Goodbye, NaBloPoMo

A month of posting every day wraps up with this very post.  It's been a fun challenge and I'm glad I did it.  An added bonus is that my daily readership has more than quadrupled since I started the challenge, which isn't saying much because it was only sitting at about 6-10 readers daily.  Ha ha.

I supposed that depending on who you ask I didn't quite suceed.  I faltered due to Harry Potter with only 6 posts to go.  I didn't clue in that going to the 10 p.m. show meant that I wouldn't be home in time to blog before midnight.  I did blog before bed that night though, so in another way I think I suceeded.  Depends how letter of the law you want to be about the whole matter.

A few of my reader friends have been asking what I'm going to do with my blog now that it's over, and I'm not exactly sure.  Hopefully I can just ride on the momentum of this past month and post more regularly.  We shall see. 

One thing that blogging every day has made me realize is that I don't have very many friends who blog, and those who do don't do it regularly.  It's a bummer.  I like reading the blogs of my friends.  I read lots of random people ones but it's not the same.  I have blogs of my friends on a reader and every time I logged in in November it was always Kerry's posts because nobody else was posting.  It was nice that Kerry was NaBloPoMo-ing it up as well though.  And she actually succeeded I think, so WAY TO GO KER.  Also to Nicki.  Whooo.  It was much more fun knowing you two ladies were in it with me.

Lost my Jane Austen Groove

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

That's the opening line of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice".  I read it for fun in early university and loved it from the moment I read that sentence.  Her satire and wit took me by surprise.  Classics can often be epic, beautiful, important, well crafted and worth reading, but a lot of them are far from being entertaining and cheeky. 

I think I read P&P as a follow up to the dry, uneventful and humourless Robinson Crusoe (I'm sorry, I know that I am supposed to love it and respect it, but I just can't.  Maybe resepct, but never love).  That book is the equivalent of talking to the most boring person I have ever met.  Boys always seem to like it though, so...sorry guys for bashing your favourite novel.

After reading P&P I went on to watch a lot of the Jane Austen movies, old and new, and we had a good thing going for a while.  Lots of watching the multi-hour epic BBC version of P&P, loving Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, having a short-lived crush on a boy I met in Michigan who QUOTED THE FIRST LINE OF PRIDE AND PREJUDICE TO ME when I told him I had read it recently, etc. etc. etc.  You nerds know what I am talking about.

But then all of a sudden I lost my groove.  Her novels sit unread in my "to read" pile, and this is the second time I have tried to read Sense and Sensibility.  It's going ok, but definitely not great.  What happened?  I am bummed out. 

Girls Girls Girls

This weekend has been girl, girl, girly.  I spent the weekend with my friend Natasha and Pencil the lap dog who is also a girl.  She was in town for the Royal Bison art and craft fair and stayed with me.  But it turned out her sister came to town as well and ended up staying with me too.  Then her other other sister and mom came over to hang out, as well as our friend Megan.  So basically to top off the girl fest we watched Little Women with many many people crammed on to my couch hide-a-bed.  It always feels like the beginning of winter and Christmas when I watch that movie.

 In this picture we are actually watching the Marcel The Shell (with shoes on) video that I posted a few weeks ago.

This morning, I went to breakfast with some high school girlfriends and then back to the Royal Bison, only to dsicover that Tash, her sister and I all showed up wearing striped cardigans with brown curly hair.  Three of us in a row behind Natasha's booth. People started asking us if we were all related and then eventually a girl (sweetly) asked us what our deal was "are you guys like, best friends or something...what's your deal?".  It was super funny.

And tonight was the swap.  Or, SWAP-O-RAMA, as we fondly call it.  I predict that Kerry will expand on this in an upcoming blog post, so I won't say a whole lot about it yet, but to whet your appetite I've posted a picture below of the climax of the event.  Kaeli is wearing like 80 items of clothing. 

Royal Bison, Lap Dog with Reindeer Antlers on, Royal Bison, Lap Dog, Lap Dog

Today was day 1 of the Royal Bison Art & Craft Fair.  My friend Natasha of Pretty Sketchy drove up (with her little dog, Pencil, and her sister and friend.  I usually sit at the booth with her.  Sometimes I sell some stuff, other times I just sit around and hang out.  It's a good time.

