MY HUSBAND’S NEW OBSESSION
They say boys don’t ever grow up, they just get better toys. This isn’t totally true of my
husband, because he is grown up. But in 25 years I’ve known him, he has had many interests (read toys.) Lately he is revisiting his interest in bikes. Bicycles that is. He has purchased bikes and parts for the bikes and new clothes for biking. He has a wish list of additional gadgets for his new obsession.
He spent hours pouring over a book about local riding trails and then brightly suggested a “family ride” over the long weekend. The teenaged girl was not enthusiastic, I believe there were threats required to achieve her consent. I thought it a nice way to spend the morning as long as the trail was pretty simple. I don’t have an off
road bike or a road bike, I have a cruiser with a big basket in the front, I love it, but it is heavy and not built for speed or climbing hills. Like me.
It was a beautiful fall day, crispy leaves underfoot. The morning was cool, but the sky a deep blue which contrasted wonderfully with the green and gold of the trees. We were riding along Coyote Creek which was lush and shaded at some points and branched out wide into ponds and lakes along the way. There were a fair number of people out, but the trail was not crowded. We lasted 5 miles or so before our various body parts began protesting. We rested a bit and then turned back – this time pedaling into the wind.
I think he might have been a bit disappointed that we didn’t push through the whole 28 miles – but if I keep working out and watch the holiday treats, maybe by spring when the
wild flowers are blooming.
Technorati: bicycle, bike, bike gifts, bike ride, bike trail, Coyote Creek bike trail, custom gifts, mountain bike, pedal, work out, Sunflower, goddess, bike wheel
SHOP SAFELY ON CYBER MONDAY AND EVERY DAY
Just in time for what the media calls “Cyber Monday” the CBS program 60 Minutes reported that your credit card is more secure on an internet site than in a store! The report centered on an investigation into the TJX corporation which owns TJ Max and Marshall’s stores. They and many other retailers use wireless internet connections in their stores to submit credit card purchases. These can be easily tapped into from outside the store! From there, identity thieves could hack into the corporate data base and steal credit card information and other personal information.
The benefits of online shopping are many. Small websites like Kyle Design do not retain any personal information about out customers in a database. One the credit card is charged, the information is deleted. We use a wired internet connection so an identity thief would not be able to tap into our computers from outside our studio. Our shopping cart management is off site and very secure with the latest encryption software. We also subscribe to Hackersafe which scans our site daily for any possible intrusions by computer hackers.
So feel safe shopping with us – and enjoy the season!
For more information on internet shopping, see our Squidoo pages.
Technorati: cyber monday, safe shopping online, hackersafe, wired internet, 60 Minutes, e-commerce, online shopping, cyber shopping, safe shopping
WHATS SO FUNNY ‘BOUT PEACE LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING?
The title of this blog comes from a song by Elvis Costello. I like the song and the
sentiment. We have a lot of gifts for the peaceful. This nice money clip includes engraving – which could be Peace on Earth 2008. I just packed an ornament with the world on it engraved “Save the Earth.” Nice.
We also have the Chinese character for peace, happiness, love, harmony and dream.
Which add up to understanding.
Technorati: peace, love, understanding, Elvis Costello, peaceful gifts, peace gifts, love gifts, custom gifts, designer gifts, ornaments, money clip, earrings, chinese characters,
MEANINGFUL GIFTS
I have said before that I like to give gifts which celebrate an occasion, a trip, a hobby or event. I just consider them more meaningful. We have seen a lot of people choose gifts to celebrate “firsts.”
Realtors have given gifts to new home owners to celebrate their first home. Friends and family members have celebrated first Christmas, and first anniversary.
Other occasions to celebrate might be losing a tooth or retirement. Someone’s first cruise or piano recital. Commemorate a graduation and a first job. A new pet or a prize winning 
hobby and award winning team. All of our designs can be added to all of our products – so you could choose a business card case or a pill box or even a Christmas tree ornament. This year I plan to give a pink ribbon gift to my sister to celebrate her 10th year cancer
free!
Today we sent out 13 flask sets, each with a different design all engraved “Haiti 2007”. I think they must have been to celebrate a family reunion or something.
We have sent out many gifts which have been engraved to make the items more personal. A birth date, a wedding or anniversary date. A nice phrase or even a monogram add a lot to a gift.
