Industry Themed Gifts for Your Staff This Christmas

It can be difficult to find a unique gift that is relevant to your line of work and isn’t either too feminine or too masculine for everyone at the office. Our biggest sellers for office holiday parties are our personalized Christmas ornaments with career themed designs in brushed silver.

With several tree ornament body styles to choose from and an array of bead and ribbon colors, you can easily create a look that works for all of your recipients (male or female) and fits your company’s color scheme.

Some of our top industry ornaments this year are our nursing ornaments, construction ornaments and dentist themed ornaments:

With 63 different careers to choose from, our unique occupation themed ornaments are perfect for your 2013 Staff Holiday Party. Find industry gifts for hairdressers, lawyers, police officers, architects, teachers and more at Kyle Design.

Create a Custom Industry Ornament – Here’s How:

Select from our line of Design Your Own Ornaments.

Choose the design that represents your field of work (63 occupation designs available) by clicking the orange “Choose” button and then clicking the purple bar labeled “Occupations”:

Choose from several body styles (the shape of the ornament):

Make background, bead, and ribbon color selections (the background color is the color that shows behind your selected design – for example the blue behind the grad cap in the image below):

Finally, add an engraved message such as “Merry Christmas 2013” or your company name and the year:

Add to cart and you’re done!

It’s that easy to make everyone at the office feel special. Show your hard-working staff how much you appreciate them with a unique job themed ornament that represents your industry.

Ready to design yours? Visit Custom Christmas Ornaments to get started. Most orders ship out in 1-2 business days even with an engraving, but with December being our busiest time of year we can’t guarantee your item will ship that fast so please call to confirm a ship date. If ordering large quantities, you should also call us to ensure your design is available in the quantity you need.

S.F. Bay-Friendly Garden Tour April 26th – Earth Week Tips for California Gardening

Kely's Garden in Fremont, CA, features a gorgeous glass tile fountain with water lilies

Another excellent Earth Week event is the 6th Annual Bay Friendly Garden Tour is happening tomorrow April 26, 2009, around the San Francisco Bay Area and my sister, Kely, (Kyle, rearranged!) is one of the participants this year. In fact, Kely’s garden in Fremont is the one featured on the Bay-Friendly Garden Tour flier, with shots of her fountain and succulent garden.

Kely has a huge lemon tree, hammock and succulent garden which create a peaceful place to enjoy nature.

Water Feature – Her garden is absolutely gorgeous, with a glass tile water fountain in blue, green and aqua shades. The fountain also provides water for wildlife and the resident goldfish eat mosquito larvae.

Organic Garden – Kely’s garden is pesticide-free. She has an organic kitchen garden with vegetables, fruit trees, edible nasturtiums (used in salads) and herbs. Other areas of her garden have bamboo, bearded irises, Japanese maples, and grasses. A huge lemon tree planted about 90 years ago provides shade over a hammock slung between posts of an arbor. Her garden is colorful, calm, and environmental conscious.

Native Plants – Kely has made an effort to create a beautiful yet environmentally-friendly garden. Her succulent garden is a gorgeous mix of chartreuse and pink-gray plants. A couple of years ago she redid her front garden, removing the water-thirsty grass lawn and replacing it with a mix of native California plants and other drought-tolerant bushes, (except for her roses, which she couldn’t give up.) She had landscape designer Tom Wilhite of Green Man Garden Design create a drought-tolerant cottage garden site plan for it with gorgeous results. He created pathways past plants with interesting textures and colors. The contrast of the California poppies and lavender bushes is particularly stunning.

Kyle Design's Garden Gate Holiday Ornament - A beautiful gift for those who love gardening and going green.

Kid Friendly – Her daughter loves playing in the garden now because of all the interesting insects – butterflies, bees, ladybugs – that are constantly at work. Children playing hide-and-seek can hide behind the big miscanthus transmorrisonensis. They makes posies with the flowers and everyone loves how fragrant all the plants and flowers are. The kid-friendly arbor also has a swing in addition to the hammock. The kids spend a lot of time outdoors now!

Every drop of water is important in states like California which are facing drought.

Save Water, Save Money – Kely has used a variety of earth-friendly techniques. She installed a drip system and sheet mulching. To help retain the water, she first covered the drip lines with a newspaper barrier then mulch on top of that. Frequent mulching keeps water usage low. All these are important gardening tips for drought-stricken Californians. She has water-permeable walkways with inset solar lighting. These walkways help protect local watersheds because permeable paving helps prevent runoff. She also reused the concrete walkways that were torn out, turning them into pavers, and thereby reducing waste in garden. She conserves water by planting perennials and saves energy with deciduous trees (Sycamore, Japanese Maples) that shade the house in the summer and provide light in winter.

