Lighting Love

I saw these lights and gasped - aren't they just perfect?  SO beautiful.  The site they are on, www.within4walls.co.uk, has some gorgeous lighting eye candy.  I thought I would post some of it here for your viewing pleasure, but there is much more on the site.

Floor lamp version are also cool (although they don't have the same lunar effect - and would be disastrous with a toddler in the house!)
I love love love starfish - I once considered getting a starfish tattoo on the top of my foot before someone mentioned how painful that would be... these lights look much less painful.
The ones above are hand-painted canvas - so pretty.
Can you tell I love the ones with a marine inspiration?

Christmas Party Success


So I may have gone a little overboard with the red...but it was fun!  Problem with a small(ish) space like our main floor is that a little goes a long way - and I slathered it on.  The insane thing is that this is the biggest house/apartment we have ever lived in, and yet I only used about a third of the decorations in the boxes.  Yes, husband, we have too much stuff.
My apologies for the photo quality.  The Hubster and I have very different ways of approaching, well, LIFE, but especially parties.  I love the thrill of the day of, with the list of things to get and do, the puttering around, the frantic application of make-up as the doorbell rings.  He hates last minute preparations, finicky finessing of decorations, and my lackadaisical sense of time management.  So when I started taking photos while there was still food to be set out, the popping veins in his forehead and apoplectic sputtering told me I should probably put the camera down and start skewering some bocconcini balls...  hence the crappy photos.
Of course I couldn't let the house be the only thing to get the holiday red treatment...so I got me some festive nail polish too.
The party was tons of fun, with the bestest of our friends in attendance, including our guest of honour from Kelowna (Chris's brother Dave).  Our little angels slept the whole way through without a peep (much to our amazement!).  And the hubster managed to have a good time, as evidenced below.  I am already planning the next one! :)

Christmas Party Countdown - decor

Contrary to popular belief, being addicted to the internet has its downsides - there is so much beautiful inspiration out there, but how do you know what 'look' to choose for your holiday decorating?  Especially when you have to do it in a day?  However, one of the many upsides of internet-obsessing is sites like tumblr and pinterest, and on pinterest I created a folder of Holiday Inspiration.  After randomly saving things I was drawn to when I came across them, I went through my folder this evening to try to come up with some sort of direction for the house.  It's funny that they actually all kind of tie together - I seem to like pretty traditional white, green, and red - especially the red! - natural touches, and evergreens.  So I guess I know where I'm headed - time to get out the boxes and crank the holiday tunes!
One of the wonderful things about these sites is that you can drag a button onto your bookmark bar, and when you are on a site with an image you want to 'clip', you just hit that button and select the image.  Pinterest keep all the sourcing info and when you click on it in your folder it takes you to the original page.  So all sourcing info for these photos is over on pinterest!

Will's Red Bed on Ohdeedoh!


SO exciting - Will's red bed and room were featured yesterday on Ohdeedoh!  Janie emailed me out of the blue to ask if she could do a feature and send me some questions, and I am thrilled with the result.  Hello #1 Top Tour!  Funny how the room looks so much nicer on a famous site... :)  GO see!

Christmas Party Countdown

Man this time of year is nutty!  It is the craziest of all for me at work, and of course Christmas with family on either side of the country is always a bit of a zoo.  And for some reason I decided that this year it would be a good idea to reinstate out annual Christmas party (which has been on hold since the birth of our first little guy).  The party is this weekend, and I have something after work every day leading up to it, and have had my folks visiting last weekend until this morning.  Brilliant planning Lisa.  However, I stumbled upon this great article from the New York Times Minimalist blog: 101 Simple Appetizers in 20 Minutes or Less.  Sign me up!  I'll let you know if any of them work! Anyone else have a great and easy appetizer to share?

O Clock

I love these punchy Italian watches O Clock.  They are so simple and striking, and I could do all my shopping at this one store, cause who doesn't love a stylin' watch?  And at $36 each, it wouldn't be a bad idea.  Hot pink for Boodie, of course...
 Orange for Dave...
 Turquoise for Mum (it will go with her tan)
 Green for...not sure about that one...
Red for Chris, he loves attracting attention...
And white for Daphne!
Check out all the other colours, and note that they have no clasp, just the silicone band that comes in 3 different sizes.  Very cool.  Seen on poppytalk.

Parkdale Bazaar

I was reminded by birthday-girl Emma today that this fun event is tomorrow!  Full of amazingly talented Parkdal-ians (many of whom are Etsy sellers) the Parkdale Bazaar is an awesome opportunity to get some quality hand-made or vintage items for the holidays and put faces to the names of some of your favourite artists.  Oh, and you also get to relive your glorious past with the help of a Christmas special marathon (I LOVED this episode of My So-Called Life - poor Ricky) and also get those professional Christmas card portraits done (for free).  See you there!
 

Movember done right, eh? (Not that anyone can do it wrong...)

Beauty, eh?  I haven't really blogged about the Canadian Design Bloggers Meetup* but since that marvellous event I have been 1) inspired to blog like never before and 2) introduced to some kickin' new blogs.  One of these is definitely OK, Now what?, and I was won over by the Movember team.  Maggie (author of OK, Now What?)'s husband Rob and two of his friends did the Movember challenge for prostate cancer in magnificent Canadian style.  Team MOser's, eh? (a la "Take off, ya Hoser!") had an accompanying blog, which is good for fashion, fitness, and etiquette tips.  I encourage you to check it out.  And apparently, there is still time to help contribute to their campaign, which you can do here.  Nice work, ya hosers....

*About the event - it was seriously awesome and inspiring and I got to meet a whole bunch of amazing Canadian/Torontonian bloggers.  I will be adding a special category to my blogroll.  However, I didn't take any photos, and I am not in any of the 'official' photos from the event (mercifully?), so I figured no post!