Finally had the day I really needed during this 5 day weekend. I know everyone seems to find the holidays stressful, and mine was no exception. Sunday night we actually celebrated New Years early, so we could party with the same 'ol crew we party with every year, even though some of us won't be around on the real night. Today all I did was recover from that with about 4 ep.s of the first season of Gilmore Girls on the new tv, some Mario brothers, both new and old, and a little back splash tiling with Ron. A good day for sure.

Hopefully I'll get back to sharing neat stuff with you soon, you know, now that all the craziness is somewhat done.

Today is the Friday of my 5 day Christmas weekend, which I NEED.
Still a few presents to buy tomorrow. Gonna be a hectic day.
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The picture above is from Neato Coolville. It was toss up between that one and this one. Also, I always remember really wanting one of these. Just because of the way it looked. So cute.
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Wow, I would love to go to The World's Largest Toy Museum in Branson! Sounds like a good time to me!
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This is pretty impressive, both design/production wise, and for the fact that I had no idea that facebook makes donations in their advertisers' names for Christmas. That's pretty cool. It's also cool that you get to decide which public school gets the donation with this one. Good stuff facebook.

If I were to give out awards for favourite movie poster of the year, you can be pretty sure that the poster for A Serious Man would be right up there near number one. The tones are really, really nice. It's just a nice, subtle poster. I hope the movie is good. I'm going to try to get out to see it here at the Twin. Opens tomorrow!
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Blog worlds collide today! A Continuous Lean gets featured on High Snobiety!? I guess this is pretty much the most street wear-ish item I've seen featured on or come from ACL, but it still struck me as pretty crazy. Do I want the ACL hat? Yes I do. Do I want to pay $60 for it? No I don't.

You gotta love ACL though. I haven't had time to fully browse his shop, but things seem to keep popping up on there. Not that I can afford any of it, but you know. Also, if you do love ACL, I recently started reading Kaufman Mercantile, which I would say share's some of ACL's ideologies. Here's their tagline: Many products move from factory to garbage dump with little time in between. Poor design, low quality materials and bad food infiltrate our lives. Let's enjoy the good things instead.

Being discussed over there today? Kitchen towels. Good stuff. From our cute Orla Kiely for Target ones, to this classic that I'm always tempted by at Ikea, I do love a good dishtowel.
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Speaking of things featured on High Snobiety, this shirt is a bit of a burn. I appreciate the message, and the execution, but definitely not a message I could get behind wearing.
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Speaking of wearing, I don't wear any manly scents, but every once in a while I think maybe I should, or I see a product that makes me say 'hey, if I were going to wear a scent, that sounds like the one for me'. Vintage Black from Kenneth Cole is a case of the latter. The name alone is great, and the vaguely ink bottle look and the simple, bold label pull me in further. The scent description "top notes of fresh green lime with a dry oakwood to create an icy tequila accord" minus the tequila reference, sounds pretty okay too.
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HA!

I keep going back to this Audi image. Stark and simple, but stunning. The confidence it exudes is amazing. So much different from so many car ads. (Thanks to Grain Edit for linking to that one)
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Film guide is done. We're never done this early in the month, and it's going to make this Christmas a lot more relaxed. It was a stressful time to lock it down so early, but totally worth it.

Our living room is finally painted, and the Christmas tree is up. It feels so much more like home now in there. And it only took like 6 months! Dining room is painted, but will be painted again this weekend. The colour we picked was just not quite right...
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Here are some tabs I've had open for awhile, either to look at again (and again), or to share:

Ampersandwich tee - Pretty funny. Not quite totally doing it for me, but enjoyable.

French Paper Company and Charles S. Anderson Design - Nice promotions!

Cabin and Cub desk calendar - I love the idea and look of calendars, but I've never been big on using them. This one almost got me to buy it. It's pretty great, and bears!

Swingline staple gun & box - Jenna sent me this one, and I would LOVE to own it. Once you add in shipping though, that cost is just totally impractical. The label on the side in picture 3 is pretty great.

Baby Kermit Glass - Another one from Jenna. SO CUTE.

