friday, july 16, 2010 The VancouVer courier EW25

Freshyour life & style guide for julyspecial advertising feature

by Melissa Yue

You stand in your skivvies at your open closet, frowning slightly as your old clothes gaze frostily back at you, almost mocking you and your low purchasing power. You know you desperately need a new outfit, but you don’t have the time or money to deal with it – especially when you’re already running late in the morning.

If you live with a parent or sibling who has great taste in clothes and wears the same size, you’ll have no qualms about raiding their closets. But most of us will end up resorting to select-

ing a tried-and-true outfit that “works” – even if it’s your second time wearing it in a week.

To spice up your closet and avoid reg-ularly hijacking your sibling’s clothing, host an eco-friendly clothes swap party. Here’s how it works:

1) Rummage through your closet and sort out any items that either don’t fit or haven’t been worn in six or more months. When you have at least 10 or more gently-used items, give them a good wash and move to step two.

2) Send an invite to your friends and ask them to invite their friends as well. The more people, the better selection of

clothing. 3) Set a minimum number of clothes

for each person to bring and ask them to wash and iron their clothes for the day of the party.

4) Charge an admission fee and donate proceeds to a charity that helps children and families globally. Chal-lenge your guests to think of children and families in other countries.

5) The day of the party, assign a sta-tion area to each participant and have them arrange their clothes in a neat dis-play. Once everyone is set up, start shop-ping. Tell participants to start at the next numeric station from their own. The

person with the highest station number starts at the lowest number. For example, if 15 people are participating, the person at station 15 will begin at station one.

6) Allow each person to spend one minute per station, selecting one item only.

7) Donate any leftover clothing to a local charity.

By the end of the party, you’ll have 10 or more new items to accessorize and spruce up your look. Best of all, you’ll be helping your friends to not only look good, but feel good too as they help local and international charities.

Article courtesy Newscanada.com.

upgrade your wardrobe...for free!

The fi rst ever CITY LIFE photo contest!We’re looking for three dynamite shutterbugs to explore the Lower Mainland, and we’ve got prizes! Here’s the scoop: Simply take a photo in any of the three categories listed, and emailto production@vancourier.com with CITY LIFE in the subject line.

Criteria: Photos must be taken this summer at any locale (featured in a listing OR ad)from our CITY LIFE section, publishing Friday July 23. Only one entry per category, per person, please. Include daytime phone number. Min. 300 kb, max 2 MB fi les, jpeg or Tiff.DEADLINE TO ENTER: FRI. AUGUST 20. Winners will be contacted by phone, and their photos published in a future edition of the Courier.

Category 1 KIDS ‘N FAMILIES Win a $100 gift card for a local photography store.

Category 3 OUTDOOR / SPORTY

Win a $100 gift card for Pacifi c Centre stores.

Category 2 ENTERTAINMENT

Win 2 passes ($100 value) to Arts Club Theatre.

www.vancourier.com

Summer Sidewalk SaleJuly 21 – August 2

Corner of Kingsway @ Broadway30 Shops & Services • www.kingsgatemall.com

hollywood stylist rachel zoe’s closet runneth over.

EW26 The VancouVer courier friday, july 16, 2010

freshTala Hair

& EstheticsHair Cut .....................$20Colour using Goldwell ....$45Highlight ....................$65Perm ..........................$65Mani/Pedi ..................$45Facial .........................$45Waxing, Threading & more

604.733.09051937 West Broadway. Free Parking available

HOURS Monday to Saturday 9:30am-6:00pm

Permanent Makeup TattooEyebrows $150 • Lip Liner $150 • Eye Liner $250

Susan welcomes you!

VGH Thrift Shop120 East Broadway

Open 7 Days a WeekDonations of clean used, good quality clothing, household goods and furniture, jewellery and books can be dropped off at the shop during

business hours. To arrange pick up of donations or to volunteer at the shop call

604.875.4604

small biz’nessKnow your stuffcompiled by Helen Peterson

Work, as we know it, is changing with the times. The majority of people in their prime are not necessarily slogging it out at the same job for 40 years.

