man would not be thrilled? This is what I call passion. I understand Ted has 60 different types of BBQ in his backyard. Don’t miss the sample recipes and the blog when you visit the site.

7. Fun socks. On a serious day, sometimes great socks are there to remind you to lighten up. I wore out my pink polka dot socks. Leopard prints, Christmas prints, just nothing serious or kid-like (kittens, for example, could be too adolescent; leaping frogs are fine, I feel, depending on the day); might also be best to avoid glitter so you don’t have to take Michael Jackson comments!

Look at Joy Of Socks for goddess of fortune socks, mermaids, snowmen, cats, stripes, bright colors in diamonds and argyle patterns, there are some great socks here. There are also some very elegant socks, like these from Chinese Laundry.

8. Hockey game tickets. Hey, it’s Canada! If you really like these people because they drove your child around all year and delivered it alive, throw in the meal at the Sports Bar beforehand.

9. The jewelry at J. Crew. Dear heavens, it’s greatness. If money were neither here nor there, I’d never shop anywhere else. These clothes just sing to me. In the meantime, I’ll remain a Value Villager and splurge now and again.

10. Good solid plain men’s belts. My belts last 20 years. My husband goes through a belt a year.

No weird details, no shiny stuff, not embossed, no odd inserts, plain buckle with no imaginative features. Men should be controlled from free forays into the sartorially creative. It’s a recipe for a mistake. This Roots belt is a good one (though the Roots site doesn’t seem to give the width, hopefully it’s about 1.5 to 1.75 inches wide).