SMART GIFT SHOPPING
Bright Christmas Pill Box.
I know that this new round of economic woes has everyone on edge. The concepts are too big to get my head around, except for the old adage of “what goes up, must come down.” All I do know is that it is time to focus on what we need and to spend our money on quality.
To me the best thing about Kyle Design products is that they are lovely pieces of art but useful, too. Functional art is what it is called. The other thing I like is that I work for a woman who has built this business over 25 years. She has weathered these financial storms and kept her business alive and has a real commitment to offering high quality at a moderate price, made in the USA and backed up with good customer service.
The holidays are coming up fast. We have been getting ready for months now because it is our busiest
Click here to see large custom lockets.
time of year. I always start my shopping early because we put in long days at work in November and December. I have a few gifts in my hiding places already, and I have made lists of things to seek out in the next few weeks. Will I cut down this year? Not much. The cuts that could have been made were made in past years. I just try to be smart and look for value
One thing I look at when I am shopping online is the shipping cost. If a site hides the shipping information or pads the cost of shipping, I look elsewhere. I am proud to say we do not charge beyond the actual cost of UPS shipping at Kyle Design. Plus we offer flat rate shipping – so buying multiple items from us is smart.
Click here to purchase money clip with dollar sign.
I think it is smart to shop online, as well. Saving the time and gas and staying away from the crowds is big for me. Kyle Design offers a huge variety of gift options. (We frequently ask Kyle if she has gone crazy because she is always adding new items and our shelves are bending under the weight!) The thing is – last year we didn’t have lockets or long engravable bookmarks, handy boxes and our double design options and now people order them every day! Spend some time looking around our site and you will truly fine a gift for everyone you know.
So, for the holiday gift season coming up, shop smart by spending some time at Kyle Design.
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Double Peace! as heard on San Francisco morning radio
Report from Tina Kopko, a novice blogger
Support Peace and Justice.
I’ll be guest blogging today on My Art Filled Life. I’ve never blogged before, in fact I tend to resist trends and technological fads. BUT, I just had to share my excitement about this morning’s KFOG broadcast live from Walnut Creek, CA. Their guest was Mary Alice O’Connor, Executive Director of the Mount Diablo Peace Center (www.mtdpc.org), an organization working to promote peace locally and globally through citizen involvement.
Hearing the hosts of my favorite morning radio show interview Mary Alice got me hooked back into the FACT that there are many people in my very community who are actively working toward peace. I contribute by maintaining peaceful relationships in my daily life: coworkers, friends, crazy drivers on the highway (float them a peace sign instead of the middle finger!), waitresses and other servicepeople. I proudly display my “WAGE PEACE” bumper sticker and got an extra 45 miles out of my tank of gas by driving 65 instead of 75.
You may think these little things don’t really make a difference, but they do. Every individual has an effect
Double Peace!!
on the people around them – whether they are conscious of it or not. If you were to assume that is true, how would you behave differently with the people in your life? Remember the famous speech that reminds us “our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” Fear causes us to retract, to shrink down, to believe people who want us to accept the status quo. I don’t accept war and I don’t accept conflict in my relationships. I believe that every day I have the opportunity to create peace in my world – that’s an exciting concept to me. Mary Alice and the KFOG crew live these concepts every day.
I’m so fortunate to live in a part of the country that takes an active stance in speaking out against war and supporting peaceful conflict resolution. Both
The World is One
Berkeley AND Oakland (don’t believe everything you hear about Oakland!) adopted resolutions to support a cabinet-level representative for the Department of Peace. Imagine what this country could do if we had politicians in influential positions brainstorming and campaigning for waging peace domestically and in other countries! Also happening this weekend at UC Berkeley is the 2008 California Department of Peace Conference. link: http://www.afdop.org/conference/
Kyle Design is a wonderful resource for gifts and home decor with custom designs – such as peace and justice, earth and nature, professions and hobbies.
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SMOKEY SUMMER FORECAST
Here in the San Francisco bay area we are surrounded by the wildfires sparked by both man and nature last week. Sunday morning the skies were bright blue, but we could smell the smoke. By Sunday evening the skies were hazy and since Monday, the weather report has included “smokey” in the forecast.
The brownish haze is not only a sad reminder of the fires and all the damage 
they cause, but a health hazard to people with respiratory problems. It looks like we may see a change in the weather pattern by Friday, which must be good news to all the firefighters – some of whom have been working for 30 days straight. Rain is a lot to ask for during a California summer – but there is the possibility of some showers, and the lightening that accompanies a summer thunderstorm.
