Been doing more book reading than blog-reading this past week. By the way, you should read City of Thieves by David Benioff. Jenna got me to read it, and it was real good. Aside from reading, this weekend I spent a lot of time re-arranging, sweeping, vacuuming, mowing, baking and more.  Busy weekend, with satisfying results.
------
That image above is a crop of this image from Shorpy. I just love that giant hat.
------
Here's an interesting little article on the founder of Best Made Co., who make really pretty axes. I frequently browse and covet their axes. They're really nice, but pretty impractical. If I had a ridiculous amount of extra money, I might buy one though. Like that's every going to happen...

------
Living in: Stand by Me. I always find this feature on design*sponge interesting, but this has got to be my favourite so far. I think about this movie, and it's look and feel a lot. Many things trigger it. I've always loved the idea of it, and the image of the boys, and their bedrolls, trudging down the tracks. Particularly the bedrolls. There's just something about bedrolls...
------
Speaking of camping, look how pretty these trailers are. Super compact, and super classy.
------
Soviet Posters Recreated With Barbie Dolls. Genius.
------
Caffeinated Maple-Bacon Lollipops. Wow. These things just have it all, don't they? Damn.
------
Just what is letterpress? Here's a nice little Q&A with the guy from Studio on Fire, answering questions about what letterpress is, and why it is currently popular, in case you didn't already know these things...

If Fonts Were Dogs. Been thinking about dogs a lot lately. Not ready for one yet, but maybe someday. Looking at adorable puppies on kijiji is both great and terrible.

------

Hobbit houses in real life. How long have I wanted to live in a hobbit hole (just ignore how poorly I might fit in one for a second...)? Pretty much for ever. Neat stuff.

------

Nintendo cartridge harmonica. So clever! Awesome!

------

Fixing monuments with lego. Clever & awesome as well. Neat stuff.

------

Hey Marc, speaking of things you might in a beautiful dream, check this out. OH MAN could not be more correct. I want to eat that. Of course, the chance of dying immediately would be high, but it might be worth it... Except I just realized that it looks like it's made with cheese slices. Missed opportunity on that one.

------

While looking for something else today, I discovered these shoes, and instantly became obsessed with the idea of them. Neat stuff. I'd like to try on a pair. Buying them seems impractical obviously, but just to try them on could be pretty cool.

New Things

Kitchen pictures are up on flickr. I finally got around to it. The set has the pics from the original real estate listing, then ones we took after we had gutted the place, then what it looks like now. I wish I had a wide angle lens, so that I could get more in and have it not look so cramped, but what can you do? Don't ever hire me to be your real estate photographer...

Very happy with the outcome. It feels way too nice to be my kitchen. I'm so glad that we pulled the fridge and stove back into the room and put that new bathroom back there. Love it. Couldn't have done it without the help of Jenna's parents, very thankful for that. I've got pictures of Ron and I doing some of the tiling that I'll post later (Jenna was tiling too, but taking the pictures, so she's not in them).
------
Jenna bought me a WD TV unit for my birthday and, if you ask me, it's one of the best things ever. Since we bought our new tv on boxing day, we'd been watching a lot of downloaded videos by hooking my computer up to the tv. It was nice to watch things on the tv, but it was really annoying me that I couldn't use my computer while watching things. With the WD TV, we download stuff, put it on my USB drive, plug it into the tiny little WD TV box, and blam, it's on the tv. We've watched so much stuff! Lots of tv, a few movies. Good times. Highly recommended if you enjoy watching downloaded videos.
------
For Christmas, Jenna's mom bought Jenna Bananagrams, and I highly recommend it as well, if you like word games at all. It's like Scrabble, but there's no board, and you play off your own words trying to use up all your letters before your opponent(s). Love it.
------
Also new, I finally have my full G driver's license. Got it Friday.

Birthday Tacos.

The Tuesday closest to your birthday is, by default, your birthday tacos. I've missed a number of taco nights recently, but I certainly won't be missing tonight's!
------
By the way, yes, that is a taco on our Christmas tree. I am so happy with our first Christmas tree here, and we both have been getting sad that its going to have to go. The shape is perfect (for us), and there are so many little things that I love on it! I'm uploading pictures right now to my flickr account, so check it out later to see more.
------
I haven't been posting much, because we've either been busy working, or busy relaxing. We just finished Dexter season 4, which was amazing. So stressful at times! So good! We're almost finished the kitchen. We put up the backsplash over last week, and grouted this weekend. I"ve always wanted to try grouting, and definitely enjoyed it.

