Had a pretty great weekend that consisted of 3 days of antique markets. Spent about 1 hour on Friday at the St. Jacob's antique market (with its big sale!) before it closed on Friday, went back on Saturday to finish up in about another 2 hours, then went to the southworks one in Cambridge with JT's parents. Amongst other things I scored the above stapler (the Apsco A9), one of these pretty sweet salt and pepper shakers, and we started assembling a pyrex bowl set. Spent a lot of time looking at sets other people had put together, but realized we could get something where every bowl is in better shape, and is exactly the colour we want if we buy it all piece by piece (if possibly a little more expensive). Jenna has a radar for spotting pyrex bowls, even if they're hidden behind like 8 other things and she has to move something big to get to them. Impressive. She spotted my stapler too, after I had walked right past it.

Solid weekend.
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Pretty badass shirt... Can only find a version for sale that I don't like nearly as much.
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Also, we've started papercrafting. More on that another time.

Best.Episode Title. Ever.

Supernatural comes back this week, and I am excited. It's funny, I used to make fun of Jenna for watching the show, but now, it is one of my favourite shows on tv. Witty, scary, smart, highly self-aware, bad-ass. There is also the eye candy: hot girls, a bitchin' car, and, of course, Sam and Dean.

On to the subject of the matter though... Supernatural has had a number of good show titles over time ("Are You There God? It's Me... Dean Winchester" and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester" in this season alone), but last night Jenna told me the title of next weeks' episode, and it takes the cake:
"Criss Angel is a Douche Bag"
It almost makes me even stop being excited for this weeks' episode. I love it. Couldn't be more true. Can't wait to see what they do with it.
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And I know I've posted this before, but while we're on Supernatural, I feel we should all watch this hilarious little video again.

It's a big day for Waterloo. As some of you may know, I've been complaining for awhile that the only place to get Mexican food around town (except for special nights at certain places), is Taco Bell, and, well, you know how much you can consider that Mexican. Well, as of today, a step is being taken in the right direction. Casa Salsa, the Mexican place in the Kitchener market (that I've never gotten around to going to, but I have heard decent reviews of) opens today in University Plaza! That's conveniently right along one of our potential routes home! I can't wait to eat there. I'm thinking Wednesday, 'cause Tuesday is, of course, Taco Tuesday at Ethel's, and tonight Jenna's mom is making fajita's because it was my birthday last week. Things just couldn't be better for this upcoming 3 nights of dinner! I'll let you know how it goes when I do go there.

Also, love the Casa Salsa phone number: 725-TACO. Gotta remember that if I get to pick my own number sometime.

(picture, of course, from Toothpaste for Dinner)
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Being a fan of Ace of Cakes, I, like many I am sure, have imagined how awesome it would be to get them to make me a cake. Yesterday I decided to cruise by the Charm City Cakes website, rolled over to their FAQ and found out that the minimum cost of one of their cakes is $1000! Looks like I won't be getting one of those anytime soon!
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These bikes look amazing! Super light, super strong, and super awesome looking. I don't remember what I was searching for images of when I stumbled upon that post, but I was definitely stopped in my tracks.
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I totally meant to post this before Christmas, and then it got lost in my emails as I sent it to myself to post: a wonderful program cover for a production of A Christmas Carol. I love so much about it, but mostly the fact that Scrooge is shaped like a Christmas Tree. Pretty great.

Pull down their pants and...

If Drew continues to be as prolific, and can get more books printed, preferably compiling all of his work, he could usurp Gary Larson for best bathroom comic book read. While I can never quite be bothered to get around to reading all of his work online, I was reading Drew's first book (in the bathroom, of course...) and almost crapped myself when I read the above comic. Luckily I was in the right place...

Seriously though, laugh-out-loud, ridiculous, often too true one panel comics? Tell me that doesn't sound like the Far Side.

Special Delivery

While I haven't come back to post here in almost a month, I do keep returning to the above picture on Shorpy. Just a great image. Check it out real big. I can never say enough good about Shorpy.
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So I've been in what I call "cocoon mode," where things are just a little too hectic, so I pull back and avoid anything and everything that I don't HAVE to do. Of course, "have" does include spending time with family and friends, but you know, I gots my priorities.

For the quick Christmas re-cap, I had a great one, that included a hard fought for Wii (Jenna's parents both lined up separately before stores opened to pick one up), and this amazing piece by Timber that she managed to find and buy before I even knew it existed. You may know I love Timber, and I usually buy anything I see from him that I like as soon as I see it, so yeah, good score. Big surprises, awesome presents. The rest of it was great too, like having family over here for Christmas chili, getting to see my mom, and lots of time spent with The Suze and Big Ronnie T.

