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Canadian Voices Rise Up to the Sky

National news can be learned directly from children, which was the case in my household regarding a new song my kids are learning at school. The song I.S.S. Is Somebody Singing was collaborated together by Astronaut Chris Hadfield and Barenaked Ladies frontman Ed Robertson and with how interactive Hadfield has been from space – the kids rate this partnership as something very cool! Officially commissioned by CBC Music, the goal is to bring attention to the importance of music education in Canada. The debut of the song Is Somebody Singing happened in February with the glee choir of Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts and not only is it a great song (and Chris Hadfield can really sing!) but it’s a coalition spreading a great message of unification through music across Canada. Music history was made when the song was recorded both on Earth and Space while Hadfield is in orbit on the International Space Station. Have a listen below!

Astronaut Hadfield helped co-write the song and I love the line “You can’t make out borders from up here.” Ed Robertson from Bare Naked Ladies has a wonderful quote about how we can all feel connected, even the wonder of what Chris Hadfield experiences in Space. Robertson’s quote is here:

“I wanted it to be a celebration not about the remoteness of space, but about the connectedness of a human being on the I.S.S. who looks down and sees the whole planet in a way that, from our perspective, we don’t have the opportunity to.”

I love listening to music that my kids enjoy and the goal for May 6 is to have the entire country united in song across the different time zones and have Hadfield hear the voices while still in space. It is the official song for Music Monday to promote and celebrate music education in schools. Share this message so that children that are home schooled, school music departments, and music makers of all backgrounds learn the song together and lend their voice in May.

Access free downloads and lyrics through the Coalition’s Music Monday website, and join the coalition to fill the skies with music. There are some great Music Monday ideas for getting started:

• Music Monday in a field
• Joint School Event – organized with multiple schools
• Community Wide Event – community partner with a senior music group, local choir, etc.

Play the video, learn the lyrics and help bring awareness for music education in your communities with this special song. Champion children to believe that anything is possible – whether it be travelling to space or hearing a song there.

Valentine's Idea: A Year of Dates

As far as Valentine’s Day goes, my husband and I have never really celebrated it. I suppose there was that one year when Mark bought me a couple of baby guinea pigs because I said I wanted a real, human baby. But in general, we’ve always let V-Day pass on by, perhaps because Mark and I have always made a habit of doing regular date nights. Though now that we are new parents and have not had a date night in six months, Valentine’s Day seems like a good excuse to force a date! Even more importantly than that, it is an opportunity to think about our relationship (read: appreciate our relationship) and make spending time together a priority.

Just recently, I read a great idea about pre-planning one date per month. The idea behind the article was that quality is better over quality, and that if you take the time to plan a no-babies night, you can actually make it happen! So here’s our year of dates at a glance. I did my best to make sure they weren’t too expensive either and that a few were home based so we won’t always have to get a babysitter:

February- A Romantic Dinner

Mark and I have been dying to get back to a lovely little downtown French bistro, so we’re going to spend our first date night going for dinner. We are planning our date for Valentine’s weekend, but not actual Valentine’s day so it will be less busy, crammed with other young lovers, and (hopefully) less expensive!

March- A Hockey Game

We’ve been wanting to check out a Halifax Moosehead’s game all season, but we haven’t gotten around to it yet. Last year, we went to a few university games and had a great time, but they’re not quite the same as an arena packed full of thousands of fans.

April- Try a New Recipe

Our New Year’s resolution was to expand our cooking repertoire. I thought it would be fun to make a date of choosing and preparing dinner together from start to finish – after the baby goes to bed, of course.

May- Visit the Art Gallery

Another thing I’ve wanted to try out for the past year. Our art gallery has free admission on Thursday nights, so I would love to spend an enriching evening strolling through the art gallery, holding hands and maybe stealing a kiss or two.

June- Make Ice Cream

It’s summer! And we have an ice cream maker we bought over a year ago that’s just sitting there, collecting dust in our cupboard. It would be a great summer treat to make ice cream together. Maybe we could even compile all our favourite foods. Peanut butter, chocolate, coffee, cinnamon ice cream, anyone?

July- A Late Night Picnic & Star Gazing

Every time I visit the country, I just look up in wonder at the stars. I thought a romantic and cheap date night would be to head out for a late night picnic and some star gazing. We can have a friend come by once the baby is already sleeping!

August- Play Catch

When we lived in North Vancouver, we used to make a point of getting out once a week to throw a ball around. Actually, we started with badminton, but I was so terrible that we moved onto baseball. It was a lot of fun and would be a great to make it a date for this summer!

September- Test Drive Nice Cars

Mark loves cars and we had a great time test driving cars when we were looking, earlier last year. However, the Kias and Hyundais we were considering were far from exciting to take out for a spin.  So I thought, why not head out one evening to test drive cars priced out of our range? Sounds like fun, right?

