You may have noticed that I like IKEA. When I need something for the home I think of IKEA. I love their simple, inexpensive ways to freshen up the home, to fill a specific home décor need or to make a simple meatball with gravy dinner. To me, IKEA is for the home just as a grocery store for food. The more I find out about IKEA, the more I like it and what it stands for. I thought you might also be interested in these little known facts about the brand:

• IKEA is an acronym for the initials of Ingvar Kamprad and the initials where he grew up, Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd, Sweden.
• The first store in Canada opened in 1976 in Vancouver.
• The first store in United States opened in 1985 in Philadelphia.
• There is a grand total of 301 IKEA stores in 41 countries/territories. The IKEA Group itself owns 267 stores in 25 countries. The other 34 stores are owned and run by franchisees outside the IKEA Group in 16 countries/ territories.
• IKEA was one of the first retail stores to charge for bags and then to completely get rid of plastic bags.
• IKEA was one of the first to introduce reusable bags.
• IKEA can cater your next event, small or large.
• 150 million meatballs are sold each year around the world. Mmmmm, just thinking about their meatballs is giving me acraving. Here is a link to make your own Swedish meatballs.
• IKEA has a store front section to completely outfit your own store or boutique with everything from counters to stylish shelving.
• In 2009 660,100,000 people visited an IKEA store worldwide.
• All IKEA products have a designer’s name on them.
• BILLY, the classic bookcase for book lovers, was born back in 1979. Since then they have sold about 41 million of them around the world.
• IKEA consists of 9,500 home furnishing articles – most of them packed flat and ready to go!
• IKEA allows you to be your own interior designer by using their planner guides.
• Globally, IKEA is the largest corporate donor to UNICEF.
• Sustainability is integral to the IKEA culture and business. IKEA’s environmental practices, including flat packing to diminish our CO2 footprint are key to the way IKEA does business. Here is a list of some of their latest sustainability improvements.
• IKEA US and American Forests have planted over 1.5 million trees through in-kind store customer donations.
• IKEA Canada sells Christmas trees for $20 at all their stores. A portion of sale proceeds will go to their long-standing environmental partner, Tree Canada for the “Pick a tree, plant a tree” program.  In addition, customers receive a coupon for $20 off a $75 purchase made between January 2 and February 28, 2011. Christmas Trees will be available for sale starting November 25 until they are sold out.
• IKEA is sponsoring the Life Improvement Project. They are accepting proposals until November 8th, 2010 on how you would spend a year and a $100,000 helping others.  If interested check out the website.

Fun facts. I would love to hear an interesting tidbit you may know about IKEA that we don’t know.

Indeed, take a look at Lumi Co. This brand new start up company is up to BIG (huge) things. It is headed by the very young (22 year olds) but incredibly brilliant and determined product design students, the team of Jesse and Stéphan.

What’s Lumi? It’s a totally unique, groundbreaking printing technology. Why is it so special? Lumi’s process isn’t derived from any other existing printing technology. It enables printing with photo-realistic qualities, on any NATURAL material (even over texture). This has been previously impossible. Sure, there are ways to print on textiles, but the only known process are screen printing for natural textiles (which limits the quality & authenticity of the printed image) or sublimation which can only be done on synthetic materials, with a whole lot of harmful chemicals. Natural materials cannot be printed using the sublimation technique because it would burn and destroy them.

In contrast, Lumi can print the exact, unaltered image in an eco-friendly way on ANY natural material. This is truly ground-breaking. The image is permanent, wash-fast and eco-safe.

How do 22 year olds come up with something like this? Well, you need one very passionate young lady who doesn’t understand nor accept the meaning of “No, this can’t be done.” This was the standard response that Jesse got for a numbers of years as she was asking herself why, oh why, were there no methods of reproducing, i.e. printing, full-color/full-tonal gradation images on natural fabrics, cotton, linen, leather, etc… She took a year off of school to explore this very question. Her investigation took her to talk to print experts all over the world, who all told her the same thing: it can’t be done.

From her Kickstarter interview, Jesse says:  “I conceived of the idea back in high school when I was operating a fashion company and began to question why my creativity had to be limited by the materials and technologies that I could find in the yellow pages. Choosing textile imaging as a focus, I began an in-depth quest to learn every way that people in every culture have applied imagery to fabrics through the ages. What resulted was a deep knowledge of why we’ve come to use the technologies that are currently available, but also exactly where their limitations lie. Still unsatisfied and looking for solutions I began to study types of printing that weren’t textile related, that is when I uncovered the building blocks to the Lumi Process.”