Now on to a tonne of links I've been meaning to share for awhile now...
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A beautiful Calgary manhole cover. From another favourite, of course, the Canadian Design Resource.
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Orla Kiely does some real pretty work, that keeps popping up in different places. The water bottle here is just cute.
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Luggage tags seem to be a huge colletibles market. This one might be my favourite I have ever seen around the old internet. The colours, the drawing style, the clean crisp typeface, the nice script, the shape, everything. But really, the illustration and colour especially. Perfect.
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Here's some interesting stuff from box vox, both related to chocolate, which I'm sure a lot of you, like me, have a lot of sitting around right now...
The Canadian $.05 chocolate bar revolt. In 1947 candy bar companies tried to raise the price of a chocolate bar from 5 cents to 8 cents, but Canadian kids were not having it. The Five Cent War is definitely a movie I wouldn't mind checking out.
And trust the Germans to make chocolate (more) evil: A "chocolate grenade," yes, a grenade disguised as a chocolate bar... Apparently there was more than one type of this in WWII. Evil.
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Finally, you gotta love Lincoln. Well, Obama rightfully does, and he and the democrats seem to be taking Lincoln away from the Republicans. Good call. I never even realized he was a Republican, but then, it was a whole different party back then, from what I hear.
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If you're not doing anything tonight, DJ Bearface! will be playing tracks all by his lonesome at the Jane Bond (that is, minus DJ88), so come by and say hi.

I have to say that I am really enjoying getting to create stuff for Stitch n' Kitsch. Cute and crafty is basically what I think of when I think of SnK, and that works really well for the way my head works. Up top there is a post card I created for them to promote their spring sale at their upcoming winter sale (which is December 13, by the way).
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I just can't believe this one. Who decided that creating that was a good idea? Really? Or, once they created it, how did they not realize it looked like it was burning and decide that selling it might not be the best idea?
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When I first spotted this poster the other day, I thought it was pretty great. Then I flipped over to the comments and read how it was created: "Each poster background was masked and spraypainted by hand using 2 metallic colors. The trees were drawn and the rest of the layers were created using spray paint and masking techniques that were scanned into the computer to print the vellums. The only thing that wasn't made by hand was the type."

That's pretty impressive if you ask me. I mean, I create digital files that get printed digitally. I'm already impressed by people who screen print all of their posters. But then this? Seriously Impressive.
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Apparently United Visual Artists created a video for Battles' Tonto. I actually own the single for this song, and the cover art is taken from this video, but it never occurred to me that this was where the art came from. "The video consists of our documentation of the band’s marathon 11 hour performance". Impressive. (Apparently I'm impressed this morning...)
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Loving this cutting board, but, like many things I've liked from House, expensive. Makes me want a woodshop so's I could create my own.
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A great little explosion of colour. Don't know if this is staged, or for real, but it's pretty great regardless.
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Finally got some of my newer posters up on gigposters, with two more waiting to be approved. Feeling pretty good about some of this stuff lately, so I keep wanting to share.

Charley Harper at Old Navy? A shopping trip this weekend yielded that surprise. You can bet I was excited to see him out in public more, even if it is at Old Navy. The printing on the t-shirts isn't very good, and all of the books and whatnot are cheaper on Amazon (what isn't?), but you have to assume that a lot more kids could end up learning their abc's from Charley's beautiful art now. We actually didn't buy any of it, due to the aforementioned better prices on Amazon, but still... What I did buy was this pretty great pair of pj pants.
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Google is hosting the Life magazine photo archives, which is a pretty crazily large collection of some amazing photography (article about it). I haven't gotten a chance to look too much into it, but photos keep showing up in other places, like this great picture of the first enclosed shopping mall on Shorpy.
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Did you know that the distinctive Coke bottle shape was designed by a Canadian? Neither did I. Okay, so technically he was an American living in Toronto, but you know, close. Anyway, box vox posted the original patent application for the bottle shape, which is kind of neat to see.
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Some movies I'm looking forward to/hoping to get to see at some point:
The Brothers Bloom (Brick director Rian Johnson's new one)
Dear Zachary (I feel like I would likely cry through a good chunk of)
Beautiful Losers (I've mentioned this before, but I really want to see it!
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I've got more stuff sitting in tabs I've been meaning to mention, but it's time for work!