Magic Monday Café

Tea contains antioxidants. Antioxidants can help slow down the...

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 18:01:32 -0500

Tea contains antioxidants. Antioxidants can help slow down the aging process, and help cells regenerate and repair. Many studies suggest antioxidants also assist our bodies in preventing cancer.

Tea can lower stress hormone levels. Black tea can reduce the effects of stressful events by lowering the amount of the stress hormone cortisol in the body.

Tea fights cavities and reduces plaque. Compounds in tea are capable of killing or suppressing growth and acid production of cavity causing bacteria in our mouths.

Tea keeps you hydrated. Every cup of tea you drink, especially low or no caffeine varieties, counts as a cup of water with the added bonus of providing antioxidants as well.

Tea may reduce the risk of stroke and heart attack. Tea can help prevent formation of dangerous blood clots which are often the cause of strokes and heart attacks.

Tea can help lower blood pressure. Drinking green tea daily can reduce your risk of hypertension by up to 50%.

Tea aids your body in digestion. Tea has been used for thousands of years as an after-meal digestive aid. It can also help relieve stomach cramps.

Tea may help prevent diabetes. There is some evidence to suggest that green tea might help to lower the risk of getting Type 2 Diabetes.

Tea can help beat bacteria. An Egyptian study testing the effects of green tea on antibiotics found the tea to enhance the bacteria killing effects of the drugs.

Tea aids your immune defenses. A study comparing the immune activity levels of coffee drinkers vs. tea drinkers found the tea drinkers to have levels up to five times higher.

Sorry for Lack of Updates

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:42:00 -0400

Things here are on a crazy hold because we’re in financial schtuck because of taxes and houses and things.

Though we have had a bunch of nifty coins donated by my (Cat’s) Dad from various countries. I have not done a full count yet, but I think we’d have a nice area to cover from that.

So, all our focus is going to this:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/258996?a=1101419

Thanks

Re-Imagined Tea

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 14:45:00 -0400

Now that I have access to truly decaffeinated tea I can say that I’ve reworked Peaceful Dreams.

Taste tests really couldn’t determine if it was better with peppermint or spearmint, so since we can make to order we will offer the blend with either or both. Thunderstorm’s electrical interference pending it should be in the shopping cart by the end of the day.

Sencha Green Decaf tea leaves, lavender flowers, peppermint and/or spearmint.

No caffeine whatsoever. Plenty of relaxing yummy flavors to make this the perfect tea to have in the evening before bed.

More Urgent

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 09:39:00 -0400

I’m sorry there’s no real update about the cafe this week; but I’ve been a bit freaked out about a more dire money situation that we’re in so Becca and I haven’t really done much planning cafe-wise.

I’m $275.76 short of the morgage this month and I’m trying to raise the funds.

I have a fundraiser up here: http://catrionasea.chipin.com/to-save-the-house/

We actually need to raise a bit over $5000 by the end of the year because if we don’t pay the taxes and insurance on the house Wells Fargo won’t let us assume the mortgage and they will foreclose on the beautiful house that we’re supposed to inherit from my late father-in-law’s estate; but for the time being I’m focusing on the short term goal of $300 to get us to my husband’s next pay day.

For those who are more esoterically inclined I have a tarot-related fundraiser going on my other tumblr: http://silverpathcat.tumblr.com/ if we get $100 donations I’ll start doing drawings for free readings among the participants, prizes will increase as donation amounts increased.

Thank you so much.

Bread for Bread

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 20:09:44 -0400

Today we made bread :)

Bakery cafe’s need lots of bread after all. This is two batches of dough and we made three loaves, two dozen clover leaf rolls and some bread knots with the left over dough.

So, this is our Honey Wheat Bread. We’ll be trying out other recipes over the next few weeks because we want to have lots of yummy healthy breads to offer over the course of a week.

Magic Monday Café: Recipes

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 09:25:40 -0400

Magic Monday Café: Recipes:

ssfseiyakou:

magicmondaycafe:

Today Becca and I are sitting down and collating recipes for the food we’ll have on our menu.

We’ve been going through muffin recipes for the past hour and now I’m really hungry :)

Now we’re going through other sweet treats we might offer such as pies and brownies.

Yesterday was soup day.

