cat nonsense

you can call me a crazy cat lady if you want but this is just too funny not to post - make sure you're not drinking anything before you click this : )

value village

no shipping is good

jewels

I've been making jewelery since I was in college and discovered this amazing store called The Bead Gallery.

I don't even remember how who told me about it or how I got the idea that I could make my own earrings, but I did and that's what I started with. The year was 1990 and I was in love with garnets & sterling silver.

Then I cut off all my hair and stopped wearing big earrings (that episode from Felicity was so my life). I moved on to necklaces but a lot of the pieces I made were very formal and though I loved making it I didn't always like wearing what I made. My mother on the other hand was crazy for coco-puffs about my designs so she became the primary recipient of my creativity. The woman is hard to shop for so it was a great way to make her eyes light up on her birthdays, mothers day and x-mas - she now has a very sizeable collection.

Eventually I grew my mane out and got the bug for big earrings again. Then last winter I rented the Sex and the City movie when I was recovering from my breakup with P and even though I thought the movie sucked, SJP's jewellery in the Mexico scenes blew me away and got the ol' creative juices flowing.

I basically decided that I was going to spend the summer wearing long flowy dresses with long strands of big beads, or even short dresses with long flowing beads.

I started small.

But then I discovered chain.

And then I was in a rush to make a piece I wanted to wear to a party and I threw this together.

But I'd been intended to do this in chain also. I finally got around to doing it this weekend and my friend who threw the party took this pic in her backyard on a slightly chillier day.

Now I needed something I could also wear to work.

As you can see I am obsessed with all things turquoise.

 

Marcel likes it too!

ebay is addictive?

someone should have warned me ...

winter's first slush

This is what it looked like around these parts yesterday.

This is what it looks like today. One might say the snow really makes the rosehips "pop".

But I say - my feet are wet!! I broke out the winter boots this morning. The ugly but shearling-lined winter boots which I wore through the rain, sleet and slush all last winter and kept my tootsies toastie. But today boots you let me down - you leaked!!

Marcel is staying in.

curtains

I love fabric!! But do I sew? well, kind of. I own a sewing machine and I’ve been known to do some of my own repair jobs, alter costumes, and make the odd pillow cover out of some Amy Butler fabric. In my old place with a slew of many shaped Victorian windows I did completely customize curtains from IKEA for 7 different windows – and they looked ok.

But do I really “sew” – maybe not. When I lived with Perry I bought some gorgeous Kaffee Fassett fabric to hang in front of my large closet, since the doors were eating up some valuable floor space. But I thought it was so pretty that I was worried about making a mess if I tried to hem them. Turned out that was ok since I moved out a few months later, and in the new place I even used one of the panels to cover my headboard which is a bit more modern than what I like these days.

Here is the proof that I don’t really sew. This is the curtain hanging in my bedroom. It needs to be lined both for darkness and so that it doesn’t bleach out. So I cut a piece of fabric to line it with but it's been hanging like this for almost a year because I’m scared to do it (please note the selvedge is there for all to see).

Marcel doesn't care - he just likes to sit on the radiator.

have I mentioned I like winning?

How I found my little house

I lived in Toronto from the age of 3 to the age of 9. Then my family started moving – a lot. By the time I started high school in Michigan I had attended 9 schools in 9 years. This was not fun but I sure did learn how to make friends quick. Then when I moved to Ann Arbor for college I moved what seemed like every 4 months, spent a winter living in the Canary Islands and a summer in Italy. So after graduation, when I could go anywhere I wanted, I decided to move back to Toronto and found a fantastic apartment in an old building with a carved marble fire place (which didn’t work, but who cares), tons of crown moulding and stained glass, on an incredible tree lined street in Little Italy. And I lived there for 13 years!

Now I loved that place and so did Marcel. That was the only home he had ever known and it had the perfect little window for him to go in and out without me having to open a trio of doors. It was his ‘hood and he liked it. So many parties, over-night guests, lots of swing dancing on the hardwood floors in the living room, friends visiting from out of town, Marcel bringing dead birds to the front porch and killing mice in the bathtub … ahh memories.

But I had been dating Perry for a couple of years and I decided I actually wanted to live with him (and it had been a loooong time since I’d been willing to do that). But I didn’t want to live in his place and he didn’t want to live in mine. Fair enough, we’d have a new start together in a new space for both of us. And though I loved that place, I did feel like it was time for a change and a new adventure. Marcel did not.

