My Unique Gift Idea Shopping Blog

Welcome to Michal David’s world. This year she is celebrating 13 years of diverse, dynamic creation…
Michal David is a wonderful artist and artisan from Israel, the Holy Land. Her inimitable designs of pictures, clocks, mirrors, jewelry boxes and more are well known for their classic romantic and Victorian style.
Michal writes on her website, “My art works are the outcome of countless hours of contemplation, creation and deep affection for fine art and for people.”

She says, “When I was a little girl I used to imagine that I was alive in the Victorian ages, wearing Crinolines dresses and beautiful jewelry and dancing in the large splendor decorated halls of those times. By creating my Art, my dreams come true.” But not only her dreams come true through her art – a new dream is born: an amalgamation of new-age Jewish and other mysticism with Augustan-tinged, Victorian neo-Classicalism.

All of her “designs are handmade and hand decorated, using the best quality materials and Fang Chui spirit with perfect finishing touches.”

Michal has been exhibiting in the US and Europe since her studio opened in Rishon LeZion, Israel in 1996. In addition to her jewelry, keys, pictures, clocks, mirrors and jewelry boxes, she also makes Jewish art and Judaica, Mezuzot, ceiling designs, decorative crosses, blessings and of course Hamsas and her ideas continue to grow.

MostOriginal.com offers a large selection of Michal David’s artwork…enjoy

With holidays coming up to many cultures and religions, I thought it best to start the season with a 5 Best & 5 Worst list of Holiday Gifts to give you some ideas, help you make the right decision and avoid unpleasant mistakes…

Best:

Bacconaise — stock up on this new hot seller, bacon flavored mayonnaise.

The Original Nintendo Entertainment System – and I do believe that this is now part of the Toy Hall of Fame. You can never go wrong with this timeless classic.

Shana Tova & Good News Hamsa by David Gerstein – A beautiful hand painted free standing Hamsa Hand, the perfect gift to wish a happy new year to your family and friends.

Bible Toys from BibleToys.com – They have everything, Noah’s Ark, Jesus, you name it!

Apple IPad – got $500?

Worst:

Sheep, Camels or Oxen – whether you are Jewish, Christian or Muslim, you are familiar with these animals and they surely have a special place in your heart, just not in the house. Giving one as a holiday gift would be quite awkward and create a liability.

Snake in a Cage – yeah, yeah, they’re cool, I know – but not everybody is fond of this slithering reptile.

Ice Cream Cake – this spells trouble almost always. There is really only one holiday when this gift makes sense and that is, of course, a birthday. Even when given as a Christmas present in the dead of winter, when it won’t necessarily melt too fast, it is totally weird.

Adopted Child from Children International – This gift is generous yet a little presumptuous. Plus, you never know what will be demanded of you in the guardianship of the kid.

Talking Elmo – This gift went out a long time ago, along with the teeth of too many dads assaulted while waiting in lines on Black Friday. Elmo is yesterday’s news and frankly should be boycotted.

Need more advice? come back soon for new holiday posts, and read this article for extra Jewish Holidays Gift Ideas.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year has many customs. The Shofar is one, and eating apples dipped in honey and other sweet foods is another.

Rosh Hashanah’s evening feast features a custom to eat an apple which has been dipped in honey and other sweet foods to symbolize a sweet new year.

A lovely custom growing in popularity is giving Rosh Hashanah Gifts to family and friends on the holiday. On the Jewish New Year sweets and items of Judaica are probably most appropriate.

One gift idea are Home Decor Accents made specifically for Rosh HaShanah, for example Hanging Pomegranates. The decorative pomegranates are made from a very fine quality and unique assortment of semi-precious stones, glass, brass, tin, copper and Swarovski crystals. The combination of materials creates special effects of color and light.

Why pomegranates for Rosh Hashanah, you ask?

Well, you see, on the second night of the holiday, it is a custom to eat a “new fruit” – that is, a fruit which recently has come into season but which we have not yet had the opportunity to taste. A pomegranate is often used to represent the new fruit.

Still a further explanation given for blessing and eating pomegranate on Rosh HaShanah is that we pray that our positive deeds in the next year will be as plentiful as the seeds of the pomegranate.

