Valentine's Day 2010: 10 Gifts for Him

With Valentine's Day three weeks away, it's time to think outside of the chocolate box for guy gifts. Women may be tempted to give sentimental tokens on February 14, but most men prefer playful or practical gifts. (See the Seven Guidelines for Guy Gifts.) Consider these 10 guy gifts to celebrate Cupid's big day.

		Victorinox Swisscard. Arm your guy's wallet with a credit-card-sized multi-tool. The SwissCard includes a letter opener, scissors, tweezers, a magnifying glass, 3mm and 5mm flat-head screwdrivers, two Phillips screwdrivers, a LED mini light and an integrated ruler ($20 from Amazon.com).
		Mr. Beer Premium Edition Home Microbrewery System. Have your Valentine home brew and bottle his own batch of beer. With just four steps, this kit is great introduction to the craft of beer making ($40 from Amazon.com).
		6-month Netflix Gift Subscription. Introduce your guy to Netflix (or extend his current subscription). He gets DVDs in the mail or he can instantly stream movies to computers, game consoles and other devices ($54 to $102 depending on the plan, from Netflix).
		Buckyballs. Rolling Stone's 2009 Toy of the Year. This set of 216 magnetic spheres can forms countless shapes. Give your Valentine this highly addictive gadget/puzzle ($26.31 from Amazon.com).
		Popcorn Palace. Send him a Valentine's Day one-gallon tin filled with Chocolate Drizzle Caramel Corn and Gourmet White Cheddar Popcorn ($25 from Popcorn Palace).
		Gigantic Sweet Hearts Fortune Cookie. Create your personalized fortune message in a Nerf-football-sized fortune cookie. This treat is dipped in chocolate and coated with candy hearts. I loved the cookie received as an eighth wedding anniversary gift ($30 from Good Fortunes).
		Coffee Tote. Make sure he has java on his next junket. This black canvas tote holds a stainless steel vacuum flask for piping hot coffee, two insulated mugs, a small container for cream, two stainless spoons, and a napkin ($56 from Uncommon Goods).
		Cricket Laptop Stand. Make life with his laptop easier with this ergonomic stand. The Cricket props up any laptop computer nine inches for more comfortable viewing ($40 from Relax the Back).
		Slingbox PRO-HD. Set the TV free. Slingbox allows your guy to watch his DVR, cable or satellite TV on the go. This nifty device streams his favorite shows to a laptop or smart phone ($264 from Amazon.com).
		Personalized Steak Branding Iron. The mark of a real grill master. Order your guy's initials for this iron, seared into a wooden gift box ($47 from Texas Irons).

iTunes Store Streamlines Haiti Relief Donations

John Hodgman audio books are no longer my favorite thing on the iTunes Store. Apple just simplified donations to the American Red Cross to help the Haiti relief effort. If you have an iTunes account, you can give $5, $10, $25, $50, $100 or $200, and Apple will charge the credit card you have on record. You'll find a contribution link on the iTunes Store Home or click here to launch iTunes and access the donation page. Your monetary gift is anonymous, and 100% goes to the American Red Cross to provide food, water, shelter and emergency services to disaster victims in Haiti. It's the best transaction I've made on the iTunes Store.

Give to Haiti Earthquake Relief

Haiti needs our help. If you can, give to a reputable charity online. Or simply visit Amazon.com to make a donation for Haiti earthquake relief.

Consider the charities below that meet the Better Business Bureau's 20 Standards for Charity Accountability.

• Action Against Hunger
• American Friends Service Committee
• American Jewish World Service
• American Red Cross
• AmeriCares Foundation
• CARE
• Catholic Relief Services
• Compassion International
• Concern Worldwide
• Direct Relief International
• Episcopal Relief and Development
• Food for the Hungry
• Friends of the World Food Program
• International Medical Corps
• Lutheran World Relief
• Medical Teams International
• Mercy Corps
• Operation USA
• Oxfam America
• Physicians for Peace Foundation
• Project Concern International
• Save the Children Federation
• United States Fund for UNICEF
• World Relief
• World Vision

Resolutions Revisited: Gift Giving Guy in 2009

I'm overdue on my annual bookkeeping for this blog. In 2009, I made five resolutions for Gift Giving Guy. Let's check the ledger and see whether I was on time, within grace or past due.

Resolution #1: Publish 100 posts in 2009.
Past Due. I posted 75 times in 2009, three quarters toward the goal.


Resolution #2: Introduce six new gadgets, design revisions or other blog improvements.
On Time. I started using Twitter on March 22, adding a follow link and the latest tweet to the right column. I embedded a ShareThis link on each post. Two new hub pages, Guy Gift Ideas and Gifts by Occasion, made their debut. And I included two new Blogger gadgets: recent comments and a poll.


Resolutions #3 and #4: Create an online quiz. Offer a guide on gift giving by personality traits.
Within Grace. I'm counting my post, "Selecting Gifts by Personality Quiz," toward both of these resolutions.