Lotta Nieminen Birds - Love so much about this image. Grain Edit featured a couple of her pieces. All are good. This one's the best though.
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Few, my Firefox is way slimmer now! Hope you enjoy some of that stuff.

Hard at work on the Jan/Feb film guide. It prints Wednesday and still lots to do! I stopped by one of my secret spots for grabbing high res. movie images and spotted the poster above. I can't decide if this poster nailed the concept it was going for, or totally failed. I think the perspective on the key vs. the perspective of the door lock just keeps knocking my brain a little. I think the idea was kind of doomed from the start if they really wanted to feature that much of the key, you know? Perspective. I think the motif works a little better without the pictures mucking it up.

The thing is, I still really quite like the picture version though.

Okay, okay, this poster is even better! Why is Shirley MacClaine's head so BIG?

Wow, and things get even weirder here.

11.5 hours at work today. Film guide almost done. More finishing up going on in the house. Pictures maybe to come soon. Tiring times. Looking forward to Christmas for sure.
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Speaking of work, the back side of this coin makes me think of 'work'. Not bad, tiring, annoying modern work, but solid, honest, work, good strong handshakes, that kind of work, you know? Anyway, I keep going back to look at that coin. It's a fine piece of work. Proud, Canadian work.
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Regardless of my own beliefs, any story about a church being defaced or destroyed always gets to me. Just the thought of doing that is repulsive to me. The destruction of something with such age, history, and meaning is just terrible in so many ways. I was listening to an interview with the minister at that church on my way home from work tonight, and I just keep thinking about it, and how that whole community must feel right now. Appalling to think that someone may have done that. What a shame.

Damn, I just googled my Dad's name and found out he's been blowing up the news since September! I guess he's started a monthly service that people are encouraged to bring their dogs to. Sounds like cool stuff. Here's a couple articles if you want to check it out:

Filling the Pews ... with Paws from the Montreal Gazette (this one seemed to get circulated on the wire)
Pet Value: Quebec church launches 'paws and pray' from the Anglican Journal
Montreal hot for jet-set pets from Canoe.ca (not just about his church, but mostly, and some good quotes, one of which contradicts one in another article! shocking!)

Things like this, and quotes like “I always like to push boundaries a little bit,’’ definitely make me proud of the guy, so I just had to share.

(Image from here)
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Nancy Grows Up. Audio recordings of a girl growing up, reduced to just a little over 2 minutes. Heard this one on RadioLab, and had to find a version I could share. Very neat, and cute, and touching, and kind of sad in it's own way.
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More people I know in the media: Ben Ong on Jimmy Fallon. When I saw Ben mention this on Facebook, I totally thought it was a joke. Turns out it's true! And awesome! Yay Ben!
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Speaking of friends, Marc sent me this one, Bear Sleeping Bag. Crazy.

Apparently blogging fell apart on me last week as we found ourselves shopping for house stuff every evening.

This weekend, as the image above indicates (which was an awesome project to get to do, by the way), was Marc & Celene's wedding, which was a great time. Good people to hang out with all over the place. And now that it's over I can finally wear my groomsman shoes out and about. Got 'em on right now.

Hopefully I'll get back to posting more now, but we'll see, it's film guide time at the Princess right now...
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Jenna sent me this one and my only response was 'DAMN.' Nice stuff.
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Sometimes I just don't know what to make of Richard Linklater. I really want to love him. He made one of my favourite movies, employed some great sounding practices while doing so, and has also made a number of other interesting films. But then he's also made some crap.

I guess I didn't realize that Me and Orson Welles is one of his, but when I saw this poster for it, it just made me think that he's out to make some money, you know? I do think that the movie could be good, but the marketing is just so lacklustre and pandering feeling, you know? Citing School of Rock (mainstream, fun movie) and Before Sunset (romance!) is obviously toeing the mainstream line, versus the possible tag of 'From the Director of Dazed and Confused, Waking Life, and A Scanner Darkly,' which would definitely get ME to watch the movie. It's just hard to know what to make of such fluctuations.
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Speaking of artists fluctuating back and forth from mainstream to underground, Shepard Fairey designed the program for the Grammy's? Seriously? It's like, the worst award show.
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Somewhat entertaining, definitely tragic: Tacos exploding in slow motion