Record coasters

It was surprisingly misty today in SF. Ahhh, the perfect weather for reading the Chronicle and a cup of Mocha Tesora outside of Philz. Along the way, I stopped by Arkay Workshop and bought these awesome coasters.


yours truly,
Valeri

must write ideas down, NOW

I'm 100% guilty of not following through with my many ideas. Fleeting dreams... Well, not dreams exactly, but wonderful things I wanted to make. My friend knows I'm guilty of this and sent me the link to this Idea Book sold online at Poketo. If you don't feel like paying $8, you can just draw boxes in your moleskine.

Idea 1: Making a leather clutch. 2: Making a family cookbook. 3: Writing a zine. I'll keep you posted with these projects.

They also sell these cute bookmarks. Adorable for cookbooks!

yours truly,

Valeri

Covering wood with moss

I'm always in awe of the display at Anthropologie. Everything looks very handmade. Sometimes a little too arts and crafts, but creative and inspiring nonetheless. I remember seeing the visual display artist using moss to cover an ostrich made of paper and chicken wire. "Hm, you can buy moss," I thought. "Hm, I should cover a large piece of wood with moss." I found a small piece of wood on the street and decided to practice on that first. I bought the moss from Beverly's.

Away I glued.

I used Elmer's glue because I didn't have a glue gun. I think a glue gun would've worked better because you can pack the moss on a lot more.

I recommend using a larger board. The bigger the better! This one works for my room and especially if you're renting.

yours truly,
Valeri

Painting clay pots

I spent part of Saturday making red velvet cupcakes and painting these clay pots. They're going to be perfect for my cacti! They're also perfect for starting seeds. May to June is a really good time for planting cilantro, parsley, and basil. If you use acrylic paint, make sure to spray/ paint it with a water based varnish to seal in the paint.

yours truly,
Valeri

DIY: Space saving night stand

We keep on using my wicker nightstand as a projector stand. I was sick of moving my nightstand around, so I decided to make a new one. I bought the wall shelf and brackets from Home Depot for less than $15. The Ikea wire basket was put under the shelf to add additional storage. My new night stand is a lot more functional and uses less space. This worked really well because my bed is parallel to that wall. If you use the wall perpendicular to your bed, a wall shelf might be too wide. Here's alternative solutions:

(via Apartment Therapy)

(you can make/ buy one of those at designmyworld.net)

yours truly,
Valeri

DIY: Revamping Lampshade

I found this on the side of the street. The lampshade was dirty, but I loved the etched glass. I kept it with the intention of buying a new lampshade, but it was hard finding the right lampshade. Finally, I gave up and decided to make it myself, like all DIY projects. I used this video as a guideline:

How to Re-Cover a Lampshade
Uploaded by Howcast. - Parties, dorm life, and other college videos.

Videos are great how to's, but you definitely have to improvise according to your lampshade. For mine, I didn't keep the initial lampshade, since it was dirty. Instead of reupholstering an old lampshade, I just made a new one. I had to cut the fabric with an extra inch on each side so it could be wrapped under and on top. I chose a peach cotton fabric and glued it with Glue Touch, fabric glue, as I wrapped it around the wire frame. You can choose any fabric really. I chose to cover the peach fabric with a thick orange lace. The lace was cut and glued on the same way as the peach fabric. The hardest part of this project was keeping the fabric and lace smooth and free of wrinkles as I wrapped it around the metal frame. After a few hours, voila:

I was a little hesitant of the lace and orange combo, but strangely it's worked for my room. It's one of those ugly-pretty aesthetic.

yours truly,
Valeri

Full time charitable restaurant

A really interesting idea.

This was posted on http://blog.missionstreetfood.com/2010/01/full-time-charitable-restaurant.html :

"For the past year, Mission Street Food has been donating its profits to charity; now, we would like to open a full-time charitable restaurant. This restaurant would be here in the Mission, open daily, offering fine dining food at affordable prices, benefiting a changing roster of charitable organizations.

While unconventional, the business model we’ve used thus far has enabled us to donate $22,000 to local charities in 2009, and we’d like to propose another unconventional business decision for the new restaurant: inviting you to participate in the venture. Mission Street Food is currently in negotiations to purchase a restaurant space, but we need a little more capital upfront. So we’re announcing a co-op of sorts, in which many investors could contribute a reasonably small amount to the start-up costs and earn annual dividends and more.

Here are some details regarding this proposition: We need about 100 investors at $500 apiece. If there is enough interest in this project, we will hire a lawyer to manage an escrow fund and accept contributions. Our tentative business plan projects a level of profitability that would make the annual dividend around $70 (14% return on investment). It also projects fundraising of $40,000 to $90,000 per year for charity. Investors can choose to hold their membership and redeem annual dividends or redeem the membership at any time for $1000 in gift certificates at the restaurant. If the restaurant does not open, investments would be returned in their entirety.

This is, undoubtedly an unusual offer, but we’re trying to build a charitable engine and hope you'll be interested in participating. The restaurant will not be strictly not-for-profit--some profits will go to partners/investors and some will go to members of the co-op as dividends. But I think we can raise a lot of money for charity. More importantly, if we’re successful, other people might follow suit by incorporating charitable elements in their businesses.

If you're interested in getting involved as an investor/Co-op member, I would be happy to provide more detailed information. And if anybody wants to invest an amount over $5000, we would be glad to discuss partnership terms on that level. Email me at missionstreetfood@gmail.com.

Thanks for your support,

Anthony"