October- Visit the Bookstore & Have a Hot Drink

This is another one of our favorite activities that has fallen by the wayside since we’ve become parents. A great fall date is heading to the book store for the evening and strolling around with a nice hot bevie. The smell of new books and coffee mixing together and the quiet that tends to surround books, makes for a nice, relaxing environment.

November- Games Night

Mark loves video games but he rarely has a chance to play them. I thought it would be fun to have a games night with him. Even though I’m terrible, it should be good for a few laughs. If we’re feeling really adventurous we can play online and have eight year olds smack talk us all night long.

December- Drive and Look at Christmas Lights

This is a date we could even bring a sleeping baby along for. One of our favorite Christmas activities is to go looking for Christmas lights. There’s something about listening to a Christmas tune in a nice warm car, surrounded by sparkling lights that’s super romantic.

Now all I have to do is line up a semi regular babysitter and my year of dates is complete! Do you have a regular date night with your significant other? What are some of your ideas?  Please feel free to share as it’ll help get started on an entirely new list for 2014!

Art in the Open: a Sneak Preview

Late last summer, for a single evening, downtown Charlottetown was transformed.

There were sounds you don’t normally hear and sights you don’t normally see: poems in the street and a human crow parade and magical TV towers. Charlottetown’s first-ever festival of public art showcased not only the creativity and theatrical flair of this little city, but also its green spaces and the charm and possibility of its varied urban landscapes.

It was Art in the Open: a hands-on discovery extravaganza.

And this coming Saturday, August 25th, from 4pm to midnight, all over historic downtown Charlottetown, it’s happening again. All over Victoria Park, Rochford Square, Connaught Square, Victoria Row, and the Confederation Centre, Art in the Open will be back for an entirely new collection of magic. There will be installations, performance art, theatre, dance, portable sculpture: a whole array of new transformations waiting to make Charlottetown come alive for another evening of experiential art.

And in the middle of it – ready for you to walk right in – will be the Wonderland Labyrinth, collaborative partnership of visual artists Lori Joy Smith and Catherine Miller.

Catherine and Lori both make beautiful, whimsical things. Long-time friends, they’ve joined creative forces for the first time with the creation of Wonderland Labyrinth: a world of soft marvelous creatures and wind-blown walls. And very stylish animals.

Scaled to big and small alike, Wonderland Labyrinth is a children’s fantasy made real: an exploratory space of touchable toadstools and magic rabbits, where tiny slugs smile up at you from fabric logs and even the rocks are adorably cute.

Large and small, EVERYthing is cute.

I got to visit the inhabitants of Wonderland Labyrinth and their creators and talk a little about Art in the Open and their inspiration for this year’s installation. Lori was busy wrapping a barbamama with genuine Island wool blanket ends from MacAusland’s Woolen Mills, while Catherine fixed a fluffy tail to a nattily dressed bunny.

1. Lori, how did you get involved in Art in the Open?

Catherine approached me with her idea of a labyrinth back in the spring. She wanted to build a large 60′ by 60′ fabric labyrinth filled with creatures and animals. I loved her idea and was really excited about the thought of a collaboration with her. Catherine’s work tends to be big and bold, where I like to work small and intimate. It’s been a great experience trying to blend the two. I feel we’ve done a great job.

2. You have indeed…all the critters are full of personality. What’s your most vivid memory of last year’s Art in the Open?

I think the bonfires in Victoria Park are my most vivid memory from last year. It’s hard to say tho, because it was such a magical night. It felt like everywhere you looked there was art and people. There were people riding story telling bikes, the crow parade, DIY t-shirt in the park… the cannons wrapped in blankets. It was great to see Charlottetown so alive.

3. What inspired you and Catherine to create your particular installation for this year’s show?

Catherine came up with the main idea, but it has grown and developed as we’ve worked on it together these past couple of months. We wanted to make it a Wonderland for kids. We’ve drawn inspiration from the books we loved as kids to create some of the characters, Beatrix Potter books, Wind in the Willows, Moomin books by Jove Hansen and the barbapapas, to name a few. It’s been fun working together on this and truly a collaboration. We worked on each piece together. Catherine did most of the sewing and I knit most of my pieces. We took turns sewing the almost 100 fabric panels though… that’s seriously a lot of fabric!

And it’s seriously a grand collaboration.

Even the garlic is cute.

Come on out, Charlottetown, on Saturday August 25th, and enjoy the magic of Wonderland Labyrinth and all of Art in the Open. Help the city – and this fabulous installation – come alive.

Creating Artists in the Cradle of Confederation

One of the coolest things about Charlottetown PEI is the punch it packs, arts & culture-wise, for its size. It only has 35,000 people, give or take a few. But as a provincial capital, it’s a rich hub of music and theatre and art and learning at a level few small cities can match.

