{I Heart} Girls' NYC Weekend Blurb

For a while now I've wanted to get some photo books printed of the various trips I've taken instead of developing individual photos and getting massive photo albums for them. I love seeing full bookshelves and having organized photo books on them would be just lovely!

So when I won Kait's Blurb Giveaway right before our girls' trip to New York (seen here and here), I figured it'd be the perfect test trip since I was going to print multiples and I could see how both softcover and hardcover were. I don't think it made much of a difference (only a few bucks), but I Googled for a coupon code as well (I think I found 20% off) and placed 2 separate orders since Blurb only allows for one promo code to be used per order.

On the left, the ImageWrap hardcover and the softcover on the right. I chose the Standard Landscape size (10 x 8 inches).

Sadly I'm not made of money so the bride-to-be and I got the hardcovers with premium paper (in lustre finish) while the others got the softcovers with standard paper. Only softcovers with over 80 pages can have text on the spine and I made them to be 60 pages, hence the lack of text on the top two copies.

Inside!

The photos are a bit grainy so I think I need to use a higher resolution on my camera if I plan to make more of these books.(Though I'm not sure if it's because of my camera settings or the printer...)

For the most part, I had a ball of a time playing with the pre-set layouts as well as creating some of my own.

I like that you can cram as many photos as you want on a page, without having to pay for each individual print if you were to develop them normally.

Next time I need to scrutinize every photo edge though. I found a few of these slight gaps throughout the book.

I even listed the things we ordered at Marea, otherwise we will never remember what we ate despite having all those photos.

Mandie's a rebel and uses Hipstamatic instead of Instagram, but I picked my fave ones from her photos and put them chronologically across two pages.

On the back cover I listed our itinerary and put the photo I took of the map of Central Park. 
No matter how many times I refer to this map, I always take the wrong path! (And I don't mean just on this trip.) Oh well. We still got to where we wanted to go, we just took a bit of a detour.

I was pretty impressed with the packaging! Those babies did not budge in the box at all.

I was really impressed with the speed! I submitted my orders on the Friday before the Canada Day long weekend and had the books in my hands 10 days later! I thought it would take at least 3 weeks! The quality of the books were great as well, though after reading through the forums I'm not sure if the graininess of the photos were due to my photo resolutions or the Canadian printers.

I definitely want to make more books and have a neat little collection, but I take forever to sort through photos, let alone formatting them in the different layouts.

Have any of you started a collection of photo books?

What happened to summer?!

Yikes! I haven't been keeping up with blogs (mine and everyone else's - Google Reader says I have almost 1000 posts to read!) and it's almost September! I have not done nearly as much around the house as I expected to, but much of my free time at home lately has been spent trying to get this baby (and myself) up to speed.

It's a little birthday gift to myself since my last laptop (which was really my first) was bought in the spring of 2004! I'm surprised my p.o.s. Dell has lasted 8 years! I did have to replace the hard drive in 2006 after a virus wiped it out and I could no longer bear with the blue screen of death though. But recently I was starting to have issues with the hard drive again and I was long due for a new computer so I went and bought myself a new toy!

The Dell is twice as thick as the Mac! Seriously this thing is a monster.

I am slowly transferring photos but trying to sort them into a more organized and logical manner than before is difficult since I'm a Mac newbie. I installed Evernote but I don't get what it's for, I'm not sure my Messages is set up properly, but at least I'm picking up using the touch pad a lot quicker than I expected. With the Dell I absolutely have to use the mouse because the track pad is terrible.

I'm still going back and forth between both computers, but hopefully I will fully transition to the Mac soon. I just have to plug in my camera/memory card to see which method is going to be best for uploading photos and then maybe I can get back into the swing of things!

I hope everyone has been enjoying their summer! And enjoy what's left of it! *sigh*

{Blog Life} Liebster Blog Award

Big thanks to both Beatrice at The Crafty Bee and Michelle at SweetSuite10 who awarded the Liebster Blog Award to me!

