OlaArte Tacos and Art Show

There come times in parents' lives when their kids do some pretty cool things. Now is one of those times. Come out to enjoy Artist/Illustrator Erika Natasha Richie as she features her whimsical world at OlaArte Tacos & Art Show on Saturday, March 23rd, 2019 from 7:00p-11:00p.

Erika will showcase her artwork and have a variety of collectible merchandise available. RSVP Tickets here:

Tacos & Art Free Tickets

We look forward to seeing all of you there!

Hook & Chain

January marks M.Elisa & Co. needle & yarn, hook & chain production time for the Fall/Winter season 2019. I'm excited to see what this year has in store. Last year began with a lull in sales online, only to pick up with great momentum offline. What a blessing it has truly been! With wonderful guidance from fellow makers online, they've helped streamline my inventory to suit my niche market. This year's inventory reflects tried and true trends that my customers love with new holiday themed items to add to their collections. 

Three months of working hard planning, creating and marketing will be hectic. After 2018 sales I am ready for more blessings to come. Who knew that this thing would work out. It was a lesson learned that when you take a leap of faith and just trust God with your gifts, everything will work out wonderfully! I had so much self-doubt and fear of failing. I really believed that people would hate what I made, those thoughts dug their heels right into my heart and I was discouraged. What I didn't realize is that I wasn't reaching the right audience. I would tell others about what I was working on, but because my online reach was weak and sales were slow, I hesitated showing off my collection. Then I showed the right person. My landlord and family friend, whom knew this town like the back and front of his hand.

A native Angeleno like myself and fellow real estate investor ( income property investor ), he was able to steer me in the right direction. His elderly mother, once a fashion merchandiser and seamstress in her own right, currently in full capacity of herself regardless of her age, looked over my work. Her creations are works of perfection, so it was an honor to gain her seal of approval and her encouragement. Their consensus was to take to public market places, preferably in "gentrified" areas of Los Angeles...lol... and place my inventory on display with the option to purchase. It didn't take long for me to sell completely out of everything I had with customers privately requesting custom creations for a slightly higher price. This was totally unexpected!

The ole' hook & chain has found its niche with most of my requests for the following season being crochet items. What a year of growth, health and great wealth, l'chaim 2019! 

The Coffee Cake To End All Coffee Cakes

Move over Starbucks, the Head Honcho is alive and well! If you grew up in LAUSD throughout the 70's, 80's and 90's this following recipe is about to bring it all back. Remember being in Junior High and rushing the "Hash Lines" ( not to be confused with "hashtag"- for some of you little millennials, this post ain't for you, lol ) for one of three things; a brownie, a ridiculously large/soft cookie or the holy of holiest COFFEE CAKE. 

This wasn't your average coffee cake, no no... This was all cake, all sweet, all things soft, spice and nice. You'd find yourself running from your farthest 3rd period class across campus, past the quad, the student store and through the eating area to get to the "Hash Lines" just to be one of the first to purchase your daily coffee cake, still hot from the lunch lady's 1965 industrial ovens. The warm cinnamon, brown sugar and vanilla cake permeated the air. You stood in line catching your breath, your senses catching the aroma with each huffing breath. It was imperative to be one of the first ten fiends in line. Yes fiends, because this cake did make us fiendish for it. This delectable delight was in short supply, once gone there were none until the next day! The horror was unbearable. 

Reminiscing with old friends 20 years later of all the missed nuances of school and the wonderful treats our own children will never know. The first thing to be mentioned is our beloved coffee cake. No thanks to "The Powers That Be" who did away with all of the things that made school bearable in the name of blasted "healthy eating". Never mind that students throw away 80% of today's "healthy" school breakfasts/lunches in the garbage! That's our tax dollars, every penny of that 40% of my business taxes, in a garbage can. Alas, I digress...

I have found the "forever diamond" in the mine of the LAUSD school snacks of yore. Our most treasured coffee cake to end all coffee cakes, Starbucks could never... Devour The World blog by Jen Jenk has shared this wondrous and magical recipe with us in what is simply called...

LAUSD Coffee Cake

Now, go my brethren! Yes! Go, and bake the stock out of your local Smart & Final and bring this illustrious coffee cake into your homes so that your children will know what a REAL gotdamn coffee cake is supposed to taste like!

As always, YOU'RE WELCOME! ;)

Grove Collaborative, The Holy Grail

• "We all have good intentions.
• Conscientious choices are not just for the few.
• Every home is beautiful.
• Every day is worthy of celebration.
• Human connection matters."- Guiding Principles of The Grove Collaborative

I came upon The Grove Collaborative through YouTube vlogger Amanda Paige aka This Crazy Life Vlog/blog. Every week she gives a detailed account of every product that has made her life so much easier while keeping her environment safe and healthy for her growing family. I've recommended her channel to you in a previous post, I do hope you check it out. 

