Recently, I had the wonderfully fantastic opportunity to relax and read an entire book – something that hasn’t happened in months! My friend Rebecca, (thanks RB!), lent me The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. Albom is also the author of another coveted favourite, ‘Tuesday’s with Morrie’. This is a book which – if you haven’t already – you should read! It’s such an inspiring story and once you’re finished with the book, you can head over to YouTube to watch a documentary with the real Morrie Schwartz and be seriously inspired / look at life differently for at least a few moments.
Back to The Five People You Meet in Heaven, another inspiring tale with a look at life, death, and the meaning/relativity of it all. (There’s a theme here Mitch Albom…). The story starts off with a rickety old man working as a carnival repair-man. Throughout the book, it delves into his past and we/he discovers the hurdles he has faced over his lifetime that have added to his misery. The repair-man, Eddie, dies suddenly in a carnival accident and we are then reading the story as a part of his afterlife.
Reading this book puts a lot of things into perspective – the effect we have on other people (even people we don’t know), the way that we are all connected and aiming for the same goals in life (happiness), and for me, it helped me to take a look at my own relationships and value them even more.
I finished the short book feeling revitalized. I’ll admit, it’s probably not a good idea to read both of these books back to back as you’d be over-loaded with ‘meaning of life’ thoughts, but I do genuinely recommend them. They’re both pretty short too, so check them out.
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Hey, I don’t know about you, but the Waterloo Busker Carnival is on my list of things to do this weekend.
Karl & I attended last year and it was a ton of fun! Waterloo doesn’t have street performances very often & although this event happens only once per year, the community support and encouragement is wonderful! They’ve got a great schedule of events posted online and you can find a bio of the top acts of the weekend here.
Check it out, it should be fun & I hope to see you there..
images courtesy of www.waterloo-buskers.com
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On Saturday afternoon, Karl & I ventured into Waterloo for an event we found out about on RQ Magazine. Although the all-day rain put a damper on it (see what I did there?), we enjoyed Arts Squared in Waterloo Town Square. We certainly weren’t expecting the ‘Rhythmic Recyclers’ to be playing when we arrived – which consisted of five members dressed up in animal costumes and all playing hap-hazardly on home made instruments… Water bottles, elastic bands, tin cans, etc.
Eclectic.
Random.
Here’s a video:
Aside from these characters, there were quite a few vendors with very beautiful art. One in particular that stood out for me was Lauren Judge (check out the portfolio section of her website, the paintings rock).
There was also a live art installation happening. Over 3000 cups of coffee were made into a mosaic of King Tut. A team of volunteers as well as ‘Matter of Taste Coffee Bar’ worked tirelessly for the final product. Check out the full story on the Record website & I’ll leave it to you to decide weather or not the use of so much coffee/milk/cups was wasteful.
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Another vendor (our favourite!) that we spent a good deal of time with was David Okum, author of a variety of Manga Illustration Books and fantastic Caricature artist.
He drew Karl & I:
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Event: this Saturday, August 21 from 10am to 3pm at Kitchener City Hall
Livable Waterloo Region is an urban-focused conference to discuss creating a more livable city.
The event is hosted by Wonderful Waterloo which (pretty obvious really) writes about and promotes all things wonderful in Waterloo Region. Festivals, Editorials, Useful information – it’s all here. This group began in late 2009, so it’s pretty new – lets show our support for their third and largest event!
The conference is FREE and will cover topics that involve making our community more livable. Everything from Transportation and a ‘green’ community to geek culture and educational incubators will be discussed. It will be an annual event, hosted every summer. For event information and a list of speakers/times, visit the website. Or Download the PDF: Livable Waterloo Region – Agenda
(And yes, that is their logo… don’t ask my why.)
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I am fortunate enough to have some Lovely, Lovely friends in my life! Last week – being my 27th bday – my great friend Lindsay blessed me with the prettiest little necklace I’ve ever seen.
