Lunchtime Lookup - June 3rd, 2011

Image by Rainbow Photos.

Hoo boy, baby, it`s a late one today! Perhaps this is a dinner-time lookup!

I spent the day thrifting and preparing for tomorrow`s yard sale - if you`re in Ottawa, come on out to Midway Avenue for their yearly neighbourhood sale! And now I`m chilling out in my best friend`s backyard, sipping sangria and providing distractions for you! All for love! Exclamation points!

The Sartorialist has young ladies on bicycles. Yes please. I hope I look this good on my bike! Also, thank you for vintage kissing in matching sweaters. All the love. All of it.

Adventures In Dressmaking has a tutorial for an adorable burlap boutonniere. I believe I know just the young man I would make this for!

Refinery29 and the YSL cigarettes.

Laura Thoughts made this brilliant magnetic makeup board. The Virgo in me is squealing over this kind of storage awesomeness!

Just Something I Made has this awesome expanding file with a vintage book cover. It looks way too labour-intensive for me, but pretty.

Chocolate On My Cranium has a tutorial on how to pretty-up your pens. Dead simple!

Sarah Wilson in defense of the hipster. Yes. I own it. To the same end, Flavorwire's In Defense of Twee.

I don't know if Angela at Oh She Glows is a genius or what, but her recipes never cease to amaze. Gazpacho? I want to go to there. All summer. Also, on my to-do list this week was "make kale chips", so I think I'll be using her recipe for sour cream and onion ones!

Dear See Kate Sew, why is this vintage suitcase chair the cutest thing I've ever seen?!

CRAFT has a how-to for a peg board made with toy animal heads - it's like teeny tiny taxidermy! Love+++!

They also show off this room divider made from old paperbacks, and it makes me think I could DIY this rather simply! And a necklace made out of bubble wrap? What!?

Babble, why do you hate me? Deep fried strawberries, indeed.

Thanks, JRD Skinner!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!


Chris Tse is an Ottawa lad who is currently competing in Paris at the
International Poetry Slam Championships, representing Canada.
Go Chris!

That`s it, kiddo! Enjoy your weekend! XOXO!

A Little Bit of Heaven - June 2nd, 2011

Image by kainet.

What is up, candy cup? I hope you're having an incredible week so far!

As I write this, I'm sitting on a balcony high above the city, with the sounds of children playing in a water park drifting up to me, enjoying some lovely sunshine...

But that doesn't matter, as much as I may love it. Here's what matters: it's time for the great big, long missed Thursday love list: A Little Bit of Heaven! Here's what's been turning my crank this week!

The Canadian Museum of Nature: I got taken there on a lovely date recently, and it was super-boss-awesome-fun-time to look at dinosaurs, bugs, plants, and especially rocks!

Being physically active - specifically taking long, long weekend walks and going for bike rides all the time. I find I resent time spent at the gym (although I love going), but doing fun stuff while getting exercise is just fine by me!

To that end, private underpants dance parties! There have been so many of these in my life lately and they are absolutely amazing!

Amazing friends who pick me up from surgery. Specifically, Justin, who is awesome and took time out of his work schedule to come and get me.

Taking photos with toy film cameras, especially my Lomo! I've also been playing with a Vivitar point-and-shoot and using Vignette for my phone when I want something digital. Also, my amazing Android phone, the LG500. Love++!

Dates with myself. Last week I took myself to Fil's, drank Perrier with lemon, ate a grilled cheese on rye bread, read Emma, and listened to my favourite Beatles songs. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamazing.

Photo by J B Hildebrand.

New vintage sunnies that I probably got gouged on but I love them so much that I don't care, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay pinker hair, and eating nectarines (which I like to call protectarines). Also of note, a polka dotted dress with pearls and wearing my non-shorn hair in a ponytail. (Since I only have hair on one side of my head and it`s crazy vibrant violet pink, I feel a bit like a My Little Pony!)

My dad and my gentleman friend have been e-mailing each other because my dad needs advice on a purchase in my friend's field, and it's been really cuting me out!

Honourable Mentions: Cinnabon surprises * Sleeping through the night * $5 food processors * Edward Scissorhands * Setting SMART goals! * Having a dream about jumping on a trampoline * OhMiBod Freestyle * Vintage jewelry picked up for a song at yard sales * Spinach + fruit in a salad * Perfect strangers telling me they love my hair * Especially when they're adorable little girls * Bonus points for being named Bella and being the sweetest girl in the world

Instead of just listing all the songs and music I've loved this week, here are some links to some YouTube clips of them! Un petit playlist, if you will!The Beta Band - Dry the Rain (seriously, kiss someone you really, really like while you're listening to this), Belle Orchestre - Throw It On a Fire (creepy video...), Frightened Rabbit - Backwards Walk, MIA - Fire Fire, Girl Talk - Let It Out, Fuad & the Feztones - Camel Walk (not the best quality, but trust me when I tell you that their record Beeramid is totally worth picking up and I crush on this band hard), oh man, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs YES STILL - Heads Will Roll and Handsome Furs - I'm Confused (the Bluesfest 2009 combo), Wax Mannequin - End of Me (one of the best shows I`ve seen in a while!), and finally, Mr. Oizo - Flat Beat!

