CRAVE CRUSH the urban girl's blog to all that you CRAVE

Recipe For Homemade Frappuccinos

July 31, 2009 by Amanda | Comments (1)

While browsing CakeSpy.com we stumbled across this recipe for home made Frappuccinos via Savory Sweet Life, we feel this might just be the perfect remedy for hot summer days. Check out the directions from Alice at savorysweetlife.com:

Alice’s home version of Starbucks Frappuccino Recipe
Ingredients:
1.5 cups of crushed iced
2-1 ounce shots of espresso
3/4 cup of milk
3 tbl. of sugar (more or less depending on preference)
*optional whipped cream in a can or freshly made and chocolate syrup
*If you don’t have an espresso machine, use 3/4 cup of double strength (strong) coffee mixed with 1/2 cup of milk and increased crushed iced amount by 1/4 cup.

Directions:
Blend all the ingredients except the whipped cream in a blender for 30-45 seconds. Pour into a tall glass and top off with whipped cream and garnish with chocolate syrup. Best served with a straw. Enjoy!

Alice’s home version of Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino Recipe
Prepare everything the same as a regular Frappuccino (recipe above) except reduce sugar to 2 tbl. and add 2 tbl. of chocolate syrup. Enjoy!

Other Variations
Use splenda, flavored coffee syrups, or flavored coffee creamers for a portion of the milk. For a richer beverage, use half and half, or heavy cream for a portion of the milk.

Disclaimer: This is not Starbuck’s actual proprietary recipe. This is my own version copycat clone frappuccino recipe of it. This recipe is for a blended icy coffee frappe / beverage similar to but not the same as Starbucks.

New Love Incorporated: Re-Falling For Your Business

July 30, 2009 by Amanda | Comments (0)

Amy Swift is the founder of SMARTY, a community and resource for entrepreneurial women in Los Angeles and around the country. Check out this great article all about reconnecting with your business.

Recently, I found myself in close proximity to a newly-in-love person. Once you get over the seemingly endless descriptions of “how he looks at me,” it’s actually pretty inspiring. For this married lady, it probed me to look at my husband in a new way and to recall all the early flutters of curiosity, awe, wonder and “wow” factor. And I haven’t even been married that long! Nevertheless, the daily grind sets in and sometimes you need a kick in the butt.

Weirdly, the same is true about your business. I’ve been reading The Dip by Seth Godin and musing at how we start our businesses with such vim and vigor and all the passion our beating hearts can muster. Soooo in love! But time passes, challenges arise, people judge you or support you depending on the day and entrepreneurs can easily slip into the uninspired slump. Whereas you used to make-out and caress your business, now you kind of roll over, put a pillow over your head and hope it doesn’t see you drooling in your sleep.

Relationships have it and businesses have it. It’s the ditch on the side of the highway that allows you to see who is hauling ass at mock speed with their tail in the air while you do your best to climb out of the dirt.

Here’s the funny thing; the antidote to the “ditch” is often hitching a ride on someone else’s entrepreneurial Masarati, someone who happens to be on the highway at the moment, someone who can remind you about how it was and can be. The easiest way to do that is to be around a bunch of smart chicks doing cool stuff, people who are truly excited about what they’re growing. It reminds you. It inspires you. It kicks your complacent butt into gear.

Deep, mad, crazy love has two people paying so much attention to one another that they see when one is hot, cold, hungry, tired….when one of you need your feet rubbed. Are you paying attention to your business this way? Are you feeding it? Giving it a rest sometimes? Bringing new information to the table to innovate and create? Are you keeping it interesting? Is your business worthy of a love affair?

It’s easy to stay in your sweat pants, hair in a ponytail, scarfing lunch at your desk. But imagine if you were in looooove. You’d put on lip gloss, rock a beautiful pedicure, prepare a gorgeous lunch to be enjoyed with a real knife and fork (!).