We’re also going to go through different lemonades and healthy soft drinks we can offer as alternatives to chemically heavy sodas.

Any sort of finger foods would be good. Little cakes or cookies, maybe some baklava or mini cannolis. Fresh fruit with slices of cheese for a healthy option would be great, too. (Babybel mini cheese?) Or, if you want savory, look into tapas.

Ah, the baklava! I can’t believe we forgot to list that because Becca makes an awesome baklava.

We are planning to do some savory things particularly Cornish Pasties which are a bit like empanadas.

We will definitely have fruit “on tap” as we’re planning to make our own jams and have fruit pies on different days, so that’s an excellent option.

Recipes

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 12:29:53 -0400

Today Becca and I are sitting down and collating recipes for the food we’ll have on our menu.

We’ve been going through muffin recipes for the past hour and now I’m really hungry :)

Now we’re going through other sweet treats we might offer such as pies and brownies.

Yesterday was soup day.

We’re also going to go through different lemonades and healthy soft drinks we can offer as alternatives to chemically heavy sodas.

Are there any particular recipes that are your absolute favorites that you think we should offer?

Pennies Update

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 17:20:54 -0400

This week, we got a nifty wolf card from Bigger on the Inside purveyors of fine hand-made books :) Check them out; and thank you so much!

991 US pennies *
6 Canadian pennies
and a 2 euro coin

* denotes updated totals.

If you would like to send us pennies for our floor, please mail them to:
Magic Monday Cafe
P.O. Box 2410
Umatilla, FL 32784

Pennies Update

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 18:24:55 -0400

walk-your-talk:

magicmondaycafe:

While we were away our good friends Patti & Steph from Starlit Creations and Last Chance Myu sent us 300 pennies! Thanks so much ladies!

We also received three pennies from Munchkin which he found on the floor and were probably mine to begin with ;)

Our current total stands at

980 US pennies *
6 Canadian pennies
and a 2 euro coin

* denotes updated totals.

If YOU would like to send us pennies please send them to:
Magic Monday Cafe
P.O. Box 2410
Umatilla, FL 32784

If you are super awesome and would like to donate to the cafe building fund so we can have counters, chairs, tables and those important things like stoves, tea pots and coffee makers you can send your donations to the same address or over paypal to magicmondaycafe @ gmail.com or you can buy some of our yummy teas from our store at magicmondaycafe.com!

Thank you so much!

Stay tuned! Next week there’ll be an update in donation incentives. I’ll give you a hint. You can drink out of them!

^ these people are awesome.

Thank you ^_^

Pennies Update

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 15:49:00 -0400

While we were away our good friends Patti & Steph from Starlit Creations and Last Chance Myu sent us 300 pennies! Thanks so much ladies!

We also received three pennies from Munchkin which he found on the floor and were probably mine to begin with ;)

Our current total stands at

980 US pennies *
6 Canadian pennies
and a 2 euro coin

* denotes updated totals.

If YOU would like to send us pennies please send them to:
Magic Monday Cafe
P.O. Box 2410
Umatilla, FL 32784

If you are super awesome and would like to donate to the cafe building fund so we can have counters, chairs, tables and those important things like stoves, tea pots and coffee makers you can send your donations to the same address or over paypal to magicmondaycafe @ gmail.com or you can buy some of our yummy teas from our store at magicmondaycafe.com!

Thank you so much!

Stay tuned! Next week there’ll be an update in donation incentives. I’ll give you a hint. You can drink out of them!

Floor Plan

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 15:38:55 -0400

I feel comfortable sharing this now as we’ve heard from the building owners that they’ve received it. It seems our initial send didn’t go through and then we were out of town and various things.

So, they have the floor plan now and you guys can see how we’re hoping to set things out. The blue room would be where the pennies go!

We had a hiccup with the P.O.Box turns out the number was written incorrectly on my paperwork, and I have updated the correct address here, but I’ll announce it again.

Magic Monday Cafe
P.O. Box 2410
Umatilla, FL 32784

So, there it is. I apologize sincerely if any of you have tried to send us things and they’ve gone back to you!

We found out when Becca tried to check the box while I was out of town, and I hadn’t thought to add her tumblr account as an authorized user of this blog, because I’m a dork!

