UsedEverywhere.com

Art show

The UsedOttawa website now sports a FREE tab, so it’s very easy to browse all the goods that happen to fall into this category. Woot! I have a feeling it’s going to become a regular part of my day!

Speaking of free (or very very cheap), I wanted to share a few different ways you can pick up some very inexpensive art to decorate those naked white walls of yours.

Our family art budget is very small, much smaller than I would like it to be. I love art, and I’m always on the lookout for ways to add more art and not break our budget.

I recommend bookmarking the Art/Antiques category on UsedOttawa. You never know what you might find. There are links at the top of the page so you can narrow down your search, if you’re looking for paintings, for example.

For the purposes of this post I’d like to take you on a quick tour of some of my favourite art. Who knows, maybe it will give you a few ideas you can incorporate into your own home.

Etsy is a great source for art. These two prints are by one of my favourite artists, John W. Golden (his Etsy shop is here).

Another fave of mine is this laser cut set of shadow puppets, also from Etsy.

It’s from this site, and is currently perched on top of the TV cabinet in our living room. I have a string of lights in behind which illuminate it very nicely.

Yard sales and second-hand stores can be a great source of art too. Many moons ago I bought a series of old Jello ads and had them framed. They’re in the kitchen right now:

Photography is a fantastic way to get some inexpensive art on your walls, especially now that home printers are able to crank out a fairly good quality print. A few of my photos are hanging over the couch in the living room:

Kids are a great source of art too. We picked up a “peel n’ stick” chalkboard awhile ago. Everytime I turn around there’s something new to see. This one is right outside the kitchen:

Both of my daughters recently took a 90-minute art workshop at a local children’s studio called 4Cats Art Studio. They came home with something very cool:

They are so proud to see their work hanging on the wall.

Paint and colour-by number sets have become very modern and sophisticated. We’re happy to display some of them on the mantle. The one pictured below is by Djeco and was purchased at Tag Along Toys in Kanata.

When children’s artwork is framed it takes it to a whole new level. The wintry watercolour in the photo below was painted by my eldest daughter.

The papercut in the foreground was purchased online at Tiny Showcase, another great source for (small!) art. I still need to pick up a frame for it.

One of the best – and least intimidating – places to buy original art is at The New Art Festival (formerly known as Art in the Park), an annual art show and sale that takes place in the Glebe.

I bought this set of three cubes there a few years ago:

Artist tours are another great way to discover new artists. I bought this one during the West End Studio tour a few years ago:

It is my favourite painting. It’s called Early Morning Blue and is by Alison Fowler. I never tire of looking at it. It hangs in our dining room, right across from where I sit.

That’s pretty much it for our art collection!

Now it’s your turn for a bit of show n’ tell. What is your own favourite piece of art? Post a photo of your art on your Flickr, Twitpic or on your blog, and let us know in the comments below. Is it a poster, a print, or something you or you child painted? Please share!

Hot and Cold

It’s been cold here in Ottawa lately. How cold? Well, check this out:

I had to see for myself if this worked. And it did!

So, yes, it’s been cold. And when it gets this cold we find ourselves drinking a lot of hot beverages, especially hot chocolate. 

Awhile back I discovered an easy way to make it. It’s so easy in fact that we don’t even buy prepared hot chocolate mix anymore. Better yet, the girls are old enough to make it themselves, so I’m not actually the one making it anymore! (Well, most of the time.)

Here’s how:

• Take one heaping teaspoon of cacao powder and mix with one or two heaping teaspoonfuls of sugar in a mug.
• Add a couple of teaspoons of boiling water and stir until you get a smooth paste.
• While you’re doing stirring, microwave a cup of milk for a couple of minutes until it’s really hot.
• Add the hot milk to your chocolate paste and mix well.
• Optional step: add a ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract, marshmallows, or milk foam.

That’s it! Can you believe how easy it is? And it’s probably better for you than the storebought stuff anyway.

As for me, I’m more of a Hot Vanilla kind of gal. I prefer a cup of superheated milk with a dash of really good quality vanilla extract. Yum.

