three.

in the spirit of three beautiful things..

01) exactly the perfect amount of milk in my hazelnut coffee today. two times in a row.
02) the simplicity of pork and beans for dinner with buttered brown bread on the side of my plate. reminds me of being a kid on those busy nights before swimming lessons and karate class.
03) the chill in the weather allows me to wear my new wooly autumn jacket with my mustard yellow scarf. {so snuggly warm!}

manic monday

not much time to post today, but i wanted to share a new obsession.

i can't remember whether i first saw it in blueprint or domino, but i think that coral is the height of decorative je-ne-sais-quoi. it was in an all-white office with bursts of colour, and it was on the creative director's desk, all natural and gorgeous-like.

(mind you, i wouldn't want to purchase real coral.. just the artificial stuff because it prevents unnecessary harvesting from the ocean. plus, if you think of it, using real dead coral is kind of like putting a corpse on display on your shelf. yech.)

anyhow, i'd kill for a gorgeous piece of artificial coral like the one in the foreground. how lovely!

gorgeous white resin coral from seaside inspired.

power: off

i really need to quit watching cnn. it's as if they just learned the definition of the word 'crisis'. the world is ending and nobody's going to have any money, water, oil or food. everyone's going to be billions (no, trillions!) of dollars in debt. pigs are going to fly. hell is about to freeze over. stocks are plummeting, banks are bankrupt, and the souffle has fallen flat. (oh, dear!)

but chin up, kittens... good news. i'm going to the niagara wine festival this weekend, and word on the street is that 2007 niagara rieslings are to die for (dahhhlink). it's pretty much the only good thing that i've heard recently, and so i'll have to go and make damn sure i enjoy it before the world blows up. cheers!

what are your plans for the weekend?

photo via basheertome

the cure for what ails you

holy hannah, i think that the blogging gods turned a kind ear to yesterday's post about having creative ADD. check out this post, with super cool links to show you 'how to do fancy things to your blogger template' - including adding a navigation bar to your header. loving it. i'm never gonna stop revamping this thing.

some other things that i'm also loving:
stack of rings via paintedmetal

large moss terrarium via madebymavis

tree stumps pillow via olive

double up wednesday

i dont generally double up on posting in a day, but i have two very important things i need to say. firstly:

... i hope blogger's not trying to communicate with me. this may be problematic. (ok, sorry. i thought it was pretty funny. simple things amuse simple minds, right?)

ALSO

big thanks to robin for sending me the title of that gratitude blog i was talking about last friday:

it's called three beautiful things. i quite possibly googled every combination of 'gratitude', 'gratefulness' and 'blog' - and every synonym thereof - that i could think of. no dice. thanks robin, you rock! (and by the by, so does your gorgeous blog).

a sample of it's goodness:

1. At the first stroke, the sharp new point on my pencil pops and crumbles into a tiny constellation, black on white.
2. Dry morning. No-one in sight. Dew wet footprints on the path get fainter step by step.
3. One last push late at night to finish my day's proofreading.

i'm adding it to my blogroll. now go devour it.

goodbye, ruby tuesday

yesterday was another one of those days. you know - the kind where you have to take a deep breath and focus on the things that relax and inspire you to keep from buying into other people's crap.

i choose to move on and not dwell in it. moving on now.

lately, i've been thinking that i'd like to give my hand a try at chain maille. although it's never quite been my 'thing' before (although medieval is interesting to read about, i'm not overly big into the wearing of it)... but when i was at the Cobourg street festival a few months ago, I came across an artist who made some of the most gorgeous bracelets i've ever seen in my life. and what do you know? they're chainmaille. (colour me embarrassed!) then again, after my recent infatuation with mustard yellow, i suppose i shouldn't be overly surprised.

the problem with me and trying something new is that i lose interest quickly. some things are easy to just pick up and get going with... others, (like chainmaille) seem to require a certain number or size of jump rings and a certain pattern that can vary between beginners and death defying. oy. maybe i'll just order some jump rings and get a-hookin. we'll see what comes of it.

or maybe i've got creative ADD. or a severe case of the creative fidgets.

speaking of ADD, onto something completely different: i've ordered my first ever art print from the oh-so-talented kal barteski. i can barely wait to get it.

moving onward and upward into a better day than yesterday.

