Impressive Zinio Customer Service

Let me start this post off by saying I wasn't going to post today. Today is Family Day in Ontario (and Alberta and Saskatchewan), but I don't have the day off because I'm a public servant. I went to bed in not the greatest mood because I knew I would have to work today, even though I had a great weekend at home with Kevin.

So here's the story:

About a week ago I got an email from my friend, Sara, who told me I should read this month's issue of Chatelaine magazine because it had some great small-space solutions in it. I currently have two magazine subscriptions (Canadian House & Home and Style at Home), which I read mainly using Zinio.

About Zinio:

Zinio is the world's largest newsstand and bookstore. With its many digital products and services, Zinio creates better ways for people to discover published content, get more of it and do more with it. Now, readers can purchase content once to be read on any screen. Zinio provides the ability to shop for, search inside, read, share and save digital content in 23 local newsstands in any country in the world. 

I barely even glance at my paper subscriptions anymore because with Zinio I can read them over a week earlier than the mailed version. I also found a Zinio app for my iPhone so I can read my magazines anywhere - no computer necessary. Sweet!

So yesterday, while perusing Zinio on my iPhone, I decided to check out the digital price for this month's Chateleine magaine: $2.99 for one month, $12.99 for a 12-month subscription. Really? $12.99 for 12 issues? They were practically giving it away. How could I say no? I put through all my information, but I got an error message...

 Gah! That sucks! I'm not the most patient person. I love buying things and getting them immediately, which is exactly what I was expecting, so this error message was less than ideal. I followed the instructions and sent them an email, including the above screen shot. I wasn't expecting to hear back for at least a few days though (agony!) because it was 1. Sunday night, and 2. it was a Sunday night preceding a holiday. Double gah!

Much to my surprise, I got two emails from Zinio within a couple hours (but I was already asleep), where they were apologizing for the inconvenience. Emails like this are always appreciated! First up was this one:

 Then this one:

That's right...FREE. I read this at 6am this morning thinking, "Sweet, they're gonna give me a free issue." No folks, the whole subscription is free! Woohoo Donald L! You are the shizzzz!

The value is $12.99 - nothing huge, I know, but it definitely started my day off right :) And I love being able to share positive customer service experiences. Note: I always love to share negative customer service experiences too and have been known to blacklist companies forever. Le Chateau, I'm talking to YOU!!!!!!!! Worst customer service EVERRRRRRRRRRRR.

To continue on in my positive mood, I had an absolutely clear drive on my way to work this morning and got here in record time because there were no cars on the road. 

So far today is feeling like this: (seriously, if you want to get your day off to good start too, watch this video).

Happy Valentine's Day! Cookie edition...

Kevin and I don't make a big production out of Valentine's Day. I like wearing something red or pink and baking some cute heart cookies, but that's about it. I don't think we've ever gone out to dinner on Heart Day, but we are this year. I guess there's a first for everything!


Kevin loves shortbread cookies, so I usually end up making them for him for Christmas, his birthday and Valentine's Day. My absolute favourite recipe to use is from The Joy of Baking. This recipe has served me extremely well and I highly recommend it!


Shortbread Cookies:

INGREDIENTS

2 cups (260 grams) all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon (2 grams) salt

1 cup (2 sticks) (226 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup (60 grams) powdered (confectioners or icing) sugar

1 teaspoon (4 grams) pure vanilla extract (I use a about 1.5 teaspoons)

Note: use the best butter and vanilla you can afford - it makes a difference!

INSTRUCTIONS

In a separate bowl whisk the flour with the salt.  Set aside.

In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter until smooth and creamy (about 1 minute). Add the sugar and beat until smooth (about 2 minutes).  Beat in the vanilla extract. Gently stir in the flour mixture just until incorporated.  Flatten the dough into a disk shape, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill the dough for at least an hour or until firm.  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) with the rack in the middle of the oven.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough into a 1/4 inch (.6 cm) thick circle.  Cut into rounds or other shapes using a lightly floured cookie cutter.  Place on the prepared baking sheets and place in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes. (This will firm up the dough so the cookies will maintain their shape when baked.) Bake for 8 - 10 minutes, or until cookies are very lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack.

Shortbread cookies will keep in an airtight container for about a week or they can be frozen.

Makes about 20 shortbread cookies.

I put the cookies I baked into a glass jar ($1 from Dollarama) and made a little label to go on the front. I bought a $0.29 piece of striped pink card stock from Michael's to frame a white piece of card stock that I decorated with adhesive stickers (kind of like stick-on tattoos, but for paper - $1 from Dollarama). I used a star-burst hole punch at the top of the label, strung a piece of silver ribbon through it, then tied the ribbon around the lid and curled the ends. It's not super fancy, but it's just a way to personalize a cookie jar... and it only cost me  $2.29. 