What about you? What’s your hot beverage of choice when the weather gets cold?

In order to find, first you must seek

I was browsing the UsedOttawa Folk Art category recently, just to see what kind of things people were selling there. Let me tell you, there is a surprising variety of stuff in there.

Take for example, this gong. It can be used as a dinner bell, or for impromptu re-enactments of The Gong Show, a summons for the kids to come inside from an afternoon of outdoor play or for when it’s time for them to brush their teeth at bedtime. Think of the possibilities! But what about its history? Who was this mysterious old Asian man of whom the ad speaks?

One of the best finds I’ve ever made – online and elsewhere – is a wooden doll which I purchased at an estate sale down the street from where we live.

With youngest in tow I suddenly found myself browsing through someone’s belongings. There were stacks of odd things: old magazines, a collection of handsaws, countless knick-knacks, an old wooden toilet seat (!) … picking through all of that stuff felt downright voyeuristic. My daughter was eyeballing a dusty ceramic puppy and a box of broken wind-up toys, but what caught my eye was a hand-carved wooden Pinocchio doll.

I’ve browsed through many yard sales and thrift shops but I don’t have any experience judging the value of wooden toys or folk art. Whether something is valuable or not rarely enters into the equation, but this piece spoke to me. It reminded me of simpler times. It reminded me of the toys made by the grandfather of one of my childhood friends.

“Grandpa” (as we all called him – he was everyone’s adopted grandpa) made popsicles in the summer (ice cube trays of Koolaid with toothpicks “handles”) and distributed them freely to all the neighborhood children. He also made wonderful wooden toys: a scale model of a gas station for his grandson and doll houses for his granddaughters.  

Now that I’m old enough to appreciate how much time and effort it takes to make a gift by hand, I feel a little differently about all of it. I realize how special these kinds of things are, and I appreciate them much more.

The Pinocchio lying on the table before me had hands that were very roughly hewn. They looked almost like shovels with thumbs. The feet were simple and rounded. The only working joint was in the left arm.

I loved it. But I didn’t have any money with me so I left it behind.

The next day I drove by again. I pulled over, feeling hopeful. At first I couldn’t see him, but a second look located him quickly enough. The sticker on his forehead told me the price I was expected to pay: $10.

I didn’t have much cash on me. I should have scrounged up more money before I left the house. A fiver represented the only paper money I had and a loonie stood alone among all the silver. I had about six bucks to work with. I wondered if the proprietor would accept my offering. I held up the Pinocchio.

“Will you take six,” I asked.
“Eight.”
“But it’s all I have…”

I showed him the money. Perhaps I looked like a lovestruck of kind of gal who deserved some degree of pity. Perhaps he remembered my daughter and I poking around the previous day, although it’s more likely that he just wanted to clear everything out. Regardless of the reason, it was mine. He scowled a little, looked away, and grumbled a grumbly “okay.”

When I got home I peeked under Pinocchio’s clothing. His clothes were machine sewn and fairly new-looking. They didn’t look like they belonged. Much to my surprise he wasn’t naked underneath. He sports a painted shirt and what might be lederhosen.

This all happened years ago, but I still can’t help but wonder about the story of this little fellow. There are no markings on him at all. 

The history of the Pinocchio toy is forever lost, and it makes me a little sad. Whose grandpa made it? How did this little guy end up lying on a folding table surrounded by ceramic puppies and wooden toilet seats? Why doesn’t anyone want him anymore? It makes me want to write histories for all of our special things, just so the stories don’t get lost amid the detritus.

Putting a spring in my step

I don’t LOVE shoes, I just like them a lot. Ok, maybe I like shoes a tiny bit more than the next person.

Here’s a question for you: do you or do you not think shoes are a personality barometer? What do your shoes say about you? Are you scuffed and dusty? Tired and worn? Neat and tidy? Shiny and purple? Or maybe somewhere in between?

