Fun outing - Architectural salvage

On a cold day in Chicago, we were looking for something fun and different to do.  I had seen architectural salvage places on various HGTV or DIY network shows, but I had never been to one.  I went on Yelp and looked it up.  There were a few options.  We went to Architectural Artifacts.  Wow....SO fun.  We walked around for a couple of hours.  Your mind just goes wild in a place like this.

Here are a few of the sights -

This is a room of doors.  There are many of these rooms.  As you can see here, there is every kind of door you can image.

 Here is a room of fireplace mantels.  Look on the left of this picture.  That is a gorgeous mosaic mantel. Again, many rooms of mantels as well.

This was one of my husband's favorite pieces.  This is a clock face, like from a old building, turned into a huge dining table. You can see the 12 o'clock roman numeral at the bottom of the picture frame.  SO cool!!!

Restaurant review - Urban Vegan, Chicago

I was looking for something different to eat.  I found Urban Vegan.  Ends up it is a "vegan Thai" restaurant. It is a small restaurant - maybe 8 tables.  It was very clean and the staff was very nice and attentive. I was at the Lakeview location.  They have another restaurant in the Lincoln Park area.

This is the Seaweed soup.  Yes, I like seaweed. If you like sushi, you like it too.  It is the nori, the dark wrapper around your maki roll pieces. This had seaweed, napa cabbage, mushrooms, tofu and mung bean noodles (also known as cellophane noodles).  This was so nice and light and just brimming with health.  I really enjoyed this soup and this little restaurant.

Brilliant Idea - Panera Cares

When we were in Chicago the other day, we wanted to grab a small bite and sit.  Look at what we found - Panera Cares.  Ends up that there are 4 of these in the country - and two of the four are in Chicago.  The other ones are in Clayton, MO (seemed weird location, but this is Panera's home base, so it makes sense now) and Portland, OR.

The idea is that you pay what you can. On the menu there are "suggested donation" amounts, but you pay what you can.  According to the co-founder of Panera "Twenty percent of customers pay more than the suggested donation. Sixty percent leave the suggested donation and 20 percent leave less, typically significantly less."

As you can read below, they ask for volunteer time if you can't pay at all.  This is an amazing thing. It is so win-win. Panera can write off its left over inventory as donation (since the food at a Panera Cares is day-old) and those who can't afford to eat get food.  I haven't ever seen such a big win-win scenario before.