When Old Stuff Costs a Fortune, Make Your Own

I’m really miffed.

Old stuff is in.  Clothing, jewellery, furniture–you name it, it’s back in vogue.  And now it costs a fortune.

Recently I’ve been looking for an old farm table for my kitchen.  It wasn’t long ago that you could find one in a flea market for pennies. Not any more. Now they cost $1,000 or more, simply because there’s a demand now–and sometimes it’s not even reclaimed lumber.  What a rip-off.

I decided to make my own. Not the entire table, mind you, but the top.  This is what I did:

I took a trip to home depot and bought a couple of planks of pine framing lumber.  The nice home depot guy cut it for me, and did me an extra favour and cut down the legs of existing pub table (thanks Cory).

Then I beat the crap out of them, using my hammer, wood chisel, screws, and carpet ripper.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

That was the fun part.  Next, I applied some stain more or less willy-nilly.  I used American something-or-other and Colonial Maple.

Mix and Match Stain

So far so good.  Notice Clancy the cat resting on his perch near the window.  He didn’t give a fig about all the noise.  Buddy the dog, on the other hand, was hiding in the basement.

Anyway, I finished the rest of the beating and staining, and here’s the table so far:

Next to do is apply the polyacrylic finish, affix the planks, and then work on the legs.  Not bad, eh?

I love it when ideas actually come to fruition, and for a fraction of the cost.

Ah, Home Ownership

My front lawn has grubs.  If you’ve never had the pleasure, it looks like 1400 golfers used my lawn as a driving range and left 14,000 divot holes.  The little buggers are chowing down big time, and soon my lawn will be a distant memory.

Can someone remind me why I bought a house?

I often wonder this.  The main reason, I think, was because I didn’t want to share walls anymore.  I wanted peace and quiet.  Which I don’t get, by the way, since I’ve got a jackass for a neighbour that plays really crappy music until all hours of the morning. So much for peace and quiet.  My apartment was quieter.

Back to the lawn situation.  I refuse to spend tons of money to fertilize, water, etc, in order to get a decent-looking lawn.  For that much money, I want something more or less permanent.

Which brings me to the best invention since sliced bread.  Grassless lawns.  Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?  But check this out:

Looks real, eh?  It’s artificial turf called SYNLAWN.

SYNLAWN is made for different types of foot traffic, both human and canine.  The cost is approximately $15 a square foot, so it’s not cheap.  The other option I’m considering is combining the use of SYNLAWN with landscaping, as in these photos:

While these options are costly, as least they’re permanent ones.  And I can’t wait to see grubs choke down synthetic grass.

Revenge is sweet.

Painting and a Purple Heart

I can scarcely believe it’s been a month since I’ve last posted.

I’ve been up to my armpits in Annie Sloan chalk paint, repainting (yes, repainting) my kitchen cupboards.  My house is a mess.  I’ve also repainted my living room and bedroom:

Living Room in decator buff, by Benjamin Moore

Bedroom in duck egg by Annie Sloan

Buddy thought the living room carpet was grass and promptly pooped on it the next morning.

The bedroom walls are more blue than in the photo.  Looks really nice with the Wesley Allen iron headboard.  Speaking of the headboard, it retails for over $700 Canadian, not including delivery.  I got it for $500 U.S., including delivery.  Not to0 shabby!

In other news, I finally gave myself a purple heart.

It’s made of purpleheart wood with an inlay of crushed opal.  I just love it.  If you’re interested in these types of rings, go to Etsy and visit Matt at MnM Woodworks.

Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride

Our bridge to Target.

I live in a relatively small city bordering the Great Lakes.   Those of us who live here benefit from a low cost of living, affordable housing, and all the beaches and waterfront property we can stand. If we hanker for excitement, we have easy access to two major highways which connect us to the major cities of Ontario.

Our beaches are just outside our door.

We suffer from one shortcoming, however:  we aren’t situated on the 401 corridor, the major highway in Ontario.  The outcomes of our regrettable geography are many.  For example, we are the last to receive social service funding, standing in line behind similarly sized cities which ARE on the corridor.

Also,  we are the last–if ever–to receive expansions of commerce.  I didn’t know that major retailers had  ”tiered” stores until I moved here.  There are “first tier” stores, which have all the departments and merchandise sold by the retailer; there are “second tier” stores, which have fewer departments and less merchandise, and finally, there are “third tier” stores, which can be reduced to a lonely kiosk in the center of a shopping mall.