This time I'm selling a few pairs of earrings I made from the jewels off an old chandelier and the last pair of fabric flags from last time.  Tash, on the other hand is selling a whole bunch of great stuff.  Postcard packs, limited edition prints, adorable printed tea towels, necklaces, stationery sets and cards.

The show was pretty busy for most of the day.  We snuck in Tasha's little dog friend Pencil after we finished setting up and she slept in a box under the table. I used to say I hated lap dogs, but I'm not so sure anymore. Pencil's pretty cute.  We spent a whole lot of the weekend doing stuff with her and for her.  Like...

Tucking her into Kaeli's high-waisted pants.  Like a marsupial pouch.

Altering a cat costume that I bought at the dollar store to fit her little head.  The cat costume was too big for her.  Note Becky's one-piece PJs.  With footies.

 Here is Pencil wearing the completed reindeer costume.

 We spent half the day doting on her and letting her sit in our laps while we worked at the Royal Bison

 And letting her sleep wherever she wanted.  Even on the price sheet.  Come hang out with us tomorrow and bring us chai lattes if you want.

Bathroom Pics, House Tour Part II

I like having my own bathroom.  It's pretty sweet.  As I mentioned a couple of posts back, I have been working through all the random bathroom products I own and have acquired, and having my own bathroom has definitely helped me to focus those efforts because I know that everything in there is mine.  It's enabling the crazy.

 It's a really small little space, but it's all white and pretty cute.  There is no vanity or countertop since the sink is mounted on the wall so I mounted a little shelf on the wall to hold some of my stuff.  Hair elastics and bobby pins go in the little teacup, and the clock keeps me on schedule in the mornings so I'm not late for work, right? right?

 The cupboard above the toilet is totally awesome and holds a ton of stuff.  And the little baskets nailed to the wall are a storage solution from my first little place that I lived in years ago, which was a small room in a tiny attic (servant's quarters) apartment in a mansion overlooking Groat Road in Edmonton.  I had almost no closet space, no storage, and no space in the shared bathroom to put anything, so I nailed them to the wall and became strangely attached to their functionality.

Two of my other favourites are the bath mat and the shower curtain.  I hate bath mats that show footprints on them, because they always look sort of used and dirty even if they aren't really.  Plus I can't get enough of stripes so this bath mat won me over right away.

 The shower curtain is a terry cloth one with a grid pattern.  I loooove it.  Also, note the lavender shampoo that smells amazing but unfortunately doesn't work very well.  Dang organic shampoo.

And that's my bathroom.

Eames in progress

Well, I officially failed Nablopomo.  But sometimes, you just have to eat chicken and go see the new Harry Potter Movie.  Sorry folks.  Go easy on me.  I even had this post drafted and almost complete.  Ha ha.  Oh well, it's sort of like I posted it for November 25 because I haven't gone to bed yet...

I posted before pics of an Eames-style (authenticity undecided) lounge chair that Joel creatively acquired this past spring.  It's not done yet, but we did have an intense weekend of working on it a while back and it's getting close.  Perhaps Joel's roommates, who have been watching it sit in a relatively untouched pile on the floor lately, can attest to the fact that a) it's looking good, and b) that there is still a bit of work to be done.

We got the (off-white, buttery soft) vinyl through our designer friend Dawn of Dawn Stiles Design.  We wanted a high-quality almost-leather feel but weren't sure we wanted to pay for leather since we were going to tackle this job ourselves.  It would be much more tragic to ruin an expensive piece of leather than an only moderately expensive piece of vinyl.

We thought about getting it done professionally, but that's not nearly as fun I don't think.  So, after ripping it apart we set out to put it back together again.  In a lot of ways, it was as simple as tracing the pieces of fabric that we had removed on to the vinyl and cutting them out.  We chose to get buttons made by a professional upholsterer because we figured they would look waaaayyyy better and they only cost about $2 each. 

