OSCAR DE LA RENTA EXHIBIT

My friends know I love fashion (although my day to day wardrobe doesn't necessarily scream fashion forward my instagram feed is full of haute couture) so it was such a pleasant surprise the Oscar de la Renta exhibit was in San Francisco! It was at the deYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park and the park itself was beautiful. We went on our last day and I wish we had more time to explore the grounds (especially the Japanese Tea Garden).

On our vacations we almost always compromise by doing something the other person enjoys and then switching. For instance, in New York we went to a baseball game and then to the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). In San Francisco the baseball game was followed by the Oscar de la Renta exhibit. Fair's fair. Basically his favourite thing is baseball. My favourite thing is art.

I was so excited and the dresses were stunning. In particular I loved seeing older designs (from the 1960s) and the more recent Met Gala dresses - in particular the black and white design Sarah Jessica Parker wore a few years ago. I took about a thousand photos as inspiration for my cousin, the surface designer - see her blog here. She creates hand painted silk designs so of course I sent her photos of the same medium from the exhibit. Enjoy a very select few of my photos below!

SEVEN

I've posted here before about my cousin, Dee (Dara) Wilkie and some of her projects and she has had a very busy fall season! She has been working very hard with great results so I wanted to showcase her most recent work!

Dara studied surface design at New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and graduated in 2012. Since then she has been working full time while she also starts her own brand and I am a big fan of everything she has ever done! Her biggest fan maybe. :)

Last summer Dara conceptualized a new project inspired by the seven deadly sins (hence SEVEN). She designed and created seven fabrics, each inspired by one of the seven deadly sins, and four local fashion designers turned these fabrics into beautiful garments. A completely Fredericton based project, local models were then styled by Billy Peterson and Michael Drost and photographed by Lance Kenneth Blakney.

The dresses and photographs are currently displayed at the George Fry Gallery at NBCCD. Gallery hours: 9:00 am to 4:30 pm Monday to Friday. 457 Queen Street, Fredericton, NB.

They will be displayed until January 19th if you're in town! Please stop by and support local artists!

Fashion design:
Michelle Duncan
Adrienne Goodine
Alexandra Keely
Bronwen Robbins

Surface design:
Dee Wilkie

CURB APPEAL - POST SIX

Do you remember my series of curb appeal posts last summer/fall? If not, let me remind you what our house looked like before.

Recap: brown paint, crumbling concrete steps (that we attempted to paint but then the paint crumbled off as well), old rusty house number, unruly spiria plants, and red bricks lining the flower beds.

Now for the excitement. This is as good as it's going to get, people. Photo credit below to Jordan and Judith Photo/Film. 

 
Recap: green paint, new wooden front steps, new adorable house number, window boxes, hostias (that unfortunately did not really grow this summer), and new stones lining the flower beds.

So there you have it! We spent the better part of last fall and this summer painting that baby - mostly waiting for good, dry painting days!! In the end we had to hire someone to paint the back side because it's a walk out basement and we didn't have the equipment to do it ourselves. The rest of the job wasn't all that bad.
It's never going to happen but the last of my to do list would be: stain the front steps and cut down the pine trees (to the left of this photo).

Looking forward to the Trick or Treaters that will be stopping by in a month and a half. :) It's such a good neighbourhood for that!! We love our sweet little first home.

HEATING A HOUSE

Happy 2015!

We had a lovely Christmas and New Years and now it's back to real life while I start 2015 with 19 straight days of work. Yippee! ;) I like to think of it as character building. Moving on.

I'm also starting off the new year with a riveting blog post (totally kidding). Segue. Are you cold? Because I am. (Especially today - pretty much all of Canada is at least 30 below right now with that blasted wind chill.) In our little old house - built in the 1950s or 1960s - we are constantly trying to come up with ways to make it warmer. Our house is heated by a forced air electric furnace and because hubby and I both grew up in homes with wood stoves, it just doesn't cut it for us. We fully insulated the attic a couple of years ago which has cut down on heating costs but doesn't change the fact that electric heat isn't cozy. During the day we're ok but to save money hubby turns the heat down at night and I freeze a little in bed. Correction. I freeze a lot. When I'm there (remember - 19 straight days).