Body Shop is a good example is this.   When it first opened here, Body Shop was a bone fide store, with walls and everything. After a few years, it was reduced to a teeny kiosk near the food court.  A year or so later, it got its walls back again, although with less product.  According to Body Shop staff, the kiosk experiment failed.  Another example of this kind of corporate stupidity is the Cleo retailer.  Cleo sells women’s clothing, both for work and leisure.  It’s one of the few stores that caters to adult females, with adult female figures.  I happened to be in London shopping one day, and saw a sweater I liked. When I got home, I decided to drive to our local Cleo store to buy it.  The store manager said that our store didn’t carry it, and that if we wanted certain merchandise they would have to call the London store–which would, in turn get the sale credit.

From a store with walls to a lonely kiosk–and back again.

Now the Target retailer is coming to Canada.  No more cross-border shopping, we cheered.  But wait–we’re not getting a Target.  Every single comparable town and city within a 200 km radius is.    What is up with that, anyway?

I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait an hour on the bridge, pay the toll, get hassled by customs, all for the pleasure of shopping at the American Target.

I say we should boycott.  Any takers?  ;)

Believe It Or Not

I was watching a documentary the other evening about these amazingly life-like dolls, called “Reborn” dolls.  They’re not mass produced, but created by individuals who sell them on-line.  Take a look at these, and remember–they’re not real:

Aren’t they amazing?  Not only do they look real, but their little bodies are weighted to feel real.

The dolls are purchased (or “adopted”) mainly by women (for themselves, not for their children.)  One woman, a mother of teen-age boys, said that she liked to go home and cuddle her doll after a hard day because it relaxed her.  Another woman took her doll with her when she ran errands, explaining that she liked the company.

I must say I’d love to hold one for a few minutes, but I can’t imagine dropping $4,000 for one.  I think I’ll stick to my fur babies.

 

(Mis)Adventures

I’m a junkie of nonfiction books about surviving misadventures–at sea, in the air, on the ground, you name it.

Being as how it’s winter and I’m kind of in semi-hybernation, I’ve read a few of these books the past week, and would like to recommend a few to you.

You look good enough to eat, said the starving man.

Desperate Passage:  The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West (Ethan Rarick).

In 1846, A wagon train of families decided to move from Missouri to California, taking the advice of an ill-informed Lansford Hastings as to the best route:  a shortcut which he himself had never travelled.  This delayed the journey significantly, and by the time the wagon train reached the sierras it was too late to continue.  They hunkered down for the winter, without sufficient food and barely any shelter,  subsisting on their own dead to survive.  Of the initial 87 travellers, only 47 survived (women fairing much better than men), not counting some members of various rescue parties who themselves perished in the attempt to bring the travellers to safety.

David Shaw, diving in Bushman’s Hole, Africa

Raising the Dead:  A True Story of Death and Survival ( Phillip Finch).

In 2004, David Shaw became one of only 11 people in the world who dived below a depth of 240 metres, at Bushman’s Hole in Africa.  It was during that dive that he discovered the body of 20-year old Deon Dreyer, who had died 10 years earlier and whose body was too mired in muck for Shaw to retrieve.  Shaw went back a year later with a team of divers, including his teacher and friend Don Shirley, determined to bring Dreyer up to the surface. Shirley almost lost his life in the effort, and Shaw–wearing a camera for a documentary about the rescue– records his own death.

One of the survivors with an unhappy little cannibal.

Lost in Shangri-La:  A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of WWII (Mitchell Zuckoff).

In May 1945, 24 American serviceman and WACS board a transport plane for a bit of sight-seeing over the mountains of Dutch New Guinea and crash, with only three people surviving in a land inhabited by cannibals.  Since the locale is only reachable for parachute–or plane crash, the army scrambles to figure out how to get the survivors out.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

My Name is Tahitian Goddess, and I am an Etsy Addict

God help me and my bank account, but I’m addicted to Etsy.  For those of you who may not know about it, Etsy is an on-line shopping site which allows artisans and collectors to sell their wares.  It operates as a virtual craft fair, selling everything and anything from vendors all over the world.

Here are a few items I’ve purchased so far:

Linen pillow covers in shabby chic, from Debbie’s Porch.

Silver “birch” ring, from Sheena Jewellery

 

And this is what I’ve purchased and is being made as we speak:

My crone ring in wood, with purpleheart liner in place of the black ebony liner, from MnM Woodworks.

 

And I’m not finished yet.  I’ve got my eye on these items:

Victoria Teague Hand-Forged Jewellery on Etsy.

 

Kekugi Leather Braclets for Men and Women

 

MaryAnneKarren Jewellery

 

Shopping on-line sure beats shoveling snow.

