What is your Design Style?

I found this quiz via Elements of Style and I'm apparently Fatale Attraction (really?!):

Your home oozes glamour and romance. It's fabulous, sexy and sophisticated (just like you, non?!). Of course, you can have too much of a good thing, and sometimes holding back will create more impact than going hell for leather. You love life, and your home is perfect for good times and having fun.

Living Room
You are drawn to all things that combine beauty with adventure. This is a high-octane, unabashed, sensual look that encompasses everything that's luxurious, voluptuous and curvaceous. Think rich fabrics, textured materials and glossy surfaces. While glamour makes a big, bold statement, it also smacks of total comfort and fun. Modern accessories will make a sleek counterpoint, allowing an outstanding sofa, for example, to take centre-stage. Dark colours work well if you use the room mainly during the evenings and at night, while glamorous prints and patterns are fun and stylish. Curled up on the sofa with a good book, your living room's the perfect place for some "me-time".

Bedroom
Your bedroom has that classic look that never goes out of style. Sleep is fundamentally important to our well being. Clean, fresh air can truly aid sleep, but so, too, does a well-made bed and the best mattress you can afford. Touch is an important issue in the bedroom, from crisp, linen sheets to wool or even sheepskin underfoot. Elegance and relative simplicity are keynotes in your bedroom, using vibrant colours to make a bold statement.

Dining Room
You're a clean slate waiting for a dash of spice. Different meals and types of food lend themselves to different styles of dining. Think about how you live your life and even the sorts of places where you like to eat out, and use these to create a dining area that suits your needs and reflects your personality. When it comes to entertaining, you like quite simple (some might say 'peasant') food with big, robust flavours.

Home Office
Office life's never dull when you're around! No matter how independent you might be, like everybody else you'll have bills to pay. A dedicated home office will help you keep on top of the 'boring bits'. Space permitting, you can make a real 'statement' with your choice of desk -- a talking point for visitors and a pleasure for you to work at.

Conclusion
Your lust for life and having a good time shines through in every room of your home.

17 days and counting...

To my move and I'm spending the day sorting through, among other things, the piles of papers I have on my dresser, in boxes and on my desk in order to determine what to file away and what to toss. I am making a promise to myself today that when I'm in my own space, I am not going to run into the same predicament with account statements from the year-end still waiting to be filed. I vow to live an organized, mostly-clutter-free life!

Graham & Green

Ever since I first spied these ram's head chairs paired with the Tulip above, I've been smitten...and then when I saw the beautifully-patterned version below while browsing a house tour on Apartment Therapy I've been hoping to find them online...


...and I finally have, thanks to Rang Decor, who led me to Graham and Green! Check out these 2 swoon-worthy versions:

Embossed Metal-Covered Ram's Head Chair

Bone-Inlay Ram's Head Chair

And there's more!

Regency Bone Stool

Bone-inlay Chest of Drawers and Mirror

Mock Croc Desk

Barcelona Console Table

RIP Professor...

Professor Randy Pausch, who gave us The Last Lecture, succumbed to pancreatic cancer today at the age of 47.

Rest in peace, Professor.

Mythic Paint

I came across this ad for Mythic Paint while flipping through my latest copy of Domino yesterday and think it is timely and oh so clever with its reference to doping at the Tour de France...and I suppose one could assume that with the Olympics coming up, it could be referencing that too...but I don't think there is any sport as rife with doping as the Tour.

I'm taken with these blues as possibilities for my bedroom but it looks like they're only available in the US! :(

Summer Sounds

The boxed set of The Bossa Nova Years by Stan Getz has been on my wishlist for a few years now but it's a little dear for me to pay so how happy was I when I stopped by HMV during my lunch hour today at First Canadian and found a copy of Verve's Jazz 'Round Midnight series featuring Stan Getz, Astrud Gilberto and Joao Gilberto for the value price of $12.99?? It has a good sample of the songs I'm familiar with, like The Girl from Ipanema, Corcovado and It Might As Well Be Spring. Listening to the tracks on this disc immediately bring to mind refreshingly cool caipirinhas sipped out on the patio under a smiling sun. Mmmm...