We moved anyway, Marcel & me, into a large and beautiful apartment with Perry (right next to the hockey rink). To make a long story short it did not go well. I think in the first week Marcel took a piss in Per’s hockey bag, put some serious claw marks in Per's leather ottoman, and would not stop stretching all over and scratching Per’s real Turkish rug. Now these things weren’t insurmountable but a few other things turned out to be – ah what can you do?

Well move out for starters! So with a plan to move out on December 1, 2008, I started looking for a place, all the while kicking myself for ever letting go of my old “perfect” apartment. Now I didn’t want to spend a lot of money and I’d had roommates in the old place off-and-on since it was a two bedroom, so I figured I’d move in with someone and get a little closer to the subway. And that is what I found: an adorable place with high ceilings and stained glass, on another great street, with a nice woman who loved cats and loved to cook.

Umm, well, turned out said “nice woman” was a tad unstable and when she started telling me that I couldn’t move my living room furniture into the place and that Marcel would have to stay with Perry for a couple of weeks because she was looking after her old roommate’s cat, I told her that none of that was cool with me since I’d paid rent. She replied by giving me back my money. So with December 1st only a couple of weeks away and Per’s new roommate moving in soon, I had no apartment – f*&%!

This was a pretty major crisis for me, since my brother and sister were also coming to visit from out west over the x-mas holidays, but what could I do? Craigslist here I come – again. Finding an apartment for Dec. 1, turned out to be impossible. But Perry’s roommate didn’t actually need to move in until the middle of the month so that saved my bacon for a couple of weeks, then a close friend in my old “perfect” building was going out of town for the holidays and said we could all stay there for a week. Now all I had to do was find a great place that I could move into a bit early.

At this point, I’d decided to live alone, and I kept wishing I could find something like my old apartment. It had been such a wonderful place to live alone or with a roommate when I needed to "reduce expenses". So after seeing some truly disgusting basements, I went to look at a two bedroom apartment at a very good price on the main floor of a Victorian house, on a very nice tree lined street in Little Italy, on a snowy day, with hope in my heart. The front room was big with a bay window, nice. The first bedroom was small, but not too small. The kitchen was big enough for my table, good. The bathroom was a bit odd, but surprisingly spacious. And when I got to the bedroom at the back of the house – which was huge – I told the landlord I’d write him a check on the spot. Then some other people knocked on the door and he said he still had to show it to the people who’d made appointments – f*&%!

But the next day the landlord called and told me how nice he and his wife thought I was and it was mine!!! Only later did I find out it also had a back yard!!!!! Marcel we hit the jackpot!! (but it was still winter and he was not impressed). What made this place even better was that the guy who lived there was moving to the apartment upstairs and he wanted to be in by x-mas, so I could move in a week early - yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The whole thing was incredibly stressful and exhausting, but almost a year later I am very thankful to be here in my little house – and so is Marcel.

I like winning

ebay is crazy

Wow, so I've been coveting the Homer Laughling Orange Tree bowls over at Mabel's House (learned how to hot-link today) and since I don't know anything about antique fairs I went straight to ebay to see what I could find.

These gorgous babies were originally made as sets of 5 mixing bowls in graduated sizes (now don't ask me what I plan to mix in them because I don't cook/bake) and didn't ebay just have a set of 4 - which is apparently unheard of. Unfortunately, my newbie status to this whole bidding thing meant that they got away for a ludicrously low price to someone who'd better love them. But I got me one just the same and I can't wait to see it live and in person!

 While I was there I managed to snag this too!! I have always been a serious sucker for vases and cut flowers - as is Marcel - but I thought it would be nice to try and grow something (and save some dough). I have a definite black thumb but I've been keeping a little purple shamrock plant alive at work for months so I'm going to give it a go when ms daisy here arrives.

Getting started

A friend of mine has been talking about starting a career defining project for years now and I've heard myself saying "just start and work the bugs out as you go along, but please just start" about once a week lately - so I thought I should just take my own advice. I'm good at dishing it out but not always at following it myself.

So here I am. I've been talking about this for a while and though I have no idea how to format and make this thing look pretty, no idea how to link in all the things I joyfully obsess about (like my cat Marcel, books, the jewellery projects I'm working on, my small efforts at home decor), Elizabeth over at Mable's House (http://mabelshouse.blogspot.com - wonder how I hot link that) has totally inspired me. So I'm here for some sharing and some adventure.

- Jessica