In my last post I gave you some very good shopping ideas for the millennials in your life, thanks to input from Lawler, my daughter/blog coach and personal dedicated millennial test subject. If you are looking for gifts for someone in a more mature demographic, which I will define as anyone born prior to 1978, this list is for you. Now, before you Millennials get all defensive about my use of “mature” and your assumption that I am implying that you are not, think about the adjective and its antonym in terms of fruit, or trees, or wine. If you were a fruit, you would be very unripe and not ready to be eaten. If you were a tree, you would be still tethered by twine and stakes, to keep you from blowing over in a stiff wind. And if you were wine, you would be what we call "bottled headache" and would not be drinkable for at least 10 more years. So don't be offended by my use of "mature," little ones. Be glad you are not tall enough to ride this ride yet, because you will be soon enough. But I surely have some things here that your parents will enjoy, so read on.

CORAVIN WINE SYSTEM

On a recent shopping trip, Lawler and I came upon this new device that allows you to pour a glass of wine from the bottle without pulling the cork. It makes the wine last longer because it doesn’t allow air to be introduced into the wine bottle. I instantly thought of giving it to Tony, who is an oenophile, but just as quickly realized that would be stupid, because the time between when we open a bottle of wine and when it is finished is easily under two hours. But if you are shopping for someone who only drinks occasionally, it would be just the thing. I can assure you there is no one in my circle that fits that description. Plus, they had better be a really good friend because it’s pretty darned expensive. So if you have a very, very good friend, or a very, very close relative, who lives alone and drinks no more than one glass of wine a day, this would make a perfect gift.

Coravin Wine System - $299.99-$437.80 Depending on the model

Outdoor Voices Leggings

Many older people are very fit and can appreciate hip workout clothes as much as Millennials do. We are simply too frugal to buy them for ourselves because we are still conserving money in case they wind up out of work and we have to pay their rent, because having them move home is out of the question. Lawler gave me some Outdoor Voices workout pants for my birthday and I have gotten compliments on them four times, which is sort of weird given that they are just leggings. One of the people who complimented them is my good friend Robyn, who is a fitness trainer, so I asked her what it was about these pants that everyone is raving about. She said, “They make your butt look small.” So yeah. Outdoor Voices workout pants are my new favorite thing. Lawler's friend Miranda says she hasn't bought them because they look really small, but don't be fooled. They are not hard to put on like Spanx, and they aren't low-rise pants that ride around your hips like most Lululemon pants do. Mature women who have birthed a few babies don't like those. These pants have a fairly high waist that holds everything in and, at the gym or in a Yoga class, that is a really good thing. They are pretty expensive, but can you put a price on having people tell you your butt looks small?

Outdoor Voices Leggings - $70 - $95

MIS EN PLACE PREP BOWLS

When I am cooking something with a lot of ingredients - particularly a lot of different spices - I love to measure everything in advance so that, when it is time to cook, I can flip the contents of each little bowl into the pan and act like I’m hosting a cooking show. My friend Audi told me that the French call it mis en place, which literally means, “set in place.” She knows this because her husband Cricket does it too, she explained with an eye roll. This is not an unusual reaction - non-mis en placers tend to think mis en placers are annoyingly anal, rather than just intensely organized cooks who delight in the enactment of a Julia Child fantasy. So last year, when Audi gave me her annual thank you for playing the guitar and then burning 25 DVDs of the Christmas Pageant gift, she chose this adorable and highly functional mis en place measuring cup set that I think would be an excellent gift for any meticulous cook.

Unfortunately, I can't find anything online that is anywhere close to being as cute as my bowls, so I put links to some acceptable and functional prep bowl sets below. While tiny mis en place bowls are adorable, be careful not to get a size that exactly matches the size of your drain, or else it may get stuck in there and the only way you will be able to get it out is to get Tony to drill a hole in it and yank it out. I have the Oggi Melamine Pinch Bowl set listed below, but I only have 5 of them.