Resolution #5: Blog about gift giving and e-commerce insights discovered in my MBA classes.
On Time. I matched my graduate school experience with gift giving six times in 2009:

• A Gift Deferred: The Wii for Christmas
• Brand-name Gifts
• A Perfect Gift from Buckle
• Irreverent References: Gifts for MBA, Law and Medical Students
• When Gift Retailers Fail
• Keeping Workplace Gifts Respectful

Birthday Gifts for the Entertaining Hostess

In our home, my wife is the hostess-in-chief. If I were running hospitality, I'd be tempted to follow the advice of comedienne/actress Amy Sedaris: fill the medicine cabinet with marbles. ("Nothing announces a nosey guest better than an avalanche of marbles hitting a porcelain sink," Sedaris suggests.) So for my wife's birthday, I gave her gifts that affirm her as the entertaining hostess.

		Any event needs a plan. Notepad maker Knock Knock packages a menu list, a shopping list and a cooking prep list in The Chef's Planning Kit.
		Two of my wife's favorite crooners are Michael Bublé and Harry Connick, Jr. I gave her their new albums (Crazy Love and Your Songs respectively) as lively music for our party prep.
		Instead of pitchers, we'll be serving from Artland Simplicity Eight-Piece Punch Bowl Set. The bowl and set of six cups have clean lines. And my wife likes the the ladle is crafted from glass, not acrylic.
		I think her favorite is the Waring Professional Buffet Server and Warming Tray. She loves to host brunch, and now the food will stay piping hot.

100 Years of Hallmark

I'd almost given up on Hallmark. Then in 2000, the greeting card giant released its Fresh Ink line. These cards are colorful, clever, odd-shaped, off-beat, even snarky at times. Fresh Ink is my first choice when seeking a greeting card. Today Hallmark celebrates 100 years of cards — still fresh after a century.

Puzzling Presents

This Christmas, we only had 9.8 lords a-leaping. That is, until we moved the coffee table and found that final missing piece of our "12 Days of Christmas" jigsaw puzzle. Puzzles challenge your problem-solving and pattern-recognition skills and make a great gift for families. Consider these puzzling presents.

		German puzzle maker Ravensburger sells some of the best jigsaw puzzles available. I like the 1,000-piece puzzles, like the Celebrating Paris puzzle. Ravensburger also offers puzzles with 1,500 pieces (Van Gogh's Café Terrace at Night), 3,000 pieces (Oceanic Wonders) and a brain-scrambling 18,000 pieces (Tropical Impressions).
		Don't let that jigsaw puzzle overwhelm their dining room table. Ravenburger features a "stow and go" mat to roll up puzzles up to 1,500 pieces.
		Giving a gift card? Puzzle fans may enjoy the challenge of freeing that card from ThinkGeek's Gift Card Puzzle Vault. You lock up the gift card, and your giftee must navigate a ball bearing through a translucent plastic maze to release it.
		Upload your digital photo at PortraitPuzzles.com and create a 1,008-piece personalized jigsaw puzzle. Choose a puzzle box or puzzle tin for packaging.
		Fuel creativity with Roger von Oech's Ball of Whacks. Arrange the 30 multi-color magnetic pyramids to form hundreds of unique shapes. Couple this gift with the book A Whack on the Side of the Head.
		Puzz 3D foam-based puzzles appeal to one's inner architect. Let them build the U.S. Capitol Building in their family room.
		For my nephew's fifth birthday, I gave the Melissa & Doug 100-piece Pirate's Bounty floor puzzle. Read the blog post.
		Do your gift recipients subscribe to the New York Times? Look up their birth date or anniversary date and give them a puzzle based on that day's front page.

Mistaken Gifts

I just re-digested a whole year of Reader's Digest, a gift from my in-laws. Last year, the RD editors favored stories of gifts gone wrong, as seen in these five reader anecdotes.

January 2009: Submitted by Kay Przybille
I've always wanted a beautiful shawl to wear with my winter dresses. So when I opened the present from my sister Wanda and saw that it was a white-and-silver shawl, I squealed in delight.

"I love it!" I told Wanda that evening. "I wore it all morning."

"You wore it?" she asked, smiling. "It's a skirt for the Christmas tree."

***

January 2009: Submitted by Ruth Williams
For the holidays one year, rather than send gifts, my friend decided to enclose checks in her greeting cards. Inside each card she wrote "Buy your own presents" and then sent them off.

A few months later, she discovered the checks she'd "mailed" under a pile of books.

***

March 2009: Submitted by Susanna Wolk
Dad got an iPod Nano as a gift. He thought it was a tie clip.

***

May 2009: Submitted by Jamie Carlson

The knit cap my friend sent me from England was a bit small. But it was lovely, so I wore it to church that Sunday. Afterward, I e-mailed her to say how nice it looked on me.

She shot me back a note saying how glad she was. "Especially," she wrote, "since it's a tea cozy."

***

October 2009: Submitted by Heather Boyd
Last Valentine's Day, I arrived at the doctor's office where I work as a receptionist to find a mystery man pacing up and down holding a package. As I got out of the car, he declared warmly, "I have something for you." I excitedly ripped open the bundle. It was a urine sample.