Category — Arts and culture

I love old things - buttons and bellbottoms, postcards and polkadots. So, you can imagine my excitement when my husband first showed me his vast collection of scouting badges. I have been brainstorming a fun project for them for most of a year.

Back in Vancouver I began collecting more badges in hopes of launching a kids onesie line along with my friend Jen and sister-in-law, Brittany. When our clothing supplier dropped the ball, I kind of sidelined the project. Until now…

Introducing lost and found goods!

If you are my friend on facebook, you’ve probably already noticed that I launched an Etsy shop last week.

There is a delightful nostalgia to collected things — old stamps, polaroids, postcards, buttons, and badges. First and foremost, Lost & Found is a paper goods line featuring found objects from across Canada but I hope to add onesies soon, too.

All vintage cards are snow white square and each order comes with a flashcard insert typewritten with love and care.

I would like to offer you a discount on the cards in the shop. Simply use the coupon code: LOVETHEBLOG at the checkout and you will receive a 15% discount.

One more thing…

A GIVEAWAY! Post a comment below and you will be entered into a draw to win a free card and a gift bag with other little trinkets.

Thank you for reading!

Have you heard of the “You are beautiful” movement? Maybe you were walking down the street on a particularly dismal day and stumbled upon the words on a telephone pole, in a bathroom stall, or on the wall of a favourite coffee joint (or on a giant panda atop an Irish hilltop.) Well, someone left them there for you.

You are beautiful. It’s true.

I’ve long been a fan of this simple, creative movement and I just got word that they are doing a reprint in a couple of weeks. So, if you’re thinking of getting some stickers, now is the time!

From the You are beautiful website:

We can’t go anywhere without a few in a wallet or back pocket. They always come in handy - slapping one up, leaving one behind for that nice waiter, or dropping one into the lap of someone who has had a tough day.

You’ll get 10 stickers for each dollar, and we’ll cover shipping on all donations made between now and November 4th.

http://you-are-beautiful.com/STICKERS.htm

I love clothes. My mom instilled this affection early in my youth, with her personal sense of style and what some would call flamboyant taste. Capes and red-rimmed glasses. Aboriginal prints and snake-skin shoes.

Building a wardrobe takes time and a keen eye. Over the years friends have asked me to take them shopping, help them take the guess work out of what can be an altogether tedious task. And it is. I hate shopping out of necessity. I rarely do intentionally, instead I explore favourite haunts from time and time, collecting pieces as they find me. This way I can purchase items I love rather than the best I could find in the moment. And you can too!

On a recent trip to Anthropologie, a delightful (and unexpected) anniversary gift from my husband, I carried a pile of twenty items into the change room.

Shopping Tip #1. Grab everything you like.

That way you don’t have to run out of the dressing room half-naked combing the store for that pair of grey corduroys you were iffy on.

On this particular trip, I started with the tops. I am a stay-at-home-mom/sometime writer at present, so tops and cardigans paired with a favorite pair of jeans are my go-to outfit.

Tip #2. Wear jeans, flats, a good bra (for the ladies) and a favourite plain cardigan.

This will allow you to see each item exactly how you’d wear it day-to-day. If you are an uber-planner, toss a pair of heels in your handbag too.

I create three piles of clothes — no’s, yeses, and maybes. In the end it was down to four daily pieces (all from the Anthropologie sale section) or one incredible (full price) dress.

Tip #3. Buy to wear.

If you can’t see an immediate need for a piece of clothing, don’t buy it. I have done this and regretted it time and time again. Save the money, and the closet space, for later.

In this case, I opted for the four simpler items. While I loved the dress, I had no immediate event on the books and, in case something crops up, I have a handful of lovely frocks waiting for me at home.

Final tip of the day…

Tip #4. Buy to last.

Building a wardrobe is about buying quality and developing a personal style. That way clothes can be worn year after year, no matter the style forecast. Purchasing quality clothing does not have to break the bank. I rarely (if ever) buy full price items at stores like Anthrolpologie. Check out sale sections of local designer boutiques (try Dream in Vancouver and Poa Studio in Toronto,) end-of-season sample sales and, my favourite: vintage and consignment shops. I found an incredible little-black-dress for $10 at a vintage shop on Commercial Drive last summer. I promise, it’s possible.

A final note: I am a firm believer in wearing what you want. If you are a man and you want to wear Tretorn gumboots in Gastown, then you damn well should. That goes for white after labour day, too.

Happy shopping!

Season four of Being Erica, my favourite show, premiered this week. It’s the only show I watch and I take it in online because we don’t have cable. If you haven’t seen it, and are a woman between the ages of 25 and 40, watch and love.

A few clickity clacks after the show and I found myself on the mothercorp job board where I found this little gooder. May be worth dusting off the ‘ole CV.

I am looking forward to the launch of Kate Payne’s new book THE HIP GIRL’S GUIDE TO HOMEMAKING.

Monday, September 19, 7 – 9pm. The Drake Hotel, 1150 Queen Street West, Toronto. Hosted by Type Books.

In her own words:

“I’m a grant writer, half-assed domestic goddess, occasional nanny, after-hours poet, committed doodler, trash collector, big-time procrastinator, tea and toast and jam obsessed Austinite. I come from Swedish, German, Irish and British great grandparents. I collect old typewriters; some of them still work. I studied anthropology and sociology in the Sonoran Desert. I worked on an organic tomato farm once. I paper mached gigantic thumbs once, too.”