Oggi Melamine 6-Piece Pinch Bowl Set - $11.99

Lauryn Janae Mini 3.5" inch Glass Kitchen Prep Bowls, Set of 6 - $18.95

TECHNOLOGY GIG BAG

When Lawler and I were on that recent shopping trip, she admired the little portable technology bag I always carry in my purse. She thought it was clever of me to have all of my technology crisis tools so neatly stashed in a tidy little bag and I have to agree. Here is my bag and its contents:

I know that looks like a lot of stuff but it takes a village to come up with the right combination of equipment to use more than one generation of Apple products these days. (Lawler, I think that must be your headphone adapter, because I don't know how else I could have two). So, if you are feeling particularly generous, you could fill the gig bag with all the shit you need to operate an iPhone and iPad. If they have Android devices you could probably get a smaller bag. The handy little Guatemalan zipper bag is another gift from Audi, of the mis en place bowls, and it is several years old, so I can't find any just like it online, but I did find these Ugandan Wax Cloth Coin Purses that are a fair substitute. Plus, they come from the Hunger Site Store, so each one you buy funds 50 cups of food for people in need. Yes, Millennials, your mature friends and family members have a social conscience too. While you're feeling socially responsible you could get them some toilet paper from www.whogivesacrap.com, but don't expect it to fit in the bag.

Ugandan Wax Cloth Coin Purse - $4.99

USB EXTENSION CORDS

You won't see me sitting on the floor in an airport or convention center, tethered to an electrical outlet by a too-short umbilical power cord. I have enough USB extension cords that I can walk around a room using my phone while it is charging (as long as I am not using headphones with my new iPhone 8, of course). It never ceases to amaze me how many people notice my USB extension cord and say, "WOW! How do you do that?" It's an extension cord, people. It's not like I made it myself. What I love about these things, and other types of hardware that involve an outie that fits into an innie, is the way they are described as male and female. I truly hope the sexual misconduct police don't decide it is inappropriate for us to label things that way because I love going to the hardware store and asking for male and female parts of things. It just feels so... organic.

Here's a picture of my super long cord charging set, with extension cords for my iPhone and my iPad and a cord for my Apple watch. I think it's a pretty good system so, while you're getting the USB extension cords, get one of those multi-USB outlets too. I think this is a good present for sure.

USB 3.0 Extension Cable - Male to Female - 6 Feet (2 Pack) - $9.99

Multi USB Smart Charging Station - $16.99

ADULT COLORING BOOKS

Me posing with Sara's Home Alone coloring book. I think the resemblance is uncanny.

Get your mind out of the gutter. I don't mean porn coloring books, although by now we all know that, if I'm thinking of it, it has already been done. So of course I had to go look for some and was not at all surprised to find Sexual Seduction XXX ($10.00) and Sex Positions Coloring Book (with 40 Kamasutra Positions) ($4.99), but the one I liked the most in that category is Just Cocks ($5.00). It's M.C. Escher meets Peter Max. I'm pretty in-tune with my readership and wouldn't be at all surprised if The Coloring Book People experience a sudden surge in sales on account of this blog post.

My friends Karen and Sara both have coloring books on their coffee tables and I do relish the opportunity to color when I visit their homes. Sara has a Home Alone coloring book ($8.98) that I liked so much last year I had to have my picture taken with it, and that was long before I even dreamed of starting a blog, so goodness knows what I thought I was going to do with it, but I am delighted to be able to use it now. Karen has a box of gel pens that make coloring very fun, so I do recommend springing for those to go with the gift. I just have a box of colored pencils to go with that coloring book tradeshow swag I got at my last conference, and I put that on my coffee table but you can really do better than that. Here are my favorite coloring book selections for this Christmas. There is definitely something for everybody.

Be careful to look inside any coloring books you order online, to make sure the images are hand drawn. Some of them are just collections of photographs that people have run through Photoshop to turn them into gray-scale line drawings and they are really crappy looking.

A WHITE SHIRT

Several years ago my sister Janelle started giving me new white shirts for my birthday. At first thought this might sound like a dull gift, but I dare you to go to your closet and pull out a white shirt more than two years old that doesn't have pit stains or a spot from spaghetti sauce on the right boob or that dreaded ring-around-the-collar. There is no one on the planet who can't use a new, crisp, bright white shirt. And while you're at it, buy them some new white towels and white cloth napkins, because it's the same idea. This recommendation is much more powerful than you realize right now, and one day you will thank me for it.

Share your best ideas for gifts for the mature set in the comments below. And for those of you who are having trouble posting comments, I have a new and improved video on my YouTube channel that doesn't just show you how to post a comment on this site. It also shows you how to open an incognito browser window so that you can go porn surfing without leaving a trail. Talk about a gift for mature people...

The 2017 Mature People Gift List