Goodwill Hunting

Gary and I came across some interesting finds when we went to the 3 Goodwill stores for Friday Fever. I saw some great furniture, but it was all either sold already or way too big to fit into the car. I also ran into my cousin's wife, Annafel, who just recently started a blog called The Lewis Family Values. Check it out! She actually reads my blog, which makes me happy because I'm pretty sure my parents and siblings don't :P (Dear family, to prove me wrong, feel free to comment on this post!)

I looked at these lamps for long time and thought about spray painting them, but ultimately walked away because 1. I don't need any more lamps and 2. I don't want to buy lamp shades.

I was really drawn to this clay meat loaf pan. It says "Northern Clay Works" on it and it was WAY bigger than any pan I'd use to make meatloaf, but I thought it would make a super cute planter for herbs. I stared at this for a long time too, but it was more expensive than I'd like so I walked away. I'm sad I didn't get it, but Riley eats all of my plants anyway. Maybe I should've bought it and filled it with cat grass...

 

If cat grass gets cats high like catnip does, I need to get some for Riley! She's hilarious after eating the stuff. If you've never seen a cat eat catnap, watch this video - if you only have a couple seconds to watch, skip to 1:03 to see a super stoned cat lol

Now on to the (more) random sightings:

This was absolutely the weirdest mirror I've ever seen. So obviously we got a picture of Gary holding it while I'm being reflected back. We're dorks. I know.

 I burst out laughing when I saw this plate. Doesn't  it look like Lady Gaga!?

Now on to my actual purchases! 

I found these two frames and took home the one on the right. It is perfectly sized for my Ork poster of Toronto and it cost me...$5!

I also got this drying rack. Kevin does the dishes and has said several times he'd like a 2-level drying rack. I've seen them in stores before, but they're around $50! Madness!! I picked up this rusty bad-boy for $3 - gave him a good scrub with soap, and then wiped down the rusty areas with some CLR and now it's good as new :-)

This was our old drying rack, which I accidentally melted when I had the two stove burners closest to it on high :-(   Syonara! 

Last but not least, I bought this cake stand...for $3!! I keep reading tutorials for making cake stands (plate+candlestick+epoxy glue), but while they're really cute, plates have lips and I wanted my cake stand to be flat. I was too cheap to buy a new one considering I'll probably only use it a couple times a year, so this GW find made me very happy! I'm hoping to make a bake this weekend so I can put it to use :-)

 

Have you scored any Goodwill deals lately? I love hearing about bargains!

My Weekend Follies

On Friday, my friend Gary and I went to not one...

Dufferin and 401

not two...

Thorncliff

 but three Goodwill stores for Friday Fever

Eglinton and Brimley

Unfortunately, Gary didn't find the kind of frames he was looking for, but I found a few great items. I'll post about those this week :-)

On Saturday, we went on a hike in Rouge Park. If you live in Toronto and you've never been, I highly suggest going! You can hike through it alone or tag along for the volunteer-run hikes they hold several times a week all-year long. One of the guys on this walk was a trained-ecologist and shared his cool ecological knowledge with us.

Kevin and I tried to get a nice photo of the two of us...I'd say the last one is ok, but he's fake-smiling grrrr! Also, I wear my painting jeans when I go hiking (I pretty much wear them when I do anything that might involve getting dirty and I have the foresight to put them on). I love those jeans. I wish I had another non-paint-covered pair...

 

After the hike I went to the Eaton Centre with Gary and Marcel and I bought a very well-fitting (but expensive!) bikini from Bikini Village. I wanted to go swimming last weekend, but the fabric from my favourite bikini had deteriorated in some spots and practically fossilized in others... I have other bikinis, but I don't like them as much - they don't fit as well. Don't get me wrong - I'm (mostly) happy with my body, but when I go swimming for the first time each season, I need to wear my best-fitting, most flattering bikini! The shape and pattern of it looks like this, but the colours on mine are different.

And as a random side note, I saw JP and Juan from One Girl Five Gays (best. show. ever!) while walking on King Street W on my way to MEC!! I really wanted to ask them to take a picture with me, but for some reason I can never bring myself to harass tv/movie people for photos/autographs. 

Case in point: My friend and I once had backstage passes at a Mariah Carey concert (don't judge me! She was awesome in the 90s!) and I was awkwardly standing beside her while a group of us were getting ready for a photo with her. I had my CD in hand ready to be signed and I couldn't bring myself to ask. But you know what? She asked me if I wanted her signature! Ha!

I know it's a little late in the game now considering it's Wednesday, but did you have a good weekend? Do anything fun?

Style at Home - August Roundup

Some of us Canadians are probably just starting to get our backlogged mail due to the Canada Post strike. I just got my August S@H at the end of last week, so here's my August roundup:


Recently, I was flipping through a nature book that I was given as a gift at my last job. While I hate defacing books, I love the idea of finding a group of similar photos to frame in a group, like what was done below with the botanical prints. The book I have has more landscape/animal photos, but the same concept applies. I was thinking it might look good on the bare wall in the bedroom, beside the window. 

While I'm not a fan of skirts of any kind on furniture (they're impractical with shedding pets), I love the look and feel of this living room and bedroom. They're so airy and calm! They remind me of the beach. The blues, whites, greens and beiges flow together beautifully. 

