If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. That way, you can have new posts delivered right to you. Or click here to subscribe to The Men's Gift Guide by Email Thanks for visiting!

Thanks to everyone who participated.  Below are our winners!

I hope that our celebration can be even bigger next year!!

-‘>Deluxe Domino Set in a wooden box – Judith Boenke of Bel Air, MD
-Grip Master – Maggie Chen of San Diego, CA
-1 set of Power Stays from Wurkin Stiffs – Kim Chopper of Baltimore, MD
-Leather Playing Card Set – Ellen Clark of San Luis Obispo, CA
-A case of energy drinks, your choice.  Courtesy of Energy This – Skylar Sutton of Akron, OH
-A $50 gift certificate to either The History Channel Shop or The A&E Shop – Sarah Couch of Cheektowaga, NY
-2 shaving product packages that include: Face Wash, Beard Destroyer Shave Cream and After Shave from groominglounge.com – Pierce Nathanson of Somerville, MA & Dan Tiemeier of Centerville, IA
-A Pepper Head Cover, Tabasco Cap, or a Jim Furyk Performance Camp Shirt from Spicy Times – Head cover to Nicole Wallace of Houston, TX, Hat to Janet Bly of Milford, DE, and Shirt to Nicole Forsythe of Milford, CT.

The rest of the entrants will be getting a Spudz.

Hey friends, just a friendly reminder that you’ve only got one week left to enter the Birthday Bash Giveaway!  As of today, there is still a REALLY high probability of winning.  So enter today and you are almost guaranteed to win a prize!

CLICK HERE FOR THE INFORMATION.

I’ve talked about the products from The Grooming Lounge many times. I personally believe they’ve got great products and think they are doing wonders for the world of men’s grooming. I hope one day they’ll invite me to their place to experience first hand what real treatment is like at a men’s salon. I’d love to write a review for you all.

Anyway, the folks at The Grooming Lounge called to congratulate and offer some more prizes! Two winners are in for a real treat with a shaving product package that includes: Grooming Lounge Face Wash, Grooming Lounge Beard Destroyer Shave Cream and Grooming Lounge After Shave. You read it right, two winners on this one!

Be sure to visit groominglounge.com to show your appreciation.

Remember, you’ve got to enter to have a chance of winning this great prize. Click here for instructions!

I was contacted by the folks at The History Channel and A&E about our Birthday Bash Give Away! They have donated a $50 gift certificate good toward anything on either site! One of their popular items right now is The Boston Red Sox: 2007 World Series Collector’s Edition DVD Set. Or you might like the Sopranos: The Complete DVD Series. They’ve got great gifts for any guy whether he likes comedy, drama, or history. Stop by and thank them for their support.

Remember, the only way you can win is by entering the Birthday Bash Give Away. Click here for instructions.

Well believe it or not, we already have another gift to add to the Birthday Bash Give Away. Our friends at Energy This have thrown in a case of energy drinks. The winner will be able to choose any case from their site for free! So whether you like Red Bull, Full Throttle, Rock Star, or Monster, well it doesn’t matter, choose whatever you want!

Be sure to check out their store and say thanks for supporting The Men’s Gift Guide.

Remember, you’ve got to enter to have a chance of winning this great prize. Click here for instructions!

It’s hard for me to believe that I’ve been doing this for a whole year already. My very first post was actually an about us page that explained why I was giving this a go. Click here to give it a read.

To celebrate our birthday and to say thank you to my readers, I am throwing myself a party, but all the gifts are for you!

Starting today, 11/15/07 you can enter to win one of 30 prizes from The Men’s Gift Guide. The entry deadline is December 15th. On December 16th, winners will be randomly chosen from the entries and I will personally mail you your prize. A tentative list of prizes is below; maybe we’ll have more before all of this is over. (If you want to offer a prize, contact me!)

Entry is easy; first of all you have to be a subscriber. If you are not yet, use the link at the top right-hand side of this page. You can subscribe by email or by RSS. On your subscription posts, there will be a link to a special page where you can enter. All I need is your name, email address, and mailing address, simple as that. By the way, your mailing address will only be used if you win a prize.

Thanks again for helping to make this a great year and here’s to many more to come. Remember to subscribe today to get entry instructions!

Current list of prizes:

-Deluxe Domino Set in a wooden box
-Grip master
-1 set of Power Stays from Wurkin Stiffs
-25 Spudz
-Leather Playing Card Set
-A case of energy drinks, your choice. Courtesy of Energy This.
-A $50 gift certificate to either The History Channel Shop or The A&E Shop.
-2 shaving product packages that include: Face Wash, Beard Destroyer Shave Cream and After Shave from groominglounge.com
-A Pepper Head Cover, and Tabasco Cap, or a Jim Furyk Performance Camp Shirt from Spicy Times.

So it doesn’t look like Geekologie or Engadget like the idea of a wooden DIY keyboard. Personally, I think the idea is kind of intriguing. But lets look at it from our Rules For Giving Gifts To Men angle.

Rule #6 states that a gift should challenge him. By their very nature, do-it-yourself projects get his mind working and his juices flowing. Projects such as this, easy or difficult, give him the opportunity to prove his worth and demonstrate his abilities.

Rule # 8 suggests to give manly things. Something, anything, made out of wood will always be a pre-approved great gift for men. It’s just one of those natural, primitive elements that is intrinsically male. Many of man’s earliest tools were made of wood; why not his latest tool?

So by rule, any item that is covered by more than one rule has a good chance of being a great gift for men, and the wooden keyboard qualifies. That being said, for my money, I’d still prefer the steampunk keyboard.