I’ll do our penny total update in a separate post as I need to update the ticker!

huushiita: omygod. Bat tea cups! How awesome! I want! I can...

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 09:53:20 -0400

huushiita:

omygod. Bat tea cups! How awesome! I want!

I can see something we’re going to be trying :)

IMPORTANT Address Correction

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 15:26:04 -0400

Apparently there was a mix-up somewhere between the written record and the actual box. Our address is

Magic Monday Cafe
P.O. Box 2410
Umatilla, FL 32784

Many, many apologies. I went off the paper the post office had printed as I thought I was mis-remembering, and then we return from vacation and it turns out the boxes don’t go that high and our key opens 2410.

So, if your pennies get sent back to you I very much apologize.

Penny Total of the Week

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 14:05:00 -0400

Over the weekend we received our first two penny donations by mail!

Our current total is:

677 US pennies *
6 Canadian pennies *
and a 2 euro coin

* denotes updated totals.

We had a donation of U.S. & Canadian pennies from N.R. Minor-Architect on livejournal, who found us via the livejournal Crowdfunding Community. N.R. let me know that the Canadian mint isn’t producing pennies any more, so there’s definitely some history we’re adding to our floor, which we thank you for.

Speaking of Crowdfunding ;) our second donation to the floor comes from community owner Ysabet Wordsmith who runs Penultimate Productions.

Thank you both for your donations!

As always we appreciate those of you who also donate to our building fund via purchases from our shop. Where you can get tea, advertising, website reviews and tarot readings. For those of you who are truly awesome and generous you can also donate by sending a gift through paypal to magicmondaycafe@ gmail.com ^_^ and we will squee over you and send you many warm fuzzies and love.

If you’d like to send us your pennies as well. Our address is:

Magic Monday Cafe
P. O. Box 2410
Umatilla, FL 32784

Our next penny update will be in two weeks ^_^

We’ll be adding options to our shop then also with custom painted mugs and wood burned charms, keychains and jewelry during that time.

Ooops. My bad. I meant to set this to post tomorrow when we were out of the area BUT I hit the wrong thing. So, just pretend this was posted on Monday ;) ~ Cat

Pennies Update

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 16:51:17 -0400

We have a ticker now! It’s cute!

Thanks to the munchkin’s generous trading of pennies from his piggy bank for “silver coins” from my wallet we now have:

658 US pennies
3 Canadian pennies (!)
and a 2 euro coin (which I forgot to say was found by Becca’s son)

This is our overall fundraising total which looks equally daunting:

Thank you to all of you who have said you’re going to be sending pennies so far!

We look forward to hearing from you!

Catriona & Becca

Send Us Your Pennies!

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:40:00 -0400

So, here’s our big announcement! In striving to make our cafe as nifty as humanly possible we’re customizing as much as we can. We have a friend who is going to paint a brilliant mural holding our menu board along the back wall and any other large walls we have. Each table and chair we purchase from Habitat, Goodwill or other local thrift places is going to be an individual work of art. Then thanks to pinterest we saw this:

Source: https://www.floorstoyourhome.com/blog/2010/01/10-most-awesome-floors-ever-created/

And we just KNEW that the front of house HAS to have this floor! In the back we’re limited to special safety flooring and besides we’re the only one who get to see that. Out front where everyone could see we’d like to not only use pennies but penny sized coins from all around the world!

The area we have to cover is approximately 32ft by 20ft, with an estimation of 260 pennies per square foot we’ll need about 169000 pennies to cover the floor!

Any extra U.S. pennies will be transferred to our building fund (or if you want to straight donate to that, that would be awesome too!)

As of 7/19/12 we currently have…

658 US pennies
3 Canadian pennies
and a 2 euro cent.

So, only 168338 coins to go!

According to Wikipedia the U.S. penny is 19.05 mm (0.75 in) in diameter and 1.55 mm (0.061 in) thick. There are a variety of designs even for U.S. pennies and we’d love to get samples of each of them so we can make nifty patterns in our awesome floor ^_^.

We’d love if you can contribute to our cafe by sending us your pennies, 2 euro cents or whatever other nifty low denomination coins you have around.

