Sports Serving Bowl:
If you live near a National Football League city, and a lot of your employees are fans of the local team, get them a personalized serving bowl from Pottery Barn. Choose your team’s insignia and add the recipient’s name on the deep etched glass. Maybe they’ll invite you over to watch a game when it’s filled with chips or popcorn.
Designer Pen:
If your employees have more upscale tastes in gifts, a designer pen from Burke Decor is a good choice. The twist style ink ball pen is made of brown faux leather, comes in magnetic style box and is inspired by the Victorian and Albert Museum in London.
Leather Padfolio:
At eBags, this padfolio stores a notepad and has a business card pocket and ID window, along with a large pocket inside to store notes and keep organized.
Cast Iron Skillet:
For the cook at your workplace, 12-inch pre-seasoned and ribbed cast iron skillet is easy to use, clean up and maintain. It’s from Bed Bath & Beyond and is intended for rapid heating and excellent heat retention.
Candy Tower:
Prices for a candy tower go as high as $200 at Harry and David, one of many places to buy a boxed group of treats wrapped with a ribbon and stacked like a mini tower. For $30, Harry and David sells a tower that includes gourmet popcorn, lemon shortbread cookies, chocolate chip cookies, red licorice and citrus candies.
Music Subscription:
For as little as $10 a month, you can buy an employee a music subscription that they can listed to on their mobile phone without hearing from advertisers. Spotify, Pandora, Apple and others sell music streaming services. You can give them a giftcard for one month of service or a whole year.
City Map Coasters:
While a little pricey at, these neighborhood map coasters from
UncommonGoods.com are made of cedar wood and are a fun way to celebrate hometowns.
Starbucks Gift Box:
A gift card to Starbucks would probably suffice, but a gift box shows at least a little imagination. Cherry Moon Farms sells one for $50 that includes two Starbucks logo mugs, shortbread, three types of coffee and some biscotti. If you really feel generous, the gift can be renewed and delivered to their home as often as you’d like. Or go to your nearest Starbucks cafe and create your own gift box.
Chromecast:
There are all kinds of tech gadget gifts to choose from, but one that’s affordable that everyone will enjoy is a Chromecast. It’s a thumb-sized media streaming device that plugs into a TV’s HDMI port so that shows and apps from a tablet, phone or laptop can be shown on the big screen. Whatever is on your mobile device is mirrored on your TV through this $35 device.
Those should be enough ideas to get you going. If not, you can always fall back on the always-popular gift of a day off from work with pay.