I love maps and when I saw these aviator map cushions, they reminded me of the hand-stitched KETTY VARLD cushions I picked up from Ikea not too long ago. I checked Ikea's website so I could reference the pillow, but it's like they've vanished. I think they were a limited edition :-(

I'm a sucker for anything sparkly! I was eying these clearanced mercury mushrooms from West Elm a couple of weeks ago and then I saw this mercury glass lamp in S@H. The vase is hammered-silver, but it has the same feel as the mercury glass, so I added it to my sparkle section :-) They all look so glamorous! 

The Frame That Almost Was...

For Christmas 2010, my brother bought me an Ork poster of Toronto. I love maps and these ones are especially cool because they section off your city by neighbourhoods. My one looks exactly like this:

I went to Michael's a couple weeks after my brother gave it to me with a 40% coupon and BALKED when the salesperson told me how much it would cost to frame. I thought, "That poster will never see the light of day..."  


Fast forward to my mat cutter purchase!


My friend, Gary, and I went to Value Village in an attempt to find a frame big enough for my sweet Toronto poster and stumbled across this shelf of huge posters! Score! 


Unfortunately, the poster I wanted was located above a rack of used bras (ewwwwww...) and I couldn't reach the frame properly (too short!), so Gary chivalrously offered to get it for me :-) What a good friend!

The "Can't Beat The Feeling" poster looked perfect and was only $14! Literally less than 10% what I was quoted at Michael's with the 40% off coupon! I asked the cashier for a tape measure so I could ensure it was big enough to hold the Ork poster, which is 24x30 inches. I can't remember exactly how big the frame was, but it was something like 24x32..... 

sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. 

It looked so HUGE on the shelf! I thought for SURE it would be big enough. There were no other frames bigger than this one and I'm not even sure that standard frames come any bigger than this... Does anyone know? I can play the waiting game forever if I know (heck, even if I think) it's going to save me at least $200! 

In other news, we saw these cute puppies that looked like they were being purchased hehe. They were pretty much crazy (like their owner lol) and they wouldn't stay still for a photo, but then as soon as they were still, I took a blurry shot. 

Anyone have any good Canada Day/long weekend plans?

Birdie on a Wire

For my birthday last year, my friend bought me a water colour painting from Kerry Ainger. She lives in British Columbia, Canada and has a shop on Etsy, named This Tinder. She'll be away on vacation for the next couple weeks, but check out her Etsy shop in July when she gets back. She also has a blog, named This Tinder where she displays her beautiful art and blogs about her life and other creative outlets.

So, this painting had been sitting in my pile of things-to-frame for long enough, so I went to Value Village to see if I could find a suitable frame for it. Now that I have the mat cutter I feel like the world is my oyster :-) I have all these frames to choose from!

I found this nice frame at Value Village - originally from C. Gutenburg Gallery Limited in Toronto according to the sticker on the back. I also stopped back into Deserres to get another mat. The two stores are only about 100 metres apart so it was very convenient.

Here's the after shot once I cut the mat and put in Kerry's painting. I think it looks great!

Here's a close up of the cute little birdie. He's got a top hat! 

The total cost of this project was $8.54 before taxes! Seriously, where have mat cutters been all my life??

I hung the newly frame art above the towel rack in the bathroom. The silver trim looks a lot better than the old frame and the white really brightens the place up, especially now that we have all white trim in there - a reveal I'll show you soon :-)

An Ikea Frame of Mind

Last year I bought a bunch of frames at Ikea to display some photos I have. I didn't realize until I got home that...

1. Ikea mats are off white
2. Ikea frames have European sizing

I never even considered getting new mats for them until I read this on Little House Blog. Lindsay is a smart woman - she even had a link on her twitter page to a 25% coupon at Deserres, so I promptly printed off that bad boy and headed over to the store to pick up my own mat cutter and a couple of mats.

I spent most of Friday night reading the instructions and setting about cutting my first (and second and third) mats. The first one pretty much took me forever, and then I cut the second and third one with no issues. I got Kevin to take photos as I went along because it was easy enough for him to take shots sporadically as he was watching TV :-) Here's my process, folks!

Measure the Ikea mat as a basis to draw the outside border for the new mat

Use the ruler and utility knife to cut the outside border to size

Admire your first cut. What?.. It's an important step!

Make sure the new mat fits into the frame

Do some quick (or not so quick... math's not for everyone) calculations to figure out where the horizontal and vertical middle are of the mat and photo

Draw a cross section on the back of the mat and back of the photo. Line the photo up on the back of the mat, mark the corners of the photo, and then cut the mat 0.5cm shorter than the photo edge on each inner border so that the mat overlaps the photo a little bit on each side. 

Cutting my first inside edge with the bevel edge tool

Almost done...

DISAPPOINTMENT! And here's why...

Crap! This edge (the side closest to the lamp in the photo above) wouldn't cut all the way through, so I went over it a couple of time and it came out choppy. Kevin suggested I just cut that edge a couple millimetres wider - smart man! One edge is slightly narrower than the other now, but the cut is smooth so I'm a happy girl

So, remember waaaay back at the beginning of this post when I said there are two issues with Ikea frames? It's ok if you can't. Here's a refresher and some photos to go along with it!

1. Ikea mats are off white. Boy oh boy are they ever! Check out this side by side comparison:

2. Ikea frames have European sizing. Here is the Ikea mat sitting on top of the mat I cut. The mat is supposed to overlap the photo on all sides, but Ikea's wasn't even touching the edge of my photo. 

Here is my finished product! I am SO happy with the results. Some quick facts: The photo is 8"x10", the mat outside edge is 11 3/4" x 15 3/4" 

What do you think?