(the above necklace is designed by barbara hance via beading daily)

update city

wandering around the interweb, i stumbled upon something pretty sweet for toronto artists recently here. how is it that i wasn't aware of it's existence?! after having read through it and through a forum thread on etsy, it's got me thinking. i'd like to look into organizing a small art & craft show in the toronto area. has anyone ever done this before?

also, i've been checking out quite a few new blogs in the past few weeks, but haven't yet had the chance to update my blogroll with my favourites for at least four or five months (youch!). in no particular order, here's the newest ones (and a few 'old new' ones, if you know what i mean...) - you should take a minute and check 'em out because they're awesome!

art kitten
design for mankind
the peach tree

this chicken

a little bit of colour

a cup of jo

artkitten's post on all things mustard yellow was posted exactly the day that i stumbled across a kick-ass mustard-coloured woolly cardigan that i fell in love with instantly. which, all things considered, is pretty uncharacteristic of me. (not because i dont fall in love instantly - but because i have never, ever, in my entire life, liked mustard yellow clothing.) either way, i've been on a mustard kick ever since then and haven't been able to go into a store without looking for similar things. case in point with the above necklace by monishar.

and oh, did i mention this post makes number 100?

hello monday, you dear sweet thing

post ninety nine! i can hardly believe it.

how was everyone's weekend? although it went by super-quickly, mine wrapped up pretty nicely with a convo from etsy artist shauneil to let me know that my blue clips had been featured in her treasury. what a sweet late-sunday-night surprise!

this weekend was a pretty laid-back one - celebrated a belated birthday over pizza, beer and a little survivorman, went grocery shopping and all of the other sorts of daily errands, plus headed up to barrie to visit some friends. sweet, simple and relaxing. call me a weirdo, but i love grocery shopping. walking around all of the fresh veggies, fruits, cheeses and meats, coming up with meal ideas for the next week... it holds so much potential. it's even better when it's at the st. lawrence market downtown, and i've money to spend on artisanal cheeses, mustards and fresh-baked bread. maybe i should've been a chef.

a simple decision

i choose not to let the negativity of others affect my well-being and the way i live my life. i choose to live my life simply and happily, because i truly believe that good things come to those who believe in them. the more you look for these things in your day, the easier it becomes to find them.

it's a mindframe, not something that happens by chance.

a while ago, i heard one of my favourite radio show hosts talking about a blog that was based on gratitude... the author made note of three things each day that she was grateful for. at first it was difficult to look back over her day to find three.. but after a while it because easier, and she'd pick them out as they were happening - to the point that it was almost second nature. simple things, like the the summer sunshine highlighting the leaves on the ash tree, or the old man who stoops every day to feed breadcrumbs to pigeons in the park. as pollyanna as it sounds, she said that after a while it caused an enormous shift in her daily outlook. i've tried googling the blog to see if i can find it, but haven't had any success.

either way, i think this is a fantastic idea.

today, i choose to take a deep breath and move past the idle chatter. happy friday everyone - find some simple things in your weekend to enjoy.

photo taken by mike

the i-heart list

a few random samples from yesterday's online wanderings:

this artist's work (you have to click on the notebook to see her stuff)

and this one too (it's kind of whimsical and abstract with tons of movement, which i like. her blog is here.)

playlist.com - quite possibly one of the best inventions ever. i've found a bunch of great new songs from stumbling across other people's blogs with playlists on them...

... including almost lover by a fine frenzy, which i found on this blog. i didnt discover the song until the second time i'd visited it (i guess with my speakers turned on) and fell in love with it. it's so melancholy and beautiful. go. go now.

this art. i don't know art terminology, but i'm going to go ahead and say that i love the colours and layering in it. if her work were a singer's voice, i'd say i love the timbre. (woo! that was pretty good!)

i've also gone and fallen in love with my lunch. spinach salad with grape tomatoes, sliced deli turkey breast and raspberry vinaigrette. it's like a sandwich, but better. i'd take a picture, but it's already eaten.

finally, i've decided that typewriters are fantastic things as well. they don't only look awesome and vintage-y, but i love everything that they stand for and the sound of them typing is the music of productivity. (even if you're just typing random letters. it's such a satisfying sound. try it.) i used to have one when i was a kid that my mom found in my grandma's attic - i used to write stories on it while imagining myself wearing a wool blazer & horn-rimmed glasses in a small dingy apartment, living the life of a freelancer. i'd like to buy one now... not to use, just to have. and keep. kind of like sculptural art. (would it be fair to call it an antique yet?)

in the meanwhile, i think i'll just buy this print.