I've been asked why I haven't put more pictures of the house up here. I should be doing that soon. I haven't to this point because I don't want to ruin the final impact of the finished project. I want that punchy before and after, you know? So give it a week or two.
------
I've also been neglecting my google reader, so there's not much to share, but here's a few things:

Mini chair jewelery. Awesome. Reminds me of the mini replicas of famous chairs you can buy (and that my friend Jen G. has some of, making me jealous of her).

Record covers re-done with super heroes. Have I ever mentioned that I owned a sleeveless Purple Rain sweatshirt when I was a kid? Sleeveless. Sweatshirt. There's a picture I'll have to find...

Vans Spring Classics. All in light grey. Nice. Damn I'd love those Sk8-Hi's.

This kid is so stylish! Seriously!

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)
------
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...
------
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.
------
Few, my Firefox is way slimmer now! Hope you enjoy some of that stuff.

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...
------
Jenna sent me this one and my only response was 'DAMN.' Nice stuff.
------
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.
------
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.
------
Somewhat entertaining, definitely tragic: Tacos exploding in slow motion

That right there is the front of our house. I love the flower box Jenna's dad built for us, and the plants Jenna's mom picked out to go in it. As soon as it went up, our house got a lot cuter.

This weekend I finally got around to painting the eaves around the porch, so we took some pictures of the front of our house. I uploaded them, as well as the pictures that were up on the realtor's website, to flickr so I could show them off. Two sets: Before & After

The kitchen has been pushed back to "earliest October," ie. as soon in October as they can have the cabinets built, and I can't wait for that. Obviously there will be more pictures to come then.
------
At one point on our mini road trip, Jenna made a comment about a Holiday Inn Express sign. I believe it was about the colouring (H.I.Express being blue, vs. the typical H.I. green), and how the new logo just doesn't feel right. The whole Holiday Inn overhaul came at least a year ago, and it's still bothersome to me too. The old one wasn't perfect, but when you get to see it on this classic sign here, how could you ever want anything else? (via the DDC)
------
The other day I looked at my feet and imagined what it would be like to have a pair of Jack Purcell's that were made of grey wool. I decided it would be awesome. Simple and classy, it would suit the shoe. These, shoes have confirmed that for me. Now if I just knew who to talk to at converse to get this done...
------
I've often enjoyed the different ways Google plays with their logo for special events, achievements, birthdays and whatnot, and I've often wondered if they have archived copies of all of the different things they have done sitting around somewhere. If they haven't been archiving them, someone has, and you can see a bunch of them here. It's aways nice to see people taking the time to add that extra little touch. Even when by "people" you mean "giant company". What can I say though, I do love Google.
------
While I am not much of a baseball fan at all, these here are some clever/witty infographics.
This one, in particular, is great. Something important for the kids to learn, for sure. (via the DDC)
------
I really want to try these chips! I've been keeping an eye out for them, but have not stumbled across any yet, sadly...

Today's the big day. Well, tomorrow's the big day, since I haven't gone to sleep yet. Can't wait to get the keys and get in there. Lots of things to do. Paint colours to choose. Appliances large and small to buy. Things to learn. Can't wait.

Pictures to come for sure. Stressed out times to come for sure too...

On to other things for now though...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loving this skateboard. Habitat's always done nice stuff, but putting Charley Harper on a deck? nice work. There's other ones too, check 'em out here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recently I noticed that the building that housed Byma's Tire & Auto in the Bridgeport plaza was being torn down. This got me really worried about the beautiful large Firestone sign that has sat on the outskirts of the parking lot on Bridgeport for as long as I can remember.

Turns out my worries were warranted. Before I even got out to take some photographs to document its existence, the sign has been removed. What a shame. I just looked up Byma's online and it turns out they have simply moved, not folded, so now my only hope is that the sign is moving with them to their new home. I've emailed them to find out if that is the case. Failing that, maybe they can tell me where it has gone so I can go take pictures of it.

This is just one of those things that makes me sad. It's just a damn shame to see the nice things go, while crap keeps going up. Draplin sums this kind of thing all up very nicely here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's some real gorgeous business cards. Not surpisingly made by Studio on Fire, and not surprising made for Space 150.

Amazingly, Space 150 completely redesigns their design identity every 150 days. Completely. Like, letterheads, everything. Every 150 days. That's huge. Major commitment there. Just imagine the expenditure even...

Check out more of the stuff Studio on Fire has done for them here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In movie watching news. DO NOT watch S. Darko. Terrible.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I feel like I had more to say, but I guess not. Too many other things to think about I think.