The Four Femmes Booth

For the last 3 days we have been at the Community Festival which happens every year in Columbus, Ohio.  This year we took part by having a booth as a newly formed creative collaborative group called Four Femmes. We did very well, especially for our very first appearance as an all creative, all cooperating, all handmade, all femme alliance!  We had lots of inquiries as to where our local store was so perhaps this will grow into a brick and mortar venture.  Meanwhile, I will updating my much needed Etsy shop with the new stuff we’ve been working on.  My hubby, a former Coast Guard sailor, has been inspired and pulled into the handcrafted world and has made some amazing rope jewelry which sold out!

Check out that craftsmanship!

I’ve been making these one of a kind (each one is different) daisy rings which will be in the reFINDesign shop by tomorrow afternoon.  If I am able to make more, they’ll go into the Etsy shop too.  Email me if interested (rhoda [at] metaphormula.com).

"You have it in your power to make your days on Earth a path of flowers, instead of a path of thorns." ~Sri Sathya Sai Baba

From Columbus Alive! Magazine

My handcrafted wares at ReFINDesign

I’ve been proudly selling my wares (some products, exclusively!) at a local shop here in Columbus, Ohio called reFINDesign and I thought all of you out there should know about it because it’s such a wonderful idea and not just because I’m a resident artist/vendor there!  In their own words, this is what they’re all about:

ReFINDesign Workshop hopes to make Columbus a city on the forefront of sustainable practices and industry by taking the first step into zero-footprint design, fabrication, and retail – of upcycled functional design & art.  The term ”upcycled” applies to functional design/art when the materials used are strictly found, recycled, and salvaged. This is a means of processing the throw-outs of our unfortunately consumer focused society and hence circumventing the highly inefficient systems - also energy, material, money, and carbon intensive - that support the traditional production chain…

ReFINDesign Workshop employs more than its designers. By taking found/recycled/salvaged materials and designing new products with them – we create value. This also allows anyone to sell ReFINDesign Workshop said materials at prices that otherwise would not exist because we process them into items of value, thus stimulating the local economy by offering the community a new way to make money from things that previously had no worth.

My first sale at reFINDesign during opening night which was also the monthly Gallery Hop in the Short North

Here are a few articles and a good blogpost about them:

Columbus Alive Magazine (download the actual article)

Uweekly

Alexandra477

I really love that people are becoming more and more mindful of what they consume, particularly what has been coined as Collaborative Consumption.  The world (our planet and it’s inhabitants)  beg for a shift and thinking about how we consume and where our products come from is a huge start.  ‘Tis an exciting world we are creating, folks!

Need I say more except: Come visit reFINDesign!

This easy recipe takes about a total of 30 minutes total to make and is derived from a 4/4 fork rated recipe from 317 users on Epicurious.com. I have made certain adjustments to make it the way I like it so I’ve put my version below. It really depends on the oven you have but the trick is to not overcook it and you must leave the middle a little gooey. There’s no messing this up either – you can add anything you like and try different measurements of ingredients like I did. Obviously, the better the ingredients, the yummier it is so I try and use as much organic and local ingredients from our local co-op. Good luck and let me know how it goes!

Dark chocolate tasting fudgy brownies with cran-raisins = the best batch I've made so far!

INGREDIENTS:

• 10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) organic, local butter (I like it salted and from grass fed cows)
• 3/4 cups raw organic sugar
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (any will do but I use Trader Joe’s brand)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract
• 3 cold medium eggs
• 1/2 cup spelt flour
• 2/3 cup cran-raisins, chocolate chips, peanut butter scoops or whatever you like (optional)
• dashes of cracked rock salt (Himalayan pink is what I use)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Over a double broiler (I just use a smaller pot filled with low boiling water under a larger pot that can hold all the ingredients), melt the butter and add cococa, salt and sugar. Stir until well mixed.
2. Remove from heat and let cool until it’s warm while you prepare the other ingredients, butter the bottom and sides of a square pan (the smaller the pan, the thicker the brownies) and warm the oven to 325°F
3. Stir in vanilla, then eggs one by one, making sure that it’s well mixed before you add the next one. Then add the flour until it’s well incorporated.
4. Put into the pan, crack rock salt over the whole thing and bake for 15 minutes, promptly taking out and letting cool so as to not overcook it.