More and more businesses are hiring people on tem-porary contract as consultants, or filling maternity leave spots. One day you’re in, the next you’re out.

Added to the mix are lay-offs due to economic rea-sons, job turnovers due to employer needs, and other reasons why you may find yourself ‘starting over.’

Rather than hitting up new employers for work, many are choosing to gather their capital together, or secure a small business loan, and start up their own small business.

The challenge is fulfilling, the empowerment is great, the freedom is refreshing… but unless you’ve got wealthy parents or a rich backer, you need to be smart, and systematic, in getting the business off the ground properly.

Whether it’s a corner flower stand, a chic boutique, a life coach consultancy or a recycling operation, knowledge is king before hanging out your shingle.

Small Business BC, the province’s premiere resource centre, offers a variety of products and services to assist you at every stage of your business. Small Busi-ness BC offers one-on-one advisory sessions, business publications, workshops and seminars and affordable packages tailored to meet your business needs.

Its core activities are supported by funds from Western Economic Diversification Canada and the

Ministry of Small Business, Technology and Economic Development.

Some of the beneficial services include:• Corporate Registry services• Advisory services• Small Business bookstore• Free downloadable resources and tools• Room rentals• Market Research profiles (to come)The centre has many networking events where you

can meet like-minded people. It also offers ongoing seminars. Check it out!

Growing your consulting BusinessSeminar Date: Tuesday, July 20 - 9:00am to 12:00pm. Cost: $59.00

In this seminar you will to learn how to take the next steps in growing your consulting busi-ness, learn how to leverage your client base, invest in your clients work and how to get your clients to help build your network for you. This workshop visits costing the value of your time, creating products and services that complement the work you already do and extending your ser-vices beyond the face to face consulting work you already do.

Small Business BC is located at “The Station” (Waterfront Skytrain / Seabus) at #82 – 601 West Cordova St.; Tel: 604-775-5525; email: askus@smallbusinessbc.ca; web: www.smallbusinessbc.ca for info. or to register.

friday, july 16, 2010 The VancouVer courier EW27

fresh

CLOSING OUT SALE • CAMELOT BOOKS* Closes Wednesday July 28 *

* Pine bookcases for sale too *4511 WEST 10TH AVE • OPEN: 11-5:30 SUN 12-5

% OFFBOOKS70

by Kemp Edmonds, contributing writer

Free tools are vital to the success of any small business.

The current growth in free applications and software con-tinues to benefit all businesses. Choosing a few of these tools is a real challenge. These appli-cations assist small business owners with common issues such as web publishing, stor-age, document creation and editing, communications, mar-keting and scheduling.

Wordpress.com and Blogger.com are the top two online blogging tools which can also be used to create and man-age fully functioning websites

rather easily. If you are look-ing for an external solution your costs will increase expo-nentially. Use Google to find walk-throughs for these free straightforward website solu-tions. For advanced users try Wordpress.org.

Docs.google.com is a free, web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and form application offered by Google. Google Docs allows free storage of up to 1GB of data. Google Docs is also a collaborative tool for editing in real time. Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users at the same time.

Hootsuite.com allows a user to measure, monitor and post

to social media like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all from one easy to use dashboard. There is a learning curve when using this incredible free dash-board so watch the short tuto-rial videos. Social media can be utilized to enhance custom-er engagement and commu-nications, both internally and externally.

MailChimp.com allows the user to send out 3,000 elec-tronic mail outs per month or free for up to 500 subscribers. For a small business an email list is essential, but keeping those people engaged and up-to-date with your business is even more important.

Doodle.com is an easy-to-use scheduling software. It’s

great for scheduling meetings. It’s hard to explain how easy it makes things until you try it, so just go to the website and test out Doodle.

It is important to consider free tools when managing your business. See you next time!

Kemp Edmonds is a social media educator at BCIT - School of Business. He can be reached via email at: kempedmonds@gmail.com or on twitter @kempedmonds.

online toolkit for small business

City Life

Celebrate the summer by getting out with friends and family. We’ll include a list of up to 100 things to do in the Lower Mainland.

Watch for

Fri. July 23

small biz’nessKnow your stuff