Foxley

I had dinner with S&W at Foxley tonight and I understand now why W loves it so much because it was yummy goodness. We dined on blue crab and avocado salad, seabream ceviche, grilled jerk kingfish, beef cheeks in red curry and grilled pike mackerel - all of which was super-tasty but if I had to choose, it'd be a toss up between the crab and avocado salad and the ceviche...mmmm...I must go back soon!

Update: Ohmigosh! I just remembered the dessert! Black sesame creme brulee. How could forget the sweet, pseudo-savoury taste of the creamy dessert with hints of peanut butter? Mmmm....Seriously. I need to go back for more.

Want this

This combo shower curtain rod/towel bar strikes me as so practical not for its ability to hang drying towels but more for the drying of delicates like bras and such since I'd install it with the towel bar in rather than out like in the image. Lingerie could be handwashed and hung to dry, and if you've got unexpected guests, rather than a mad dash to hide away the wet pretties, you'd just have to pull the curtain! Genius!

Sleek 'n' Slim

I stopped by the Future Shop last week to pick up photos and was surprised by how affordable the HD flat panel TVs were with prices starting at $600 - I always thought they were $1000+ so I figured I'd have to wait a year or 2 before getting a sleek 'n' slim set.

I was flipping through the flyers last night and asked my brother how much he paid for his TV and why they were so cheap (it's all relative, I know)...so he started rhyming off things like resolution and contrast ratios and the like. We then exchanged the following dialogue:

Bro: Why don't you get a Sony TV?
Me: Why a Sony? Are they better?
Bro: I have a gift card with about $700 on it.
Me: (pause) Does this mean you're giving me the card?
Bro: (shrug) Sure.
Me: Really? Cool!

So instead of working, I googled Sony TV reviews last night and stopped at the Future Shop and Sony Store today after work to ask some questions.

I'm thinking 32" is just about the right size...not too big and not too small...as for the model, I'm thinking this one in particular for the pixels and contrast ratio and blah blah blah, plus it looks good:


So in return for the TV, I offered to take him to Italy with me. I'd already planted the seed with our cousins in Europe about a reunion in Italy next Spring so it'd be fun to have my brother there.

His reply? "If I have time."

Ha!

OMG the colour!

I LOVE tulips - they are one of my favourite flowers and I literally gasped out loud at the brilliant hues of the field of tulips above.

From the article:

With more than 10,000 hectares devoted to the cultivation of these delicate flowers, the Dutch landscape in May is a kaleidoscope of giddy colours as the tulips burst into life.

The bulbs were planted in late October and early November, and these colourful creations are now ready to be picked and sold as bunches of cut flowers in florists and supermarkets.

More than three billion tulips are grown each year and two-thirds of the vibrant blooms are exported, mostly to the U.S. and Germany.

I want a couple bunches of the brilliant fuschia and purple ones at the top of the photo! via

Feist counting on Sesame Street

via

The Hero and the Outlaw

I finally finished reading Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson's The Hero and the Outlaw, which my cousin, the budding Jungian analyst, had recommended to me a few years back. Prior to launching her own strategic consulting firm, Mark was an EVP at Young & Rubicam. Pearon is a pioneer in the field of applied Jungian psychology and is the President of the Center for Archetypal Studies and Applications.

The book is a dense read which lays out 12 archetypes including the Innocent, the Explorer, the Sage, the Hero, the Outlaw, the Magician, the Regular Guy/Gal, the Lover, the Jester, the Caregiver, the Creator and the Ruler that can be leveraged to create brands that resonate with consumers. Later chapters apply the archetypes to organizations and illustrate how disconnects between the organizatonal archetype and the employee make-up could lead to employee dissatisfaction.