I have no idea what this really is but I highly recommend you watch it. My
gentleman friend showed it to me on a night when we whiled away the
hours showing each other stuff we love on YouTube. This is what English
sounds like to a non-English speaker.

What about you, darling dear? What is making you happier than happy this week? What makes you feel rich? How are you loved? Tell us in the comments!

Bippy Love: PR Design

Image courtesy of PR Design.

Last weekend, after I napped to recover from the Great Glebe Garage Sale (phew!), I woke up and checked in with Twitter, and realized that ArtsPark was happening right down the street from my house!

ArtsPark is an annual event in Hintonburg, with displays of, well, art, as well as more jewelry vendors than you can shake a stick at, if that's the sort of thing you like to do to jewelry vendors.

Well, I jumped right out of bed, threw on a cute outfit, and hopped on my lovely bicycle (Eliza, don't you know) and headed over... After catching up for a moment with Krista of Urbanite Jewelry (I have an amazing pair of earrings of hers, and I love them, and I'd link to them but it's looks like she's sold out for the summer, much like her stall...), I continued around to the other vendors.

I saw some pretty things, yes, but most of them were way out of my price range for the day... Then I came upon the stall for PR Design!

You guys.

This stuff is beautiful.

I bought the necklace that matches the earrings in the photo at the top of this post. Patricia Rodi, who designs and makes the jewelry out of reclaimed materials whenever possible and strives to make them hypoallergenic, was completely sweet to boot and sent me the nicest e-mail yesterday morning, saying in part, "I just wanted to thank you for purchasing that button necklace last weekend at ArtsPark, though I don't know you it seems to fit your personality."

Isn't that just the sweetest?!

In all seriousness, I can highly recommend her jewelry. It's beautiful. And I recommend you snatch it up right now before she realizes what a beautiful thing she does and raises her prices accordingly!

Donate to Your Sweet Bippy!

Photo by Ken Teegarten.

Hi lovely!

I don't make it a common practice to ask for money. Not even to my parents when times were desperate in my 20s. So I want to be clear that I'm not asking for money now.

People have expectations that the internet should be all free, all the time. Writers shouldn't be paid for their work, right? All photos should be public domain? That's unfortunate.

I'm gearing up to launch my own website, and I'll soon be saying bye bye to Blogger. It's been fun, but it's time to move on up in the world. However, running a website costs money, and while I'd do this for free if I could, it would be really swell to have some extra coin once in a while to help defray the costs involved.

So I'm putting it out there. If you like what you see, and you want to keep it going, feel free to make a donation. The donate button is in the sidebar, just over there to your right.

If you don't feel like it, well, I'm not going to hold it against you. I'm certainly not going to make you stop reading. I don't want you to feel guilty; I just want to provide the opportunity for you to donate, should you feel like it.

Having said that, I'll leave it there. Love and love and love!

On Enthusiasm

Photo by EpicFireworks.

Yesterday morning, I was out for breakfast with a gentleman friend. As we were eating and watching the half-marathon trot by along Wellington Street, I noticed a really cool-looking couple sitting across the diner from us. I won't get into the specifics about what they were wearing or how they looked, because that's not important, but I got a sense from looking at them that they were the kind of people I would want to be friends with.

However, and here's the kicker, whenever I see people who I think look “cool” (read: cooler than me), I get all panicky and scared and insecure that I'm not cool enough to be friends with them, no matter how much I might want to be!

I said as much to my breakfast companion, and as he watched them leave the restaurant, he said, “Hmm... I wouldn't want to be friends with them. Look at that cultivated air of cool aloofness. That seems like way too much work. And it seems boring.”

We got to talking about the whole cool-aloof-hipster image, and how boring it seems. I decided right then and there that enthusiastic is the new cool.

So, how can you show your enthusiasm? Here are some ways I've been thinking about!

• Tell everyone about your hobbies! Be great at them! And if people scoff in your direction, they're not people you want to hang out with anyway!
• Wear whatever you want. Don't worry about whether or not it's “trendy” or “in fashion”. If you feel fantastic in it, and you love it, and it's flattering and fits you, then do it! My current sartorial direction is “dress like a cupcake” and I've never felt better!
• Love really hard and throw yourself into it. Tell the people that you love that you love them. Put yourself out there. Be brave.
• Find things that inspire you, be they poetry, fiction, music, art, photography, whatever. Immerse yourself in things you are passionate about.
• Love yourself. This is not to be confused with vanity, of course! But if you love yourself, and are confident in yourself, you can be secure with showing your enthusiasm.
• Most importantly, don't judge people based on their enthusiasm! If you meet someone who's passionate about long-distance cycling and helicopters, that doesn't mean you can't learn from them! Perhaps they always wanted to learn the amazing cupcake recipe you've perfected!

How about you, lovely? What are you enthusiastic about? Why don't you tell me in the comments, and we can have a big, enthusiastic love-fest! And you never know, maybe you'll connect with another reader who shares your passion!