Apparently Liebster is German for "dearest", meaning beloved or favourite. The Liebster Blog Award is awarded by bloggers to other blogs with fewer than 200 followers to help expose them to a larger audience.

A few conditions for accepting the award are:

1. Post the award on your blog.
2. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.
3. List five up-and-coming blogs (with fewer than 200 followers) to award the Liebster to and inform your top five by leaving a comment on their blog.
4. Share five random facts about yourself.

A lot of the blogs I read are the more established blogs, but recently I've been finding newer blogs that I really like as well and deserve more love. (Apologies if I've passed this on to you and you have more than 200 followers! Sometimes I can't tell and guestimate.) So in no particular order:

• Emily from Go Haus Go
• Jessica from A Simple Kind of Life
• Nette from This Dusty House
• Amy from Lovely Nest
• Laura from Gracefully Searching

(Going through my mess of bookmarked blogs has made me realize that I really need to bunker down and organize my subscriptions and blog rolls... Especially because I think my computer will go at any moment and I hardly ever back up by bookmarks.)

And the five random facts about me:

I love theatre. Mostly musicals and the ballet as some plays are too obscure for me or go over my head so for those I prefer comedies. I even make special trips to New York City (24 trips since 2006 and counting... If I could move there, I would), DC, and Los Angeles to see shows (luckily my brother has friends in every city to stay with). 2011 was my biggest year for theatre with 89 shows (some were repeat shows because I love them so much, or different casts, etc., etc.!). I'm a bit of a theatre/pop culture geek so I actually have two Twitter accounts - one for blog related stuff and one for personal/entertainment related stuff.

Past grade 4, no one has ever heard me sing. Not that I know of anyway. I belt out along with the radio to my heart's content in the car and when I'm home alone, but as soon as I sense someone nearby, I stop! And I have no idea why! Maybe I'm just paranoid that I am waaaay off key like those delusional contestants on Idol? Even humming makes me nervous when playing Cranium lol.

My favourite show is Friday Night Lights. I'm pretty sure I cried during every episode of the first and second seasons, and probably half of the third. And definitely during the last episode of the fourth season. I can't even bring myself to watch the fifth (and last) season because it will break my heart when it's over!

Source

I was an extra on Degrassi: The Next Generation in the seventh season for the prom and graduation episode. There was a teeny 2 second shot of me during the prom episode and I looked MISERABLE, even though Natasha Bedingfield was performing! It was fun to see how filming is done, but it was such a long day and I was tired. I could never be an extra for a long production. I never showed up in the graduation scenes they aired, but I'm in the background of some of the production photos.

I actually can't even think of any of his songs right now. I think I'm too old anyway.
Source (These used to be on the Degrassi site but now that it's moved to Much Music, the official site is weird and useless for older seasons.) 

I love traveling. I want to visit every continent and so far I'm 4 for 7. I still have lots of ground to cover in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa (I want to go on a safari!), but I still have yet to visit South America, Australia, and Antarctica (if only I could afford the $10 000 cruises that go there!). One day...

{I Heart} The Elephant in the Room

Last month I entered Yellow Brick Home's Jonathan Adler ornament giveaway courtesy of Pop Deluxe ...

And I won!!

The package arrived last week, just in time for Christmas! (Not that we put any decorations up what with the renovations going on and my mom still hobbling around a bit so we haven't had anyone over this holiday.)

I had a hard time choosing, but ended up picking the Elephant with Peanut ornament. So my little Elephant with Peanut box came in a big box of Styrofoam peanuts!

Pop Deluxe even sent a cute "Good Tidings To You" holiday card by egg press along with the ornament.

I've since tied the ribbon into a bow since we have no tree, but I haven't given her (yes, it's a "her" and her name is Effie) a permanent home yet. There's still a lot of shuffling going on with shelves and whatnot but she will definitely be on full display once things settle down and she'll be out all year round when I get the condo!

So a huge thank you to Kim & Scott and Pop Deluxe!!

I love it, but I'm so afraid of breaking her! I love Jonathan Adler too. Now I just need to win the lottery so I can buy more of his stuff...