If you have some coins you’d like to send us please mail them to:

Magic Monday Cafe
P.O. Box 2410
Umatilla, FL 32784

We have found out if you’re in the US you can send 11 pennies for a first class stamp and 22 for 65 cents.

If you’re donating pennies and have a business or site to promote let us know when you send the pennies and we’ll list your site on our thank you page and the weekly round-up.

We’re trying to crowd-fund as much of our cafe as possible, click What We Need to see a list of the supplies we’re needing and what the donation money is going to fund.

Then if you’d like to donate a more substantial amount to our cafe, check out our store and you can get samples of our tea and advertising in return (we’re going to be adding other rewards over the next month once we sort out the details), or if you want to send us money just because you’re a generous and brilliant person donate via the sidebar on the main website or send via paypal to magicmondaycafe @gmail.com

Please spread the word!

I’m hopeful that there are lots of wonderful people out there who would be willing to donate so that two ladies can realize their dream :)

We plan for Magic Monday Cafe to have tasty treats and healthful foods and beverages to promote wellness while pampering the taste buds. You can read more about us on our website which is linked in various places in this post!

We have the P.O. Box for the pennies!

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:23:00 -0400

Send your pennies to:

Magic Monday Cafe
P.O. Box 2410
Umatilla, FL 32784

As said before, when we receive and log pennies we’ll thank everyone in a weekly round-up post, and you’ll be listed on our website under a special section of the “Thank You” page.

Pennies Update and Mug Question!

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 18:24:53 -0400

Already we’re feeling the love with regards the penny donations! Thank you SO MUCH everyone who has spoken about the pennies, volunteered pennies and so on.

We’re intending to get a P.O. Box set up, but so far that hasn’t happened :( as we had some rather distracting mug-related issues today. We’re trying to test-paint up some mugs as we want to be able to give away tea sets and offer customized mugs for people as donation thank yous.

Our first batch of customization went horribly thanks to various mishaps. Sharpie mugs were baked and then baked again and still came off with a hard rub. I don’t know if we have the wrong kind of mugs, or the wrong sharpies. Tried glazing them, glaze rubbed the Sharpie designs off as well and just left a smudgy slightly shiny mess. Then we thought we’d cracked it with porcelaine 150 as those survived hand-washing but then one got put in the dishwasher by mistake and all we were left with of a three line quote and author was: ” a it g.

BACK TO THE PENNIES, WOMAN!

YES. So, thanks again to everyone who has been signal boosting for us. We’ve had offers so far from several U.S. places, England and New Zealand :)

When the pennies come in we’ll thank all those who are sending them out, SO if you have a website that you’re linked to DO let us know and we’ll put you up on the “Thank yous” page and we’ll also thank you on the however-often-ly penny update we wind up doing.

In the mean time I have mug try 3 curing on the shelf with the various tea supplies and here’s hoping baking the porcelaine then glazing the porcelaine and following those instructions will lead to something that can survive a bit longer.

Would people still be interested in mugs if they’re hand-wash only? or even for purely display purposes?

Floor Plan Sent!

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:04:12 -0400

We’ve been struggling with our floor plan for several months. We tried to lay things out in Sims but it has weird rules about placing and you can’t change the size of things to fit the specifications you might find online for your appliances. We’ve tried using graph paper but it gets really confusing, and pitted with erasings and lines and things.

Today Becca found a program called Floor Planner which allows you to make one floor plan for free, rearranging as much as you need to. This meant that we were able to finish the floor plan in about an hour and a half and send it to the building owner.

Very exciting!

From now on the plan is to update this blog on Mondays, and I’ll be updating other business site The Silver Path on Tuesdays. There will be other updates at random times but I’m hoping to have these two updating regularly on those days.

Here we’ll be posting recipe ideas, fund-raising offers and project updates.

talisman: Red Clover Lemonade Ingredients: 3 cups Red Clover...

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 09:45:47 -0400

talisman:

Red Clover Lemonade

Ingredients:
3 cups Red Clover blooms
4 cups water
1 1/4 cups lemon juice
4 Tbsp honey

1. Boil the blooms in the water for 5-7 minutes.
2. Strain
3. Add lemon juice and honey to the remaining liquid.
4. Stir, then chill for two hours.
5. Serve over ice.
6. Enjoy!