Other great Rosh Hashanah gift ideas are mezuzot, Shabbat candle holders and blessings for the home!

In last Sunday’s New York Times, Corey Kilgannon reported that Levi Meisner’s Shofar Shop which, reported Kilgannon, is actually the corner of the living room of his third-floor apartment on 12th Avenue in Brooklyn, is open for browsing during the Hebrew month of Elul.

Meisner actually holds down a full-time office vocation, but come the pre-Rosh Hashanah autumn he sells on average, 100 shofars. Mostly rabbis, his customers catch on through word of mouth and street fliers. An archaic viral marketing, if you will.

The Shofar, a well known Jewish symbol and Rosh Hashanah gift is a ram’s horn turned musical instrument – holding biblical significance from the Old Testament of Moses – and specifically of application to High Holy Day services.

Meisner’s horns, made under rabbinic supervision, are purchased wholesale from a dealer in Israel. Hologram stickers affirm their kosher certification. According to Talmudic law, Shofars should be softened by heating and partially straightened before a hole is drilled into their tip for the embouchure.

Corey Kilgannon’s wrote:

“On Wednesday, Mr. Meisner selected a huge spiral horn from dozens in a Dole banana box and blew a series of long and short blasts that sounded like an operatic ram stuck in a trap.” Kilganon wrote that Meisner said, “It’s not an impulse purchase…”

Elul is the month which leads into Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. This year it begins at sundown on Sept. 8.

Elul, the final month of the Hebrew year is a time for stock taking and introspection. According to Chabad.org it is:

“a time to review one’s deeds and spiritual progress over the past year and prepare for the upcoming Days of Awe of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.”

Kabbalistic philosophy likens the month of Elul to the time when “the king is in the field” and, as a contrast to the time when He is in the royal palace,

“everyone who so desires is permitted to meet him, and he receives them all with a cheerful countenance and shows a smiling face to them all.”

A keen sports enthusiast, on his recent trip to Israel Ashton Kutcher also checked out the Israeli Nation basketball team in Shoam on Sunday.

He tweeted:

“Watching the Israel national team beat up Latvia in bball. Kind of surreal…”

He was watching the 2011 EuroBasket qualifying match at the Nokia Arena in Tel Aviv.
Kutcher, wearing as always the famous kabbalah red string bracelet, enjoyed killer courtside seats and chatted it up with the other fans sitting near him.
Kutcher tweeted on Saturday, his first morning in Israel:

“The morning light of mercy is washing over The Wholly Land. I only hope that I can deliver on its promise. Wholly=1=love.”

So it seems as though the young comedy actor is a rather well-rounded dude, capable of appreciating sports and spirituality in the Jewish Homeland.

Reportedly, the purpose of Ashton’s visit was to attend the birthday party for the founder of the Kabbalah Center in Jerusalem – that is Rabbi Shraga Berg. Madonna and Donna Karan were not present.
Saturday, Kutcher toured throughout Jerusalem and Jewish spots in the West Bank and left town on Sunday.

My Unique Gift Idea is happy to mention that 32-year-old actor and comedian, Ashton Kutcher was spotted last weekend touring the Holy Land.
On the occasion of the birthday of the Kabbalah Center founder, Shraga Berg, Ashton toured the land of Israel with the daughter of Demi.

The crew stayed at the Jerusalem Citadel Hotel and toured several sites, such as The Tower of David and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Kutcher, not known to be a minimalist, tweeted:

“This just in from Israel… It’s hot.”

Ashton Kutcher has visited Israel before, and that was with the son of Rabbi Shraga Berg, Rabbi Yehuda Berg – the co-director of the Kabbalah Center.

Kutcher and Demi Moore’s relationship began in 2003. The two were married on September 24, 2005, in a private ceremony conducted at the Kabbalah Centre.

During two of his movie shootings in the past, Kutcher refused to remove his Red String Bracelet, that is for the shooting of “The Guardian” and the bracelet was digitally erased from his scenes in the movie “Guess Who,” but the movie company had to spend $ 100,000 on digital imaging to remove the red from the frames.