We were thinking of buying a space heater until he found the Eco Heater on the Home Depot website last week. It's only $99 and after reading the reviews we figured why not try it? I like to think of it as a big, magical heat square. (Really. I'm not kidding. Totally accurate name.) I truly find this the strangest little contraption. It's a convection heater so there is a little (and I mean little - like size of a deck of cards) 400 watt heater on the back of this ceramic (?) tile. You mount the whole thing to the wall and it plugs into an outlet. This little heater warms the air trapped behind the magical heat square, the warm air gradually rises, pulling cold air in behind, which then is heated, etc.

Now - if you are looking for a way to warm your bedroom at night I have to tell you. We are impressed that this strange $99 contraption works because I seriously had my doubts. I might have even laughed. The accurately named "magical heat square" might have come to be because I was...making fun. The wall, the floor nearby, and even the bed is warmer than before. Full disclosure - I find if the bedroom door is open it isn't very effective. Even with the door closed it certainly doesn't make the room hot by any stretch of the imagination, but you can feel a noticeable difference between the hallway and entering the bedroom. From the online reviews, people who had no additional heat source in a room didn't like this product, but for those who are just looking for a little additional warmth, it's pretty good. No doubt about it - I am warmer in bed now with the door closed. The instructions say you can paint the square the colour of your wall, but we find it actually gets quite hot to the touch so I wouldn't try to paint it. And I would never leave it on when I'm not home.

That was the only addition to our house over the holidays so I thought I would share! We are slowly trying to update our spare bedroom so hopefully soon I will have some photos. Happy New Year!

CURB APPEAL - POST FIVE

If you saw my last curb appeal post you might remember we have a to do list the length of my arm. We still have two sides of the house to paint which we can only finish if we get some more dry weather. My only real hopes for this fall were a new house number and maybe new porch lights.

I pictured a house number plaque that included our street name, to add some pizazz. After searching Etsy I found WoodDesigners - link here. (I also really liked this one from GlamorousFindings but hubby wasn't crazy about it.) WoodDesigners makes their plaques out of MDF but after a quick email to them they made me a custom order out of oak. It looks awesome and I'm really pleased with it. The only thing about it that is slightly less than perfect is it is made of two pieces of wood glued together so if you look really closely you can see a seam. However, I'm sure no one will ever look that closely.

Here's the before and after.

LOCAL TALENT

You might remember a few weeks ago I was going on about my cousin's local business - MairiRyan Textile Designs. (If you don't remember you can see it back here.) At the time I was promoting shopping local and mentioned the Fredericton Fall Craft Show.

I will gladly admit supporting local business has not normally been high on my priority list. However, after many discussions with my cousin about the frustrations of being a local artist, I realized I should be supporting people in my community! Colour me changed. So forgive me if in the future I'm a broken record about it.

When we went to the craft fair a couple of weekends ago I was determined to turn over a new leaf. Shopping local all the way. Here is a little showcase of the craft fair! And to be fair - I'm showing you products from three booths and two of them are a friend/family member. But I still think they're awesome.

1. Courtney's Creations - find the facebook page here.
My friend Courtney makes beautiful decorative eggs - yes, that's right - eggs. They are an art form called "Pysanky" or Ukrainian Easter Eggs. This is very similar to batik, using a wax and dye method. The eggs are beautiful and a great decoration to put on display or hang on your Christmas tree. If you like, she even makes custom orders. And if you're nearby, she will be at Rhoda's Christmas Festival in Saint John from Nov 14 - 16.

