In other news, one of my best friends – Sarah – is getting married next summer and I am doing all her stationery! I am so so excited and honored!

Metronomy – The Bay
This song is pretty catchy and perfectly summery. I love the digitalisation of the music as well. I have to keep myself from playing the whole album on repeat!

Hercules and the Love Affair – Hercules Theme
This is my “struttin’” song. ‘Nuff said.

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes – Home
I love this song more than words can say. It is such a good love song that isn’t cheesy at all! Well, maybe a little bit, but not so much that it makes you feel sick. Sometimes I catch myself singing, “Alabama, Arkansas…” and it makes me smile. Even Gavin has given it his seal of approval – and that’s saying something!

Noah & the Whale – 5 Years Time
I have to give a little disclaimer with this one.. I absolutely adore love songs. Not the sappy, dramatic ballads (except for the odd one like Celine Dion’s “It’s all coming back to me” and “All by myself”), but ones that are cute and well-written and actually make you feel like you can relate.. you know? This is one of them

O.A.R. – Love and Memories
I used to love O.A.R. in university and then I didn’t hear their new album and sort of drifted apart until I had basically forgotten about their existence. Until the other day when I was listening to some playlists on 8tracks and this song popped up! It was like running into an old friend that you haven’t seen in years. It was like no time had passed at all

Hall and Oates – You Make My Dreams Come True
Such a happy song. Perfect summer dance song! I can see my mom, sister and I dancing around the summer cottage kitchen to this one

The pesto is more of a paste as I don’t have a food processor… I know, but they are ridiculously expensive here and I have no disposable income..

And this is it mixed with spaghetti… mmmm…

So good… I can’t wait for lunch tomorrow to eat it again!

Then I rewatched it and laughed all over again. I love pranks.

Growing up, we had only one shower-related prank and that was to chuck a glass of cold water (just the water, the glass as well would just be cruel) over the top of the shower door/curtain. There are few things worse/better than getting/throwing freezing water in the face. The fact that the victim is warm and “secure” in the shower makes it even better. As we only had one bathroom in pretty much each house we lived in, locking the door was out of the question. I think I spent the majority of my showers for the better part of 2 years jumping everytime I heard a noise that could have been some one moving around the bathroom trying to freeze me to death…

“It’s not going!….”

1. What Do You Live For, ad by Ogilvy Asia.

Seriously, this made me tear up. Granted, I am a wuss and tear up at most anything even vaguely emotional. Watch this one at full screen for emotional power that goes up to 11.

2. Welcome to the Jungle, 2CELLOS.

I really enjoyed this and it made me want to play an instrument. Real bad. I don’t know much about them other than they play a mean cello, but you can find out more on their site or their facebook page. This one also benefits from full screen viewage*.
* I know that viewage isn’t a word, I just like it.

3. Hennie Haworth, illustrator and designer.

This is her beautiful Skyline poster I love all the detail and the use of color

And how great is this Alphabet print? I think it would be great in a nursery, but as that isn’t going to happen for a pretty long time, I could settle for it anywhere. Again, it’s all the detail in the drawing for me. I also love the colors. I seem to have some sort of obsession with a red, white and turquoise combo at the moment. I bought Gavin a print that was red and white, I bought me a print that was turquoise (mostly) and then I bought us both another print that will go in the kitchen… I think I am noticing a trend…

4. The World’s Smallest Post Service Kit

I think I just like stuff that is not normal sized… On a side note, I would LOVE if I got one of these in the mail!

5. Deep Dark Africa, an store that sells stuff made in Africa, but of great design.

There are these beautiful lace vases that are only $35! I love that the stuff is just classic, nice looking, affordable pieces, rather than the ram-it-down-your-throat-ethnic vibe that most fair trade products/stores give off.

How about a gorgeous bamboo shawl? This one’s a twofer as you get eco and humanitarian cred all in one

Seriously, check them out as all their stuff is amazing, handmade, affordable and it helps people. In their words, Deep Dark Africa is “carefully selected hand designed and made pieces created by or in collaboration with a diverse range of local artisans, designers & crafters, Deep Dark Africa aims to promote this uniquely talented continent & its rich creativity, showing that African design is evolving whilst still holding firm to it’s handmade roots.” I couldn’t have said it better myself

So we have reached the end of my list. I can now close all the tabs on my browser and perhaps give my poor dying laptop a well deserved restart..

Again, I apologize for the crap quality. I took it with my phone. And didn’t even bother to color balance… Oops.

Also – check out Liza Corbett. Seriously. It’s awesome. I love pen mixed with gouache and watercolor…

source

So without further ado, I present to you: Mama Fox.

This was her in the winter when I kept feeling sorry for her sleeping out in the snow.. I tried to convince Gavin to let me lure her inside. I knew it was a bad idea, but it was fun to see his sputter We did feed the fox our leftover toast and we would leave meat scraps next to the garbage cans rather than inside.. Bad, I know, but so worth it because now there are babies!

So again, I know that the quality is appalling and that I shouldn’t call myself a designer, let alone a professional with work like this to show for it, but hey. You gotta make do, right?

Anyways, if you can’t make out what’s going on in the photo, it is the Mama Fox nursing all 5 (!!) of the babies. This was when they were about the size and color of really big squirrels and they would clumsily tumble over one another. Adorable. Now they still bounce around and chase one another, but now they have turned red, rather than the dark brown/grey they were before.

I took some more pictures this afternoon, but I don’t have a cable for my camera so I need to bring it to work and get them that way.. Either way, they will be posted. I now have a backlog of posts! Eek! I need to get on this blogging bandwagon!

There on the left. With the blue-green dress. Whoa.

For those who don’t know/remember what my mom looks like, this is a photograph of her. Note the resemblance.

Ok.. that might not be the best photo of her in the world, but hey, I was being lazy and just raiding looking through her facebook rather than looking through my photo archive. Sue me

In other news, I am going to be switching over to my new site soonish. I am just going to use a temporary theme for a little while and slowly teach myself how to create my own wordpress theme and through that learn a little coding It will be good for me at work to have some basic understanding of the web… I spend enough time on it!