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Tuesday, Dec 2, 2008 8:01 PM UTC

Midrange gifts for the house proud

An Oscar Wilde-inspired mirror boasts style and humor, and graceful LEDs light your way to a lower electricity bill.

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Midrange gifts for the house proud

For the person on your list who has a sense of style and humor in equal measures, consider this Innervision Mirror ($89). It may look like an eye test on first glance, but get your eyes checked: It actually bears the Oscar Wilde quote “To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.” Not to be mistaken for the Oh How Beautiful (You Are) mirror ($99), which sycophantically flatters its owner without quoting Oscar Wilde.

How many Republicans does it take to screw in a light bulb? None, if you use these Candela lights ($69 for a set of four), lit by LED rather than bulbs. Rechargeable, graceful and handy, these lights fall somewhere between a candle, a lamp and a flashlight; they can be used indoors and out, to set a mood or just fill in for that light bulb no one ever bothered to replace.

Chances are that most of your friends and loved ones will be spending a lot more time nesting during the recession. And more time at home means more wantonly wasted electricity. Exactly how much does it cost to keep that DustBuster or iPod docking station permanently plugged in? The Kill a  Watt EZ power monitor ($34.99) can tell you. Plug electronic devices into this little gadget and it’ll show how much each household appliance is costing on your energy bill. Who wouldn’t want to know that?

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Joy Press is a former culture editor at Salon. She has written for many magazines and spent more than a decade at the Village Voice, where she was editor of the Voice Literary Supplement and later the chief TV and book critic. The co-author of "The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion

and Rock'n'Roll" and editor of "War of the Words," she lives in New York City.

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