You’d get out of bed with a spring in your step and answer your phone with breathless excitement!
Find yourself a community. Get connected to other free agents who are in committed relationships and are HAPPY in them.

No one can love your baby like you can. So change the sheets, open the windows, look your business in the eye and put some umpf into it (and you can read that howeevvver you want.) Remember the first day you thought of your idea and how excited you were, and mostly, remember why you started it in the first place.

Lit Shades—Interview with the Artist

July 29, 2009 by Amanda | Comments (1)

Great lamps can completely invigorate an otherwise drab room, but are often impossible to find. Luckily, Dawn Bassett of LitShades is around to craftily rejuvenate, restore and transform lampshades to match your aesthetic desires. Dawn recently sat down with us to dish about her glorious work. Read her energizing interview below:

What was the inspiration behind starting your business?
Have you seen the lamp shades out there? Not much to choose from, some one had to change that!

What was the biggest surprise you have had as a creative entrepreneur?
That it’s all about attitude. That people around you get as excited as you do. That a sole proprietorship involves a whole lot of people who want you to succeed.

What is your idea of fun? If given a choice to skip work for a day, how would you spend the entire day?
Making a new lamp shade out of some fantastic Osbourne and Little fabric-skip work for a day? Me and my pint-sized Papillion puppy ride my scooter down to the beach in Madison Park where we swim and sunbathe till sundown, then on to Captain Black’s for a cold drink and some onion rings…anyone is invited to come along for the ride.

Share some ways you stay motivated, encouraged or brave.
A “small business” can have fairly daunting problems. But I like to remember that a “small business” revolves around the small things; a cup of tea with the shop owner next door, a lamp shade made out a woman’s wedding dress to be used in her little girls room, the feeling of knowing only I can fire myself.

Share something you are excited about right now.
Besides a perfect Seattle summer?! Okay, I am to-die-for excited about a show I am collaborating on with Russian born artist, Alexander Kirillov, who makes these amazing lithographs that we are going to turn into a light sculpture/lighting installation. The show is set for August 13th and it will be epic.

Seasons Savings: How to Shop Summer Sales

July 27, 2009 by Amanda | Comments (1)

Ever made the mistake of purchasing an item because it was a good deal only to have it take up prime closet real estate? Check out the amazing tips on Summer sale shopping from EHow.

1. Organize your closets before you shop and make note of the items you won’t need next summer. There’s no sense buying new t-shirts, for example, if the 10 in the closet will still fit next year.

2. Avoid trendy fashion styles on the shoe, clothing and accessory sale racks since the looks will soon be dated. No matter how deep the discounts, an item isn’t a bargain if you won’t wear the color combination or designs next year.

3. Stock up on essentials like versatile shorts, jeans and tank tops that won’t go out of style. Also look for non-clothing items you’ll need next summer, such as beach towels and chairs, casual tableware for the patio, swimsuits and flip-flops.

4. Look for pieces that can even become part of your fall wardrobe. You can layer shirts under sweaters, wear leggings under denim miniskirts or use canvas tote bags all year long, for example.

5. Ask yourself if you would still buy the item if it were full price. If not, you may be under the influence of the sale and don’t necessarily need or want the item. Hold off until you’re sure you’ll wear it. As a bonus, the item will have an even greater discount at the end of the season, although you risk it selling out.

Three Things You Can Do to Fix a Bad Web Review

July 24, 2009 by Amanda | Comments (0)

Whitney Keyes is our favorite go-to gal for fabulous marketing advice. Check out this great article from her Biz Bite blog at the Seattle PI:

This past weekend I decided it was time to pop back into my local Gold’s Gym to make use of my membership. The past few months I’ve ditched the gym to take advantage of our gorgeous weather, heading down to Madison Park for sun-drenched jog-walks. I have to admit, it has been a long time since I hit Gold’s so I needed to double-check the hours. I booted up my laptop, searched the web and ended up on the gym’s Yelp listing. YIKES!