(photo courtesy of aliciabock)

pretty good, for my first online vintage shopping experience

now, i'm not normally the hugest fan of vintage stuff (there's something about ceramic knicknacks from the 70's that makes me want to poke my eyes out, actually) but today i set out looking on etsy for things that i don't normally go a-hunting for. at first it was pretty hard and i just wanted to go back to window shopping the pretty things that i normally spend time browsing. i started out looking for vintage radios so that i could jimmy them up into cool ipod docking speakers, but i couldn't find what i had in mind. so i jumped ship and started looking for a white rotary phone. not off-white or light yellow, mind you. white-as-the-freshly-fallen-snow-white.

apparently nothing back then was made in anything but off-white or pastel. or orange, for the super-funk folks. how frustrating.

but my search was not in vain, 'cause i found a whole bunch of super cool items that, if i found at a flea market or garage sale, i'd be all over like white on rice. (...or like off-white or pastel, given that we're talking about vintage goodies here)

chocolatey phone via kingsroad is pretty sweet - i love the curviness of it. if only i could find it in red...
wall clock via meadowbellevintage - for some reason, this reminds me of the gold-and-brown wallpaper that used to be in my grandmother's kitchen.
gooorrrgeous lamp via highstreetmarket - dear. god. i'd buy this if it weren't so completely out of my price range. maybe i can just find a similar vase somewhere and wire it into a lamp.
awesome chair via jawaddel (would love to get my hands on it to paint the wood and change the vinyl...)

super cool salt and pepper shakers also via jawaddel - i wish i had a need for salt and pepper shakers, cause these babies are definitely one of a kind.
metal letter 'O' via whiteelephantvintage - i've been looking for a wooden letter W for a while now (it just looks prettier than a 'C'...), but if i could find one like this i'd be one happy camper.

good morning, good morning, good morning

well hello world! wunderbug is officially back up and running, along with a shiny new banner! i seem to have ADD when it comes to branding but i'd like to work towards creating a more uniform look to the shop. it's officially on my to-do list. it'll most likely come about when i finish up the few new items i'm currently working on.

this week is lookin pretty sweet. along with the back to school hype, i've been taking time to get more organized and create a game plan for how i'd like things to go... along with actually implementing it. i love settling back into routine. it's calming.

the crisp autumn mornings have arrived, there was a student playing acoustic guitar in one of our main buildings this morning while i was going to get my coffee, and i found out that our fall poster sale is scheduled for next week.

yeah, it's gonna be a good day.

delay central

sunday... you big beautiful humid sunday that just happens to be my littlest sisters 18th birthday. what a finale to yet another four-day weekend (yeah yeah i know, but it's the last one until thanksgiving!). due to the fact that i was at my dad's place until friday night (which is dial-up internet cause that's all he can get up north)... and mike's all weekend (and his router was down), i didn't get half as much done this weekend as i'd originally anticipated. but the new router is all hooked up and rockin (i was connected about three seconds after mike had it set up) anxious much?

however, i did get started on a few new things for my shop, which is awesome (albeit behind schedule). i'm super excited to unveil my new stuff, which is a bit different from the jewelry and odds and todds that i'd been doing before. (dont get me wrong, i'm still working on that stuff too - a girl just needs a little bit of variety to spice things up sometimes!)

either way, things are slowly coming into fruition. my to-do list is pretty much the same size, but at least i feel like we've got a bit of progress going on.

and if that's not enough, it's hotter outside than it has been for most of our rainy summer! i'm goin' out to play. and wrap birthday presents. happy happy miss arianne! how was everyone else's weekend?

t-minus four days

four days til i reopen my etsy shop.

just sayin'.

i'm going out of town tomorrow and will be back on saturday, and have a whole bunch of sweet lil ideas for things to make in the meanwhile. being at my dads place on a rainy day means lots of quiet working time, so i've got high hopes for my productivity. i'll be posting an update (hopefully) before saturday, but if not.. have a spectacular rest of the week everyone!

retrospective

photo via philosophergeek

comin' up soon

this weekend was absolutely, positively what the doctor ordered. four days off that felt like a month just does something for your system that the typical two-day weekend doesn't. i can barely remember all the way back to what i did on friday.

some highlights include: model home "shopping" with mike (a new obsession..), late-night spontaneous pizza while watching the bourne trilogy (spontaneous late-night pizza tastes better), getting errands done, and beginning my hunt for accomodations for our yearly trip to the bala cranberry festival over the course of my birthday weekend this upcoming october.



it's this little tiny cranberry-harvesting festival that my mom discovered a while back that apparently is a big deal for the region. it showcases a lot of the little town of bala, including a sidewalk sale and an indoor craft sale, deep-fried mars bars, bagpipers, leprechauns (random, i know) and more. it's really super quaint, and i love it. come to think of it, every year that we've gone has been either chilly-cold or drizzly. or both. i guess it goes to show that we're troopers and keep coming back every year (and bringing more people!). it's turned into a girls getaway of sorts.