We all hope for the best and thank those who work so hard to save properties, lives and our wilderness areas.
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MORE BAD NEWS ABOUT “SMART” RFID CARDS
I am reprinting a brief article we have in our library because I saw this blog today and I think it bears a lot of repeating. The technology of thievery is not to be underestimated.
PROTECTING YOUR SMART CARDS
Many companies are now providing customers with credit and debit cards with Radio
Frequency ID Technology (RFID), a.k.a. Smart Cards, blink cards, wave cards, paypasses or contactless credit cards. These cards can be passed in front of a scanner at the point of purchase to make a purchase, instead of being handed over to the cashier or swiped through a machine. The issuing banks claim there is no security risk, but independent studies have shown there is a risk of your personal information being compromised by unauthorized persons.
The wallets currently available that protect your RFID cards are utilitarian at best. Kyle Design’s metal business card cases and metal credit card wallets are the most attractive options available and can be easily personalized to suit your taste. Click Custom Metal Credit Card Wallets or Personalized Metal Business Card Holders and Cases for a unique selection of distinctive metal cases.
How Do I Know If My Card is a Smart Card?
- You will only have a Smart Card if you requested it from your bank.
- Mastercard uses this symbol on the front of your card:
- Visa uses this symbol on the front of your card:
- American Express use this symbol on the back of your card:
In addition to our variety of metal wallets, you may want to consider our metal checkbooks. Click on any of our links to see more examples and ideas.
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SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN
Reading this book for book club made my feet hurt (sympathy pains for the foot binding) and
my head hurt (I’m sick of reading about cultures that hate women.) This is one of those books that are popular with book groups – and not really all that good. It was well written, well researched, but left me feeling like I wish I had spent my time on something else.
So I am putting in pictures of large, pretty, uncovered, happy feet!!
Learning about the women’s Nu Shu writing was interesting and says a lot about the ingenuity of women. When education is denied, desire and innate intelligence will find a
way. The character are lovely to look at and, to my eye, are often evocative of the word. I feel the same way about the designs of our Asian Characters. Love looks a bit like cupid with an arrow and friendship looks like two different people balancing. Take a look at some of our other designs and see if you can see meaning in the characters.
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Technorati: Chinese characters, Asian characters, chinese writing, nu shu, friends, love,
E-COMMERCE IS 25 YEARS OLD TODAY!
Today, March 4, 2008, marks the 25th year of e-commerce.
On March 4, 1983, Boston Computer Exchange, sold a computer “on line” to a buyer in 
South America. Alex Randall and Cameron Hall started their company as a clearinghouse for buying and selling computers. “Almost nobody outside of universities had computers,” Randall told the E-Commerce Times. “But we could see it coming. It’s like Bill Gates’ story of having a computer in every home: We recognized that eventually you’d be able to trade all kinds of things this way.”
The transaction was more complicated than making a purchase from Kyle Design is these days. There were no graphics, photos or shopping carts available. The growth of e-commerce has allowed our company to move from a primarily wholesale based company, selling through reps to retail stores, to almost completely online direct to customers. Even our new wholesale accounts come from the web.
It has also given us the ability to make each item to order, allowing the customer to customize each item exactly as they want it, rather than choosing from the limited items 
available in a retail store. Our options of over 200 designs and 40 colors added to over 100 gift items make the choices we give our customers almost endless!
“Clearly, e-commerce has gone from kind of a glimmer in someone’s eye to arguably one of the most important and powerful developments, I’d say, in modern-day commerce,” Scott Kessler, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s. told the E-Commerce Times.
And we are happy to be a part of it.
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO KYLE
Today is Kyle’s birthday! We will have a little lunch celebration with cake. Chocolate, of course. Her favorite thing.
She also loves to read so I am giving her a book I know she will like. It is called “The Female Brain.” Anyone with daughters, mothers, sisters or wives should read this fascinating book.
Kyle will also do one of her favorite things today and that is work, work, work to make her business even better for her customers!
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MORE MUSIC THAN THE GRAMMIES
My husband is a musical guy. He can play piano by ear and read music and is a guitar
enthusiast. Meaning he owns and plays multitudes of guitars, has amps, pick-ups, peddles and all kids of other guitar stuff. He buys guitars, plays them, fixes them up and then sells them to buy more guitars with which he follows the same routine. Right now we have 5 guitars hanging on the wall and 2 on stands on the floor and one in the garage in pieces. He listens to a lot of music and watches music videos and downloads “tabs” which are sheet music for guitar. He especially likes the style of John Mayer and always looks for his performances. We saw him on the Grammy Awards last night.