That’s when the detail-oriented, problem-solving partner, Stéphan, came in to assist Jesse on developing the mechanics of the new technology. The funding that they are looking to receive through Kickstarter will finance the last of the R & D stage and enable them to start collaborating with photographers and fashion brands to test the creative capabilities of their product.

Just so you know, Kickstarter projects only get financed once they have reached 100% of their goal, within the assigned timeline. Otherwise, they get… nothing. Ouch. Which is why I want to encourage you to become a Kickstarter backer for Lumi. There are 20 days left for them to achieve their goal and they are still – at the time of this writing – at 48% of their $12,000 goal. You can become a backer with as little as $5 all the way to… well, however much you’d like. BTW, you get a gift with your pledge over $15 and the gifts become better and better with each pledge amount.

You WANT to be a part of this. The textile, fashion and home décor industries have NO idea what’s about to hit them. Yeah, you want to say “I was there”. Go to Lumi’s Kickstarter page and pledge here.

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UPDATE: Lumi Co. was successfully funded on February 22 and the project is moving ahead, full steam. I can’t wait to see how it develops. I am so incredibly impressed with these two amazing young minds. Bravo!

I’m in awe of the amazing talent of the creative directors that build these dreamy, fantastical montages and of their elves that execute their vision  for every passerby’s delight…

So, I was researching this season’s holiday windows from the NYC chi-chi retailers (because they have the biggest budgets and because they need to outdo themselves every year, you know they’ll create something astonishing) to present here, when I found that all the best photos came from one single photographer: Rudy Pospisil. So, let me just send you directly to his blog where there are enough magical images to guarantee that you will feel jolly before you even click to page 2.

Some of the displays captured by Rudy will simply take your breath away… So crammed with fantasy, surrealism, fairytale, color, sparkle  and detail.

Here is a collage of some of my favorites…

Thank you, Rudy for sharing the magic of these displays.

I LOVE this new site! Looklet is “styling studio” where you and I can mix & match fashion styles to create all sorts of looks. I get to fantasize about what I’d wear if I were 6 feet tall and a size 0, or still in my 20′s and foolish again, or if about what I’d wear if I needed to attend a movie premiere. Ahhh, the fantasy. Meanwhile, I’m still in my pj’s.

Looklet is like playing with paper dolls, but for “adults” and with real fashions. The Looklet wardrobe features the latest trends by new and top designers and vintage boutiques. They also have contests where participants can build a look based around the prize item.

I don’t know what their revenue model is since they mention that they don’t sell anything on their site (Must be advertising revenue…). Still I really admire all the photography, styling and back-end work that went into making this application. Admirable. And fun.

What does this have to do with the winning-an-8000-sq-ft-with-interior-pool-house contest? Well, in leading by example, Khelly and Jerry who could not sell their house in this crappy market in order to fund DO Tank! got very creative and decided to raffle it off. And so, the 200 Story Home Art Contest was launched. Everything that Khelly and Jerry do has a win-win-win aura about it and the idea of raffling off the house fit perfectly with their philosophy of leading an authentic and meaningful life and taking action to make it so.

The details of the contest are all here and all the associated math is explained here in a very transparent process. In a nutshell, here is how the contest works: there will be 19,000 raffle tickets sold for $100 each.

Because the organization is not a non-profit, a game if skill is required. The skill? A piece of art with the theme “home” (details here). The entries of 200 finalists entries will be reviewed by a panel of seven judges who will determine the grand prize winner who gets the house or $500,000 in cash and a donation $50,000 to a charity. The 199 runners up each get $500. On top of that there will be early bird prizes which include 6 Mini Coopers, 12 Harley Davidsons and more cash.

The odds are fantastic. I’m so in. Talk about win-win-win! You have till March 31, 2010. Hurry and get creative!

I’m married to a lawyer. When people ask what kind of lawyer, he answers “a good one”. I say “a nice one”. Which is probably why he is no longer really practicing as a lawyer. You can’t be a nice lawyer for long without it coming back to bite you in the derriere and that just gets really aggravating. But I’m only mentioning all this because, as a corporate attorney, he’s always, constantly had clients looking for funding. I’ve heard all the ugly financing stories, the rapacious VCs, etc. And the small companies, or individuals whose projects could really change a life or a career never, ever get a chance at financing of any sort. This is why this latest crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter.com, really rocks.