And in the literal midst of it all, on one of the key corners of historic downtown Charlottetown, is the Confederation Centre.

Built in 1964 to commemorate the meeting of the Fathers of Confederation next door at Province House, Confed Centre is a high modernist concrete ode to public space and Canadian culture. Outside, its unique architectural imprint dominates the downtown landscape and encourages on-foot discovery, as its concrete grounds host a multitude of creative and inviting spaces for humans. Inside, it houses the largest mainstage theatre in Canada east of Montreal, the city library, a chic restaurant, a variety of studios and a two-story art gallery.

Underneath it all, though, in the “art bunker” more formally known as The Schurman Family Studio, is the space that perhaps matters the most, in terms of fostering Charlottetown’s arts & culture identity.

That’s where the art camps take place.

Artisanal skills and spirit are the heart of any arts & culture community, and the Confed Centre’s art camps give children the opportunity to build those skills and spirit, hands-on, in the midst of Confed Centre’s thriving summer scene.

Run by art educator Gail Hodder, the summertime camps are a week long. The kids try different media, sketch Province House, do amazing chalk art on the concrete expanses outside, check out the art gallery AND spend  lunch hours in the ampitheatre enjoying free musical theatre by Confederation Centre’s Young Company. It’s like a cultural bonus tacked onto the arts curriculum: by the end of the week, my kid knew all the words to Gordon Lightfoot’s Canadian Railroad Trilogy!

At the close of each weekly camp, the young artists proudly host an art show.

They showcase their comic strip creations, replete with real genuine Confederation Centre gallery namecards for mama to frame.

They showcase their tie-dyes.

They showcase their sculptures.

They showcase their collaborative enterprise: a tiny town, replete with foliage, built out of their own individual imaginative buildings. Oscar’s was a hotel-hospital, he told me.

It was totally steampunk.

All the parents ooh and aah and take lots of pictures…

And then we emerge from the art bunker, all loaded down with papier mache, to where the children’s hand-made fans blow in the wind with Province House as a backdrop.

What more could you want to foster artists of tomorrow?

Village Pottery: the Potter's Daughter brings PEI to the world

For young women in this day and age, the words “follow in your mother’s footsteps!” aren’t often framed as the path to success.

For Suzanne Scott of Village Pottery in New London, PEI, however, her mother’s footsteps have proven to hold plenty of scope.

Suzanne’s mother, Daphne Large, opened Village Pottery in 1973. Aptly named, the shop is set against the pastoral backdrop of L.M. Montgomery’s birthplace, and in its almost-forty years in operation has become something of a PEI artisanal haven. Daphne has trained a host of other PEI potters, and showcases many of their products in the shop. Her daughter grew up working in the shop, and after returning to PEI to live three years ago, Suzanne took up pottery professionally and became a partner in the family business. And, tweeting as Potter Daughter, Suzanne has brought that family business to a whole new global market via web sales and social media.

Walking into Village Pottery feels like walking into a charming antique general store, except the quaint corners and tall shelves are singularly stacked with the warm shocks of colour and elegant lines that mark their pottery. Cranberry and midnight glazes, delicate signature lupins, and the red mud of PEI capped by the steel-sky-blue of their Celtic Shore collection all greet the eye.

It’s the little details that make the shop such a welcoming space: the tea wagon at the front door, the vintage spools of wrapping paper, the spinning wheel upstairs in the gallery.

And at the back, her hands in the clay, making mugs spin up out of nothing, is Suzanne.

1. Suzanne, what drew you into the family business? 

After living abroad for a few years, I returned to PEI and saw an opportunity to grow the family business by marketing online. I started by creating a new website, online shop as well as starting a Facebook page and Twitter account. We have had great success and as a result, we’ve shipped our pottery worldwide and have been able to connect with our customers on a whole new level.

2. How has Village Pottery changed and evolved over the years? 

Over the last 40 years, Village Pottery has evolved in every aspect. My Mother started the business in 1973, since then the building has been picked up and moved down the road and a full studio was built on the lower level. There has been all kinds of items sold in the shop over the years by many local artists. From leather wallets made by my Dad to wood carvings by Sandy Stratton, the shop has seen it all. At one point, we even had an ice cream booth set up in the shop!Our main focus now has become pottery. We feature work from over 10 island potters and the majority of our work is done in the studio. Visitors are welcome to watch us in action. The second level of the shop is a gallery featuring fabric art by Margaret England, paintings by Geraldine Ysselstein and Katharine Dagg as well as handwoven scarves by Rilla Marshall.

Next year we celebrate our 40th season which will be a great occasion. I’m certain that Village Pottery will continue to evolve over the next 40 years!