The one example that totally resonated with me was the discussion of the re-incarnated Volkswagon Beetle:

Jay Mays, the creator of the new Beetle...likes to say that the car's design concept is as simple as three concentric circles, invoking, but reinterpreting, the spirit of its earlier incarnation. But looking at the design through the archetypal lens, we see that the "face" of the new Beetle is virtually identical to the face of an infant - with big eyes and a high, smooth forehead...Now that face, the face of the Innocent, has found expression in a unique and charming automotive design...we look at the reincarnated Beetle and want to smile. We may not know why, but we feel that it would be really great to drive one, to own one. For some inexplicable reason, we would want to own one in a primary colour. What we intuit as consumers, but cannot express, is our delight that the Innocent has been resurrected in such a clever new way.


The emphasis above is mine: When I see a Beetle, without fail, I smile...even the thought of one makes me smile. There is a part of me that wants to own one in the cheery green above but I would never actually go out and buy one because it's too cute a car and I don't feel that I am a cute person, yet the thought of it gives me pleasure...My attraction to the lovable Bug was inexplicable to me before, but now I understand. The Beetle appeals to the Innocent in me.

Oh, and MAJOR pet peeve? The poor copy-editing! So awful and distracting! I had the same problem reading The Interpretation of Murder. Mark was referred to variously by her first name and her last name, which got to be rather confusing because her last name could be a first name, and I found misplaced articles and misspelt words. Why the sloppy copy-editing??! So unnecessary and very disappointing.

Zuster

Love this table by Australia-based Zuster.

Inside Out March 2008 via.

New TV Classics

I was listening to the morning show on CHFI on my way to mandarin class and Erin and Mike were talking about Entertainment Weekly's round-up of the new TV classics of the last 25 years with qualification that they had to be no longer in production. Each of the personalities named their Top 5, which got me started on thinking what my Top 5 would be...and they are:

1. The West Wing
2. Sex and the City
3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
4. Ally McBeal
5. Studio 60 and the Sunset Strip

What's on your Top 5?

21%

According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list. via

The instructions:
Look at the list and:
Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read
Underline the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984 - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92.The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Status Check

It's mid-term appraisal time at work and I've begun thinking about my job and whether or not it's perhaps time to move on. This thinking was spurred by the announcement that one of my contacts in Finance is leaving, as well as a conversation with AL. Then today, I got an email from AD, who I haven't been in contact with in over 6 months.

He forwarded a job posting for a role that is not dissimilar to the one I have now, but likely pays better...so I'm definitely re-evaluating, whereas when AL asked me if I had given any thought to new options, my answer was that I was pretty content and engaged still in the work I was doing.

Now that I've thought about it...am I really learning anything new? A model is a model is a model...the variables change but the framework is essentially the same. Perhaps a new challenge in the way of a change in industry wouldn't be out of order...or would setting up a new home AND looking for a new job be just a little too much new-ness?

5 weekends and counting...

...before my big move!

On the To-Do List for this weekend:
~ drop off dressers at the refinisher's
~ spray end tables*
~ complete mortgage application form
~ organize my out-of-season shoes
~ itemize the already-packed boxes in the basement
~ give myself a pedicure
~ colour my hair because my grey roots are showing :(

* My original intention was to have the pair of icky brass finish end tables nickel-plated, but after calling around to get estimates for that and the drawer pulls for my dressers, it looks like a no-go for the tables because they're too big for whatever machine metallurgists use to plate things. So, plan B is to spray them in a chrome finish. It's SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper too, considering that what I paid for 2 cans of paint is about on par with the cost of having one drawer pull nickel-plated!

Cute little kitties...

Geoff Howe / THE CANADIAN PRESS via

How adorable are these white bengal tiger cubs that were unveiled today at the Children's Zoo section of the Saskatoon Forestry Farm Park and Zoo in Saskatchewan? They are Jasmine and Jafar, born on May 31 to a pair that is on loan from the Toronto Zoo.

5 cans...