Registration for the garden tour is now closed for this year but if you’d like to be notified about next year’s tour, be sure to sign up at StopWaste.org.

Vegetable Garden Business Card Holder - A great way to promote organic gardening techniques

If you’re looking for more unique gifts for gardeners, please visit Kyle Design’s Gardening Gifts page. You’ll find Christmas ornaments, sunglasses cases, jewelry, business card holders and more in nature theme designs like water, gardening tools, ladybugs, flowers, fruits, vegetables and bamboo.

California Independent Film Festival CIFF in Livermore CA

Film Festival Holiday Ornament - Great Gift for Movie Directors, Actors, Screenwriters

Hurry! Today is the last day of the Califronia Independent Film Festival here in Livermore CA and there are still tickets available at the door for some great cinematic treats. (Vine Theater at 1772 First Street right in Downtown Livermore.)

Sunday Morning Festival Schedule

This morning you can catch nine Comedy Shorts from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in Theater #1 (scroll way day to view really short Video Clips of Shorts here – is that a joke, too?). Titles include Cost of Living, HiBi-Chan, Just In Case, Rolla Saor (Free Film), The Green Film, The Mix Up, Three-Fifty, Ticket for Success and Wrong Number.

The 2009 Best Documentary Slate Award in being held in Theater #2.

Football Switch Plates would look great in the den of football fans, players and announcers.

Sunday Noon Schedule

The Shorts: Program C is showing in Theater #1 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. with six films. This section is sponsored by Goal Line Productions. Goal Line Productions is the full service sound stage company of Joe Madden (son of football player, Raider’s coach John Madden – who on Friday just announced his retirement from sports broadcasting after 30 years) and Jonathan “Sketch” White, who is the company’s studio manager. Again, you can view shorts of shorts More Video Shorts of Shorts. Films scheduled are Akira’s Hip Hop Shop, The Fenceline, The Miracle, Ruïne and Fertilize.

Award Winning Pill Box - Keep Your Eyes on the Prize: Great way to encourage a filmmaker, writer or videographer to keep going for it!

Over in Theater #2 in the Sapporo Short Fest Program that is sponsored by Kaori & Derek Zemrak (the lowbudget movie director and producer). International films showing in in this section include The Pond, Spoorweg (Losing Track), Auf der Strecke (On the Line – winner of over 50 international awards), Lumen, AlpTraum (Final Kick), Lui and Lone Rider.

Sunday Afternoon Schedule

From 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., you can catch the feature film Rock Slyde in Theater #1, sponsored by Livermore Valley Florist.

Over in Theater #2, the festival is showing Shorts: Schedule A. Movies include On the Road to Tel-Aviv, Red Letter, Black Rose or How Mr. Fossenrath Tried Not to Change the World, Next Floor, The Border, Silent Lake, Limpiando Sapos and Ping Pong.

Sunday Evening Film Schedule

The feature film Camille, starring David Carradine, James Franco and Sienna Miller about a couple on their way to their honeymoon at Niagara Falls, will be showing in Theater #1.

Reach for the Stars! Movie Star business card holder will reflect your professional attitude toward a challenging, creative career choice.

In Theater #2 will be Shorts: Program B, again sponsored by Goal Line Productions. Films scheduled are Pluzman, Collector, Dudley’s Raft, One Little Step, La Lili à Gilles and Editing.

Sunday Night Film Schedule

The last film showing during this festival is War Eagel, Arkansas which runs from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. It looks like a very moving, poignant moive that is based on a true story.

Be sure to check out Kyle Design’s unique gifts, business card holders, switch plates, pill boxes and Christmas ornaments. Click any of the photos to see more interesting gift ideas for actors, directors, movie stars, videographers, writers and more.

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Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacob – Book Group Reading Selection

This Knitting Tape Measure is a cute gift for knitters who enjoy other crafts as well.

Our book group selection was The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacob. Overall we all liked it and were able to have a good group discussion, a big plus. Each member of our group related to a different member of the Friday Night Knitting Club – I naturally related to Georgia, the skilled craftswoman with a small business and a 12-year-old daughter who likes to cook, because that is exactly my situation. (But unlike Georgia, I also have a husband and 10-year-old daughter.) A talkative member of our group was the first to volunteer that she saw herself in the outgoing K.C., others responded to Anita, Georgia’s supportive, older friend.