3. Do you pot? In what ways does the PEI environment (human or natural) shape and inspire (or limit!) your work?

I have been making pottery for just over a year now and loving every minute. I started out over 10 years creating the pottery jewellery line “The Potter’s Daughter” and still enjoy that aspect but felt the need for “more”, so started throwing on the wheel and haven’t stopped since. I am constantly inspired by the beautiful landscape of PEI, from the rolling farm hills behind Village Pottery to the red sandy beaches. It is definitely evident in our shop as you will find, there are PEI inspired pieces all over the place! We have even created a glaze combination based on the beach titled “Celtic Shore”.

4. What’s the most interesting sale or connection you’ve made by bringing Village Pottery online? 

There have been so many it’s hard to choose but I have to say our most interesting connection came from Barbara on Twitter. We received an online order from her for some pottery and when asked where she had heard about us, she said it all started with Great Big Sea. She had heard one of their songs, googled it and learned that the lead singer Allan Doyle was starring on the show “Republic of Doyle” filmed in St. John’s. That led her to Sea and be Scene, an online site promoting all things in Atlantic Canada. Stephanie from Sea and be Scene has been a great promoter of our pottery shop and voila! Barbara discovered our shop all the way from Ohio. She remains one of our most loyal online customers.

Suzanne & Laura at the desk

5. Tell me about the differences between your work and your mom’s.

My Mom has been making pottery for almost 40 years so obviously, she is the master potter in this team! I think the main difference between our work is that I like to try new trendy things like the “Mustache Mugs” and “Struck by an Arrow” Stir-fry bowls. I also like experimenting with new textures, this led me to create a line of lace imprinted plates, trays and vases. These are made using my grandmother’s lace which is a nice touch. In the end, my Mom is the one who has taught me everything so I’m certain there are more similarities than differences between us, which isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Now, taking a three-year-old along on a profile of a shop in which everything is breakable may not generally be best practice, but Josephine was mesmerized by Suzanne throwing pots, and even more entertained by the designated kid zone under the stairs. Suzanne and Laura – the potters on site the day we visited – also gave her some clay to try. She’s ruined for PlayDoh forever.

So if you’re anywhere near PEI, and you fancy a pretty drive along our scenic North shore, stop in at Village Pottery and say hello to Suzanne and Daphne and Laura and everyone else and enjoy one of the Island’s artisanal treasures! And hey, you have to go in just for the pleasure of smiling at the inside of this old-school front door. You may leave richer in mugs, as I did, or in pottery lessons, or simply in charm. But you’ll leave glad you came.

A Teacher's Guide to Successful Summer Learning Projects

Welcome to the first weekend of summer vacation, at least out here on the East Coast.

If you’re my just-graduated-from-kindergartener, there’s relaxing to be done, neglected toys to be dug out of the corners of the basement, and a backyard to be re-envisioned as a Star Wars set. Plus the splash pool! And the park! And day camps for swimming and art lessons!

It’s all good, and all fun, especially when the weather holds.

But we’re lucky to have a few stretches this summer where the kids and I will be home together. And while we all look forward to unstructured days (or respites from schedules and lunch-packing), I’ve noticed they aren’t always all they’re cracked up to be. Time at home with nothing we have to do can morph quickly into time at home with nothing to do, at least in the eyes of my kids.

Especially if it rains. And hey, it’s the Maritimes: it rains.

Now, I want to encourage my kids to be independent. Even when they’re home, there’s work to be done – both my writing and our family domestic stuff. Days off together involve stretches of complicated Lego games involving aliens and Hello Kitty, but they also involve stripping beds and folding laundry and whatever other chores I can get the kids engaged in. Pro tip: you can get a juvenile Star Wars fan to wipe down a lot of windows if you relabel your Windex “The Force” and tell him the fingerprints represent the Empire.

Still. As the kids get older, they just don’t buy the whole “field trip to the grocery store!” game so easily anymore.

And I still have writing deadlines that require quiet headspace.

So I’m dragging out my long-unused teacher hat – yep, I was once entrusted with the care of whole classrooms of children all at once! – and we’re designing us some summer learning projects that should offer me and the kids both togetherness and independence. They’ll learn. We’ll have some fun. And hopefully, somewhere in there, they’ll get engaged enough in their stuff that mine can get done too.

Win-win.

So. If you’re home with kids this summer, a few tips for designing successful summer projects that can actually be fun for the people involved, short and tall.

First, a definition: a project at its most basic is a learning experience that takes place over time and has a few clear steps that lead toward an end goal.

A project is not – at least if your kids are relatively young – a matter of simply dumping a whole bunch of art supplies or resources on a child and saying, “Go do…SOMETHING!” That’s called a diversion. Diversions usually last all of fifteen minutes and result in half an hour of cleaning-related mess.

