misosouper, a shopping blog

Am I insinuating that the gifts you usually give aren’t meaningful?  (Maybe I am.  I can be like that sometimes.)   Regardless of how much of a jerk I am, these should go out to the ones you love.

Tiny and delicate can also be a grand gesture.

A container for just one thing.  Your love? Your dignity? I’ll let you decide.

You heard the man. Be somebody, all day long.

While Virginia Woolf insists on a room of one’s own, I’d just settle for my very own comfy chair.

Putting your jewelry in this dish will probably scare the robbers away.

I’m not sure what the metaphor is either, but I think I like it.

Perfect for your new assistant. When he finds a better job, ask for it back and give it to your next one.

Felt is so much sexier than leather. What would you rather rub up against in the subway?

Give this to your mother-in-law.  Then smile like you mean it.

For the more cynical among us. (Hey, I say meaningful, not joyful.)

These honesty stamps allow you to apologize or inflame, all without opening your mouth. Isn’t that what got you in trouble in the first place?

A much better teacher gift than caramel corn or an ornament.

A little handmade book of garden birds for your favorite green thumb.

An elegant home for the most modern of necessities.

Puts those Cartier love bracelets to shame.

There’s someone like this in your life, even if it’s your therapist. A route we do not recommend.

Ridiculously romantic: artist Jessica Marie Lertvilai collected love letters and transcribed them in Braille onto the surface of this vase, appropriately entitled “love is blind.”

Is there a more affectionate term of endearment?

These metal flowers come gift-ready in a long white box. Bonus: they’ll never, ever die.

Acrylic is the new gold. Custom made, so get your order in now.

After all these years, there are still some questions left unasked.

And after all these years, they still deserve some secrets.

Send in your doodle, and they’ll stuff it for you.

An anatomically correct silver heart locket. Go Victorian and enclose a lock of hair.

This therapeutic warming mattress cover, with its six separate temperature zones, could save your relationship.

Remember when you used to go to concerts? (Both a question and a statement.)

Limited edition, just like your kid.

Yes, you could just write out twelve ways you made a difference in a plain journal; but if it were that easy, wouldn’t you already have done it?

Make a wish.  Make it count.

Here are my favorites:  all big, all yellow, all under $350.

(Click on the pic to be taken to Polyvore, which will give you details and links to the watches.)

Confession:  my love for the Swatch lingers.  Out of all the fashion foibles from my 80s past (banana clips, over and under bangs, pegged Guess jeans), I so wish I could reclaim my Swatch watch circa 1987, complete with both rubber and plastic face guards.    (I’m not quite sure what I was thinking with that choice, which happened to be my 10th birthday present.  Maybe that Mondrian primary colors go with everything?)

I have upgraded to a more modern Swatch (gold with a stretch metal band, circa 2007 at the Chicago Swatch store), but I still long for the simplicity mixed with the avant garde of the old models.  This 1991 vintage version is the one I want now–black, bare, perfect, the Yohji Yamamoto of Swatches.

*Still jonesing for a big gold watch?  Tune in next week for my recommendations.

Now that my daughter has started preschool, I’m planning ahead for show-and-tell. One of the goals of show-and-tell, of course, is to bring in the coolest thing, the thing that makes all the other kids tug their parents’ shirts and loudly whisper, “Oooh, I want thaaat,” in that long-voweled way kids so sweetly do.

Yeah, they’re brine shrimp; and yeah, they’re gross; but I can guarantee you that when your child (hell, when your significant other) trots into her classroom with a Sea Monkey strapped to her wrist, you’re the parent of the coolest kid in the school.