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

Baby Boutiques and Mama Marts – Where to find all things KID!

June 9, 2010 by Jessica C. | Comments (0)

Summer is officially HERE! It’s time for family picnics and beach escapes, trips to the zoo and weekends by the coast. Cruise local kid’s shops and outfit your little ones in the latest and greatest! While you’re at it, grab a few things to make your life easier – the perfectly-pocketed diaper bag, anyone? How about attention-grabbing toys to keep tots occupied on long road trips? And if you’re expecting, you don’t have to go far to find fanciful furniture and decor for your new nursery!

Daisy Baby & Kids
shopdaisybaby.com

Daisy Baby & Kids is a one-stop-shop for all your baby and toddler needs! Choose crib, rocker and changing table for baby and high chair, bunk bed and sippy cups for older brothers and sisters. And for you? Keep your pants fitting just right through pregnancy and afterward with the super versatile, super comfy Bellaband! AND, owner Dana Evans figured out how to make your life even easier – Daisy Baby makes house calls, bringing books, color swatches and wood chips to your home to help you design the nicest nursery!

Apple Seed Maternity & Baby Boutique
appleseedboutique.com

In addition to fashion-forward maternity apparel – from hip skinny jeans to office-ready pencil skirts, pretty detailed wrap-tops to bathing suits, Apple Seed Maternity & Baby Boutique carries preciously perfect baby and kid-wear. Flip through Splendid sets, Petit Bateau onesies, C&C dresses and Kumquat hoodies. When you’re done with that, pick up a customizable, modular, multi-terrain Bugaboo cameleon stroller – never has carting around kids been so stylish and easy! Last, but not least, peruse Apple Seed’s sweet selection of kid’s keepsake toys and yummy organic skincare for the whole family by Earth Mama Angel Baby.

Pink & Brown, Organic & Trendy Children’s Boutique
pinkandbrownboutique.com

Are you looking for a children’s boutique overflowing with 100% organic furniture and cute kid’s clothes that capture the natural beauty and innocence of childhood? Well, look no further! Pink & Brown carries everything the enviro-conscious baby-Mama team needs! Find bright retro-print diaper bags, primary colored, slip-free bottle covers, and hippie print baby slings. Pick up Packin’ SMART snack stackables and old-fashioned wooden toy trains. And complete your nursery with a streamline and modern crib…that conveniently converts to toddler’s first bed! ALSO, Pink & Brown offers 10% off to Moms expecting twins (when purchasing multiples of the same item)!!

Eco-CRAVE: More Green Businesses We Love

April 15, 2010 by Sarah Clise | Comments (3)

Back in the day, recycling was about as green as you could get. These days, going green has branched out into every aspect of life and is gaining momentum around the world. More than just a celebrity trend, it’s been adopted by individuals, businesses, and even neighborhoods. Continuing CRAVE’s ongoing support of going green and to celebrate Earth Day, here are some more of our favorite local eco-friendly businesses.

Eco-Coach – eco-coach.com
If you want to go green but don’t know where to start, Eco-Coach is here to save the day! Founder Anca Novacovici uses her passion for sustainability and environmental awareness to help individuals and businesses fuse eco-friendly practices into how they operate on a daily basis. Her consultancy services include green home renovations, LEED review, and ongoing green coaching.

Celebrate Earth Day April 22

April 12, 2010 by Melisa M. | Comments (0)

Earth Day is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment, held on April 22. It is celebrated in many countries and has been receiving added attention in current years with the newfound popularity of going green and our increased consciousness of how we are harming the planet. As active motivated women, we, here at CRAVE, think Earth day is a wonderful chance to help women discover new ways to help our earth and conserve it for generations to come. The Nature Conservancy has some wonderful tips to do just that, pertaining to activities a lot of women deal with in their everyday lives.

Use reusable totes

You can help save oceans when you use reusable shopping bags instead of plastic bags. Sure, it’s a small step — but it can make a big difference in the health of our oceans. Unfortunately, 90 percent of the debris that washes up from our oceans are man-made and shouldn’t be there. Most of it has – unfortunately – come to be expected: derelict fishing equipment, disposable plastic bottles, plastic bags, cigarette butts, bits of unidentifiable plastic, Styrofoam. To help encourage others, share where you take reusable bags or where you’ve found your favorite tote.

