sweet dreams...

Someone asked me in a job interview the other day what I value most when it comes to a business. My response? Consistency.

May sound silly but I consider a blog to be kind of like a business, its premise being to attract consumers (readers) and to keep them as such. In my opinion then, you kind of need a business plan or else you risk losing sight of where you came from and where you're headed all the while consumers (readers) come and go. The extent of my business plan didn't include P&L sheets or marketing plans though, just a simple "my plan is to be consistent with what I post and when I post it". Oops, so much for posting every Monday (as if you noticed). In my defense, it's that dreaded last two weeks of the school semester with not.a.minute.to.spare. But ya, maybe I'll be easier on myself and say a "post a week"...cause there's definitely nothing special about Mondays anyway.Now on to more important things...

What do you love most about wine barrels? That they produce one of the most delicious things on earth? Ya, me too. A slight second though, I love how they can be turned into shiny little bedside tables...

 Not the biggest fan of light wood so I tend to always go for the stain. I think this one is a red oak stain? Or sedona? I forget but I like a hint of the red as opposed to a flat dark brown. Before staining I did some sanding to open up the grain and further darken the wood. I used steel wool to polish the metal....or to try to. And I have to admit the above barrel isn't the exact barrel below but looked basically identical.

 Another great purchase from Theisen Glass- this already cut scrap piece of glass which fit perfectly with the circumference of this barrel...they also cut pieces of mirror like this one

 I decided it would add some flavor to fill the space on top of the barrel with wine corks. But not just any old wine corks, Shafer wine corks which my doll of a friend, Katie Shafer, hooked me up with. I have some wonderful memories spent at Shafer Vineyards and probably just a few more spent drinking Shafer wine :)

On another note, I think doing this type of thing under any glass table would be cute especially if you did it with special corks you've saved from special bottles you've opened. Actually, if I had a little kitchen nook I'd get a much larger piece of round glass and a few tallboy bar stools and use this as a kitchen table :)

 One of the best things about this barrel being by my bedside is that every once in a while it will give off a misty odor of crushed grapes...and this, I think, is the reason for all my sweet dreams of home (sigh).

You know how as you grow up you develop those "like parent" relationships with your best friends' parents? Mr. Shafer was one of those for me. One wise piece of advice from him I'll probably never forget went something like this: "if you want to sell something with ease (advice, a commodity etc.), sell it with a story." Referring that back to the corks pictured above, they don't call it "One Point Five" for kicks. Check out its story here. They also make a wine they call "Relentless". It's gotta be my favorite name for a wine...ever.

it's amphibious!

If driftwood could talk, I bet it would have some pretty wild stories to tell, don't ya think? That must be why I enjoy it so much- something about that weathered look really adds character knowing it's the end product of a pretty thrilling life :)

I found this piece of driftwood while walking the 'beaches' of San Francisco...not too big, not too small and just enough asymmetry to build character without making it impossible to work with. Too much asymmetry gets a little tricky if you're trying to hang it on a wall, you know?

The question was, how was I going to use it?

Who doesn't love flowers?

And aren't mason jars just the cutest thing?

Once I knew I wanted to incorporate flowers and mason jars, I had to figure out how I'd adhere them to the driftwood. I must have seen these "half circle metal things with holes for screws" somewhere before because I was able to describe them just like that when I walked into the hardware store. Not to pull gender generalizations into this, but it's a funny thing watching people (more often females than males) describe what they're looking for in hardware stores. It's as if, through some crazy process of osmosis, we suddenly become fluent in sign language because we sure has hell can't describe what we're looking for in words. Anyways, 3 hardware store attendants and an exhausting lesson in signing later, I came to find out that these "half circle metal things" do have a name and that they're called pipe clamps. They vary in diameter; I think these are 3''.

In terms of hanging, you can find endless variations of hanging equipment, you just need to make sure they will hold the weight of what you're hanging (says on each box). This type (above) is pretty heavy duty and easy to work with. Going back to asymmetry, the trick to this was finding the driftwood's center of gravity in order to know where to put the screws on either side...I had to test out a few holes so it's a good thing driftwood is already holey :)

Three mason jars and three "pipe clamps"...the cheapest materials around!