With a project, the parents’ role is keeping the steps clear and the goal in sight, while scaffolding opportunities for the kid to take on tasks and responsibilities that lead toward that goal.

Here’s what you need to think about to design a fun family project for summer:

Find Roles for Everybody, Including You
Projects need to be at least a little bit collaborative. Nobody, no matter their age, enjoys being sent away on busy work. If you’re all actually engaged in your respective pieces of the whole, the experience will be far more fun for everyone.

Emphasize Shared Interests
Any project that’s going to be enjoyable has to be interesting to the people actually involved. So if your kid loves bugs but you, say, DON’T…you may want to either pick another project or design it in such a way that you’re not dreading and avoiding your involvement. Try coming up with a list of things you both find interesting, and then think laterally: where do your imaginations take you?

I grew up in apartments, and was well into my thirties before I realized cucumbers are not a root vegetable. So learning about gardening and growing food and flowers is a project the kids and I can embark on together: we have a giant box of tomato plants growing on our back deck. But the questions and games and projects that emerge from that box of tomatoes will be up to the kids: so far, we have a science “how things grow” research project, a cookbook plan, a tomato art show, and a contest to see whose pet plant grows biggest all coming down the pipe.

Keep it Focused
A fun project doesn’t need to be complicated. In fact, complicated won’t work. Keep your end goals clear and the steps to getting there within the realm of your own skills (and your child’s!) and the available time you’re able to contribute.

Scale Appropriately
Three or four (sometimes repeated) steps in a project are usually as much complexity as a kid can handle, and a couple of weeks is usually the maximum time span a child can sustain focus on an ephemeral goal. If you’re home all summer, don’t plan a whole-season project, but a series of smaller targets. They can be interconnected if you like, but assess what works and doesn’t from the first before leaping on into the second.

Also, scale participation for kids’ ages and skill levels. From our family tomato project, my six-year-old wants to create tomato recipes and a cookbook from our bounty. For him, this is probably do-able. For his three-and-a-half year-old sister, just being part of the watering and weeding process and drawing pictures of herself as a tomato-grower should suffice. Or building Play-doh gardens.

Have an Audience in Mind
Kids are people: they like their work to be received and admired just as much as you do. One of the things teaching taught me was that real audiences matter. Whether that’s writing books for Grandma or blogging, podcasting, or sharing photos with the world, real-life audiences are motivators for kids. When our son was head-over-heels over dinosaurs and talking about them 24-7, his dad decided to harness some of that knowledge and interest, and the Charlottetownosaurus podcast was born. Now that triceratops have been replaced by Han Solo in the pantheon of fascination, we may try a CharlottetownoStarWars podcast instead.

And the beauty of Internet projects? You don’t end up with boxes of them stored in the basement.

Don’t Take Over 
Projects should create interactions in which both kids and adults get to feel like they’re doing something valuable: don’t take all the learning and control out your kids’ hands. No, really. If you think ahead in any project, you’ll see potential risks and mistakes on the path. As a parent, sure, you need to minimize the ones that actually involve danger or hours of cleanup. But leave the rest. Let your child have the chance to learn from his or her own choices, even if that means that sometimes your project doesn’t quite turn out as planned.

Who knows? You might even – gasp – find your kids working together!

Project-based learning is centered around one key premise: the project? Is actually secondary to the process. That’s where the learning happens, and the memories, and the confidence-building. And the fun.

Enjoy your projects!

Canadian Cool: MacAusland Wool Blankets

I am completely in love with these blankets. Founded in 1870 as a sawmill, P.E.I.’s MacAusland Woolen Mills started making blankets in 1932. According to their website, they’re the only mill in Atlantic Canada still making blankets from 100% virgin wool. Blankets come in 3 styles and fifteen colours and they’re crazy affordable ($41-$83 + more for custom work). Wedding gifts, baby gifts, housewarming gifts… Oh, I could go on.

The Pretty Little Man-Dress, for Dad

Father’s Day in 2012: the pressure. The stress! The onslaught of vaguely embarrassing and stereotypical TV commercials! The slew of cards with BBQs on them!

Like any holiday that becomes a commercial juggernaut, contemporary Father’s Day suffers from a case of performance anxiety, and it foists its burden on everybody in its path. Have a father? A partner who IS a father? A grandfather? An uncle? A pet who loves the man in your life dearly?

You’re obliged.

The Hallmark machine that is contemporary Father’s Day exhorts everybody in the immediate vicinity of modern-day fatherhood to cough up time and money to ensure that Dad feels deeply cared for and attended to on his special day.

Now, this can be a really good thing. Dads are important, and men today are playing new nurturing roles that will likely have huge and positive impacts on the lives of their children. No longer is Dad just a pipe and slippers fixture on the armchair of our sociocultural family imagination.