Technorati: meaningful gifts, custom gifts, first christmas, first home, first anniversary, pink ribbon gifts, first gifts, emgraved, tooth, retirement, graduation gifts, cruise gift, piano, hobbies, pet gifts, team gift, first job, christmas tree ornament, family reunion
HAVE A GREAT ONLINE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE
Online shopping is big. I have been doing it for years and when I came to work at Kyle Design I was very comfortable navigating the website and helping our customers.
Since most of our products are semi-custom, there are a LOT of choices and options. Kyle has worked very hard to make the website both comprehensive ( the information and descriptions of the items) and easy (to choose options and proceed to checkout.) We recognize that there are questions which arise and we answer our own phones in the studio in order to offer the best customer service.
What many customers loose sight of is, as a web based business, we are set up to receive orders over our website. We do not have phone banks of “operators standing by” to take orders. There are 2 or 3 of us in the studio jumping on the phones while doing our other work. And as the holidays loom closer there is a lot of work to do just to get the orders out – the orders that came in through the website! So we have found it necessary to add a service charge for phone orders.
So please understand that while it may seem easier to call that 800 number listed on a website, please place your order on the site. The transaction is perfectly safe and the credit card data you send is encrypted so it can’t be stolen. In fact it is safer than handing your card over to a store employee. and if you still are not convinced, place your order as “pay by check” and call us with the credit card number.
Now think about it – you wouldn’t look around the shopping mall and then drive home
and get on the phone and call Macy’s to order the blouse you liked. NO! You would buy it while you were in Macy’s! Shopping on a website like ours is just like shopping in a store – so call us with a question or to make sure we are a legitimate company. But please place your order on the website.
Technorati: custom gifts, customer service, e-commerce, place order online, questions, safe online shopping, secure site, shop online, web shopping, website, computer gifts, shoe gifts, pill box, stamp holder
GETTING INTO THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT
My daughter is attending school in Philadelphia – far away from our home in California. Maybe if we had traveled east with the kids she wouldn’t have considered it so exciting to go across the country for school, maybe not.
She has found a bus which goes to New York City for a very reasonable rate. I remember when she went for the first time last year that she was very disappointed with Rockefeller Center and how small the skating rink was. She tried to do some of the tourist things, but it was Thanksgiving and crowded. Her friends don’t show any interest in the museums and other cultural sites, so she has not yet seen the places I like to go.
This time she visited the campus a friend will soon attend and did some shopping and eating in around town. She got lost and called her dad to “mapquest” her location and tell her where to go! So high tech. Now she is back at school writing a paper to turn in before going to the home of her friend for the Thanksgiving holiday. I sent an ornament to give
as a hostess gift.
My son is home, he arrived with a car full of dirty laundry (which he plans to wash himself.) He is in the den playing a video game with his little sister.
The centerpiece is made, the cranberry sauce is jelling, the rolls I made yesterday are tucked in the freezer. I have everything ready to brine the turkey and make the dressing on Wednesday night. I think I’m ready for the holiday!
Technorati: brine turkey, Christmas, city lights, city skyline ornament, custom ornament, daughter, holiday, holiday travel, Hostess gift, New York city, pumpkin, pumpkin ornament, school, shopping, son, Thanksgiving, tourist, turkey
BUILD YOUR OWN ORNAMENTS!
This year Kyle added a swimming design and we immediately began getting orders. She really tries to have something for everyone. The rowing design was very successful last year, so this year she looked at other sports not represented and added lacrosse, yoga, gymnastics, bowling and ballroom dancing.
We also started something else new this year – build your own ornament. This allows people to customize with their team, school or organization colors.
Today we sent out a lacrosse ornament with navy and green. My daughter’s PENN rowing team colors are red and blue. My son’s school is CSU Monterey Bay, the mascot is the sea otter and school colors are green and gold. My youngest just completed try outs for the school soccer team, so I could make one in her school colors of purple and gold.
The really nice thing about this option is it can be used with any of our over 200 designs – not just the sports – so you can make an ornament for your knitting group, the book club, your trainer, the doctor who delivered your baby, the teacher, the hairdresser, your lawyer or your mom.