Eat food

Just like you, conservationists, fishermen, chefs and consumers are working together to find new ways of living off our oceans and waters while keeping nature healthy. In a day and age when many of us “harvest” most of our meals by filling a grocery cart or skimming a menu, it can be easy to overlook nature’s role in putting food on our tables. This is especially true when it comes to seafood. For centuries, the oceans’ bounty seemed inexhaustible. Now, as scientists unravel the intricate relationships between fish and the vast lands below the water’s surface, we’re gaining a clearer picture of how humans have altered our oceans’ ability to provide for us. The Conservancy is tackling the problems by working with communities to restore degraded habitats and rebuild depleted fisheries. But sustainability also depends on how fish are brought to market. A service called FishPhone is Blue Ocean’s sustainable seafood text messaging service that instantly puts sustainable seafood information at your fingertips. To find out about your seafood choice, text 30644 with the message FISH and the name of the fish in question. They’ll text you back with their assessment and better alternatives to fish with significant environmental concerns.

Green your gardening

Even while you’re gardening in your very own backyard, you can make a big difference in the health of the ocean. Fertilizers and other chemicals used in conventional gardening are washed into watersheds and eventually to sea, where they can harm coral reefs and other marine life. To help cut back on pollution, go native! Native plants require much less water and fertilizer than non-native plants do. Make your own compost! Composting kitchen scraps is a great way to create (free!) all-natural fertilizer. Set your mower to a cutting height of 2”-3” — which will eliminate undesirable weedy plants. Don’t rake your clippings; leave them behind as fertilizer. You can even try square-foot gardening. This method uses 90% less water and 95% fewer seeds than a traditional backyard garden and requires no chemicals!

You can find all the details on these tips and plenty more at earthday.nature.org

Do It Yourself Design Inspirations We CRAVE

March 22, 2010 by Lilla | Comments (0)

Spring is finally just around the corner. We are gearing up to do all our regular spring cleaning tasks – flip mattresses, wash curtains, and finally organize our junk drawers. One of the highlights of spring is rebirth and getting a new lease on life . Well, how about doing the same for your home or an old piece of furniture? Small changes are sure to make a large difference in any home! We love to turn to designspongeonline.com for inspiration and really love the before & after posts. Check out some of our favorite makeovers:

• From gloomy kitchen to apple green colored charmer
• From boring and granny-like rocking chair to modern rockin’ chic
• From an apartment that belongs in a Golden Girls flashback to a place that Carrie Bradshaw can call home!

Do you have any home DIYs plans for spring?

Home is Wherever You Hang Your Hat

February 23, 2010 by Lynn Edwards | Comments (0)

For those of you who have read my Rachel Ray blog you know I’m culinarily challenged, but love those food shows. I’m equally as inept at home design & décor but I love me some Design on a Dime (although I don’t actual DO either). I love the word “home.” I grew up in a small rambler with seven people, one bathroom and no dishwasher, but it was home. My Dad still lives there and it’s amazing how it feels sleeping in that house. It’s awesome when we all go home with our families, the bathroom line is just a little longer now with 23 people. After college I became a vagabond and lived all over the world, followed by 18 years as an army spouse. The Army has this cute little sign that says “Home is where the Army sends you.”

Needless to say, my “home” has been a stinky room the size of a closet, a grass hut in the middle of a rice paddy, an apartment on the 75th floor, a condo near a strip mall, a large sprawling tudor style, and approximately 5000 hotel rooms. I love all that cool stuff you get for your home when you get married but I made a critical mistake and had a really small wedding. Turns out I received three place settings of my formal china. When we’d have another couple over the fourth person had to eat off a plastic power ranger plate. I’m so home décor challenged I have lived for months with no pictures on the wall, have gone 20+ years without buying window treatments and I don’t have more than two bath towels the same color. When people ask me what “theme” I have decorated my homes I answer with a mid-modern century “pot pourri”.

As a joke one year my friends bought me an entire set of holiday plates. I now have salt & pepper shakers with snowmen on them…so stinking cool! I think chicks that wear hats are fashion forward stars, those with holiday-themed china are domestic goddesses….now I’m one. There are some staples I love that seem to make a house a luxurious home…a million pillows on your bed & lots of thread count sheets, a system to organize your plastic wear & lids, real flowers on your kitchen island, and that’s living. Oh, and whoever invented that electric fire place switch needs a raise…big time! I love huge tubs but have spent little time in them. The time I did spend was usually jockeying around to get comfortable around all those hot wheels in there with me. I did build a water feature on my deck once. I loved it, yeah for Lowe’s. I looked like a landscape architect genius just by putting part A into part B and firing up the hose. It was great to fall asleep to but it made me have to get up and pee all night long.

