Mother Kombucha and the Neverending Green Onion

Sounds like the title for an offbeat fairy tale or something, eh? Kind of! Mother Nature does indeed pull off some pretty amazing magic. Recently, we happened to be the lucky recipients of some of that magic, thanks to a couple awesome friends!

The lovely Dominique hooked us up with a batch of homebrewed Kombucha tea, complete with a couple Mothers and a nicely growing Scoby on top! She even gave us her personal recipe for Kombucha tea, and care instructions! Such a sweetheart :) More on Kombucha tea here.


While making dinner at our place a few days ago, our good buddy Paige shared a little tip she'd picked up off Pinterest (god, I'm addicted to that site..), for neverending green onions! The next time you have green onions, instead of tossing the trimmed white root ends, submerge them in fresh water in a small jar and place them in a sunny windowsill. Within a couple days, they'll start shooting all over again! We've had the jar on the right for only 4 days and look where it's at, already! Just snip off what ya need, keep the water fresh, and you'll hopefully not have to pay for green onions for a long time!
Happy Growing!

Temescal Tool Lending Library

Hey all!.I'm knee deep in building a custom work table for our studio, as well as a few other projects! I'll document the whole build process in a couple days when it's all done, but here's a sneak peak at the mish mash of gathered items that'll be screwed/nailed/glued/willed together to create something very distinctly "Breanna" (rack full of stuff not included)


As part of this build, I've had the need for some tools that I dont (yet) own. Enter the wonderful Temescal Tool Lending Library!

This amazing little wing of the Oakland Public Library group has over 2700 different tools to check out, and it's all free as long as you've got a library card! From the gnarliest power tools to teeny tiny hand tools, they've got you covered, and are all smiles and helpful about it to boot!
The Tool Lending Library is located at the back of the Temescal Branch Library, a beautiful red brick building in the Temescal neighborhood in Oakland. They offer workshops, volunteering oportunities, and a super welcoming atmosphere for the wide range of patrons they see every day. I feel really lucky to a so close to this unique resource :)

Temescal Tool Lending Library
5205 Telegraph Ave
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 597-5089


Now I'm off to rev up the power tools and get buildin!

Rainy Oakland

Some shots from a recent rainy walk through our hood...

(PS, finished shots of the door table and all the other projects I've got going are soon to come!)

Door Table Update! Step 2's

First off, the next steps taken on the DIY dining table. A new crazy work schedule (I recently was promoted to managing my own store, hours, hours!) postponed my work on the table all week. BUT, for the first few days everytime I checked the Ikea leg pieces for solidity and dryness in the stain, it was still a lil sticky. So, hectic work actually worked in my favor here.
Today, I decided to screw all the damn pieces together. I was tired of looking at them drying. I still had the underside of the pieces to stain, but I figured I could do that when the pieces were all together, bc, hey, they were the underside pieces...who's going to be scrutinizing my craftsmanship there???

(p.s. I did have a friend over this evening who gave me the raised eyebrow and mentioned the integrity of my "craftsmanship"...meh, whatever, I'm not gonna be looking at the underside of my damn table.

ANYWAY: rant aside...

Here's what I started out with after putting the half stained pieces together:


Ikea thinks it's ok to have the gross big screw holes visible on their furniture..


Wood filler fills them nicely..


The finished product after full stain, upside down since I was working on the underside of the pieces..


This is taking so much longer than I originally anticipated...but I can attribute it to the slow stain setting times on the Ikea finish (literally 3-4 days) and my super busy schedule. Oh well, these two days off will prove fruitful no matter what!

DIY Dining Table from a salvaged door: Part 1

I couldn't find a dining table I liked. Scratch that, I couldn't find a dining table I liked that was cheap or free. We have a large kitchen and dining area to fill (comes with the large house), and I wanted a big gathering place-type table to fill it. I'm trying to see how far I can go furnishing it with free, reclaimed, salvaged, second-hand, etc pieces. I believe we can do it, and I believe we can make a lovely home in this manner, indeed :)
Craigslist was unfruitful. People either wanted too much for things I wasn't willing to settle for, or they lived too far away, or I couldn't fit their "beautiful antique piece that just has to be out today" into the back of my hatchback. I took all of this as a sign pointing me in a different direction. How do I get all of the pieces of a large dining table into our place, on my own, on the cheap? Build it myself!!
Enter the GREAT idea found here: http://www.designsponge.com/2008/01/diy-project-dining-table.html . This sounded super fun and easy so..hell yes!

There are ways to make this project completely free. Scavenging a door, not treating it with anything, makeshift legs. I wasn't privy to any of these options at the moment, and hell, I wanted to see if I could build something beautiful from otherwise cheap or throw-away materials..so I may have splurged a little on the finishing details. The final product will still come in at hundreds of dollars less that an equivalent size table at retail, guaranteed. AND, this one will be personalized and one of a kind :)

Step 1: Find a door

Accomplished this at our amazing Urban Ore , the best salvage/recycling/treasure hunting warehouse I've found in the Bay Area. From the literally 100's of doors I whittled my choice down to a hollow core door (price - much cheaper), with no drilled though handle hole, and unpainted for easier staining. Cost: $25

Step 2: Find legs

The DIY recipe calls for a set of 4 Ikea Fintorp table legs, which as far as I can tell have since been discontinued. After much searching of flea markets, salvage yards, and craigslist, I couldn't find anything that floated my boat as a fancy replacement. My ideal vision was a set of 4 beautifully lathed banister type spindled legs...alas, nothing, so need overrode dream vision. I need a dining room table. Plan B mode set in and I checked my pride and walked in to Ikea. (Disclaimer: As much as I loathe the big box, assembly line, rat in a maze feeling of Ikea, {and the fact that buying their particle board shit makes me lose sleep} I do like walking through once in a while to brain-catalog design ideas. I can't lie, their designers are good, considering the materials they have to work with.) After 3 days of recon..no lie.. I settled on 2 of the Vika Fagerlid legs in birch veneer (which apparently is also discontinued). This choice came from a couple of other necessities. The fact That I chose a hollow core door hit me during my leg contemplations: How am I going to sturdily attach legs to this thing?? Oops... Well, the Fagerlids have large wide flat tops that I can easily screw in to the corner joints of the door, and will support a larger piece of the door. They were also half price due to the whole dc'd thing. Score! Bonus that they have neato storage shelves on the sides for pretty vases, bowls, etc. Might attatch thin safety rails across the shelves so wayward feet can't smash. We tend to have our share of wayward feet wandering through our place.. Cost: $40 (marked down from $80)

Step 3: Sand and Stain!!

The hands on part..my favorite. With my Aretha Frankiln Pandora station on I set to the job at hand. The door itself was lightly varnished so I only took a light sanding to it to rough it up for staining. It took the stain well.


The legs came in 6 piece segments that Sonny advised me (smartly) to stain before assembly. I was wary of staining Ikea pieces due to the fact that they were already "finished". I read through a few ppl's horror stories of trying to refinish Ikea pieces before totally losing interest and wanting to try it myself. My pieces are birch veneer and all these people were bitching about melamine and foils and laminate and whatever...I decided to try it anyway. I thought sanding to rough up light varnish would be better, but for some reason I went ahead and tried just a straight stain out on one of the smaller pieces on top of the finish. Call it laziness. It worked better that I could have thought. The stain penetrated and took on the gloss of the finish. Magic??


So, this is the stage I'm at. It's going to take overnight for the stains to set, then it's time for second coats, second opinions, second chances, etc..

Updates to come as the project is completed!