It was covered with negative reviews! The 27 ratings were dominated by one and two star critiques. Here are just a few that focus on the condition of the exercise machines:

“At any given time a fair amount of them (elliptical machines) were broken, and they stayed broken for quite a long time. Often they were broken with no sign on them indicating that they didn’t work. I’d let a staff member know and come back the next day to find that there was still no sign.

“…the cardio equipment is ALWAYS broken making it difficult to be able to use what machines you want..”

“Cardio Machines are quite often broken…”

I always recommend people take web reviews with a grain of salt. Too many positive comments can mean overly eager-to-please friends and family members. A ragingly negative review can mean a one-time, genuine slip of service or someone who had a very bad day and just needs to vent.

But when the majority of reviews are negative, that’s worth paying attention to, Gold’s.

Here are three of my top tips for tackling negative online reviews about your business:

1. Regularly read comments. Too many people blow off constructive, online feedback. If it is too painful for you to read or your ego is blocking you from absorbing something that could be helpful, do what celebrities and politicians do: get someone else to read your hate-or-great fan mail for you.

2. Acknowledge when there’s a real problem. When a plane crashes, airlines don’t make excuses. They follow crisis management basics. Admit what happened, empathize with the people impacted (your customers!), fix the problem, and communicate every step of the way.

3. Correct mistakes quickly. If you genuinely have been taken advantage of by a renegade reviewer, it is perfectly fine to ask your clients to take a few minutes and share their more positive experiences working with you. This will balance out your online story

When was the last time you looked at your reviews?

Click here to subscribe to The Biz Bite from Whitney Keyes.

The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl

July 24, 2009 by Amanda | Comments (1)

The working girl is unlike any other woman you will get the chance to encounter. While the average American works around 10 jobs by the age of 40, this inspiring woman has worked 59 jobs in 22 cities and 4 countries! Karen Burns relays her lifetime of work in The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl, giving her readers “real life career advice you can actually use”! CRAVE delves a little deeper into the inner workings of this fabulous woman. We ask her some difficult questions that have moved her to become “rather philosophical” for our readers. Tune in for some great words of wisdom .

So, Karen, why so many jobs?
The short and maybe not so admirable answer is—I get bored easily. Once I feel I have mastered a job I just don’t want to do it anymore. So I move on. There’s nothing wrong with being dissatisfied if it makes you strive for something bigger & better.

Was this a movement towards finding your calling?
In the end it turned out that way. But to be truthful, at the time the job hopping felt a lot like floundering. Later, we tend to look back at our lives and say, “Oh, when I did this it led to that.” We can see a path. But usually while you’re living through it, you don’t realize that.

Have you found your calling?
Yes! I think writing is my calling. It’s never boring. (Maybe because I haven’t mastered it?) Anyway, it makes me happy.

Tell me how your job experiences tie themselves together to create your past 40 years of life experience. How have your jobs made you who you are today?
I guess whatever life experiences you have make you who you are, to an extent. However, I do believe that a large part of our characters is already present at birth, and that we often spend our whole lives uncovering that character, trying to find ways to allow it to bloom. It can be scary but also an adventure.

Nothing seemed to hold you back from picking up and moving on to the next adventure in life. How does a woman overcome defeat?
Boy, it’s hard to overcome defeat. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I do the things that make me feel better. When I feel stronger and a little recovered I try to figure out what to do next. I identify a first step–something small that feels doable. Then I just basically force myself to do it. If it works out (which it usually does because I pick something that is fairly easily accomplished) then I get a little confidence boost, which helps me to go on to the next step. And so on.

What is the biggest word of advice you can give to a female in the workplace?
It has to be two words: Be smart. I wish I could say that women don’t face any more challenges than men in the workplace, but it’s not true and I don’t know when it will ever be true. We still have to be smarter. We still have to do a little more to prove ourselves. This involves being industrious, calm, reliable, thoughtful, intelligent and—here’s a word you don’t hear too often—unflappable. Don’t let anyone get to you!