This is the kind of domestic I can get behind.

Last year I pitched a story to UPPERCASE magazine — a profile of my creative hero, artist/author Sabrina Ward Harrison. It was a thinly veiled attempt to meet Sabrina, whose work I have followed for close to ten years. As luck/fate (read: GOD) would have it, the pitch turned itself into much more than a phone interview.

I was sent to Prince Edward Island for a three-day sojourn with six other women to create alongside Sabrina at an old waterside hotel called the Highlands. (You may remember I faced a little trepidation as prepared for this trip.) The historic home and adjacent town dance hall, where we did our making, has housed royalty and the likes of Reverend Billy Graham. Each room was brimming with island minutiae and stacks of old LIFE magazines — a writer’s dream. Angela Ritchie, founder of the Whistler-based ACE Camps, and a creative mastermind in her own right, was the organizer of the retreat. I had the good fortune of interviewing her when I was back in Vancouver last week.

The fruit of the trip — Watchful Reverence, in UPPERCASE issue 10 — arrived at stockists and doorsteps days ago.

An excerpt:

“It’s the steady calm of the island air whistling through the birch trees. It’s the burst of plover, finches, and jays that begin their daylight calling at 4:30am, beckoning us to do the milking… I am sitting on the front stairs of the Highlands main house. Here four crooked trees congregate like an outer hearth. The twisting white-worn branches are the sort you’d find in the Haunted Wood of Anne of Green Gables’ imagination. The beaked chirps, caws and whistles blend into a symphony of spring. Behind me seven girls chatter on around the breakfast table: preserves, balkan yogurt, fresh-baked muffins, boiled eggs, brimming between. In the old adjacent dance hall Sabrina, dressed in a vintage polkadot dress, is readying for the day’s making.”

It was an absolute gift to meet Sabrina and a joy to work with Janine Vangool, tireless publisher/editor/designer of the magazine (not to mention mother to an on-the-run toddler.)

______________________________

If you are interested in reading the complete article you can order single copies or subscriptions to this beautiful publication at: http://shop.uppercasegallery.ca/collections/uppercase-magazine-1\. It is available in print only.

The final piece, now hung in our office / art room. Paint, India ink (Sabrina’s lettering, my words,) and collage on craft paper. I originally thought I was making a piece to be cut into pages but decided in the end I liked it too much whole.

_______

Closer…

[Grab images and drag to a new window to look closer]

[process]

Tomorrow I leave for a charming, Atlantic coastal house on the shores of Prince Edward Island to work on my life’s dreams. It’’s an Angela Ritchie ACE (arts, culture and education) camp being hosted by a longtime creative hero of mine, Sabrina Ward Harrison (whose work I was first introduced to by my dear friend Avital.) I’’ve been reading Anne of Green Gables in preparation, and between that and reopening Sabrina’’s book Spilling Open, I am being confronted with an abandoned way of living — Anne’’s insatiable desire for all things romantic and Sabrina’’s altogether raw confession.

Yesterday I was talking with my friend Sara and trying to explain how I felt about this trip. With my tongue uncharacteristically tied in knots, I finally spilled the truth that I was feeling NERVOUS.

I am nervous to go to camp.

Like the nervousness I felt before going to a Calvinettes camp-out when I was eight. Except today it’’s an adult nervous. Like I’’m fooling myself into believing that I can see all of the potential potholes ahead.

I’’m not nervous the girls are going to tease me or the boys won’’t think I’’m pretty. I’’m not worried I’’ll forget to bring my bathing suit or that it will rain all week and we won’’t be able to sing or roast marshmallows around the campfire. I’’m worried that this trip, this camp, this first four-day sojourn without my one-year-old, this meeting of a creative hero, this writing assignment, won’’t be all I desperately hope it will be.

Something deep, DEEP, in me wants to fling myself into this week with the unhindered expectation of a five-year-old. I want to believe with my twenty-year-old-heart (the better, freer, lighter heart) that this will be IT. The marker. The moment. The chapter changer. A time so affecting that I’ll hold it up as my Everest climb. A culmination of so so so much. And something (SOMEONE) tells me it is. And I want to believe it.

Oh god, do I want to believe it.

But my adult self tells me to be careful. To not care too much. To not get too excited. To set my expectations just a little bit lower.

And my five-year-old/twenty-year-old self is telling my thirty-one-year-old head/heart to fuck-off. To ““do what you did at first”” (Revelation 2:5). To BELIEVE.

That my God (the God I am so unsure of, the God who ever clings to me, the God of my youth, the God of the universe) is love. And that he WANTS me to believe this with every single inch of my being. And to not hold back.

And somewhere behind my ribcage, behind my separating bones, screams YES.

The yes of my two-year-old, five-year-old, twenty-year-old, pre-period, pre-heart-smash, pre-confusing-years, pre-church-mess-ups, pre-career-detours, pre-falling-out, pre-self.

Yes.

Yes. It will be.

Yes. I believe it.

Yes. There is love ahead.

Yes. There is more.

Yes. The daring will be worthwhile.

yes. yes. yes.

good. good. good.

love. love. love.

amen. amen. amen.

echoes my thirty-one-year-old heart.

And tomorrow I leave on a jet plane. And all shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things will be well.

Yes. Amen. Let it be.