Awhile back an acquaintance on Twitter mentioned that she had a pair of Fluevogs in my size to give away. (If you’ve never heard of Fluevogs check out the official website here. They are a very unique shoe, and have a cult following that borders on crazytown.)

I’ve never worn secondhand shoes. Although I’ve bought and worn a LOT of secondhand clothing, the idea of wearing someone else’s shoes was teetering on a line that I wasn’t sure I was ready to cross. But then I read that tweet, promising a pair of red Fluevogs to the first person who answered. This, my friends, was a very special kind of dilemma.

I have always wanted a pair fo Fluevogs but never had a few hundred dollars to spare in order to buy them. And so, I jumped. My friend sent them to me via another friend here in Ottawa, and suddenly I had my very own pair.

They required some minor repair work so I ordered special heel caps (heart-shaped! Eep!) from a local shoe store and brought the whole thing to the neighborhood cobbler. 

All told, I got myself a lovely pair of Fluevogs for less than $50.

While waiting to pay the shoe guy I had a few moments to scan the rows of shoes that were waiting to be picked up by other customers. All kinds of footwear lined the counter: work boots, high heels, sneakers, and even some cheapie little flats … the kind you’d pick up for a song and discard after a season of wearing.

And that’s when the lightbulb went off. I’ve kind of always known this, because I do consider myself to be an environmentally-friendly person, but as a society we really shouldn’t be buying cheap shoes and throwing them out when they fall apart. We should be spending more on better shoes, buying fewer of them, and getting them fixed when they need a little help. It’s better for all of us, especially in the long run, isn’t it?  

I was oddly proud to see all those shoes lined up, ready to be given a second chance.

Perhaps I’ll buy myself a pair of new Fluevogs after all. I wonder if I can find some in purple?

Spare some change?

Last night we did a radical thing, we did a remarkable purge of something I didn’t realize was weighing me down as heavily as it was. We got rid of our spare change. All of it.

We have had three large containers of coins kicking around the house for as long as I can remember. The first was an old glass bear-shaped peanut butter jar. The second was a war-torn cardboard cylinder from a bottle of booze, and the third was an old Tootsie Roll piggy bank which contained only pennies.

We had amassed so many coins that to roll them all was incredibly daunting. Did you know that you can’t just dump a bag of coins on a bank teller? Let me rephrase that…  you can’t go into the bank with loose change and expect them to pour it into a magic machine that will sort and count it. Weird huh?

We’d actually tried to get rid of our change on three other occasions. We hauled it all the way to the coin counting machine at our local grocery store only to have to turn around and go home again after discovering that the machine was out of order. THREE TIMES.

Do you realize how heavy three jars of coins can be?

We thought we’d try our luck again last week. We picked a grocery store that had a coin counting machine and crossed our fingers that it was fully operational. On the way to the store we all took turns guessing how much money we’d collected. The jars had heft, and made good door stops, and could possibly kill someone if they were dropped from a second storey window. Hmm. I guessed $70.00. My husband guessed $150 (but then rescinded because it seemed crazily high) and the girls guessed somewhere in between.

It felt like the Price is Right, only a lot more exciting because it was our own money.

I was happy to see that the coin counting machine we chose was in good working condition.  Here’s a tip for you: read the fine print (this particular unit takes a mafia-like 11% cut!) before you pour your money into the slot. We went ahead, mostly because I couldn’t bear bringing all that change home again.  

Oh my, what a satisfying jingle it all made. I hung around for a few minutes while the girls shovelled more coins into the machine. I left them in the care of their father in order to get a jumpstart on the grocery shopping.

I was just about to leave the produce department when the three of them approached me with wide grins on their faces.

“Guess how much money we have!” they shouted.

I couldn’t fathom.

They handed me the printout. We had a credit of $137.00 to use at the grocery store, and that’s after the 11% cut. Of that total, $30.07 was in pennies alone.

It was worth hauling our coins in to the store. The groceries pretty much paid for themselves that night. Pretty good for some spare change, isn’t it?