But. We’re doing a crappy job of celebrating him properly, people. We’ve swapped out the old stereotypes only to replace them with new ones. You may feel obliged to make Dad’s dreams come true on Father’s Day…but what kind of dreams does Father’s Day merchandising actually sell?

Judging by the card selection at my local stationery shop, apparently all Dads live for the following:

1. new golf clubs
2. a personalized set of BBQ tongs
3. beer
4. fart jokes

Now, I enjoy a good fart joke as much as the next person (well, not if the next person is my six-year-old, but still) and beer never goes out of season. But seriously, world. A man can only use so many sets of golf clubs and steak implements, and all that golfing and standing out on the deck grilling and farting and drinking kinda perpetuates the old “Dad is the fun parent when he’s here but really, he’s secondary on the domestic front and relegated to the deck” mythology.

Truth is, the deck is fun. I’ll happily stand out there and BBQ, at least when it’s not January. But to get past the slightly snide ways in which we celebrate Dad as parent and caregiver and truly honour him as a well-rounded person and not a Homer Simpson caricature, we need to bring BACK the standard Father’s Day gift of yore.

The tie.

Yep. Let’s be clear: the necktie, with its straight, stuffy reputation? Is actually the most subversive, saucy gift you can give a man for Father’s Day. Why?

Because ties are – looks around, whispers – actually pretty little man dresses.

Seriously.

Back in the Renaissance and European Restoration era, dudes got to wear velvet and lace and fancy little hose with those pointy shoes at the end. They practically pranced around in drag, swathed in sumptuous fabric. And ribbons!

Manly: Old School Version (photo credit: Photo Pin)

It can’t be easy being a man in this day and age. There’s nothing sumptuous about most men’s clothing choices. Avenues for self-expression – and velvet! – are limited. Hair is short. Hose are a niche market. You can’t wear band tshirts forever and get promoted.

So what happens? Men in the Dad phases of their lives end up falling in line and standing on the back deck in bland golf clothes drinking beer and wondering why everybody swoons over Mad Men and not over them.

The answer is simple: not enough ties.

Ties, ladies and gentlemen, are glorious. They’re expressive and varied and rich in texture and colour and pattern. Pretty little man-dresses, I tell you.

Better, every single man – and plenty of women, hello Annie Lennox – looks absolutely smashing in them. They exude vintage style and power, a la Mad Men (purr), and they inject a little bit of joie de vivre and jauntiness into the otherwise drab landscape of men’s fashion.

Look at these beauties! Elegance, in socially-sanctioned man-form.

Worn right, ties are hot. It’s that simple. They get noticed, and they reap compliments, and they make a man feel kinda purdy like a player. Whatever floats his boat. Ties are the one place men get to be playful and still professional in their wardrobe choices.

So for Father’s Day, do the Dad in your life a favour and help him out of the beer & BBQ box and beyond: buy him a tie. Or three.

Maybe he’ll like feeling pretty.

(photo credit: lisby1 via photo pin cc)

Seven Tips for Getting Sold Fast: Make Your Used Item Stand Out in the Crowd

It’s spring, and I have clutter.

You know what that means: time to sort, organize, and list! UsedPEI, I have the motherlode coming your way.

The great thing about sell & swap sites and services – whatever your local and preferred flavour may be – is that they enable you to minimize the clutter in your living space while also making money. One person’s trash is another’s treasure, so the saying goes.

But the truth is, if you’re really trying to sell trash – or if you treat your potential treasures like trash in your listings – you may be selling yourself short.

Listing items on a used site is easy. It really is. However, you can drastically improve your chances of selling by taking just a few minutes to actually show your treasures off properly.

Below, friends, my hard-won wisdom from months trolling the boards. Here’s how to maximize what you sell in the minimum of time: seven tips for making the selling used process as efficient and successful as it possibly can be.

1. Sell quality
Decide what you actually want money for, and what you simply want to get out of your house.

The fact that something may no longer be of use to you doesn’t make it garbage: UsedPEI and the UsedEverywhere family of sites pride ourselves on helping keep things out of the landfill. But, that said, the profit margin on many things is rather tiny, and the lower the value of the item, the more intense the haggling. If you simply want to get rid of something quickly, but aren’t sure whether it actually has monetary value, consider listing it under our Free headings: stuff tends to disappear faster there.

Or if something’s in decent shape and you’re able to afford to simply give it away, consider donating small items to places where they’ll be appreciated.

2. Know your market
Once you’ve sorted out what you want to sell, take a few minutes to consider what it might be worth, and to whom.

Is this a niche item? The older something is, or the more unusual, the more likely you are to have a real treasure on your hands, in the eyes of somebody. If that’s the case, make sure you target your ad with relevant key words.

