For Your Smart Girlfriend: Holiday Gift Guide

Of course, we’re all smart, but your smart girlfriend doesn’t just accept information, she devours it.  Intellectual pursuit and curiosity define her.  Smart girls do like jewelry, handbags and perfume, but there are things that a smart girl just loves.  Like books, educational stuff, and Vera Wang.

As a self proclaimed “smart girl,” I’m writing this holiday gift guide to help you make, well, smart purchases for your smart friends.  So.  Here we go.

I love the library.  I do not, however, love carrying my books home every week in a reusable grocery shopping bag from WalMart.  It follows, then, that I need this Vera Bradley Tote Bag in Very Berry Paisley to carry said books.  Actually, I would pretty much accept any kind of Vera Bradley tote because I think they’re gorgeous.  This bag can be purchased directly from Vera Bradley or you could get lucky and find it on Amazon or Overstock.com, which both carry the brand from time to time.

Smart people love to be smart in several languages.  Don’t let the price discourage you, the Rosetta Stone software proves highly cost effective when compared to taking several college level courses.  Each language offered has several levels, and buyers have the option of purchasing one level at a time or an entire set.  The software can be purchased directly at the Rosetta Stone site and also at Amazon.

I type nearly all correspondence on my keyboard, but I love the idea of sending hand written notes to my friends and family.  There’s something incredibly classy about penning a “Thank You” note completely from scratch on your very own personalized stationery.

There are tons of places on the Internet you can find designs for stationery.  I really liked this one at Finestationery.com.  Mostly because it’s called “Saffron,” and because it was designed by Vera Wang.

On any given day, I might be in the process of reading up to three books at the same time.  That doesn’t mean that each of these books doesn’t need to feel special which is why I’m a bookmark junkie.  I have metal, ceramic, plastic, leather and glass ones.  While I may have lots of bookmarks, I do not have a hookmark which can be purchased at, you guessed it, Hookmarks.com.  It’s a definite bonus that this vendor mentions free gift boxes with each hookmark you purchase.

There’s probably a specific topic that whips your smart friend up into a frenzy.  Most likely, it’s something she can talk about for hours that would cause her to set aside her normally awesome social skills and cease to notice the deadened look in your eye as she goes on and on about it.

If you’ve been harassed about you’re aware of this well loved topic, head over to PBS’s site and click on “Shop PBS.” You’ll find numerous documentaries for sale, at least one of which will be entirely devoted to the thing she loves to talk about most.  While many of these titles are available on Amazon, purchasing directly from PBS ensures your money will go directly to creating more educational programming on the network.  If you can’t decide exactly what to get, they have gift certificates available, as well.

The best gifts, I think, are the ones that are both given from the heart and adequately reflect a measure of consideration for a person’s true passions in life.  Of course, if your smart friend  is really smart, she’ll like whatever you give her because she knows it’s being given with love and sincerity.

HowEVER.  If I’m your smart friend, know that my birthday is in January and this was just one big hint.  Consider yourself warned.

Happy holidays.

Friday Flops: Laptop Bag doesn’t fit laptop

I hate it when the things I buy for myself don’t work out as planned.

I was so excited to find this Relic Laptop Bag at Kohl’s.  It was on clearance sale for $11.00 and it seemed like the perfect fashionably geeky tech gift for myself.

I have to take my laptop back and forth to work.  It’s a pain in the ass.  When I saw this laptop bag I figured at the very least I could save myself some hassle by being able to use it as a computer bag and a purse, as opposed to lugging a laptop bag and a purse back and forth to work.

And it’s cute.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually hold a normal sized laptop computer.

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Going Green With Reusable Shopping Bags

I am always one of the last people to pick up on the latest “going green” trends.  It’s not that I don’t love the earth or want to be more eco-friendly.

It’s that I’m lazy and cheap and like my stuff.

I tend to be suspicious of green products because there’s a lot of overpriced, yuppy crap out there being marketed as “eco-friendly” and therefore “worth this exorbent price tag”.  Thanks, but no thanks.  The Earth and I had a talk and we’ve agreed neither of us wants me to be poor or a pretentious asshole.

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