“Holiday gift guide for every personality and lifestyle - Los Angeles Times” plus 1 more |
| Holiday gift guide for every personality and lifestyle - Los Angeles Times Posted: 11 Dec 2010 08:53 AM PST HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE 2010 RUGGEDY ANDY This guy loves the outdoors and looking good while he's out there. Or he's just a guy who appreciates the tradition of a heritage label and the subtlety of earth tones. Err on the practical side and give him something that keeps him warm, tells time or adds to his tool kit. Penfield for Rag & Bone men's Mallory jacket in deep khaki, $695 at Saks Fifth Avenue Pendleton (for) Levi's blanket, $198 at Levi's retail stores nationwide and http://www.levi.com Gap Men's fingerless gloves, $14.50 at http://www.gap.com Nixon (for) Barneys Limited Edition Watch Collection "The Chronicle" with interchangeable band in black stainless steel or brown Horween leather, $495 at Barneys New York, Beverly Hills American Living Western Vest, $85 at JCPenney Tool set by Jonas Damon, $95 at http://www.areaware.com BEAUTY QUEEN Sephora's got nothing on this girl. She has an encyclopedic mind for cosmetic brands, collects limited-edition beauty products and loves a new lipstick like others love shoes. Shiny, pretty packaging doesn't hurt either — she'll swiftly swing these new items into daily rotation or tuck them away in her purse to stare at later. Here are some sure-to-be-appreciated items. Nars Bento Box, $125 at http://www.narscosmetics.com Clarins limited-edition beauty balm with Swarovski crystal packaging, $48 at Nordstrom Dolce & Gabbana, the Lip Jewels compact, $60 at http://www.Saks.com Sephora Favorites "Give me some lip" box set of 10 lip glosses, $48 at http://www.sephora.com GHD Dazzle Collection Set $240, at http://www.ghdhair/us.com THE MELLOW FELLOW The yoga studio is this person's home away from home and he or she won't eat a vegetable if it doesn't come from the local farmers market. Gift the friend who sticks to a natural and organic lifestyle with some stylish but useful items. Yogamatic customizable yoga mat, $85 at http://www.yogamatic.com This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Gift-giving guide for the clueless at Christmas - Los Angeles Times Posted: 10 Dec 2010 04:47 PM PST It's a fact: Some people are really bad at gift-giving. And by some people I mean me. The traditional gift for every wedding anniversary I've been party to has been paper — as in hastily scrawled IOUs for Palm Springs vacations, weekends at the Beverly Hills Hotel and landscaping. Widen the circle beyond my spouse and it only gets worse. One year my brother and I exchanged the exact same gift (a DVD of Pink Floyd's "Live at Pompeii" performance). And for three years running, I've inadvertently given my sister-in-law things that have ended up back in my possession, either because she already owned the same item or because I'd subconsciously bought her something I'd wanted for myself in the first place so she turned it back over to me. There is the occasional truly inspired gift — long ago I decided my stock wedding gift to former paramours would be the gravy boat off the registry — but the combination of an impulsive nature, the attention span of a nematode and the pressure of a marathon holiday shopping season make me possibly the worst bestower of seasonal gifts of any creature with opposable thumbs. That's why I've developed a handful of fail-safe coping mechanisms — which can be easily remembered by using the acronym "GIFT." As we hit the midpoint of the holiday shopping marathon, consider them a gift. Get going — early It's never too soon to start making a list. If holiday shopping begins in earnest in September for most of the country (which, according to the National Retail Federation, it does), the gifting-challenged should consider kicking into high gear for next Christmas before the last ribbon has been removed from this year's haul. There's a bonus to this approach: What better way to figure out how well future gifts might go over than by noting this year's reactions? Remember the time your dieting or deathly allergic in-laws recoiled at a gift box of nut clusters as if it were bubonic plague? If you had, you might not later have gotten them each the biggest Harry & David gift basket you could carry. As presents are unwrapped, feel free to make extensive notes — everyone will simply think you're conscientiously making a thank-you list. Invest (time, not money) It's hard to truly hate a handicraft — especially at the holiday season. And, since homemade oven mitts and marmalades can't be returned or exchanged, they have to be tolerated. That's why something like, say, bottles of home-infused horseradish vodka along with a neatly printed Bloody Mary recipe (affixed with a jaunty red bow) will work every time. The same approach applies to tins of home-baked butterscotch brownies, hand-carved kitchen spoons and cross-stitched table runners. Even if you lack basic baking, weaving or trivet-crafting skills, chances are you probably have a hard drive crammed with digital images from the last year. Spend a couple of hours of down time dragging, dropping and writing cute captions, upload the finished product to any number of websites and — voilà! — that trip with Mom to Montana becomes a professionally printed keepsake photo book that will live proudly on the coffee table forever. And if you want a gift that's a little more fashion forward, the folks at Shortomatic.com can put your personal pictures on a pair of custom-made board shorts. Flag it It's always preferable to make note of a potential purchase when the hint is dropped, the finger is pointed or the picture of the Louis Vuitton handbag is taped to your shaving mirror. While a file folder (physical or virtual) labeled "Holiday Gifts" might be sufficient for some folks, there are also some high-tech coping mechanisms — such as the website Evernote — that can help. Created as a one-stop bulletin board, clipping service and file folder that lives online, Evernote allows snippets of text, Web links and e-mails to be tagged, flagged and organized by topic ("Christmas Gifts," for example) — all from a smart phone. Then, when it comes time to drop the turkey baster and don the Santa hat, a quick visit to Evernote will refresh your memory with all the swell gift ideas you've stumbled across all year long. And take a helpful hint from someone who's been there: If you do this, make sure to include the potential giftee's name, lest you forget who was clamoring for the at-home cheese-making kit (mozzarella and ricotta), the T-shirt with a vintage "Slaughterhouse-Five" book cover design or the padded wine bottle sleeves from the SkyMall catalog. Think twice Finally, before clicking that order button, think about it. Then think about it again. Are you really buying that absinthe cocktail book / 3-D flat-screen TV / bacon-of-the-month club membership for your loved one or for yourself? And even if her name is at the top of an Amazon.com wish list, is your sister-in-law the kind of person who really would ask for a Heineken BeerTender? Maybe it's a different Kathleen Moore. Of course, GIFT will only get you so far — as I discovered last Christmas when I found myself subjected to the peculiar form of torture known as the "Yankee swap" at the hands of my family. While the rules can vary wildly, a Yankee swap (also called a "white elephant" gift exchange) consists of a group gift exchange that allows participants to choose between unwrapping an unopened gift or appropriating someone else's already opened present. The fact that the game by its nature encourages stealing from infants and senior citizens, what gift (of not more than $20 in value) could possibly be suitable (even on a humorous level) for each of the 17 family members that encompass three generations and range in age from 18 months to 74 years? Hastily scrawled IOUs, anyone? This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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