Well, it must be October. I’ve noticed for the last week that my mailbox has gradually gotten fuller and fuller. It started out gradual; one here one there. But one day last week I counted six catalogs in the mail on the same day. Now don’t get me wrong, I love it. For a guy that writes a shopping blog, it’s the best time of the year.

It got me curious though. With the internet, and all it has to offer, do people still shop from catalogs? Do you enjoy going through the catalogs in the mail as much as I? Or do they just get thrown away? Let me know what you think.

Anyway, get ready for more great gift ideas from The Men’s Gift Guide. We are starting to hit the biggest gift giving time of the year!

When I was in elementary school, we would take a trip to the planetarium every school year. This was before the age of school budget cuts. I’m sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore. Anyway, we would go and the session would start out with some classroom time. The teacher was the same guy, year after year. I really looked forward to these field trips and they were lots of fun. So after the classroom, we’d go into the planetarium for the presentation, and then return to the classroom for the rest of the day.

The planetarium was down the hall from the classroom. When we left the planetarium, we would sprint down the hall back to the classroom. The thing was, the teacher was still in the room when we left the planetarium, but always was already in the classroom after we ran 100 feet down the hall. Whoa. It was like magic every time. The guy didn’t have more than five seconds before we were there, but he never failed. He was in the room, standing at the desk, like he’d been there the whole time. It was amazing.

Every year, he’d ask one kid to guess how he got there so fast. And each year, the kid he called on would guess the door that was behind the desk at the front of the room. Well that must have just been a storage room because that wasn’t it. So each and every year, some kid would guess the same door, and every year, it still wasn’t the right answer. He would always tell us that he’d give us the correct answer when we were in the fifth grade (our last year of elementary school).

Finally in fifth grade it was time to go and I couldn’t wait to get the answer (yeah, didn’t have a lot to look forward to in those years). Remember, I had sat through four years of some idiot kid guessing the same thing year after year. The day arrived and the trip was canceled because the guy was sick. It was rescheduled, but we never went because, rest his soul, the man died.

I never found out how he got to the classroom so quickly. This was probably twenty years ago and it still drives me crazy to this day.

My point in telling you this is to reiterate gifts for men rules # 3 and 7. If your man relays to you some sad story such as this, use it to your advantage. Plan a trip to the planetarium so he can relive those memories of youth. It’s often very interesting where men hide their gift idea hints. You’ve just got to be on the lookout.

I read an interesting post by Peter Crump on his blog, Find That Gift For Him, about whether or not a man should wear a wedding ring. You can check out the post here. He explains the history of men’s wedding rings, and makes some great points. Some of which I agree with, and of course, some of which I don’t. Don’t you just love the blog-o-sphere as a place to get differing opinions? Here is my take.

Crump explains that men wearing a wedding ring really only started during WWII as soldiers starting wearing them overseas as a symbol of their marital status. At the time, this was a voluntary act, and Crump argues that “despite the fact that the wearing of a mans wedding band is more common now, I think it is still true to say that it is considered optional.” Well I don’t know about you, but try going to my wife and asking her if my wedding ring is “optional” and I’m sure you’ll get a strong opinion. Which is interesting considering my ring almost never comes off unless I need to clean it, yet she usually removes hers the second she comes in the house.

Crump then goes on to say that for many men, it’s the first jewelry they may have ever owned so they are uncomfortable with it. Agreed, but hopefully it’s also the first wife he’s ever had (and last?) so everything has a break-in period.

He also points out that some men’s jobs or hobbies do not allow for the wearing of jewelry for safety or legal reasons. No argument there.

Peter’s main point of the post, is that the wearing, or not wearing, of a wedding ring should be entirely up the couple and shouldn’t be the subject of outside opinion. I couldn’t agree more.

My point here, and what I really want to add to this conversation, is that some kind of significant gift should be exchanged on the wedding day. So he’s not up for rings, so what, get him something else that works for the two of you. There are any number of pieces of jewelry that can be special. For example, when my grandmother was dying 15 years or so ago, she knew that my grandfather would end up married again. Obviously, she knew that he would then wear a new wedding ring. So she bought him a gold necklace that he wore as a symbol of her till the day he died. And yes, that necklace stayed on even during other relationships and marriages. The point is that another gift of significance can work, instead of a ring. Incidentally, I now own the original wedding ring that my wife had resized for me. It’s a really nice thing to have and I use it as an optional secondary wedding ring.

Optional secondary ring? Heck yeah. Variety is a good thing. A couple years ago, I was really giving my wife a hard time about never wearing many of the other rings I’ve given her over the years. She finally told me that she didn’t really want to wear multiple rings, being a school teacher and working with her hands all day, and she felt bad not wearing her actual wedding ring. So I told her that she was free to wear any ring she wanted, so long as she had something on her finger that I had given her. I’m not concerned about which ring she wears, so long as she wears one. Frankly, I’m much happier that the other pieces I’ve given her are getting some use now.

Since we’re on the subject of men’s jewelry, I’m so pleased to say that men’s jewelry has been coming on strong lately. Many different things have become fashionable again. So, I am going to officially announce that next week will be Men’s Jewelry Week at The Men’s Gift Guide. Each day, I’ll focus on a different kind of men’s jewelry and give you some of my top picks for each one. You may be surprised of some of the cool stuff out there for him right now. If you are going to make a jewelry purchase for the holidays, now would be the perfect time to get that done.

So thanks to Peter Crump, at Find That Gift For Him, for bringing up this topic. If you get a chance to check out his site, he’s got some great ideas on a variety of men’s topics.