What is next for you?…Is a new career in the horizon?
Good question. Maybe. We’ll see. Right now I’m pretty happy with where I am. But one thing I’ve learned—it’s impossible to predict the future.

Visit www.karenburnsworkinggirl.com for more information on The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl. The book is available in bookstores everywhere!

Are You Video Ready?

July 22, 2009 by Amanda | Comments (0)

Forecasting trends show that video is about to take the web and may very well account for 90 percent of all online content by 2011. This sounds daunting to those of us that just mastered twitter or facebook, but luckily it is becoming easier to produce videos. Check out these great tips from Ladies Who Launch:

Invest in a webcam and create short snippets of video showcasing or talking about your product or service. Research shows that online viewers have short attention spans and react favorably to authenticity even if the quality is sub-par. Invest in a few practice rounds, but most importantly, be yourself and opt for video snacks that are no longer than 1 minute and 30 seconds in length. — at CRAVE we use the flip video (cost effective, and uploads directly to YouTube).

It is also important to use a video hosting platform. Video platform Web sites host and publish your videos at little or no cost to you. They make it really easy for you, so use them! The reason they do this is twofold: You are allowing them to split any ad revenues you make on your videos and because they need hits and content to become a media empire. YouTube is the most popular and widely used platform, with many more video Web sites closely following: MySpace Video, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, Veoh, blip.tv, Revver, and many more.

You want to pick a video platform that allows you simultaneously to publish your videos easily and quickly to other sites in order to increase hits on your video. Blip.tv, for instance, makes it easy for you to set up a show on iTunes as well as cross-post each video entry to del.icio.us, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, FeedBurner, Yahoo! Video, and AOL Video—all with one click. It also allows you to put the video on your own Web site and for users to post your video onto their sites.

Video platforms also have great tracking tools with built-in statistics. They track your viewership and can tell you how many people are watching your video. These statistics will help you with advertisers and help you learn what is working and not working for you in the videos. To read more click here.

Busted! Bra Fit Video Tutorial

July 22, 2009 by Amanda | Comments (0)

A perfect fitting bra is imperative for thin, warm weather clothing that leaves little to the imagination. This short, informative Youtube video is a great pre-lingerie buying guide, and will help you to weed out ill fitting bras in your wardrobe.

Country Living in the Heart of Seattle

July 20, 2009 by Amanda | Comments (0)

There is something so soothing, so refreshing, about life lived in the country. Riding a horse through a field, gardening on an expanse of land, dipping your toes in a fresh stream—one is given the opportunity to experience the peace of fresh air.

Nestled in the heart of Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle lies a store of this raw nature. After entering through the doors of the Noble Horse Gallery (214 1st Avenue S, Seattle, WA 98124), one does indeed “enter into another world”.

Soothing music plays in the background, aesthetically appealing art lines the walls, and quality clothing & accessories fill the store. Heather, owner of Noble Horse, is a horse lover inspired by the elegant nature of equestrian fashions. She aims to provide the urban woman with “timeless, lady-like” garments. The Noble Horse Gallery will dress you in exquisite jackets, Parisian riding boots, English-made gloves, and leather belts imported from Spain. Heather treats her clients like royalty, encouraging them to a lifestyle of elegance and sophistication.

Take a trip into the peaceful essence of Noble Horse Gallery and walk away with a quality product that you will not find anywhere else in the city of Seattle.

Noble Horse Gallery is a participant in CRAVE summer dreams Party August 19th at Teatro ZinZanni’s Spiegeltent.

Learn How to Make Candy Soap

July 17, 2009 by Amanda | Comments (0)

Anne-Maire Faiola  or “The Soap Queen” is the founder of Bramble Berry, a website dedicated to the art of soap making.

Next Page »