Oprah says make your home an oasis…take a look around and think about what you can do to make your house a little more “homey”…even if it’s just a $2 apple pie scented candle.

Come Clean in DC

February 23, 2010 by Sarah Clise | Comments (0)

Given the recent Snowpocalypse, it’s hard to believe that winter is coming to an end. It’ll be spring cleaning time before you know it…  The question of the hour is, will you be ready to face your closet, let alone your entire house or office? Below, two local ladies who make a living out of organizing other people’s stuff give us their top five organization tips in anticipation of spring cleaning!

D. Allison Lee (dallisonlee.com)
phone: 301.502.3835

From organizing your home or office to helping you with home staging and storage solutions, D. Allison Lee will de-clutter and de-stress your space in the most efficient way for your lifestyle. A Certified Professional Organizer since 2008, Ms. Lee offers a variety of packages for virtually any budget and promotes innovative, structured, and organized living.

1. Set Organizing Goals. Figure out what you want to accomplish, and put those items in order of priority. Sometimes it feels like our whole house needs help, and it might. However, there are likely to be specific areas that bother you the most. Start with those areas first.

2. Gather Everything You Need. Once you’ve set your goals, get everything you need to work successfully on your project. For example, when sorting and categorizing documents, be sure that you have a shredder, recycling bin, file folders, etc.

3. Work When You’re at Your Best. Most of us don’t do anything well when we’re hungry, tired, and/or in pain, so be sure that you’re mentally and physically ready to work. Also, think about the time of day that you’re the most productive. Are you an evening or morning person? Do you get your “second wind” in the afternoon? When do you feel the most alert? Finding out when you perform at your best will help you to complete tasks more efficiently and with greater success.

4. Play Your Favorite Music. When we exercise, we play up tempo music. It makes the whole process more fun and it can be very motivating. The same is true for organizing. Who says you can’t sing while you organize the kitchen cabinets?

5. Do a Little Bit Every Day. Have you ever tried to tackle a large project all in one day? It can be pretty daunting and overwhelming to manage it all at once, so spend 10-30 minutes every day doing some type of organizing activity. Not only will you keep the momentum going, but you will also get a chance to do other things you love to do. You’ll be surprised by how much you can get done when you do a little bit at a time.

Put It Away! (putitaway.net)
phone: 240.242.PIA1 (7421)

Catering to homes and small businesses, Kim Oser’s professional organizing service customizes its services based on each client’s particular need. Her business uses the most up-to-date organizational tools and trends to help you get rid of the clutter in your space! Put It Away! also does a great deal of community service, including supporting local non-profit organizations.

1. Schedule time to get organized. Mark it in your calendar. Set aside 20 minutes to 2 hours. Are you more productive in the morning, mid-day or at night? Schedule it like you would a doctor’s appointment. If you wait until you have spare time, you’ll never get started. Adding organizing time to your calendar establishes a commitment.

2. Grab a buddy. Do you ever feel like you get more done while you have a repair person at your home or you get the laundry folded quicker while the kids are doing homework? Have you noticed the kids get their room cleaned faster when you are standing at the door even though you never lift a finger? Invite over a non-judgmental friend, your mom, the dog or turn on the radio. This is the concept of body doubling. The body double’s only job is to stay in the room with you and help you stay on track, keep you from getting distracted. The presence of the body double serves as a physical and emotional anchor whose existence helps keep you focused on the organizational process. Plus, doing anything with company usually makes it more fun.

3. Spend 10 minutes setting goals. Why do you want to get organized? What is preventing you from being organized? By getting this information out of your head, it gives you an idea of what you want to accomplish and purpose for moving forward.

4. Drop a perfectionist attitude. We tend to think “I can’t get started because I won’t be able to make it perfect”. Our desire for perfection inhibits any success. So rather than tackling the whole office or closet, start with one drawer, or just the shoes. If we plan for small accomplishments, we feel success and inspiration to move forward.

5. The organizational process starts at home (or your office). When getting organized, our first inclination is to go buy a bunch of bins, new bookcases, file folders. While buying these supplies may get us excited, we tend to get home, pull out our supplies and go “now what?”. The organizational process starts with your stuff. Pick an area to start organizing. Sort the items in the area, match like items with like items. Determine do all of the items in this area belong here? Do empty shopping bags really belong in your closet? Do your heels belong in your file drawer? If items are out of place from where they are being used, set them aside to be returned to their appropriate area. Once an area is sorted, pick appropriate containers, label them and assign a home. By assigning everything a home, you always know where to find things and where to return them.

