Hot Daze in the City

I met a couple of friends, Meghan and Kaleigh, for dinner last night. It has been so hot out that I wanted something loose and flowy to wear, so I went with this top I recently bought.

It was a coincidence that the three of us ended up wearing complimentary colours!

Antique Extravaganza

The third day of my visit with my parents was spent thrifting (small town = better thrift stores) and going to the most amazing antique market I have ever seen. It was housed on three floors within a massive building that had once been an abattoir. Really, it was more like a museum of fantastic collections of vintage things, and they could have charged us admission to see it and I would have considered that money well spent. We must have spent three hours there! Here are just some of the pictures I took. As far as purchases went, I bought myself a kitten figurine, which I will show you when I do an entry on my figurine collection. Also got a crystal shot glass for the mister, shaped like a little tiny beer mug. And since this visit is in honour of my mother's birthday, she picked out a cute bracelet with dogs on it.

Farmers’ Market Saturday in Barrie Ontario

c="http://www.loulou.to/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/sign2.jpg" alt="" title="sign" width="640" height="570" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-891 blk-brdr">Whenever I visit my parents in Barrie, I love to go to the Farmer's Market that is held an easy walk from their place. While they do sell the most amazing treats and foods there, this is not really a traditional type of farmer's market, with stall after stall of vegetables. Rather, it contains many (more interesting) tables full of wonderful hand-made things. Don't get me wrong ... I love veggies, but I love looking at pretty little art-glass earrings more!A highlight of my recent trip was meeting a vendor named Leanne Noble, who made felted wool products. My cousin had just had a baby girl (Delilah xo) and this was a perfect opportunity to pick-up a gift. I would have wanted something made by Leanne regardless, but I was particularly drawn to the precious little shoes and was happy to have a baby to buy them for! My mother bought her the pink owl.

Gift Wrap Rap

My mother and I have had this little tradition about wrapping gifts for one another for a long time.

The premise is based on re-using materials. She gives me a gift, I save the wrapping and trim and sometime later, incorporate elements of her wrapping into a present I give to her. And vice-versa. There are pieces that have gone back and forth between our homes for years. Of course, it should look pretty no matter what, so only the intact things get re-used.

So, to wrap her birthday gift this week, I pulled out what I had from what she gave me for my last birthday.

Making it : Birthday card for Mom

No matter how old their children get, I think that mom's always appreciate a hand-made card. That notion and the fact that making a greeting card is a quick little creative-outlet that I really enjoy doing, so I keep on making them!

I have a whole drawer-full of supplies, which is currently blocked by the cabinet that usually lives in our kitchen, but has been moved to the living-room during the reno.

So, after having lunch with a friend (Nyla) the other day, I popped into this "Odds and Ends / General" store, that I'd only ever seen from the outside before, while passing it in the streetcar. It's located on the north-east side of Bathurst and Bloor, (for curious Torontonians or visitors to the city), and I am a bit stumped as to what exactly to call this type of store. If everything in it were a dollar, I'd call it a dollar store, but it's not. Everything in it is very reasonably priced and most things are a dollar, but this store is so much more than that! For example, I paid $10 for a terrific carrying-case for my new iPad, which I love btw. Anyway, it was a fantastic place and I must have spent an hour in there, looking around and gathering unique bits and pieces!

But I digress ... back to the card making ...

Since my usual supplies were blocked from access, I grabbed a couple of card-making kits from the store. This type of pre-packaged assortment of goodies was new to me, each containing everything you needed to make two greeting cards, including the envelopes. Not as down-and-dirty-hand-made as I usually try for, but they looked pretty good, for sure. I laughed at the little slogan on the back of the package ... "No skills required".

For my mother's card, I went with the the pinky colour combo pack, on the left. But I wanted to personalize things a bit more, so I grabbed a piece of blank business card stock, trimmed it to a point and punched a hole into it, to make the semblance of a tag. I was able to snake my hand into the forbidden craft supply drawer and get the top thing out, which was a sheet of letter stickers, which I used to write MOM on the tag. I attached it with that blue "keep-your-blouse-on-the-hangar" ribbon, (mentioned in yesterday's gift wrapping post), so the tag could dangle and move. Then I stuck the card printed with Happy Birthday inside, and hand wrote my personal greeting below it.