This Crazy Life Vlog, Amanda

Grove Collaborative is like no other website I've come across. They are a San Francisco, California based steadily growing, environmentally friendly retailer of home and personal care items. In accompaniment to their house brand you'll find Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home, Caldrea, Burt's Bees and Yes To among others. They are the Holy Grail of environmentally friendly cleaning and personal care products.  Grove offers an incredibly flexible subscription service to their customers. For every purchase there are incentives, minimum purchase rewards in the form of free gifts. Should something go south with your order, they make good on their promise of caring about you and work post haste to ensure your utmost satisfaction.  

The Grove Collaborative

My first order came with their Holiday caddy starter pack as a free gift. Inside a festive red tin caddy came three of the most heavenly scented Peppermint Mrs. Meyer's products I've ever had the pleasure of owning. These are full sized products, not samples. I also received a few more free items for meeting my minimum purchase. You can check out my haul on my Instagram page: Grove Haul In short, I received about $68 worth of products and paid only $23. I kid you not, you did indeed read that correctly. I only paid $23 total for my entire order and I received free shipping...What!!! Yes biiiiitch... that's a deal to silence all deals.  They got me, quite possibly forever because when that box came in it felt like Christmas!

Ruin.Transformation.Sanctuary.

It has often been heard that one's home is one's sanctuary; your respite from the outer world, a place where you can rest from your weary days of labor & toil. As a real estate wholesaler I see sanctuaries in ruin. Ruin is great for business and certainly ruin is good when you think of how reinvention is oftentimes birthed from ruin. To quote one of my favorite authors from her book Eat.Pray.Love.- Liz Gilbert, 

"Ruin is a gift.  Ruin is the road to transformation."

 I work with ruin, negotiate around it, reimagine ruin and quantify numbers on ruin based upon that imagined transformation. I could walk through ruin and see a transformed sanctuary, placing a carefully calculated price for the hungriest bidder. I don't transform the space myself, I provide the canvas for my pool of artisans to create their masterpieces. This is the real estate wholesaler's life, this is my life. I literally take shitty structures and create deals out of them, bring them to buyers to make magic. On my seller's end, I relieve them of their ruin and create the capital for them to transform their financial situations. Where ruin was once the bain of their existence now becomes their gift of capital gains. So why does my sanctuary look similar to the ruin in my deals?

This isn't a story about how I transformed my ruin into a sanctuary. This is an awakening, that I peddle the very thing I live in. I'm a renter with interests in purchasing the building I live in. My landlords are an amazing family, we've been family friends for 50 years. This building celebrated it's centennial this past May. It stands as a monument to the booming prosperity and bustle of constant Angeleno transformation. Its time that this building transformed itself unit by unit. Don't get me wrong, my landlords run a tight ship. They're fair, they keep up our building and keep our living spaces clean. Any time repairs need to be made they are done instantly or in a matter of hours. My landlords go above and beyond their call of duty. The magnitude of scope of transformation I envision is far beyond anything they could take on financially. I know exactly how much renovations cost, can estimate down to the cent and creative ways to find the funds to execute the task.

While I work on seeking out the funds to buy this building, I've been looking at renovations on Houzz. This site is like a beautiful, modern spin on the Real Estate Investors Association I'm a part of. This site is all of my contacts and their portfolios come to life! Check them out:

https://www.houzz.com/photos/query/1920-quadruplex/nqrwns

The goal is to rip out the Craftsman built in china cabinet/buffet hutch and cooking area stove. I want to open that entire space up and completely demo the kitchen to move the location of the sink, stove and cabinetry. I'd love to finally install a dishwasher so that I'm no longer busting suds. Imagine my chagrin when I'm washing dishes by hand and have to stop, dry my hands before evaluating deals that filter into my emails. A dishwasher would save me time and money. We need space in the dining room and kitchen, both should be open to each other. I have a nook in the kitchen I hardly use, a pantry too small to hold any amount of food of significance. Everything is awkwardly placed in the kitchen. My refrigerator sits in a corner in the DINING ROOM, yes the dining room. I don't use the built in china cabinet/buffet hutch for china. It is a bookcase/file cabinet/holiday gift wrapping storage. I won't miss that this monstrosity of architecture in the least to be honest. With so many plans, Houzz makes it easy to really envision something practical and doable for even the most difficult of spaces. I have more plans for my ruin's transformation into my dream sanctuary.