Do you have anything planned for your sweetie tonight?

Tutorial: Fluttering Hearts Frame

I love doing crafts and projects and must talk about it incessantly (hehe whoops) because a few months ago I got asked to put my mad skillz (sarcasm) to use and make a wedding guest book. The bride sent me some inspirational pictures and told me she wanted white hearts on a white background with 2 pink hearts - one with her and the hubbie's initials, and one with their wedding date. I spent an afternoon doing the project, but the wedding ended up being called off (eeek!) before I ever had the chance to show it to the bride. 

Valentine's Day is around the corner and I thought this would make the perfect DIY gift tutorial. You could definitely also make this as a wedding guest book and have everyone sign in the hearts, or you could use coloured/patterned paper or pages from your favourite book for the hearts. It's completely customizable, super cute, and only costs about $20 if you're buying all of the supplies from scratch!

Supplies:

• Shadow Box Frame (mine was originally $13 from Michael's but I waited until they were 50% off)
• Mat Board (already had)
• Paper or Cardstock (already had)
• Glue Stick (already had)
• 1 inch Heart Punch (mine was originally $8 from Michael's but I used a 50% off coupon)
• Ruler (already had)
• Pencil (already had)
• Something with a not-too-sharp edge like a paperback novel

Total cost for me: $11.50 + existing supplies

Instructions:

Step 1: Remove the paper template in your shadow box and use its dimensions to cut your mat to size


Step 2: Once cut, figure out how much border you want around your hearts. The frame I bought was perfect for 49 stars (47 were sign-able for the guestbook). Knowing I would be making 7 rows of 7, I found and marked off the centre of the frame. I started by making the centre horizontal line, then the centre vertical line. This helped me keep the lines straight. Note: I only marked the first heart's location (the one in the centre). For the subsequent hearts, I just used my ruler as the guide and made sure the bottom points of the hearts were 1.5 inches apart horizontally and vertically. 


Step 3: Punch out those hearts! I used just over 1 sheet of white craft paper and cut out about 50 hearts - I cut a few extra just in case. 


Step 4: Using the spine of a book (or something else with a hard 90 degree edge), put a crease (not a complete fold) vertically down all of your hearts, except for any hearts you want to stand out from the rest. When I originally made this as a guest book, the hearts were pink, but now they're glitter and they're kind of awesome :)

Step 5: Glue your hearts to your mat! Start with the centre heart. Alternately glue the left side then the right side of the hearts so that you get this pattern... look, they're all a-flutter!

Step 6: Enjoy!

This project took me an afternoon to do and I'm very very pleased with the results! If you give it a go, I'd love to know how it went for you. 


Do you have any DIYs up your sleeve for Valentine's Day? 

My First Gingerbread House

Wow, is this post late or what?! Kevin and I made a gingerbread house right before leaving for our cruise. I snapped some photos, but unfortunately forgot to post about it! I'm not the most patient person so I was interested to see how working with Kevin on the house would pan it. Well, we're both still alive and you know what?... It was fun! We worked well together :-)


I had a 50% coupon for Michael's so I used that to buy the gingerbread house kit. I can't remember the exact price, but it ended up being $5 or something like that. 

Once we read through the instructions a couple of times, I got to making the icing. I had to add quite a bit more water to the icing than the directions specified, but eventually I got the right consistency. The icing is what holds the walls together...

We had to wait in between "mortar"-ing each wall for the icing to firm up a bit. Eventually, our house was intact!

I wanted the entire roof to be covered in "snow", so I watered down some of the icing and flooded the roof with it. A bit of the icing dripped off, but we just wiped away any excess, no biggie.

Then came the fun part: the candy! After eating about 25% of it throughout the icing process, we proceeded to attach what was left of it to the house. We used every. last. piece. on this house! And I gotta say, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out!

And my favourite part...the icicles!

Gingerbread houses aren't something that we do in my family, but I really enjoyed it! I think I might try making a gingerbread from scratch next year! Hopefully (fingers crossed) our condo will be done by then so I'll get to do it in MY OWN KITCHEN!! Wooohooo!