This post is inspired by an article I recently read. The theme of it reminded me a lot about the Kabbalistic ideas which I write about sometimes for the blog and which I keep in my mind so that I feel either elevated or with two feet healthily grounded – which ever is preferable.

So think it not strange that one moment I am talking about clothes, movie stars and Kabbalah Jewelry and the next about similarities between an organism’s cells and altruism.

Well, according to this article, organism’s cells unite by reciprocal giving for the sake of sustaining the body in its entirety. Each cell in the body receives what it needs for its sustenance, and then it expends the rest of its energy looking after the remainder of the body. Now, at every level of Nature, the individual always works to benefit the whole of which it is a part. Therein it finds its wholeness.

A body cannot persist without altruistic activities. In fact, they say that life itself cannot persist. Well, this sounds like the idea of the Body Politic, doesn’t it? This is because all of humanity, as well, is actually one whole body.

The truth of the matter is that we have always been individual parts of a single system.

The problem is this:

We human beings are still unaware of it. The phenomenon is revealed by nature in the way in which two forces act in sync: there is a connecting force which connects us all as one, and there is also a rejecting force which pushes us away from one another.

Henceforth, at the time when these two forces begin to manifest their orientations more intensely, we find ourselves starting to discover how dependent we are, and at the same time, we revolt against this dependency because of our growing egos.

Well, this reminds me of the workings of the Ten Sefirot in Kabbalah. Everything gives and takes and is an essential part of the system.

The First Lady of France, Carla Bruni joined Owen Wilson recently to be filmed by Woody Allen for his brand new movie “Midnight in Paris.”

Thus far, photos have surfaced for two different scenes:

“one in which Bruni’s and Wilson’s characters are strolling the streets and checking out fruits and veggies at a market stand and another of Bruni waiting in an alley”

Reports the Huffington Post.

One source told People.com:

“Carla and Woody got along incredibly well on the set. They talked constantly and laughed quite a lot between takes. Owen as well…They must have shot the same set up, where she walks along holding a baguette in her hand going into a supermarket around 32 times.”

This is Owen Wilson’s first time back on the big screen after he was rehabilitated for drug abuse and a scary suicide attempt.

The Hilfiger family’s new home is perched on one of the highest floors of Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel. The family bought the two-floor condo on the corner of Central Park South and Fifth Avenue in 2008.

Tommy’s Wife, Dee Hilfiger says:

“We tried to incorporate as much of the history of the building as we could…From Marilyn Monroe to the Beatles to Jackie O., it makes you think, if these walls could talk…”

But she did not finish her sentence.

Tommy said:

“We had a vision to create an old-world atmosphere complementing the old-world Plaza…We have bought almost all of the furniture together…We like to go shopping on the weekends. It’s been a real collaboration.”

The dining-room table, the antique lacquered desk in the living room and the crystal sailing-ship chandelier in the baby’s room are all noir Maison Jansen.

Original Andy Warhol portraits of Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly are hanging in the living room, and Mickey Mouse hangs in the guest bedroom, while Marilyn Monroe makes an impression in the second-floor hallway. Altogether, there is 20 pieces of Warhol in the apartment and a Jean-Michel Basquiat in the entry. Word has it that Tommy has also got his eyes on a Jasper Johns American-flag painting.

The French Renaissance-style turret even features an Eloise mural by Hilary Knight.

There are some women who spend months if not years searching for the right sports bra. So often is the list of must-have features extremely long: straps which stay up, chafe-free, strong support and hold, easy putting on and taking off, no digging into the skin – OW! I hate that! , no locker room embarrassment too, now that is key…

Well, as you all already know, finding the right sports bra is so indescribably elusive that even some scientists are searching for the secret of just what makes the best one and why!

OK, ‘bling‘ usually does not find its way onto the list of requirements. However, the designers of the Trenta bra from BodyRock Sport had ‘bling’ in mind and not for purposes of practicality.

This Trenta blingin’ BodyRock Sport bra comes with a sterling silver detachable charm bracelet and necklace which fastens itself to the neckline of the bra.

This bra goes for…get this, only $1,850!

It is allegedly the single most expensive sports bra the world over.