From the grand to the goofy, last-minute gift ideas

Ah-oh. Only four more shopping days ’til Christmas and you still don’t know what to get that special someone on your list.

Fret no more. The following gift suggestions go from grand to goofy and may be just the thing.

There’s no place like home

A gift that shows you really care for the safety and welfare of your loved ones is NiteMates. Sure to outpace Chia Pet and The Clapper in popularity, NiteMates are slippers with headlights in the toes.

Each slipper “toelight” has a krypton blub (70 percent brighter than normal flashlights) behind a contoured lens that projects wide-angle beams of light. Two AA batteries per foot provide hours of illumination. Nitemates turn on when the heels are tapped together. Sort of a Clapper for your feet. They come in four sizes, small, medium, large and extra large, and cost $29.95 plus $4.50 for shipping. Orders placed by Dec. 22 are guaranteed by Christmas Eve. Telephone (800-748-5989).

It’s the thought that counts

If funds are running low, you’ve still got the weekend to devote to baking a basketful of goodies or a bread braid in the shape of a wreath.

Another thoughtful gift is an instant party pack of a bottle of wine, homemade dip and some gourmet crackers. Tuck these fixings for unexpected holiday guests in one of those decorated bags. Better yet, make one from a few layers of wrapping paper.

Homemade gifts call for homemade gift wrap, bows and special doodads. Cover the unwaxed side of white freezer paper with felt-marker drawings of seasonal joy. Lousy drawings are especially fun. Real pine cones or holly may be tied in with the bow, but the best toppers are offbeat paraphernalia that has meaning to the recipient — a bristle of red and green golf tees or fake fingernails taped to each bow loop. The gift tag can be personalized with a photo cutout of a Christmas past (add thought balloon).

Staring longer than is polite

This gift may, at first, make the recipi ent wonder why you gave it. Why a coffee-table book, one of those presents that take up space — like a fondue set — but gets little use?

The reason, however, is revealed later when visitor after visitor spends time slowly turning the pages, staying a little longer than may be polite, gazing at this gift. It fascinates.

“Photographs Annie Leibovitz 1970-1990,” a collection of photographs of the most photographed people in the world, is hypnotic. Each image tells you something with clarity, nipping wit, audaciousness or slap-your-face bluntness.

Many were first printed in Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair magazines. Others have never been published, including a few almost voyeuristic family-life shots snapped by Leibovitz in childhood.

The best have an out-of-context twist: Bob Dylan turning a hose on a rosebush; a vulnerable poet laureate Robert Penn Warren, sitting on a bed without his shirt; an overhead view of Whoppi Goldberg submerged in a bathtub of milk, with floppy limbs and sassy face peaking out.

The book (HarberCollins; $60) has been published to coincide with the solo museum exhibition of Leibovitz’s 20-year career, which will travel to a dozen cities in this country and Europe in 1994.

Locally “Annie Leibovitz” is available at Mr. Paperback.