(these are shots from the past cranberry festivals that we've attended)

after having spent last year's festival in a hotel that was a little further away than we preferred, i decided to get on it early this year and find something cheaper, nicer, and closer. i'm thinking that a two- or three-bedroom cottage would be nice, so that we can have everyone in one (larger) space instead of cramming into a tiny hotel room with a few bottles of wine after a long day in the cold october air. i'm having a bit of trouble finding one thus far, but hey - i like a challenge.

into a different mindframe

one of the best things i can think of about having a bit more free time right now is the fact that i can turn my attentions to getting my etsy shop all revamped and prettified. i'd been neglecting it more than i preferred to over the summertime and eventually ended up putting up a notice to say i was revamping (y'know, so cobwebs and dust bunnies didn't move in..) but a few recent visits to other people's shops have recently kick-started my butt back into gear.

as of late, i've been super obsessed with art prints... a coworker of mine is big into owning original artwork (personally, i can't afford it yet), but also is big on the custom framing of it. i totally agree on this point; a well-framed piece of artwork (original or otherwise) can help to make or break it's effect on the viewer. i'd love to learn the fine art of framing .. from the research i've done already, i'm sure the techniques themselves aren't all that difficult - but as with most art forms, i'd assume that the skill lies in the practice and having a good eye for what works.

here are a few of my most recent frame-able desires:

one - blue bloom panel mounted print, by susyjack

two - poppies print, by jellybeans

three - hello there, by studio mela

four - whats important, by greenchairpress

back to school: 1, new years: 0

given the spirit and nature of the back-to-school season, i'm really tempted to say that early september - with all of it's fresh-start-back-to-school hubbub - should beat out new years as far as resolutions go. really.

think about it... do you get a new binder with 250 fresh sheets of hilroy lined paper, with that little red margin line down the side at new years? no.

do you get a new pencilcase, chock full of pointy-sharp pencils prepared for any word problem that the math teacher might throw your way at new years? no!

do you get a completely fresh start with brand-new professors and classmates at new years? (well... sometimes, depending on the semester.. but that's beside the point. let's just go with another resounding no for arguments sake. besides, what new years offers you a fresh start in anything but the date anyhow?)

so really then, why is it that new years has always been the holiday famous for it's resolutions? it's only a conceptual tradition; a new school year is a wide-open horizon that begins simply with "this year, i'm going to....". in the last two days, i've lost count of the number of student conversations i've overheard about their big plans for 'this year'.

it's funny how those intentions and impulses echo even after i've finished my degree. my ever-planning and strategizing mind is going into overdrive with all of the possibilities that september holds.

hullo september, welcome in!

image via seejanework

secret confessions of a bookworm

photo by jaredks

september 3rd. finalement.

three enormous orientation events and one orientation week later, i'm happy with everything that i've accomplished. holy satisfied, batman.

i've a glorious five-day weekend coming up, and i'm going to spend it enjoying the final days of summertime ('cause in my books, it's summertime until it's not hot anymore). although i love the fall, i'm planning on milking summer for all it's worth.

one of my favourite signs of late august is the countless bales of hay in every field. for some reason, lately i've been trying to think of a comparison for describing hair using the colour of late-summer hay. they never quite turn out as positively as i first imagine it...

"she had hair like summer-spun hay".

... dry and crunchy? nope.

"her hair was golden like twilight on august bales of hay"

... so it's brassy then? yellow hair? and besides, when else do you see bales of hay but in august? you certainly couldn't say "...as golden as mid-march hay", cause that's just not saying much at all.

the imagery is rich in my head, but somehow doesn't translate as smoothly into the written word. maybe i just have to tweak it a little. {either that, or i've got a subconscious vendetta against the word 'hay'. it doesn't sound like the most complimentary thing after all, does it? then again, 'straw' doesn't come off sounding much better}.

and these are my dorked-out daydreams. take me for a ride in the countryside, and i ponder similes. guess i need to get out more often (or start reading more fiction to lend me a hand with some inspiration).

next up: corn silk.

on this fall's to-do list

mike and i were going through movie trailers while we were taking a little regroup/lunch break last week, and stumbled across a few upcoming movies that we cannot wait to be released.

firstly, flash of genius, starring greg kinnear.

secondly, i.o.u.s.a. (i heart documentaries.)

finally, bottle shock. i want to move to california's wine region. end of story.

who says summertime is blockbuster time?