Technorati: ballroom dancing, beaded ornament, book club, build your own ornament, Christmas ornaments, custom ornament, doctor, gymnastics, knitting, lacrosse, lawyer, mom, personalized ornament, sports ornament, swim, swimming, teacher, trainer, tree ornament, yoga
A BARNYARD FULL OF ANIMAL GIFTS
I get e-mails from people all the time suggesting things they would like to find for gifts and for their home decor. I always pass the ideas to Kyle and she mulls them over for her next design session. This summer she went crazy! She added about 60 new designs to the line up. We had to change all our categories to and charts to fit them in.
Among her inspirations were barnyard animals. People collect or have some other attachment to these images, and we did have some basic farm animals already – the rabbit, horse and the pig. They have now been joined by the rooster, cow, bull and the cutest sheep with amazing woolly bodies. 
I think some other animals that could be found on farms would be ducks, bees and mice. Now don’t get all squeamish on me – some people actually want a mouse gift and bees are wonderful, helpful insects. Jerry Seinfeld just made a comedy called “Bee Movie” about bees. Bees are hip.
Just think – you could have a pig pill box, a bee compact mirror, a rooster business card case. How about a bull money clip, a bunny night light or a rabbit condom case!
The possibilities are endless.
Technorati: animal gifts, bee, Bee Movie, bull, bunny, business card case, cow, duck, farm animal, horse, Jerry Seinfeld, lamb, mice, money clip, mouse, pig, pill box, pony, rabbit, rooster, sheep
START YOUR HOLIDAY SHOPPING
In mid-October when people talk about the holidays coming up they are usually referring to Halloween. But at Kyle Design and many other retail businesses – we are talking Christmas. We start talking about it in August. We start getting ready in September. By October our shelves are bursting with inventory and Kyle’s invoice pile gets sky high.
We notice that we sell a lot of our “home improvement” products during the months leading up to Thanksgiving, and then that business drops like a stone! Everyone shifts from fixing up the house for company to gift shopping.
At this point in the preparations we are printing everything we think we might need between now and January. Our production ladies are snipping all the metal designs, filing rough edges, putting labels on products and all the time consuming work normally done on a day to day basis. We make stacks of gift boxes and pre-bag our little protective pouches and talk strategy for dealing with double our normal shipping volume.
Then we hope we didn’t prepare for a party of 500 and have only 5 show up!
For myself, I still don’t like to see the Christmas stuff in the stores in August. But I don’t mind the avalanche of catalogs in the mail because I start shopping online in October. I really try to be pretty much done by Thanksgiving because after that we are working
long, long hours and I am too tired to think at the end of the day. I start picking up little things – stocking stuffers and the like, in the summer. I like to have little things, reflective of the year to give.
And of course – something from Kyle Design for everyone!
Technorati: Christmas gifts, custom gifts, gift boxes, gift shopping, Halloween, online shopping, personalized gifts, stocking stuffers, Thanksgiving
GIFTS FOR SMOKERS AND THOSE WHO WANT TO QUIT
November 15 is “The Great American Smokeout”. This is a rallying day for those who want to quit smoking. Wanting to quit is the number one key to a successful cessation. My hubby has tried to quit with about every method there is, but he admits that deep down, he loves to smoke and so until that changes for him and others like him, we have some very nice gifts.
My husband is one of a large number who roll their own cigarettes. He has a pouch with his tobacco and papers and lighter. He rolls each cigarette when he wants a smoke. Many RYO or MYO smokers roll in advance and use a nice case to carry their cigarettes. We 
have 19 different cases of varying sizes and styles. To those cases you may add one of our 200 designs and colors.
For those who may want to cut down on their smoking, we have very small cases to fill each morning and hopefully will not exceed the capacity by the end of the day. We even have a nice gum holder which can hold only 3 cigarettes – or if one the road to being smoke-free, carry nicotine gum!
We also have cigar cases and tools in various sizes and a great selection of lighters. Our cigarette cases and lighters can be engraved and make nice gift combinations.
And when a smoker decides to quit – the cases make excellent metal wallets!
Technorati: , cigar case, cigar cutter, cigar tool, cigarette cases, colorful, designer, gifts for smokers, lighters, metal wallet, nicotine gum holder, smoke free, smoker gifts
My Art Filled Life 