Pho Cyclo Cafe - Tasty, fast, fresh

Last night we ate at the Pho Cyclo Cafe new location on Broadway (near Harrison). The folks there were so nice and helpful to us (we don't know a great deal about Vietnamese food). We had the fresh rolls and the #19 and #25 (as usual I can recall numbers much better than names) both were delicious and fresh. Iced Tea was tasty, too. It is definitely worth a repeat visit and we are glad to have a new place we can bring our curtain climber to.

Summer Fun

When the sun is relentlessly beating through the craft room window, it's good to get out of that hot,stuffy craft room and into a fast and furious water fight. And these Hydro stiks are the BEST armaments! You can get them through NSR and other whitewater outfitters.

Puzzler Father's Day Card

I made this card for my husband. He really is "1 in a million". The scan loses the nice colors of the card which looks black, but is actually choclate brown. The greens are much nicer than they appear in this image, too.

Tea for two on Father's Day

 
Our Dads love tea so we purchased them some great teas at the Queen Anne teacup, found some nice tins and created lovely labels for (I regret not taking snaps of those). I found some mailing tubes at the Paper Zone, dropped the tea tins in, wrapped and ran out the door. I like the way they turned out. Festive and remind me of bamboo.

I must plant these next fall

Hair Allium
One of the key features listed by the catalog is "conversation piece"

Alphabets and such

                            
I could spend hours reading through all the alphabets and languages on Omniglot!

When I was a wee one, I used to keep a notebook that I filled with samples of typefaces and calligraphy that I liked. Some girls had scrapbooks of idols, mine were filled with fake chinese lettering and big bubbly seventies writing among other novelties.

I even made up a language that I taught my friend at summer camp. We thought we were so cool, until we kept evolving it to the point where she and I both had very different dialects.

Favorite Notebook

Moleskine notebooks seem to have a cult-like following. I admit I have lusted after them in my heart. I love the look; the size; the elastic; the pockets; and they have some interesting formats like the storyboard. I used to carry something very similar. But I find that I hate writing in a notebook that I can't fold completely open so I tend to like wirebound (or any other binding that allows me to fold it over).

So here's what I've been using for years now. I always get these Clairefontaine notebooks with the grid paper...I really hate writing on anything other than grid. Don't ask why - I have no rational answer. And I always use the 6-3/4 X 8-5/8 for work and the 4-3/4 x6 -3/4 for carrying around with me to jot down ideas,etc.

I always end up hacking them a bit:
- Always create two pockets: one inside the front cover and one inside the back cover. To do this I usually hack up a couple 8-1/2x11 envelopes.
- Glue in a pad of sticky notes
- At one time I tried hacking on a pen holder...that wasn't so effective

The covers are not beautiful, I'll probably try my hand at hacking some sort of cover one of these days.

I have to admit I have recently been tempted by the Rhodia but they are too large.

How interesting that someone would bother to create a notebook and paper with "Sensuous curved edges". Must be some interesting market research behind that one.

More Papercraft fun

Chao Labratory has patterns and instructions for these sweet characters and others projects.