Bryce’s Handy Christmas Gift Guide

Do you have a beloved geek in your life? Someone who needs some holiday presents, but when they tell you what they want, your eyes glaze over, and you stop being able to understand the words coming out of their mouths? Or maybe you want to surprise them with something special. Look no further, my friends! Let Bryce help you out, with the list of Stuff I Already Have and Love or Wish I Had So I Could Love.

Don’t ever say I didn’t do anything for you.

Basically, I’m just going to spit out things that I think are awesome, and when I run out of time for this blog post, I’ll stop. Easy enough, right? Click the pictures to see more info about each item.

Kindle Paperwhite–I don’t have an eReader, but if I did, this is the one I’d get. Crisp, clean text, back lit, great battery life, and it’s in the Amazon biosphere, meaning there are just a ton of books to choose from.

Lost Cities–A fantastic two player card game. Easy to learn, easy to play. Perfect for you if you want to play with the board gamer in your life, but don’t actually want to invest 10 hours each time you play a game. One game takes 15 minutes or so. Nice!

Lego Mindstorms 2.0–Certainly not for the faint of wallet. But the ability to build working robots out of Legos and then program them with your computer?!? What’s not to love?

Rocksmith–This is *without a doubt* one of the best presents I’ve ever gotten. I can play the electric guitar now. I couldn’t play it a year ago. Period. A year later, I still play almost daily, and I love love love it. It’s available for PS3, XBox 360, and Windows. This bundle comes with a guitar and the game–everything you need to get started. (Assuming you have the console, of course.)

Lord of the Rings Card Game–The best solo card game I’ve found out there. Tons of expansions available. Another one of my favorite gifts from last year. It lets me play strategy games all by myself. No friends needed! 🙂

Nintendo 3DS–TRC loves and adores his and uses it all. the. time. He can play games, shoot stop motion video, take pictures, watch Netflix–the whole shebang.

Hmmm… This book. Vodnik? Yeah. All the cool cats are reading it. 🙂

Ready Player One–One of the best books I read last year. Perfect for the techie/pop culture fiend in your life. Chock full of 80s goodness, with a sci-fi/gamer twist.

One of Denisa’s favorite kitchen tools. A modern pressure cooker that won’t blow up on you. 🙂  It’s electronic and super easy to use. Cooks beans, meats, soups, rice–you name it. She loves it.

Aerolatte Milk Frother–I use mine to make the best chocolate milk ever. Just add some Nesquick, mix it up with this little puppy, and you’ve got awesome goodness in seconds or less.

A PS3–The best bluray player out there. Oh, and it plays Playstation games, too. But mainly this is my media-consuming device of choice.

Believe it or not, but the whole family loves This Old House. Well, maybe not DC–but even TRC enjoys reading it. Maybe it only appeals to me because I live in an old house myself, but I always look forward to each issue every month.

You can’t beat this cook book for variety and easy recipes that taste great. A favorite of mine for years. I assume you all already have one, but you know what happens when you assume . . .

A friend of mine turned me on to this book. Fantastic. Tons of recipes for every cookie you can think of. It’s a reissue of an old book, so that means you get a ton of classic recipes. Perfect for Christmas baking–or whenever.

It got some bad buzz at the beginning for being  too easy, then too hard, but it’s been patched beautifully, and I still regularly play Diablo 3. Brings back old memories of earlier Diablos. Good times.

My current Leatherman of choice. I never leave home without it. Period. Because you never know when you’re going to need it.

That’s all I have time for, folks. But there you have it–a list of toys and things that I either use a bunch myself, or my family does. I vouch for all of them. Happy shopping! 🙂