2. MairiRyan Textile Designs - find the facebook page here.
As I mentioned above, I wrote a post on my cousin Dara's largest project to date a few weeks ago - a collaboration with a fashion designer using MairiRyan fabrics. Dara also creates a variety of other products that she sells including Comfort Cathy dolls (microwaveable for aches and pains), hand-dyed silk scarves, headbands, and notebooks. If you are looking for Christmas or birthday presents I would highly recommend a hand dyed scarf! Or even a headband as a stocking stuffer! She makes baby sized headbands too, which would be adorable for a newborn photo shoot.

3. Megan Billings Pottery - find her website here.
I have to tell you - I have no bias here. I don't know Megan, but I have been admiring her work at the Saint John City Market (at The Butcher's Daughter, specifically) for the last four years! When we found her at the craft fair I was so excited to meet her! Her pottery is gorgeous - bright and happy. The colours she uses make me happy. Nothing feels too precious or fussy but there is beautiful attention to design and detail.

Hopefully this will also inspire you (at least a little) to shop locally! Keep it in mind when you're buying Christmas presents this year. I'm definitely trying to!

CURB APPEAL - POST FOUR

Here it is. The moment we've all been waiting for. The house painting before and after.

Now, before you skip ahead, let me warn you. This is not the final product. I have a number of things on my outdoor to do list as you'll see in the photo below. Everything else (except for a new house number) will be a project for next year. I want to take out the concrete steps (that are flaking apart) and put in new wooden steps, get some shutters and window boxes, new outdoor light fixtures, finish painting the house, a new front door and new windows just for the entryway (all the other windows were replaced before we bought the house), chop down the dying pine trees beside the driveway, and even just do some landscaping.

That's a long list.

And that's why this year I am happy with 2 of 4 sides of the house painted and a new house number. Baby steps. (Concrete steps?) :)

As an FYI - we scraped one side of the house at a time and our neighbour told us you really only have to get rid of the paint that is flaking off. Then we spot painted areas that were worse than others. After that we did 2 full coats and it looks sooo much better (in our opinion)!  Take a look! (PS - painting is way better when you have a super cute assistant. And I mean...super cute.)

LOCAL TALENT FEATURING MAIRIRYAN TEXTILE DESIGNS

This is new for me, guys.  I'm super nervous about this post because I want to do justice to this project because I am really proud of it.   This is the first time I've shared someone else's work and I hope you love it as much as I do!

Let me start at the beginning.

My incredibly talented cousin, Dee Wilkie, started her own business a couple of years ago.  It is called MairiRyan Textile Designs (named for her sister and husband) and you can find more information here.  She makes a variety of cool products including headbands and she will be at the Fredericton Fall Craft Show if you're local and want to check it out (because you totally should. Peer pressure).

My favourite thing that Dee makes?  Gorgeous hand dyed and hand painted silk fabrics.  Enter Adrienne Goodine, local fashion designer.  A collaboration between the two with Dee's fabrics and Adrienne's designs?  Awesome.  I'll stop there because the photos below really speak for themselves.

Remember to support local artisans and check out MairiRyan Textile Designs at the Fredericton Fall Craft Show on October 3 - 5.

Photo Credit: Lance Kenneth Blakney and assistant Bobby Cole.  Model: Athenais model.  Hair and Makeup: Amy Barter.  Designers: Dee Wilkie and Adrienne Goodine.

 

CURB APPEAL - POST THREE

Now that God has shipped us back to our first home, we have some work to do!

Our house has cedar shingles which I am conflicted about.  On the one hand I'm not a fan of the look of vinyl siding.  On the other hand vinyl siding has zero maintenance which is kind of awesome.  Hubby and I had been complaining to each other because a previous owner had painted the shingles rather than leaving them stained.  We were worried that was going to make upkeep a far bigger job than necessary.

And back to having work to do.

Those shingles needed to be painted, people.  Or the house needed new siding.  Cost wise painting is the better option and once we decided to do it - go big or go home, right?  We chose a different colour.  A waaaay different colour.

You may remember old red/brown before?

We never felt strongly one way or the other about this colour.  Mainly we felt strongly we didn't want to paint.  You know how it is.  But when you're going to be painting it anyway and the world is your oyster?  Let's make a dramatic change to the neighbourhood!!