I’ve been a busy little bee making stuff for the wedding and today, I just got done handcrafting this one of a kind necklace.  The pearls are fake but it’s all upcycled from real vintage jewelry and will be up for auction after the wedding. 100% of the profit (minus shipping) will go towards same sex marriage advocacy.  Check http://www.anditsyou.com for regularly for information.  I’ll probably post something on here too.

"The most precious jewels are not made of stone, but of flesh." ~Robert Ludlum

I’m making a whole lot of these for the wedding and for more shop products. It’s kind of fated that making these just came to me from the depths of my upcycle-obsessed cells; My name, Rhoda, apparently means “a garland of roses”.

"Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of the character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning." ~Lydia M. Child

I really hope that my love of leopard print dies down a little.  I would hate to be known as “that crazy leopard print lady” :-D.  Note that I’m wearing another version of the “Spring Time” book flower wrist corsage which will soon be in the online store.  I believe the one I’m wearing on this photo is still on sale at reFINDesign (1122 High St. in the Short North) for those in Columbus, OH.  It’s an amazing space that just opened so check it out!

By the way, the store on this site will soon be composed of more than my Etsy stuff in order to accomodate the non-vintage and non-handmade items I’ve got that I know will be a treasure for others.  It’s hard to part with some things but I simply can’t horde all the baubles, leopard prints and other pretty/shiny things to myself!

In other news, I’m so pumped doing this refresher Landmark Education seminar! I’ve already gotten some great results from the first class last Wednesday night.  The tools just makes life easier and an overall empowering experience for everyone I’ve known that has done it.  All in all, it has made my life more enjoyable and I believe those around me too.  My fiance is certainly more pleasant to be around and our relationship has gone up a zillion notches since he finished the course a few weeks ago.

I just got off the phone with my Landmark group and am feeling philosophical.  I looked at this photo and it got me thinking about all the things we are committed to in our lives and how and with what we fill ourselves up with in order to keep going.  A little metaphor to get you thinking and also a little play on words in the reminder below in the photo caption for all you graduates out there ;-)

Be mindful of what you fill your tank with, lest you hurt yourself and others should you have a breakdown.

Tonight, here in Columbus OH, was the monthly Short North’s Gallery Hop which was also an opening night for reFINDesign, an awesome arty store/workshop that is all about showcasing upcycle artists like moi and providing an atmosphere for sustainable thinking.  And I manged to make a sale!  Here is my first customer wearing her “Stop and Read the Roses” hairpin accented with feathers.  These will make it to the shop very soon so stay tuned if interested or message me for a request.

My lovely first customer wearing the newly purchased hairpin and I'm wearing a new product soon to be in the shop, the "Spring Time" wrist watch band corsage.

I had to take product shots today for my Etsy shop, thus the reason for today’s photo.  And just so there’s no confusion, I’m selling the earrings and not my lips!  With it being so close to Valentine’s Day, I’m also feeling a bit lovey dovey, especially after digging up and posting an amazing poem written by my love for me when we were 15 years old… What a multi-talent he is {swoon}!  The poem is up on our blog (I’m metaphorically the ocean).  I think it’s pretty cute that he went into the Coast Guard and also became a surfer after that.  Moral of the story?  Life is an adventure and you never know what is around the corner – sometimes eX’s become wonderfully surprising Ohhs!

i love you, baba!

“That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it…. We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.”
~ Paracelsus, quoted in The Dream Game

Today’s post is about sleeping and dreaming.  A friend sent me this interesting article about dreaming and I really loved the part about how dreaming allows us to be ourselves, to remind us of our true selves – in essence, our rest from the crazy, varied and stressful stimuli that we endure in the waking world everyday.  While we usually think of our dreams as being weird and crazy compared to our waking lives, I like that this different perspective makes me think of all the insane things that are in our world that we take for granted as being everyday common things – things that we just have to live with – like inequality, greed, insecurity, etc.  When we examine these things in the wide scheme of things of what is really important to people, they are the things that really don’t make sense yet we think of it as reality.

Meanwhile, in our dreams we can fly, be in another era or country at a thought and fight sharks (like I did last night).  I like to think that my essential self is the one that can do all those things.  If only my waking self can believe it too.  I’m working on it :-)

By the way, a sleep eye mask like the one I’m wearing below can be customized just for your and purchased via my Etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/laughingrhoda.

serious about catching ZZZs