Pretty Cooking Ornament - A great way to acknowledge a girl's budding culinary interests

It was fun discussing how Darwin, the doctoral student writing a thesis on what a throwback knitting is, evolved over the course of the book. (If it’s fun, enjoy it, and don’t be intimidated by others who have different interests. It wouldn’t be a skill that is still practiced if it were true drudgery – anyone prefer to wash clothes on a washboard?) Knitting is meditative, it feels good in the hand, you can immediately have a sense of accomplishment and it’s practical – what’s not to like?

Learn to accept the twists and turns one's life takes with a River Name Badge Holder

We discussed the fact that most characters in the book did the opposite of what was expected of them and whether this was realistic. I think the group was mostly against it in the beginning, but came around to the fact that this not unlike real life in many cases. If you think about what you were like in high school and what you thought your life was going to be like in future and compare, well, you too may discover that there definitely were unexpected twists and turns. Not everyone leads a predictable life, and quite often you don’t end up where you thought you’d be.

Fairytale Castle Bookmark - A lovely gift for the young reader who is enchanted with books

Even the ending of the Friday Night Knitting Club was not predictable, and this was a refreshing change from so many books one reads. It gets to the point when reading other books that half way through you’ve already figured out where it is going, know the neat tie-ups that are coming – that someone will keep a baby, get married to a long-time friend, be successful in business or whatever feel-good, fairytale endings the author comes up with. Not with this one. I think the characters have stayed with me for that very reason.

Maple Leaf Pill Box in Fall Colors - Reminds transplanted Canadians of home

BTW, she was born and raised in Canada, which may account for why she comes across as such a nice, friendly person with whom you could quickly become good friends. Her characters, too, are quite believable that way.

Monogram Money Clip with the Letter K - for Kyle or Kate or Knitting! At Kyle Design, we now have gifts with all letters of the alphabet.

Side note: Kate exclaimed when I said my name was Kyle, because that was what she had intended to name a female character in her latest book, Knit Two. But she was discouraged from using it by her manuscript readers as being not believable. So now she said she’s inclined to use again if it fits a future character.

So, the bottom line – good book that I would definitely recommend for book groups in particular.

If you’re shopping online for unique gifts, please visit Creative Knitting Gifts, Enchanted Castle Gifts, Gorgeous Monogram Gifts, Inspired Cooking Gifts and Meaningful River Gift Ideas. You’ll find a huge selection of distinctive Christmas ornaments, tape measures, name badge holders, pill boxes, bookmarks, money clips and more.

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Happy Christkwanzmakah! Holiday Celebration for Mixed Religion Families

Hanukkah Christmas Ornament - Perfect Solution for Mixed Religion Marriages

Mixed religion marriages can face difficult questions during the holidays about how best to celebrate religious practices while respecting each other’s beliefs. So many religious holiday celebrations often overlap – this year Christmas and Hanukkah overlapped as did Kwanzaa and Muharram, the Islamic New Year.

Negotiating  plans for holiday celebrations is something each family needs to work out for themselves, but for one of Kyle Design’s customers, the solution is “Christkwanzmakkah“, a name that encompasses all the holidays in which their family members participate.

Christians and Muslims Can Celebrate Holidays Together with this Islamic Star Christmas Ornament

What a wonderful approach! As our customer explained it, rather than referring only to one event during their religious holiday planning, implying it is the somehow the most important or real or true, this family came up with this special name “Christkwanzmakkah” that lets friends and extended family members know that, in their case, Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are all being actively celebrated with equal importance.

Truly, a beautiful solution that reflects the best sentiments of the season!

Gold and Red Stain Glass Kwanzaa Night Light Reflects the 7 Symbols

At Kyle Design, we create holiday decorations and gifts that reflect many faiths, and allow you to customize each with the colors that best reflect your holiday spirit. Each of our beaded ornaments can be engraved on the back with a season’s greeting, name, year or other message. They are a special way to mark events and milestones, births and deaths, anniversaries and important birthdays, during the holidays or throughout the year.

To see more of our unique solutions for mixed religion families, please visit Kyle Design where you’ll find unusual Night Lights, Holiday Ornaments, and so much more for families of all faiths.