My advice when you're changing the exterior of your home?  Drive around your neighbourhood!  We took a drive and paid attention to the colours we did and didn't like, as well as the colours directly around our house.  There are a lot of gray homes within direct sight line of ours so although we liked gray, we had to eliminate it.  As we did the neighbourhood tour we realized we liked muted colours best - muted blues, greens, yellows, creams, etc.  Then we went to Home Depot and below was our jumping off point.  We painstakingly selected a bunch of colours and then went to the kitchen section where we could put them on a counter (that wasn't surrounded by thousands of other distracting paint colours) and analyze them in peace.

Hubby wasn't feeling any kind of blue, which as you can see above, eliminated more than half of the colours we had chosen.  Neither of us was feeling the cream.  That left us with a few gray/green options.  And then choosing darker vs lighter was a challenge.  

We are planning on replacing our front door next year (one thing at a time) so I thought we should head to the door section and compare with wood tones.  I was happy with either of the greens against "Caramel" or "Medium Oak" pretend wood.  (Don't you just hate pretend wood, though.  I know the fiberglass doors must be more efficient but really.  Pretend.  Wood.)  And maybe I am the only person who has ever taken paint samples to compare against doors because we were asked my multiple employees if they could help us.  They seemed confused when I said, "Nope!  Just checking out this paint colour against the door colours!"  I dunno.  It seemed logical to me.

Stay tuned for the finished product.  Spoiler alert - we chose urban nature.  One side of the house is done but I want to wait until we finish the front before I share!

NURSERY INSPIRATION - GENDER NEUTRAL

See? I told you I was back!

I wanted to start my first post back with a little interior design inspiration.  One of my besties is a little over 20 weeks pregnant with her first baby and she has been digging into nursery design.  Last weekend she was showing me her recent purchases for Baby E's room and asked me what I would do if I was planning a nursery.  What luck!  My favourite game to play!

You might remember from a post earlier this year that I am into gender neutral nurseries.  I have had this vision in my head since I found out T was pregnant. (And this is my first attempt at making an inspiration board so hopefully I'll get the hang of it.)

I hope you found this as super duper exciting as I did.  I especially love that fitted sheet - it has little sheep on it.  So cute.  Have a great weekend, all!

ART - IT'S WHAT YOU MAKE IT

Over the last four years of home ownership I've accumulated some items that we have used as artwork.  Some of these things are a bit nontraditional so I thought I would (hopefully) offer you some home inspiration!

You can use whatever you like as artwork.  Do you have a beautifully printed scarf that you love?  A pin or medal from a grandparent?  In hubby's case, a frisbee from an Ultimate Frisbee tournament?  There are no rules!  Frame them!

Here are some of my less conventional pieces.  (Some of these you may recognize from previous posts.)  I'll ease you into this with something not too wild and crazy.  This is a photo I took on our trip to New Orleans and I had it printed on a canvas on the Shutterfly website.

Again, from our trip to New Orleans, I bought three postcards at five dollars each and framed them.  They hang in our kitchen.

Don't make fun of me for this, but one time watching MTV Cribs (I know) we saw a collection of crosses hung over a fireplace.  Hubby and I both thought that was really neat so we pick up crosses on our travels (and by that I mean we have picked up exactly two).  Hopefully over the years we'll collect more!

I posted this little guy awhile ago.  Hubby and I used to say "Hey You" when we were dating.  I made this little sketch (took literally 2 minutes) and framed it.

This was another photo I took in Prague, Czech Republic, at the John Lennon wall.  I took tons of photos of the wall and then framed my fave.  She's in our bathroom.

And now my current favourite.  My grandparents collected tea towels over the years and there is a cupboard at their cottage that is full of them!  I snagged my favourite one (it must have been from a trip to western Canada due to the Rockies in the background) and had it framed with a vintage frame I found online.

There you go!  I hope this inspires you to frame something special to you that you have lying around your house!