New Year's Resolutions

When I was in school, I used to make about 10 resolutions every year. I would print them off and put them on the fridge, in my locker, in my bedroom, etc to keep me on track. I haven't made any resolutions in the last few years and I'm not sure why. I'm actually pretty good at sticking to resolutions, as long as they're specific and somewhat realistic. I'm never gonna stop eating junk food and exercise regularly - at least not long term - so I avoid resolutions like that. I started to make a list of resolutions for 2012 after talking to one of my coworkers about her list. I thought I wouldn't be able to think of any. My list started off slow, but then grew, and grew and GREW. I had to cut it off somewhere so I'm gonna list my top 7, in no particular order

via

1. Stop swearing
I swear like a sailor! I'll casually throw down F-bombs like they're nothing. It's horrible, and so tacky.. I know. But it's also something that I turn off easily when I'm around new people/parents/bosses etc. I'm not too sure how I'm gonna stop swearing. I need some substitute words... but they have to have some pizzazz. When I'm angry/upset/excited, it just ain't gonna cut the mustard for me to say something lame like "oh fudge". Some people say I should put a quarter in a jar every time I swear, but honestly, I don't even notice when I do it, so I don't know if that would work. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

2. Improve my photography skills

I clearly fell off the bandwagon with my photography challenge, but I'm gonna hop back on it this year and finish it off. 

3. Learn Photoshop  

This seems daunting to me. I have the program and I've tried to use it a bunch of times with no success. I think it would help me with my blog images, but there are just SO many buttons and I don't understand the layers...  I guess I just need to spend a few weekends fiddling around with it. If you know any good websites for teaching how to use Photoshop, please let me know!

via

via 

4. Read more news
I'm the worst when it comes to knowing what's going on in the world. On the cruise I was watching this recap of big news stories in 2011. It was on CNN so a lot of it was American, but a lot of these "recaps" were things I was hearing for the first time. I need to test out all my news methods (internet, radio, TV, paper) and see which one is more engaging for me. I already know this will be the hardest resolution for me to keep.



5. Do more DIYs on my blog
I want to do more tutorials and DIYs on my blog so that my readers feel like they're coming to my blog and learning something. I think it's a reasonable goal for me to set out to do one quality DIY or tutorial per month. I know that's not a lot, but it's more than I'm doing now and will ensure I'm putting out more quality content on the ol' bloggy.


6. Declutter each season
I'm not sure what happened in between the apartment and now living in the 'burbs but it seems my possessions have just EXPLODED all over the bedroom. I literally have to climb over and move things every day just to get in and out of bed. What happened?? I don't know. But I do know that I will be decluttering this month and doing it at the beginning of each season this year to keep things in check!

via

 7. Spend more quality time with the ones I love 
I think this one is the most important resolution for me. I think I fell off the bandwagon last year. Kevin and I used to go out more, I would hang out with my friends, I would write letters to those out of town. I barely do any of that anymore. As much as I like being social and chitchatting, I only have a few close friends, so I resolve to send more texts, emails and letters to them and make more time to hang out with them. For Kevin, I resolve to make more time for quality dates at least twice a month. It's so easy to fall into the habit of eating at home while watching TV. Everyone I know uses Facebook to keep in touch, but I don't have an account. I'd like to prove to myself that I can keep in touch with family and friends without the use of Facebook!

Happy (Belated) New Year!

I know this is a little late, but I hope you all had a great holiday. Kevin and I went on an 8-day Caribbean cruise for the holiday so I was a little stressed before leaving because I over-committed myself a bit. The vacation was great, but coming back to work was hard. I spent a good 30 minutes lying in bed yesterday morning debating whether to take another day or to just bite the bullet and come in. It was also weird not having Christmas dinner with my family. For the last 27 years I've been with them on Christmas, so it didn't feel too Christmas-y to me while on this huge boat - even though there were Christmas decorations everywhere.

via

I have a bunch of things to blog and have just about caught up on all of the blog posts I missed over the past week and a half. Janice over at Life Begins at Thirty is preggers (congrats!), John and Sherry at Young House Love painted their kitchen cabinets and they look awesome, and I won a Designer Series Programmable Crock-Pot® Slow Cooker. from Britt at My Daily Randomness!! Seriously, that Crock Pot is pimped out.  

via

For our vacation, we drove down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida with one of Kevin's cousins. People thought we were crazy for driving, but we saved a ton of money!! The total cost for the gas and tolls for the drive from Toronto to Fort Lauderdale to Fort Myers and back to Toronto was $320 US. The cheapest direct flight from Toronto to Fort Lauderdale was $800 Cdn each. The conversion between Canadian and American money is pretty much 1 to 1 at the moment. We saved just over $2000 between the three of us (just under $700 per person). Sounds like a win to me!

People asked if I'm glad I drove. Yes, I am. The money I saved more than covered Christmas presents, Kevin's birthday present and drinks/excursions on the cruise. 