As a completely unmusical person, I had hope that this musicality would pass on to our children. Not the obsession with tearing instruments into pieces, but the playing music part. Our oldest daughter showed a lot of 
interest in the piano until we bought one. She showed some spark of interest in playing the guitar until we bought her one. Her dad says she keeps it for boy bait. Our son wanted to learn bass guitar and practiced and practiced but managed to learn part of one song. He was invited to practice with a friend’s band once – and that was that. I think he sold it to buy a bike.
Our youngest daughter was a maniac about music. We bought her a little purple guitar but her hands weren’t big enough to play. She wanted piano lessons from the time she was very little. We talked a teacher into taking her on a trial basis when she was 6 – and she did great. The teacher expressed so much happiness at having such a bright
, motivated student. She practiced without complaint, ran through the lesson books with great speed and skill. After 4 years when it started to get harder and harder, she lost patience and interest in learning more. She decided she knew enough and stopped the lessons.
A couple of years later we moved to a smaller house and gave the piano to my sister. Her 3 girls are taking lessons. I hope that one of them sticks with it. I have a nephew who has been playing the viola for some years but he seems to be the only one who has gone into high school playing an instrument.
Funny that so man
y kids given the opportunity don’t want to put the time and energy into playing, and so many adults find so much pleasure in musical instruments. My husband has a new friend and they have bonded through music. His friend has a very fancy drum set, but wanted to learn guitar. They talk and e-mail all the time about music. I think it’s great that he finally found someone to share this love and knowledge with.
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BEATLES MESSAGE OF PEACE BEAMED THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE
At first I thought it was too late to post about this event- then I realized that I have 431 light years before the event is actually over. NASA was convinced to stop their monotonous attempts to contact alien life by a Beatles fan. “At the moment we are sending up Morse code as a way of contacting aliens,” Martin Lewis told BBC radio. “Maybe we should send them something a little more cheery.”
So at midnight Monday February 4, the Beatles peace anthem
“Across the Universe” was beamed at the North Star and will travel at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Fans were asked to play the song at the same moment to create a harmonic convergence around planet Earth and the Universe. That part I missed, but you can see the website here.
Check out our gifts related to the universe, peace and harmony. Aslo see ideas for the aliens and those who love them.
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THE YUMMY MUMMY MOVEMENT
I suppose January brings out my cranky pants. It has been gloomy and rainy and I just want to wrap up in 
something big and soft and plop into a chair with a good book until spring. The last thing I need is to learn that I am supposed to be aspiring to be a “Yummy Mummy”. Apparently I ought to be wearing stilettos to the petting zoo and smokey eyes to the supermarket.
They say it is a matter of retaining your “self-image” after marriage and motherhood. That I can relate to. When I had my twins I had only just stopped working in a fairly professional environment 2 days before. But the silk blouses were not going to stand up to burping, the pantyhose made no sense at the playground, and I had given up sky high heels in my 20’s.
When all 3 of my kids were of ages where I could step out of their lives more, I did take a look at my wardrobe and wonder who I had become -after 12 years at home with kids, the power suits and little dresses were way out of style.
Many who have embraced this “movement” think that we are to maintain our sexpot selves and remain clad in couture of the moment, designer jeans and carry budget busting handbags. This sounds a bit like the peer pressure my 14 year old daughter faces, not something grown women need to foist upon each other.
So I checked out the website of the Canadian based Yummy Mummy Club – and guess what? Their motto reads:
What Is A Yummy Mummy?
A true Yummy Mummy struggles to find the impossible balance between the single sexpot she used to be, the woman she’s become, the professional she works hard to be, the wife she aspires to be and the mother she has to be. Basically, she’s confused and exhausted.
Now that I get. So why has this be interpreted by so many to be about designer this and sexy that? I understand that these are different times and that many successful women have children and continue their careers and consider their appearance an important asset – but I don’t get this need to look “hot” at any age and circumstance.
I know there are those moms who love to be told they look like their daughter’s “sister”. Who love the MILF label. I feel sorry for those women. I consider them stunted, not empowered – not in the way I wish for my daughters.
Take a look at some great gift ideas for the women in your life – yummy or mommy, sister or friend. We have hundreds of designs to satisfy every woman’s interest!
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For more gift ideas for Mom, see our Squidoo pages.
My Art Filled Life 