Gifts

Hoping to draw more shoppers ahead of the holiday season, Facebook has expanded its Gifts service to include more products from more partners. The Menlo Park-based social network announced the news Thursday evening, saying it will partner with outlets such as babyGap, Dean & Deluca and NARS Cosmetics. Other new partners include Fab, Brookstone, L'Occitane, Lindt, ProFlowers and Random House. Some digital goods will also be available for purchase from the service: Facebook said users can choose to send each other subscriptions to Hulu Plus and Pandora, among others.  Facebook announced the service in late September.

See how long it takes your friend to discover you left behind a sweet and surprising hostess gift with HingeHeads, tiny decorative accessories that attach magnetically atop standard door hinges. Founded by architect Michael Schubach, the Pasadena company has more than 150 designs in three finishes: antique pewter, antique brass and antique bronze materials. A new summer collection includes a dog, a peace sign, a skateboarder, a ballerina, a hula dancer and a palm tree. Custom designs are available too. The designs are hand-sculpted and cast in limited editions in Los Angeles.

Need a beauty gift that will light up her face on Christmas morning? Don't confound her with bath and perfume products that have the aroma of foods she'd rather eat than smell like. And sidestep the generic, yet expensive, eye shadow quad whose choices are so limited that selecting the wrong palette could mean it sits in her makeup drawer unused. Instead, make her merry this holiday season with beauty gifts she'll love. The Spa Lover Best of Bliss set 2009, $45, www.blissworld.

SACRAMENTO -- Despite efforts to restrict the practice, California elected officials were showered with gifts last year from special interest groups, including tickets to Lakers and Giants games, concerts, cigars, expensive meals, lodging at casino resorts, golf games and foreign travel, according to records released Saturday. In August, legislators killed a measure that would have prevented companies that hire lobbyists from providing lawmakers and their families with tickets to amusement parks, racetracks and professional sporting events, as well as rounds of golf, spa treatments and gift cards.

The holiday season is upon us. Time for eggnog, caroling -- and worries about what to buy the boss. Today Alana answers your questions about gift giving and receiving. Dear Alana: I have been working in an office for a little more than a year now. Last year I did not exchange any gifts with co-workers because I was new. However, now that I have been here over a year, who am I supposed to give a card or gift to? What is appropriate? Oscar in El Monte Dear Oscar: It's a tough question.

Within an hour after my column about Mirna Gonzalez was posted on The Times' website Friday night, a dozen e-mails offering gifts and cash had landed in my in-box. All weekend, readers kept writing -- 148 by Sunday night -- asking how they could help Gonzalez, an unemployed single mother of three who was robbed moments after she cashed in the $620 in change she had saved all year for Christmas. "I was a single mother on a shoestring budget for years," wrote Jen Hoff of Ladera Ranch.

The president and first lady will cement their commitment to "eat local" efforts Wednesday evening when British Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife, Samantha, enjoy a menu based on offerings from the White House kitchen garden. On offer at the State Dinner, to be held outside on the White House South Lawn, are halibut with kale; salad greens from the garden; bison wellington and lemon sponge. Mercifully, the fish is from Alaska, rather than retrieved from the Potomac, and the bison once roamed in North Dakota, not the National Zoo, according to White House executive chef Cris Comerford.

There are two ways to Christmas shop for a cook. You can drop a wad on a spectacular piece of equipment that will get used three or four times a year and sit in the pantry the rest of the time. Or you can convert a relatively small amount of money into a potful of tools that will get used on a daily basis. While I know that $500 home sous-vide machine is going to get a lot of oohs and aahs come Christmas morning, I can't help but wonder whether it's the convenience of having a lot of the small tools around that will be appreciated more in the long run. With that in mind, I wandered over to the closest kitchen-supply store to see what I could find.