Best. Gift. Ever!

A couple of years ago, I received from my very best friend what I thought (at the time) was sort of an odd Christmas gift: Two stainless steel travel mugs.  One blue, one green.  Here are photos of them:

 (As an aside, I have few technical skills and cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to get blogger to let me put these photos next to each other instead of way across the page or one on top of the other.  Ugh.)

They are nice-looking mugs - elegant, even - but I didn't understand why my best friend in the whole world would send travel mugs across the country for a Christmas gift.  It was nice of her to send them (and it's always nice to get a gift), but sort of an odd thing to bother mailing.  After all, travel mugs are a dime a dozen, right?

Then I used them and discovered how very wrong I was...

These mugs are A M A Z I N G!!!

They do NOT leak.  At all.  Ever.  You can hold them upside down, and not a drop escapes! 

You have to push the little button that you can see there, on the "front" of the mug in the photos, to get the valve to open so you can drink your beverage.  It's not difficult to push, but is firm enough that it doesn't accidentally open.

I can put these mugs sideways in my purse, filled with coffee, and not even worry that they will leak, so long as I put the button on the "up" side and don't put anything on top of it!!  Even then, it would have to be something hard and heavy to make the button move and open the valve.  Really, I hardly even worry about it.  I just toss them in and carry them around, filled with coffee.

They keep your beverage hot, or cold, as the case may be, for HOURS.

Once, in the summer (here in Arizona, it is often 110 to 118 degrees on a July or August summer day, and gets way hotter than that inside a locked car), I forgot my mug filled with iced coffee (with a bit of cream) in the car while I went inside a store and shopped for two hours.

If I had used any other mug that day, I would have returned to the car to find hot coffee with curdled cream, disgusting and undrinkable.  Not with these mugs!  I returned and, although the ice had mostly (not completely!!) melted, the coffee was still very cold and very drinkable.  Refreshing, even, on such a hot day.

When I put hot coffee in them, it stays hot for HOURS.  I have to make sure it is a drinkable temperature before sealing it up because otherwise it will be too hot to drink for a very long time.

I LOVE these mugs.

Now you can see why she is my bestest friend in the whole world.  She knows me better than I know myself!  She knew EXACTLY what I wanted for Christmas, even when I did not know I wanted it!

If you like to carry beverages with you in the car, you should go directly to the Contigo web site (click here) and buy one (or more) of these mugs.

Sadly, my green Contigo mug met an untimely death a couple of days ago.  It was destroyed by a softball while the pitcher and catcher were warming up before my daughter's softball game the other day.  The ball smashed right into the mug and broke the lid apart.  The stainless steel portion was unharmed, but the lid was FUBAR (as we used to say in the bus business...  F--d Up Beyond All Repair).  So I will have to buy a new one.  Just trying to decide whether to stick with the lovely green I had before, or try a new color, like red or silver.

Please note:  This is absolutely not a paid promotion.  Contigo probably doesn't even know I exist.  I just totally love these mugs and I know you will, too.  My motive?  I want to keep the Contigo company in business and producing these exact mugs so that when I need new ones I will be able to buy them.  They seem to last pretty much forever, absent tragic accidents like the one my green one encountered, so I am a little afraid that they will go out of business because they won't get enough repeat customers.