Chow Time

Recently, I decided to get some take-out from East Side Marios. It was a Saturday night and the restaurant was extremely busy–and noisy.  In fact, it’s one of the noisiest restaurants around, designed to sound like a busy New York bistro with its high acoustic metal ceilings.  I don’t know how people eat there–it’s like dining beside a runway during takeoff.

Anyway, as I was marvelling at the gastric constitution (and auditory tolerance) of East Side Marios’ patrons, it got me to thinking about other restaurant gimmicks.  Of course, there are some doozies. Here are some that stood out:

1. Guo-Li-Zhuang. Located in Beijing, this unusual restaurant specializes in serving up the penis and testes of animals of various species, such as horse, ox, dog, monkey, and sheep.  Note to self:  never eat here.

Ok. I’m gonna barf.

2.  Senses.  Senses is one of many restaurants of its type where patrons dine in pitch-black darkness, and are waited on by blind staff, or sighted staff wearing night-time vision goggles. While Senses allows you to select your dinner from a menu, other restaurants, like Dark Restaurant in the Ukraine, keeps its menu a mystery.  (You are allowed to tell wait staff what foods you dislike, however, just in case penis meat doesn’t appeal to you.)

Night-vision goggled wait staff serving mystery food in the dark. What’s not to like?

3.  Dinner in the Sky.  As the name implies, diners are hoisted 50 metres in the sky to partake of various culinary delights, served by approximately 5 staff at the table’s centre. Assuming the crane and cables don’t break and there’s no air turbulence, I think this could be fun.

Eating mid-air: pray there’s no air turbulence.

4.  Urban Pooch Cafe.  Now this one I like.  Located in Singapore, parents and furkids can dine together, cafeteria style.  Menu items include food for doggie and parent.  The restaurant also hosts dog “pawties”, has a doggie play area, and dog grooming services.

Food, parties, and more for the discerning dog.

5.  Bed Supperclub.  Feeling tired after a long day?  Thailand’s Bed Supperclub is for you. According to the website,

BED SUPPERCLUB is a ‘dining in bed’ experience. Best described as a unique combination of upscale restaurant, club, art gallery, theatre and stage merged into one. Housed in a custom-built building with a modern, all white futuristic setting, BED crosses the divide between dining and cutting edge entertainment. BED is the place you take your shoes off, lay down and feel at home.

Wonder if you can wear your jammies.

This all sounds exotic, but I wish they would bring back the good ole` drive-in restaurant, like Big Boy. You don’t have to leave your car, get all artsy-fartsy, eat mystery food, or eat while dangling in the air. Plus, the wait staff rollerskate carrying full trays of food, which is always fun to watch.

Canadian, eh?

Yes, we are a breed apart, we Canadians.  If you believe the rumours, we’re unfailingly polite, worship hockey, and “eh” punctuates the end of every sentence.

If you’re unfamiliar with Canada (that’s ok, we’re used to it), here’s a quick summary:

That might clear things up.  If not, Jeff Foxworthy explains us nicely:

If your local Dairy Queen is closed from September through May, you may live in Canada. If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don’t work there, you may live in Canada.  If you’ve worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you may live in Canada. If you’ve had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed a wrong number, you may live in Canada.  If ‘Vacation’ means going anywhere south of Detroit for the weekend, you may live in Canada. If you measure distance in hours, you may live in Canada. If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you may live in Canada. If you have switched from ‘heat’ to ‘A/C’ in the same day and back again, you may live in Canada. If you can drive 90 kms/hr through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching, you may live in Canada. If you install security lights on your house and garage, but leave both unlocked, you may live in Canada. If you carry jumper cables in your car and your wife knows how to use them, you may live in Canada.  If you design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit, you may live in Canada. If the speed limit on the highway is 80km — you’re going 90 and everybody is passing you, you may live in Canada.  If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow, you may live in Canada.  If you know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction, you may live in Canada. If you have more miles on your snow blower than your car, you may live in Canada.  If you find 2 degrees ‘a little chilly’, you may live in Canada. And if you don’t take yourself very seriously, you definitely are Canadian.

Let Your Spirit Soar

Earlier this year, I made the online acquaintance of Magically Mad, a very talented wordpress writer who, like me, suffers from bipolar disorder.  She chronicled her struggles with painful eloquence.  She had attempted suicide more than once.

It was Magically Mad who nominated me for the Sunshine Award.  I’m glad that my blog made her smile.

Magically Mad has not updated her blog since September.  Sadly, her last post indicated suicide was very much on her mind.  She’s never responded to emails or responses to her last post.  I fear the worst, but hope for the best.  Wherever you are, Magically Mad, I hope your spirit is soaring.