...and 2 super-itchy mosquito bites later, my screen is mostly finished. There are spots from drippy spray cans which I can't decide are noticeable enough yet to irk me so much so that I will have to go over them again with a can of paint and a foam brush. I think I'll leave them for now and see. It looks pretty brilliant in white, non?

Looking at the pattern, I'm reminded of Morrocan furniture with their inlaid mother-of-pearl designs so I searched eBay and came across this gorgeous table which I'm imagining as my bedside instead of the Eileen Gray I'd purchased a few months ago:

We'll have to see how the bedroom looks once I've got everything in place - this isn't the only mother of pearl coffee table out there, afterall.

For Piglet

I came across this print thanks to Wanderluster and am thinking of getting one customized for my neice, who I will be seeing sooner rather than later since I'm redeeming my points to fly my sister and Piglet into town just after my move.

I'm so excited to see the little piggy again! We Skype a few times a week and she's so smiley and butterball-y now it kills me. She'll be 7 mos tomorrow and at her last weigh-in she was 21 lbs and 27 inches long!

Painting Finger

I stopped by my refinisher's this afternoon to check out the paint sample they're proposing for my dressers. I want them painted a bright white, and the colour they've sampled for me to see is an antique white that errs on the cream, so off I went afterwards to pick out my own white, Behr's Ultra Pure White.

I spent over an hour there chatting first about the paint and then about the armchair, which I was thinking of painting black and re-upholstering in a fresh white and green fretwork pattern...but M thinks the fabric may be too light. I'm not ready to give up yet...I'll call BB Bargoons back to ask about the rub count on the fabric...and if it's insufficient, I'll just have to head back out to search again. There's no rush to get the chair finished in time...but I need my dressers for the move and M has promised to have them ready for me. So yay!!

I spent the rest of the late afternoon spray-painting my screen-cum-headboard a glossy white. 3 cans and 2 cramped-up index finger later I'm thinking let's forget about painting both sides of the screens and just do the one which will face out. It will probably be another 3 cans of paint at least to have them evenly covered on the one side and am I really going to use them as a screen afterwards? I mean, really?? Short-sighted of me, I know, but my finger hurts! The skin on my right index is tender like the skin gets when you're developing a blister. It's THAT bad! (Plus, I'm wimp.)

I've got a date....

...for my condo's pre-delivery inspection!! I got the news via email today and it's the end of the month!!! Which made me realize OMG, it's for real! I am moving into my own place!

The anxiety and excitement has been building...I've been thinking the last few weeks about shopping around for a better mortgage rate as they've dropped since I first signed for the builder's rate almost 3 years ago. And I've begun to think more seriously about what I have to do for my move.

I had this grand plan to begin purging and sorting stuff this past long weekend but work has been crazy and now that I've got co-op boy to manage, between meetings, my own work that comes from these meetings and making sure that he has work to do, there really isn't time for me during the day...so I've been bringing work home which SUCKS!

Anyway, I was on the subway heading into work this morning and finally had to buckle down and begin a list of things to do because I just couldn't focus on my reading anymore for all the noise that's in my head. There has GOT to be a handy-dandy checklist online somewhere I could leverage to organize myself!

The battery's running low on my Macbook...I promised myself I would only work as long as there was juice so I'm calling it a night!

Happy Canada Day!

It's been an extra long weekend for me since my SVP gave us yesterday off. Despite his generosity in the free vacation day, I still spent the day working since I'm in back-to-back meetings tomorrow from 9 to 4:30 and have to present in 2 of them. Sigh.

But enough about work. I went out first thing this morning for a run after pulling on a pair of capris yesterday that fit perfectly fine last summer but are now a bit snug - a clear sign that I've been totally slacking off since the Sporting Life 10K in late April. But it's a new month and I'm making a new commitment to get back into a routine! I mostly ran my 6.5K route and am now back home cooling down before hitting the shower.

I've a few friends coming over later today for a BBQ so I better get a move on!