A moment in time

There’s a series of junk shops on the corner of Highway #7 and Marble Point Road in Marmora, near where my mother lives.

I stop there whenever I’m visiting. Sometimes I walk away lucky, but most of the time I’m not lucky at all. There is no pretense here. The store doesn’t aspire to be something it’s not. In fact, there is an awful lot of crap here, and it’s hard to wade through it all. I cannot call this an antique shop. That would be a whole other brand. This is basically a group of indoor yard sales, except that part of the stock extends into the outdoors, and is therefore subject to the elements.

I have always avoided the outdoor section. Musty books and old lampshades don’t hold very much appeal for me. I never thought I’d find anything there. But this time, the outdoor section seemed larger than usual. A sign informed me that the stores were closing for the season and  “no reasonable offer will be refused!

My eyes ran across the detritus of people’s lives. Oh lor,’ it is ever depressing to think about the things we accumulate and hold dear, only to have them end up selling for deeply discounted prices on the side of the road.

I was looking at piles of old cutlery when I saw It. I picked it up and held it in my hand for awhile. It felt warm. I brought it inside to pay. I had no idea how much this item was going to cost me.

I held it up to the proprietress. She snorted with laughter. “Oh my,” she exclaimed. “Haven’t you found a treasure!”

There was a lot of sarcasm there.

I didn’t react. If I’m bargaining at a junk shop in which there are no prices printed on anything I don’t show love, don’t show fear, and don’t show extra interest outside of regular friendly behaviour. The trick is to maintain a poker face, because if you don’t, the price will change, and it won’t be in your favour.

I should mention that in addition to my finding, I also held a new bottle brush in my hand, something I needed to scrub the sticky bits tomato soup from the bottom of the Emma and Sarah’s thermoses. (What’s the plural of thermos? Thermii?)

“So how much?”

I didn’t actually say those words. My face said it for me.

The verdict came down: fifty cents for both.

As I handed her some silver she took a closer look at what I had just bought.

“That thing must be 100 years old,” she clucked.

“Who knows?” I said. “I just like the story it tells.”

My 25-cent treasure was an old wooden spoon, one side of which was eroded by decades of stirring.

I bet it was the only mixing spoon its former owner possessed. Maybe it was a wedding present. I bet she stirred hearty stews to warm her family on cold nights. I bet she stirred everything from batches of custard, cookies and, big batches of jellies and jams, filling for tourtiere, and porridge to fill the tummy on chilly mornings.

I can’t even begin to imagine how much this person must have cooked in order to wear down a solid piece of wood like that. I like to think that it’s been worn by both love and hard work, misshapen by equal measures of joy and strain. How many times around the pot did it go? How many hours was it used? What is it doing, practically discarded, by the side of the road?

I bet her hand wore this spoon like a comfortable old shoe.

I own four wooden spoons (not to mention a few whisks, a blender, and a food processor) but I really only use one of my four spoons. It used to belong to my grandmother. It calls to me when something needs stirring. Those other spoons, they just stand there in an old sugar jar, ignoring me and looking bored. Why did I ever think I needed so many wooden spoons?

Our family spoon –  likely on its third generation of use – isn’t perfectly straight anymore either. It leans slightly to one side but it fits like a glove, but will probably never see as much action as the one I bought on in the junk shop at the side of the highway.

Yule be sorry you read this post (earworm alert!)

Christmas music starts playing in the malls on November 1, sometimes even before the Halloween merchandise is cleared out. And unless you do your shopping entirely online, and don’t listen to the radio, and walk around wearing earmuffs, holiday music is totally unavoidable this time of year.

I’m guessing there are less than a hundred Christmas songs in popular rotation on the radio, so odds are good that I’m going to hear everything more than once. I’ll pick up a tune in the mall – like some kind of VIRUS – and hum it all the way home. That can be a good thing or a bad thing.  There are some Christmas songs that I find really annoying, but also some that I really love.