The only part that was tough was driving at night. That was brutal. I took the first driving shift out of Toronto and after about 5 hours of driving at night through fat snowflakes, I started to feel like I was on the Starship Enterprise going warp speed. Side note: I may or may not have seen pretty much every episode of The Next Generation - I loved that show as a kid!

via

I had to call it quits and let Kevin drive. When I woke up, the sun was just about coming up (I think we were in Virginia) and the view was gorgeous. It looked a little something like this:

via

On the way home after the cruise, I drove the last 8 hours or so, which ended up being through a gross snow storm in West Virginia (I think) and Pennsylvania.  I wasn't very lucky for my driving portions...

via

I guess the bright side was at least this part of the drive was during the day... Yay to no more warp speed! When I drive at night I open my eyes really wide like it's gonna help me see better lol But all it does is give me dry eyes! Why do I do that? Does anyone else do that? 

How were your holidays? Do anything interesting? Did you go away?

My Christmas Decor Inspiration

Christmas decorations are so varied. Some people stick with simple whites, silvers, and golds, while others will use practically every colour under the sun. I grew up with my parents decorating the house with a real tree, multi-coloured lights outside and in, wreaths, garlands, tinsel, Santa figurines... you name it, we had it. I guess you just kind of accumulate a lot over the years and probably go for it a little more, decoration-wise, when you have young kids who still believe all the magic that Christmas brings. By the way, the jig was up when I was 8 and I saw my parents in the living room wrapping presents. They weren't even trying to be sneaky anymore! Seriously, I'm so gullible, they could've kept that charade going for at least a few more years...

Anywhooo, I thought I'd share some inspiring Christmas decor images that I found on Pinterest :-) My style is definitely falls into the more subdued, maybe even abstract side of Christmas decorating.

Tree:

If I had to have a traditional tree (be it real or fake - I have no preference), I'd decorate it like this. I love the white and silver decorations, the sheepskin rug underneath, the green and white palette for the wrapping paper. I even love how the tree seems kinda droopy. 

[via]

If I didn't have the space and Kevin didn't object, I'd do something like this. I love the simplicity of it!

[via, clockwise from top left 1,2,3,4]

Wreaths:

I love wreaths. When I see one on someone's front door, it kind of sets the tone for what I should expect for the interior decor. Here are some non-tradition wreaths I scoped out:

[via 1,2,3,4,5]

General Decor:

All the other little touches around the house are what help to create that Christmas-y feeling.

[via 1,2,3,4,5]

Do you go more traditional or more modern with your Christmas decor? 

Canadian House & Home - December Roundup

The December issue of Canadian House & Home has some great decor and gift giving ideas for the holiday season. Here are some things that caught my eye:

Up until now, I didn't know what you called putting out a candle... other than blowing it out. Turns out it's called snuffing and you do with a snuffer. This would be a great gift for a candle lover. I especially love the one for the minimalist and the glamour-puss. Chrome and sparkle get me every time!

The first time I had a chai latte, I fell in love... and have been in search for a decently priced milk frother ever since! My mom and sister recently discovered chai lattes too, so maybe now would be a good time to invest in one. When a small chai latte costs almost $4 a pop at Starbucks, it makes $100 for a frother seem like a steal!

I'm not usually a fan of snow globes, but I love these ones. The monochromatic finish really takes it up a notch and would look great in any home that decorates with a more subdued palette during the holidays.

This bookend is by Jonathan Adler. I saw one of his bookends in Style at Home as well and posted about it here. I think Sherry's affinity for white ceramic animals has rubbed off on me!

 

I love the finish work in this room. The trim, the moudlings, the bay window, the recessed pot lights, the dark wood floors, the fireplace (with...is that marble?). Very classic. Shelagh Kellam is the homeowner and also the interior designer for this place.

And I love when people configure a nook into something functional! This breakfast bar conceals the radiator below and is flanked on both sides by tall cabinets. Homeowners Claudio Cerrito and Scott King worked with designer Patti Rosati. For me, this would be a perfect spot to enjoy some tea and toast in the morning... and do a little spying on the neighbours :-) Hey, what can I say? I'm nosy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

{Clockwise from top left via 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

I hope all my fellow Canucks are having a fun and safe Thanksgiving! And if you haven't gone out and enjoyed this fabulous long weekend weather yet, get outta your house and enjoy it while we still have it :-)

Happy 144th Birthday Canada!

My fellow blogger, Kerry, from This Tinder, is visiting me in Toronto this weekend! She's been on vacation for the past 2 weeks, but she'll be back home as of Sunday and back to updating her blog and her Etsy page.


Kerry, Kevin and I are gonna be oot and aboot today (aka "out and about"... and no, Canadians don't really talk like that) checking out the parade (maybe), going to the beach, going out for dinner, watching some fireworks. I'll bring my camera along and update you of all the fun later on. 


To all my fellow Canadians, enjoy your holiday, eh! ...yeah I don't really say "eh" either, but I know some people who do!


Here are some gratuitous Canada Day fireworks photos I took back in my university days. Enjoy!