{I Heart} Bookends

I love buying books though I have more books than the time to read them! My novels are jammed pack on my bookshelf, but I only have a few cookbooks and design books which keep toppling over since I like them on a separate shelf.

I've been meaning to buy bookends for quite some time but never looked too hard or couldn't find them for the right price, so it just never got done. But with my cookbook and design book collections slowly growing I've been wanting a pair more and more because this is not a nice look:

My pitiful substitutes for bookends: Playbills from the summer, hungry piggy bank, and stuffed animals that couldn't hold up a magazine.

I haven't put the Playbills and programs away yet because then the books would fall over...

I almost bought these online for 30% off ($20 for the set) but decided to browse Indigo in person because I love rooting through the sales racks. Seriously, I could spend hours in Indigo without even reading any books. I just love looking at their home decor section and wandering through the book racks. 

I went during Black Friday weekend when all the Canadian retailers were throwing sales events our way and I found these on the sales rack (score!) for 50% off (aka $15 - double score!!) AND I grabbed the last two pairs that were packaged in bubble wrap in boxes. If you were standing near me, you would've heard me gasp in amazement. The other ones around were just shoved together on a shelf with no packaging and were slightly chipped or scuffed.

Look how straight the books are now! It just blends right in

So neat and tidy!

... just ignore the other corner where I've dumped my old "bookends". Let's pretend this side doesn't exist, okay?

This is one of those items that seems easy enough to make with a block of wood and wooden letters if you can't find one that you like, but laziness wins out. And for $15, I'm happy! Even my cashier was freaking out about the price.

Since buying these bookends, I've been obsessively looking at other ones. Some of my favourites:

 

 Pottery Barn Kids

 Serena & Lily

Bookends or not, I want these on my shelves!

 Graphic Spaces

How adorable are these little guys?! I wish I could afford them all!

 PBteen

 Eastory

The always classic running away from the falling books. I like the ones with people holding books up too.

 Head Above Water

Cotton On 

Simple Matryoshka doll.

 Cotton On

 Design3000

 SFMOMA

 Signs for Homes

I kind of want to buy more books just so I can buy more bookends!

{I Heart} D*S at Home; Jon McLaughlin; SK6ers

So excited! My Design*Sponge at Home arrived yesterday and I can't wait to go through it! Thumbing through quickly, I love the DIY Basics section - with some of the projects on my to-do list, it will definitely come in handy! Buuuuuuut, it's currently sitting on my bookshelf with a whole slew of books (Domino, 10+ cookbooks, 15+ novels, a few random others) that are waiting to be read... I love buying books, I just don't have enough time to read them all! Work gets in the way of everything :(

On a totally unrelated note, I was down at Lee's Palace on Sunday for the Jon McLaughlin/Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers show which was amaaaaazing! 

I mean, if I didn't already love Jon McLaughlin before (and trust me, I did), I am head over heels now! He's amazing live - if it's even possible, he sounds better live than on CD! He's probably best known for performing 'So Close' from Enchanted but I still remember the day I was googling lyrics to find out who was singing 'Human' which was on an episode of Scrubs.

I'll be honest. I primarily bought the tickets for Jon and would've been okay leaving after his set. I had heard of Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers before but never really listened to their songs but they are so fun! They're more folk rock/country while Jon is pop, and now because of them I want to have my future wedding in a nice barn (like this!) so that they can be my wedding band! There was one song where they kept the house lights down, came off stage with their instruments unplugged, stood on boxes in the middle of the crowd and just played to the crowd (as if they weren't doing so before). I wish I had a video of it but my camera died on me very early on.

 Jon McLaughlin and his harmonica telling his story about his miles vs. kilometres confusion after driving across the border that day.

 Jon McLaughlin and his band with members of Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers.

Then Jon joined Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers for a song during their set.

Next week is Mat Kearney and apparently I otherwise have a play/musical every night starting tomorrow until Thursday. Then it's off to New York for the weekend for more plays/musicals! And once I'm back, I really need to start tackling some home projects again. I've been slacking in that department lately but now it's too cold to be sanding in the garage...