It’s a very divisive issue, picking favourites, isn’t it? Christmas songs are inextricably linked to fond childhood memories. An informal Twitter poll revealed, for example, that the favourite Christmas tune of a surprising majority was The Little Drummer Boy. (Would that be the Bing Crosby/David Bowie version I wonder?)

My own favourites include:

• Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,  Brenda Lee
• I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, Jimmy Boyd
• Holly Jolly Christmas, Burl Ives
• Santa Baby, (I am not sure whether I like Eartha Kitt’s or Madonna’s version best)
• White Christmas and Silver Bells, Bing Crosby
• Winter Wonderland, by Perry Como.  Although Bing does a great job of it too. (Can you tell I’m a fan?)
• Do They Know it’s Christmas, Band Aid
• All I Want for Christmas is You, Mariah Carey
• O Little Town of Bethlehem, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Silent Night … these carols from my childhood are still tops for me.

There are some Christmas songs that I hate just as passionately. I blame this on my many years spent working in retail, which really wore the shine off the holiday season. To this day I’m not sure if I’ve totally recovered from the experience.

My LEAST favourite is Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time by Paul McCartney. OY. Once I hear it, it becomes impossible to extract from my brain. (That’s why they call it an ear worm.) I have mixed feelings about War is Over (So This is Christmas, by John Lennon). Yoko sounds like a screechy little cat and it ruins it a little bit for me every time I hear it. Anything syrupy by Karen Carpenter makes me cringe, as does Bruce Springsteen’s version of Santa Claus is Coming To Town.

Which Christmas songs make you turn up the stereo? Which ones bring out the Scrooge in you?

My cards are on the table

On Sunday night, after several weeks of procrastination and much hand-wringing and cursing, I was finally done. I finally designed and ordered our family Christmas cards. I still can’t believe it took me so long to do it, and what’s worse, I’m not even sure if they’re going to be delivered in time for me to send them to friends and family.

I suffer from major Christmas Card-related Anxiety. There are no self-help groups for this affliction, and no twelve step programs. And it is entirely self-inflicted.

My name is Andrea, and my Christmas cards have to be JUST SO.

Every year I swear that I’m going to change, but I never do. I know I can take the easy route and buy pre-made holiday cards, or heaven forbid, NOT SEND ANY AT ALL, but that actually hurts my heart to think about it.

I look at it this way: I love getting really nice Christmas cards, and in order to RECEIVE, I must give. And there’s no way around it.

For Christmas Card 2009 I threw a bedsheet over the hedge in my backyard and snapped a few digital photos of my kids. Here’s the one I used:

I uploaded it to moo.com and had photo postcards printed instead of traditional folded cards. I was pretty happy with the result. The postcards were better than I expected in terms of the print job and paper quality, and by choosing to go the postcard route I had eliminated envelopes from the equation. Ha! One less thing to fuss about!

This year, upon the recommendation of a friend, I tried Vistaprint.ca. The verdict is still out as I have yet to see the goods.

Getting photo cards printed is not for the faint-hearted. First, the photos. It was too cold to do anything outdoors so I rigged up something at home. Taking a useable photo of two squirmy kids took a couple of hours. Then, the designing of the card. There are so many decisions that have to be made. Which design? How many do I need? What should we have printed on the front: Happy Holidays? Season’s Greetings? Merry Christmas? After some soul searching I went with the latter, and I’d been tinkering with the wording when I suddenly lost all my work and had to start all over again (hence the cussing and hand-wringing).

Making the actual purchase took another 15 minutes. Paying for merchandise online is normally a pretty simple task. The order is summarized, I punch in my credit card number, and the deed is done. But this checkout was a hard sell. There were links and prompts throughout the process: “Are you sure you don’t need matching envelopes? It’s your final chance to get a self-inking stamp! How about a matching mousepad? CLICK HERE.” Fortunately I was able to avoid most of offers that came my way (except the one for the self-inking stamp, and two kinds of return address labels) but in the end I think I got a pretty good deal. Vistaprint has promised seven day delivery. We’ll see.