Kickstarter is a great tool for artists, writers, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, athletes, adventurers, inventors, bloggers, comic book creators, explorers, curators, promoters, performers, and lots of others.

There is no fee for projects to apply, but the site is still in beta, so it’s by invitation only. If you’ve got a project that is still just “a dream” because you don’t know where you’ll get the dough to get it done, this might just be your chance.

There are requirements, bien sûr, but nothing convoluted and this are all explained here.

What’s in it for the “investor”? Actually the funds are called pledges, not investments. Because the people who pledge get the satisfaction of knowing that they are backing a project(s) that they are interested in, no strings attached. And actually, pledges are only disbursed once the project has attained its total financing goal and deadline. It’s all or nothing. That speaks to the merit of the project and the follow-up networking skills of the pledge recipient. One can pledge anywhere from $2 to $5000 or more and get various “incentives” along the way, such as, for example, your name in the film credits ($25) or your name in the film credits + DVD ($100), etc…

At the moment, I am considering these projects:
-    A new Travel & Lifestyle website for hip & savvy women
-    A movie project about the chemists who developed “cold fusion”
-    A film about a real neighbor to Mr. Rogers
-    A giant Theremin to be built at the Pop Montreal Symposium headquarters. (WTH is a Theremin?)

So, fun stuff and your chance to make someone’s dreams come true. Plus your name in the credits. Worth every penny.

I know wait, every morning, with bated breath, to see what quirky concoction Sheena has devised. All are delightful and all based on the uniform dress designed by Eliza Starbuck.

The mastermind behind the uniform dress is my friend and designer, Eliza Starbuck. We took inspiration from one of my staple dresses, improving upon the shape and fit to add on some seasonal versatility. The dress is designed so it can be worn both ways, front and back, and also as an open tunic. It’s made from a durable, breathable cotton, good for New York summers and good for layering in cooler seasons.

But even better than the sustainable fashion challenge, is the philanthropic motivation behind the project, a year-long fundraiser for the Akanksha Foundation, a grassroots movement that is revolutionizing education for children of the slums in India. You can donate here.  Even an itsy bitsy, single digit donation makes a difference, so go for it.

BTW, if you are a fashion or accessories designer and would like to donate to the Uniform Project, Sheena is all welcoming and will post a link to your site/blog if she uses your pieces. More details here.

Cool huh?

Sarah’s got a very effective form of soft feminism that mocks the female stereotypes portrayed by advertisers, in a compelling and just perfectly right humorous manner. OK, oftentimes LOL hilarious. Here’s one of her “Target Women” clips that covers pretty much every cliché about women: can’t be single, has to be saved by a man, wants to be married…

Or this one about the trials and tribulations and hidden but unadulterated joys of cleaning:

Sarah, thanks for putting your finger right on the juicy center of it all (and having such a grand ol’ time doing it) . Advertisers, take note.

There’s not much info about Sarah Haskins out there, but the Facebook Fan Page mentions this: Sarah is a writer and performer for Current’s infoMania where, in addition to her role as the “Target Women” correspondent, she is an important member of the office crossword team, the fax machine enthusiast society, and is the creator of the chicken nugget-english muffin-cream cheese and mustard morning sandwich. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. Sarah hails from Chicago, IL where she performed improv and sketch comedy at i.O. Chicago and with the Second City National Touring Company.

Go here to view all her video clips on Current TV. So, you want to see the one called “Story Time”, the “Barbie” one, and then the “Chocolate” one… Love ‘em. Love Sarah.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Oh, and here are the lyrics.

For all the humor and cuteness exuded by her figurines, Nicole takes her work very seriously, spending many hours reproducing her clients – with great detail and accuracy -  as 5 inch tall characters.

Made of polymer clay, these His & Hers (or his & his or hers & hers) cake toppers will last forever. And probably longer than most marriages. Sorry. Still, I love the idea of injecting a little self-deprecating  “character-ization” humor into an otherwise possibly solemn, albeit happy celebration. And, note that the figurines can be perfect for occasions other than weddings. Graduations, new baby, retirement, promotions, birthdays … Pets can be represented too.

Visit Nicole’s gallery of cake toppers here (best viewed in IE). Are these cute or what?