If you’re selling Aunt Edna’s ancient lamp, take two minutes to do a google search for what era the lamp belonged to. Then title your ad appropriately. Many buyers search the site by keyword, not by simply scrolling through everything available.

3. Know your value 
While you’re checking out what era Aunt Edna’s lamp came from, take an extra minute to see what they currently cost and whether or not there are any already on the site. Consider the shape yours is in, and price accordingly.

Pick a price: don’t take the easy way out of “best offer” or $12345. If you want to sell, looking like you know the value of what you’re offering is a surprisingly big part of making people want to pay it.

That said, be reasonable rather than aspirational if you want to sell fast. If you hold out for absolute top dollar, you may be holding out for a long time. And if you’re firm on your price and not at all open to dickering back and forth, say so in the ad.

4. Be descriptive
While nobody’s going to win a Pulitzer for their used ad, being moderately interesting does help to engage potential buyers. Use clear descriptive terms to market your item, and market it: make it evident what it’s for and why someone would want it.

“It’s spring: need a good, gently-used, rust-free kids’ bike? Orange 20 inch, $50″ targets readers’ attention both to your item and to why your item might be useful to them in a way that “Bike for sale” does not. It often doesn’t take a whole lot of description to distinguish yourself from the competition: a mere modicum of effort can make all the difference.

5. Take DECENT photos
Again, you don’t need to be a professional to stand out from the crowd in this department. But it’s probably the one that makes the biggest difference to overall sales.

The Internet is a visual medium. People scan sites by keyword, but they click on what they can see. Include photos. Even if what you’re selling is as ugly as the day is long, let the world see the ugliness with its own eyes. Don’t surprise buyers at your door.

Top tips: Include a few photos from a few angles. Take the thirty seconds necessary to wipe the dust off the piano, for instance, and remove the thirty-three family pictures cluttering all the attractive woodworking details on the damn thing. Better, especially if you have outdoor items to sell, pick a sunny late afternoon and photograph them all. I squandered all of last week’s sunshine and am now stuck trying to get decent pictures of children’s play items in the pouring rain. Boo.

This is my pizza oven. It’s a great, flat toaster oven, about three years old. Unfortunately, since we moved, we no longer have space on top of our fridge for it. We also stopped eating a lot of pizza, hence…time to sell.

I dusted it. Nobody wants to buy a dirty-looking kitchen appliance.

I put it in a place in my kitchen where it would be well lit. I wiped the surface it was sitting on. And I opened the door for one of the shots: it’s important to show potential buyers what a piece can do.

I also removed most of the extraneous kitchen junk from the frame. I am not selling my kitchen: I am selling the pizza oven. You will notice that all sales-oriented photography is minimalist: it focuses attention on the item.

This all took approximately 45 seconds. Hey, I’m asking $30 for the thing. $30 for 45 seconds extra work? Good deal, IMO.

Last photo tip: PLEASE, people. PLEASE. Rotate your photos before uploading them. Don’t make me hurt my neck craning to see if yours is the piano – or the pizza oven – for me.

6. Spellcheck
I saw an ad for a clock the other day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t spelled that way. Some buyer is going to be VERY disappointed.

7. Be honest
Chances are what you’re selling will be useful and desirable to somebody. But don’t oversell, and never NEVER make overt claims that aren’t true. Mutton dressed as lamb doesn’t smell so good when the buyer is holding it in his or her hands, and – especially in small communities – your reputation as an honest seller will go far further in the long run than the extra $10 you might think you’ll get right now by pretending Aunt Edna’s lamp actually works. If you’re selling something for parts, say so.

In the end, selling used can be a great way to both keep your living space under control and make some extra cash. But like any thing that pays, the rewards tend to equal the effort expended. If you put the absolute minimum into your listings, you’ll likely get the absolute minimum out. If you have decent things to sell, take ten whole minutes and list them right: you may see up to hundreds of dollars in speedy return. That’s profit worth working for, I think.

A DIY Woodshop: The Six Tools You Need

The Scene: our house. A weekend.

I turn to Dave and say, apropos of nothing much said, “I think I should write a post about tools: about how to choose the key tools you need to be able to build furniture. The Top Five Tools! I mean, we’re trying to get the shed set up so we can build the furniture we want…lots of other people would probably like to be able to do that too!”

To Dave’s credit, he really only sputters a little. Then one eyebrow raises, archly.

“We’re doing it?”

Ahem.

Fair enough. I, for the record, use a hammer real good. Except when I hit my thumb. I can also use a drill without causing anyone imminent danger. Beyond that, I really don’t know a table saw from a jigsaw and have a healthy fear of both.

If we were really reliant on my furniture-building skills to finish decking out this half-empty house, we’d be sitting on milkcrates well into retirement.