Put a Spring in Your Step with these Hot Colors

February 22, 2010 by Madeline C. | Comments (0)

When we think of spring we think of pastels and floral prints, but those just seem a little too passé and boring. What will you be wearing this spring to spice up your wardrobe? Here are some of the color trends that you won’t want to miss out on. Pick up a few bright accessories that are both trendy and timeless.

Turquoise – We’re pretty sure this is on EVERYONE’S hot-list, along with other aqua-colored hues. This vibrant color turns every outfit up a notch, making you just exude that cool confident aura that will make you the center of attention. Splurge on a Jamie Joseph brightly colored stone ring. We love this Sea Blue Chalcedony Ring for a beautiful eye-catcher.

Light Pink – More specifically, champagnes and corals are two “light pinks” that won’t have you gagging on pastel and cotton candy. Champagne is the closest you can get to a nice neutral color while adding a little pop! And for coral, try some of Cara Lyndon’s hairpins, we recommend Coral Wheel . Whether your hair color is light or dark, this feminine flair will turn heads.

Yellow – In every shade and size. Add a dash here or there or a big bright bag to have everyone around you smiling. Evoking sunshine and happiness, everyone could stand to integrate this cheerful color into their wardrobe or even their home. Try a bright throw pillow to add to your living room, we like the yellow Gloria pillow from Henry Road. The great thing about throw pillows is, when spring is over, you can just throw them back into the closet until spring comes again!

Go Ga Ga for Babies in DC!

February 17, 2010 by Sarah Clise | Comments (0)

If you’re a mom or a mom-to-be (or an auntie or granny for that matter), you know how fun it is to buy baby stuff. Admit it – adorable outfits, cute-as-can-be accessories, and maternity clothes that actually make you feel pretty all have the ability to put a smile on your face. Read on for local baby shops near you!

Apple Seed Maternity & Baby Boutique (appleseedboutique.com)
115 South Columbus St. Alexandria, VA 22314
Expecting moms need look no further – Apple Seed is brimming with all things baby. Hip, chic clothing for moms and tots, the latest baby gear, and an array of unique gifts make this shop in Old Town a must-visit. Be the best dressed mom-to-be with maternity clothes from the likes of Citizens for Humanity, Paige, and Olian. Don’t miss the baby How-To videos on the boutique’s website!

Daisy Baby & Kids (shopdaisybaby.com)
4912-A Del Ray Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20814
Specializing in design services for children’s rooms, Daisy Baby offers a comprehensive experience for parents and parents-to-be. Founder Dana Evans helps you create the perfect space, one that is visually stunning and a happy place to be for everyone in your home. Furniture, bedding, window treatments, flooring, art, and more – Daisy Baby offers the works, and they even do House Calls to ensure that your new nursery or child’s room is the best it can be!

Kacy Paide – The Inspired Office – The Office Dream Weaver

December 16, 2009 by Wendy M. | Comments (0)

The Inspired Office; doesn’t the name alone just conjure up images of the perfect, neat and organized office like the ones featured in the pages of Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel or the Container Store?  You’ll likely have the notion that The Inspired Office will deliver the ideal workspace, where one can be inspired by their work and also successfully run their business.  Well… Kacy Paide, the founder of The Inspired Office, is what we’d like to call “The Office Dream Weaver.”  She’s thrives on tackling the messiest, most-paper-filled office spaces and transforming them into a dream office.  Paide is so passionate about helping business owners to create an organized, functional and aesthetically-pleasing work environment that she specializes in organizing offices.

Paide can help prospective clients in three ways depending on their needs and budget:  First,  a free weekly email newsletter filled with useful  tips, ideas and articles sure to inspire any business owner;  second, a unique quiz, “How Inspired Is Your Office” to help potential clients understand how much organization assistance they need – this also serves as a precursor to a 20-minute free consultation with Paide, and lastly, 3 consultation packages:

• The Art of Filing  (8 hours)
• The Inspired Office Makeover (12 hours)
• Inspired Office University (18 hours)

Each package is customized based on what filing and organizational systems and layout work best for you and your business. Paide takes great care to understand what makes her clients tick and how to help them work through their clutter & organization issues to make their dream office a reality.  She’s helped more than 200 business owners get organized and create their very own inspired office.  Paide is quickly becoming one of Washington’s most sought after professional office organizers and has been featured in The Washington Post and Daily Candy.

We’re thrilled that Kacy Paide of The Inspired Office will be one of the featured woman business owners featured in the upcoming CRAVE DC guide launching in the Spring 2010.

theinspiredoffice.com