So, after cutting out the vinyl, we punched holes (with a hammer and a nail) into the vinyl where the buttons needed to be threaded through.  Now the tough part...we had to thread the buttons through the thick layers of foam and batting and out the back of the chair, but we didn't have an upholsterers needle.  At first it seemed impossible, but eventually with the help of a chopstick and a lot of grunt work, we managed to figure out how to get it through.

This is what the shells looked like after the buttons had been threaded, but before we started stretching and stapling.

After the buttons were in place, it was time to stretch and staple.  The first thing we stapled was the strings on the buttons so that they would be nice and tight.

We were careful about our first staples because if we stretched too much on one side it would make the buttons off-center.  We stapled opposite corners all around, continually checking to make sure the buttons were centred.  We bought an electric stapler for the job, which in the end worked out ok, but at first caused some troubles.  Mostly because the staples got loaded in the wrong way and are now forever jammed in the handle.  Because of the malfunction I insisted that we wear eye protection.  This is me in Joel's 3d glasses, making a cranky face to communicate the wayward-staple anxiety that I was having.

After I got over it, the electric stapler worked like a charm and nobody got staples in their face, eyes, or fingers.  After centering the vinyl and stapling the straight edges we worked on the corners.  They were probably the trickiest but Joel was a champ at folding them evenly.

Each chair has a rim of piping around the edge of the wooden shell.  It's hard to visualize without seeing the chair, but basically you staple the piping to the wooden shell and then the cushion fits in overtop.  This is nice because the sewing is fairly straightforward.  I haven't worked with piping on cushions before and I don't think it would be my idea of a good time.  I like sewing but I'm far from meticulous. So this is me sewing the piping.

And here is the cushion alllmost ready.  At this point Joel and I were still speaking and on good terms.  No major DIY blowouts yet.  It's one of the ways we are testing our relationship before the big day.  Ha ha.  Just kidding.  Sort of.

When our friend Dawn saw it she sighed with relief and told us she was so worried it wouldn't work out, but doesn't it look good so far? 

Using stuff up

Living in a house with roommates moving in and out over the years meant that a lot of stuff got left behind. Especially things like post it notes, pens and pencils, stationery, lotions, sunscreen, bath salts, extra shampoo, soaps and sometimes kitchen spices. I have a hard time just throwing things into the trash when there is nothing wrong with them, but all of these items would just sit around not being used because I already had my own stuff.

Over time, I developed a...um, dedication to using this stuff up.  I think it started because I have a really vivid memory of my friend Kerry, junk purger extraordinaire, becoming really dedicated to using up all of her old journals and pens, even ones that she hated. For some reason, that really stuck with me and the obsession was transferred over (I have a stack of empty journals that I have received or purchased that I am working on using...)

I became practically obsessed with using up all of the old products that were floating around at the farm house. For two years I worked away at a cupboard full of mushroom soup (????) and a big box of pasta, as well as a bunch of teacher gifts that my sister had left behind. Pomegranate lotions, grapefruit lotion, bath salts, shower gel, body butter. I put a personal ban on purchasing any items that I knew I already had. It was tough slogging, and a few items definitely got tossed when I moved this summer (although not all), but I am finally reaching the end of it. 

Too add to the crazy, I decided that I would help Melissa de-clutter her bathroom by stealing/demanding she give me all of her bathroom products that I want and that she never uses because she has purchased multiples or new onese that are better.  Best acquisitions so far include mineral powder from Sephora, straightening balm for my hair, and dry shampoo.

Last week at work I finally got to toss a thing of grapefruit lotion that I had been using at my desk for almost a year in favour of a new one that my friend Karen gave to me that I was soooo excited to start using. Yay for small victories.

To the right you can view a dramatic photo of the two lotions.

I just have a few more bottles of lotion at home, a pile of sticky notes, a whole bunch of scrap paper, about a million pencils and pens, and about a bath's worth of bath salts left.  I am racing to get it done before June 18. 

I realize this is all ridiculous, but at the same time it's helping me a) not be wasteful, and
b) not spend money on unnecessary purchases. 

And it's basically on the reusing/recycling spectrum, so that's a good thing.  Small victories, people, small victories.