I don’t want to sit on milkcrates. I want to sit on these kinda babies and their Frank Lloyd Wright-designed brethren.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/designministry/83699766/

So I try again. In the interest of not taking false ownership of tools, skills, research, or sourcing my hands have actually had no part in, I hand the entire laptop over to Dave.

“Fearless Home Furniture Maker,” I said, “What are the Top Five Tools a person needs to get started in his or her own woodshop?”

End Scene.

(Note: in the wisdom handed back, there are six Top Five tools. Somebody doesn’t like having structure imposed on him anymore than he likes my misuse of the word “we.”

*The Top Five Six Tools You Need for an Effective Home Woodshop*
- by Dave Cormier, NOT Bonnie Stewart

I’m not what you would call a carpenter. That is, unless you have a very broad minded feeling about the word. I do like to build things in wood, and have been working my way up to furniture by doing a few new projects every year for the last few. My dad gave me a hand-me-down mitre saw five years ago, when he bought himself a new one. I started with a picture frame, and built some steps for our old house.

Then a playhouse, for our kids. Still practical stuff, mostly. Built of particleboard, fir, and cedar, without a lot of fancy detailing.

When we started talking about moving into the new house, though, I had certain feelings about the furniture that would go into it. I wanted it to be furnished with things that were solid, that would last, that wouldn’t get thrown in the dump five years from now and replaced by other things equally flimsy and disposable.

Bon found this chair on UsedPEI a few weeks back: while not exactly what I’m hoping to make, it sort of exemplifies what I’m going for. Here it is, long after its maker probably ever intended, about to be recovered and given a place of honour in the house.

It’s made of quartersawn oak, the wood of choice for Arts and Crafts furniture. It is the drunken uncle to the furniture that I hope to build, not ‘quite’ in the style that it seems that it is supposed to be. But it’s made of the right stuff, it’s sturdy, and, most important of all, it’s terribly comfortable.

So with this new dedication to making ‘real’ furniture, I am realizing that some of the tools that I have are not sturdy enough to deal with the harder wood and the lower margin of error. A margin of error, I should add, that includes the extra special margin that comes from my general level of incompetence. That’s two errors. One error too many. So I’m upgrading. Step by step, I’m making myself a real, semi-serious, woodshop.

I’ve spent months wandering through discussion forums and trying to figure out the absolute basics I need to get started. Without further adieu, the five (okay, six) basic tools I need in order to build cool furniture:

1. The Table Saw
The table saw is the heart of any woodshop. It allows you to make the big cuts, straight. Straight seems to be the magic word in woodworking. I’m saving up for a cabinet saw.

2. The Jointer
This is a funny little tool. All it seems designed to do is make a board straight. Seems simple enough right? Don’t they come straight when you get them? Well… that depends. It seems all the cool people get wood unfinished from the lumber store. It costs a lot less and gives you a bit more control. The big choice in jointers seems to be 6” or 8”. The smaller one is much cheaper and will fit into my little shop. The 8 inch, however, allows you to make the edge of a board straight, but also the flat of it as well. If I had the space…

3. The Planer
The planer is a simple tool. Also called a ‘thickness planer,’ it allows you to get your board to the needed, uh, thickness. Simple, but absolutely necessary as – see above – not all boards are actually created equal.

4. The Mitre Saw
This makes very precise cuts across a board. I actually have one of these already, which is handy. It’s a ‘compound sliding mitre saw’, which essentially means that i can cut across a 10” board and do it on an angle. That’s cool.

5. The Band Saw
This saw is critical for any curved cuts you might want to make. Need to make a rounded swirl or a curvy bit? The band saw is perfect. It can also be useful if you’re trying to split a large board in half.

…And one extra tool, for good measure:

6. The Mortiser
This is only necessary if you’re interested in making Arts & Crafts furniture, like I am. But that stuff is gorgeous, and my life is going to be alot easier with one of these. Essentially it makes square holes for the pegs that join most Arts& Crafts pieces together. It’s a signature design element in that kind of furniture, and makes what you build solid as a rock. Sounds easy enough…but it’s a lot more complicated than it sounds unless you have one of these little beauties.

When looking for tools, I try to follow my father’s rule of thumb: buy it once. In other words, the cheapest version may not be your wisest investment.

But neither do you need to spend a fortune. In this age of irons and microwaves that only last a year, it seems that many of the tools created for woodworking are still made of sturdy stuff. In my research for the woodshop, I’ve come across any number of tools that seem to suggest they weigh over 500lbs. While delivery might make sense if you’re breaking out these big guns, the truth is, the majority of the tools on my list can be found gently used and still in excellent shape: check your local listings.

Basically: take your time gathering your woodshop necessities. Do your research, know what you want to build, and be careful to keep your fingers when learning! If you’re patient and lucky, you may be able to build a lifetime of tools and skills and great furniture for less than the investment in one single signature pre-built piece.