mundane super stuff

What follows is just everyday, around-the-house-stuff. It is therefore "mundane". However, I love making a cozy home, so for me this is all super stuff. 

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I took down the wintery pictures and put up more spring-like stuff - like a bunch of pennants I've collected over many years. Why are pennants spring-like you ask? Ummm... Because they remind me of baseball?

Worth the effort, fresh bread.

Starting sweet potato slips.

I put the all swans on the shelf in the living room. Eagerly awaiting the return of the Ottawa Royal Swans to the local rivers from their wintering quarters. 

This is just the other side of the shelf... (the new painting from the previous post is in the middle)

I got this hilarious AND holographic dog picture from the "give-away-spot" in the basement (it had a really nice frame that I'm going to use for something else). Here the cat ponders the presence of the new addition.

That's all for now. Thanks for letting your eyes linger here.

Stay Inside, The Weather Sucks

There's freezing rain and general grossness in the out-of-doors so I stayed cozy in my nest all day (which, honestly, isn't very different from most days, but today I had a good excuse).

I think I'm having some post-holidays/wintertime blues or something. All I really want to do is nap, eat cookies, and read books... and then nap again.

Here are a few shots of the in-of-doors that I took today while battling the blahs:

1. Cat facing off with the Bold-Ass-Starlings that have recently joined forces with the Party-Pigeons on my ledge,

2. The current state of the sideboard: deChristmasified but still winterized,

3. Oh. And another cat shot (they never cease to amuse me and this is my blog sooooo...)

This is a new spot for Pearl. I guess she wanted to curl up and sleep in the company of a lot of other black, circular things...

Gawd, I hope the weather and my mood improve soon... 

I guess I can sort of control one of those things eh?

deck the walls

My "hall" (hallway) is pretty dark and and narrow so I decked my walls instead... mostly over the Sideboard/Hutch (which I haven't changed up in quite awhile - so it was overdue for a new look).

This is my favourite, vintage ornament.

I use to have some others but they are so fragile...

Not going to be around these parts for most of the holidays - so I decorated my Aloe plant instead of killing a tree...

Stockings hung with care. Someone made Husbo's when he was little. I made mine about 7 years ago to sort of match his...

The big "B" + Santa = "be santa"...

The framed calligraphy I just picked up about a week ago from a thrift store. It took a LONG time of me staring dumbly to figure out what it said... but once I did I thought it was the perfect thing to put up for the festive season. Also, it is hand-lettered by some patient soul and that's the kind of thing I find hard to pass up at thrift stores... Can you read it?

The little ceramic Santa is an old one from Husbo's Granny...

I love my oblong, vintage, glass ornaments but having no tree I had to display them differently...



Festival flags purchased in San Antonio, plus little nativity scenes (one in a gourd) that I got in Peru (though you can find them all over the place...)

That's pretty much it for the decking of this place.. there are few other little things but I kept it pretty low-key this year.

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accidental household graffiti

The Town Musicians of Bremen

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current sideboard

The sideboard in my house is meant as a show n' tell spot where I display things temporarily. I mean to take pictures of all the seasons of the sideboard but actually I miss a lot of them.

Husbo says it's like "shifting sands", always changing (I'm not sure if that bothers him but he doesn't complain so I guess he's OK with it...)

Anyway, this is the current state.

The "Ask" has moved over here to make room on the other wall for other art. I also found some wood in the basement and cut a "B" out to make it "Bask" - a fine sentiment for a living room I think.

My Dad (and his awesome collection of tools) is back in my employ after a 15 year hiatus from having to deal with my creative schemes. It's nice living in the same town as him again (and it saves me a lot on power tools).

Peek-a-boo-Peru.

(I got this nice woven rug in Peru but can't really use it on the floor due to the destructo-cats.)

I have been to Florida but this is someone else's souvenir that I got at a thrift store. The bigger vertebrate are from a loon I think.

I rarely have need to stop a door but I couldn't resist this door-stopper. I like its shape. It looks like a mole or an ant-eater or something.

The contents of the blue, Lion bowl that my sister gave me many years ago. The acorn is from a beautiful day in Bala last summer.

The Folk-Art-Kissing-Couple made it back out of the storage drawer. I missed them.

The mini Navajo Rug is a thrifted item that is covering up a stupid, unfortunate water stain.

The Kissers contain a little coin collection.

hold the fleas please

"Flea market" has got to be the worst name for a second-hand-sale... no one wants fleas.

Hopefully my new NON-Hudson-Bay-Blanket doesn't have any...

It's got the classic colour scheme but was made for Eatons - so it only cost 15 bucks at an antique store (in an upscale, Toronto neighbourhood to boot!!)

That's pretty darn cheap for a queen-sized 100% wool blanket without a single hole or stain!

I got a neat old medicine cabinet to hang above my sewing machine. It was still in the original box.

And here's what the sideboard looks like these days. I missed taking pictures of several in-between variations but the biggest change is that I got rid of the lamp. It was a useless place for a lamp (no chairs nearby that needed reading light). We never turned it on - so it has gone to another good home.

I brought the paint-by-number-horses out of the stable.

The fun, new additions to the sideboard are this old tray with sparrows, an old toy horse and a beautiful Amethyst crystal (my birthstone) - all obtained for only $8!

not dead yet

I'm back from the realm of the busy - where most people manage to live most of their lives (and blog meanwhile). Being of simple mind and low energy, I can only visit that realm from time to time and must then retreat into silence.

But this blog is not dead and now continues...

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This is what the ever-evolving-sideboard looks like today. Not everything has changed but I had to free up some room for books that are currently new and/or being read. Our "bar" was briefly stationed on the sideboard but I didn't take a picture and it has since found another home. Books outrank booze.

Another new addition is this collage-y thing I put together this morning. The poem fragment (from Langston Hughes*) and bird picture has literally spent 8 years on my fridge (a friend letterpressed it back at Sheridan). Suddenly it felt like time to do something else with it...

So I put together some old things I had lying around my studio and framed it. I also added a button/pin of my baby-self (which I've had since... well... birth I guess**). Anyway, I've never been sure what to do with this button of myself... but it kind of fits in with the idea of holding fast to youthful dreams and pursuing them with the purity and innocence of a fresh-faced babe.

(I'm 100% certain that my dreams are less socially significant and far more self-centered than what Langston was talking about.)

So here it is:

In other newness, I got a neat book of weird old photos off the discount rack when I visited the National Gallery recently. It's like having the website Black and WTF in the palm of your hand - but NOT on an iPhone - haha!

The rocks are from various travels across Canada. The black lava-looking ones come from an island off British Columbia and the lump of coal is from Nova Scotia. The rest are from locales in between.

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*Here's the whole poem, Dreams, by Langston Hughes (but I don't agree with him that frozen fields are barren or a bad thing...)

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

** I'm not sure WHY my family put my face on a pin. I guess I was cute as a button?

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new sideboard show-n-tell

Switched up the sideboard display yesterday. Except for one picture and the loon skull/bones, everything else is stuff I already had/made.

This is the area of the house where people would put their big, flat screen TV - opposite the couch. I sometimes sit and stare at this wall and zone out. I rearrange it to keep it interesting.

The charcoal sunset drawing is a new thriftstore-find.

This is written on the back. So sweet. You don't meet many Minnie & Maynards these days.

Brought the "Budget Heart" out of storage...

(Ordered this from a medical education website and it was actually called "budget heart". I bought it for my Valentine.)

CANADA briefcase, nerve food, and loon bones.

(Here's what it looked like before the rearrange - not that different really...)