I figure that if I can (a) write and address the cards really fast and (b) Canada Post puts in some overtime, my Christmas cards might just make it to their destinations on time.

Oh, who am I kidding.

You know what I should have done? I should have had them printed with “Happy New Year” instead of “Merry Christmas,” and then I could have taken my time and sent them in January!

DIY gift bag for small things

I am not very good at wrapping gifts. I always seem to cut too much paper, or worse, not enough. My corners get all wrinkled as I’m folding them down, and somehow the tape always gets stuck to my fingers. This is why I am a big advocate of The Gift Bag. Big or small, round or square, the gift bag solves all kinds of gift-wrapping dilemmas, especially for people like me. I can shove almost anything in a gift bag, throw some tissue paper on top, and the end result will end up looking pretty nice.

Also: I am a frequent gift-bag reuser. I believe – as long as a former recipient’s name isn’t inscribed on any kind of tiny matching card – that it is an acceptable practice.

There are, however, times that I have a tiny present to give and no appropriate bag to be found anywhere in my household. Let’s say I have a small holiday gift to give and I only have a giant “WELCOME BABY” bag on hand. See the problem? It will look totally stupid. And sometimes I don’t want to jump in the car and rush to the store to pay through the nose for something that costs 30 cents to make.

That’s why it’s good to know how to make Small Gift Bags for Small Things. This little trick has saved the day on several occasions, and it’s easy enough for kids to do too.

All you need is:

• a magazine (just make sure the kids know that you must have read it first)
• scissors or an x-acto knife
• clear tape

Grab the magazine and slice out a full page. I went with an old Canadian Geographic, but anything will do. (Old art, photography, and graphic design magazines are perfect for this kind of thing.)

Fold page in half as shown below:

Cut out the corners as shown. Tape the very bottom long edge as well as the one open side.

Turn it upside down and gently poof it out with your hand. Finish the bottom of the bag by carefully taping up the openings that were created when you cut the corners.

You will have to do a bit of folding to get the sides right. Try to shape it like the brown lunch bags of days gone by, so keep that in mind as you go.  It should end up looking like this:

And there you have it! A tiny bag of your very own! You can use it to package up a million little tiny things. We’ve used them to transport pretty Christmas decorations bought as thank you gifts, tiny toys and trinkets for a little friend’s birthday, candies for neighbors… the possibilities are endless. Let us know if you try it out!

Who's got the pickle?

Last week I promised that I’d be posting a Christmas craft idea, but I realized that today is November 30, which means that the next day is December 1, and that’s the day I want to pick up our Christmas tree. And I am oddly excited about it.

I really can’t explain why the holiday madness has struck me so early. This is unusual. Normally I’m the kind of person who is scrambling to buy presents the week before. This kind of self-imposed stress makes me hate Christmas a little bit; the parking, the slush, the crowds, the malls, the same songs over and over and over. It’s a wonder that all this stuff doesn’t turn me into a Scrooge, permanently.

But this year is different. I’m not sure what’s changed. Maybe it’s because I’m trying very hard to be mindful and not let it slip away from me. Perhaps that’s why I’m keen to get the tree so early. It’s become a big part of the Christmas ritual in our family. We get a real tree every year. (Mess aside, I’ve never understood the appeal of the fake Made-in-China tree…. but feel free to enlighten me in the comments below!) We’ve never gone to a “chop your own” farm either. We prefer to frequent roadside lots with their bundles of frozen evergreens. (Most notably, Ikea’s.) Somehow we’ve managed to snag a perfect tree every time.

Like many families, we have an array of ornaments that would make your head spin. There is no clear theme – colour or otherwise – just a ragtag collection that would mean little to anyone outside our family. I love every single one of them. Each one tells a story.

One of our newest ornaments is a shiny green tin pickle. I’ve read that some people have a special pickle-related Christmas tradition in their homes. The pickle ornament is hung late on Christmas eve; tucked deep within the branches. The person who finds it first on Christmas day gets a special treat. Isn’t that funny? I think I’ve found myself a new tradition.