This gem comes from an adorable Etsy shop called Schmooks. If you’ve never heard of Etsy before, it is a showcase of handmade goods from around the world allowing small-time crafters and makers the chance to sell their products online without having to advertise or set-up their own online store.
The home page is full of ‘handpicked’ items from around the store and any buyer can delve into the endless depths and categories to find the perfect handmade pin, vase, or tshirt.
Etsy according to Etsy:
Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers. Our vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice:
Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.
So Anywho.. Lindsay’s awesome and came up with this beauty that I absolutely adore!! It came all the way from Australia with a sweet little hand-written note attached: “Many Thanks Lindsay, I hope you love it. Best wishes, Claire”. She also included a pretty little card, titled “Love Nest”, designed by Schmooks.
The necklace also has a cute chain hanging from the back with a little bow on it. I love everything about it and will probably be wearing it non-stop for a while – better get used to it!
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Well, Well… The hard work has paid off and we’ve been munching on the fruits/veggies of our labour all week.
I can’t believe how quickly the cucumbers have taken off, they’re massive!!! The corn is delicious as well (although not quite as hearty and flavourful as our friends at Herlle’s).
There are also so many spring onions, we’re not going to know what to do with them… so sign up here for your own Waterloo grown onions!
Yummm
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After a bit of convincing, I’ve finally taken the few minutes to make my hand-drawn notes into a digital format. The iPad case is actually really easy to make, and since May when I first posted about this, I’ve had so much feedback that I thought I’d share the love. FYI: It has lasted really really well. I made it from felt from Fabricland and although it collects a bit of dirt sometimes, it easily comes clean and nothing has broken or ripped on it at all. Karl uses it every day.
So, Here are the plans (all dimensions are in inches):
Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.
First, get your materials together. You should have three pieces of felt (or whatever semi-strong piece of fabric you choose) and two buttons. I chose all black but I’d love to see some colour experimentation!
Always start with sewing the iPhone pocket on first as this step would be impossible to do once the main pocket is sewn together. I like to use one continuous line of thread (remembering to double-stitch the corners), so I started at the top left corner to the bottom, turned on a 90 degree angle, sewed the bottom of the pocket, turned on a 90 degree angle and then up to the top right.
To sew the flap on for the iPhone pocket, It was a simple line across the top.
Sewing of the main case was similar, but I started at the bottom right corner this time. Instead of stopping at the top right corner, I continued the stitch to the very top (Ignoring the fact that I was no longer stitching things together, this is just for aesthetics). Across the top again and down to the bottom left (don’t sew the case shut!! Go to the very very top!!)
Then it is just a matter of sewing your buttons and button holes to match up and voala – you’re done – that didn’t hurt one bit, did it?
Check out the photos of the finished product here
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I can’t believe how quickly the garden turned from this to this!!
What a satisfying feeling, knowing that we’ve worked so hard to keep the bunnies and weeds out of this 12×12 square of ground. Being self-employed and over-worked, it’s been a bit of a struggle to find the time (or even be at home during daylight hours) in order to keep track of this thing, but it’s been done. Mainly, I’ve been weeding and nurturing on the weekends and everyone has lent a hand collecting compost form both work and home.
I’m very proud of this product! The corn is lovely and tall with tassels. The spring onions are plentiful and the lettuce is quite green. The cucumbers seem to be taking over the place from the far right corner and I have to keep nudging it back to make sure it doesn’t choke the leafy lettuce. The carrots this year (which were the star of the show last year) are a bit of a disappointment but I think that has to do with the volunteer corn taking over it’s place in the garden.
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We have already had a chance to eat some of our garden goodies in a salad last weekend and although I don’t think everything is quite ready, I’m sure that if we don’t start eating now, we’ll never get through everything in time.
Yum Yum
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I sent out a whole lot of tweets last night about Ignite Waterloo - I’m sorry for filling your Twitter inbox, but I had to, it was that awesome!
For anyone who doesn’t yet know about Ignite, we wrote about Ignite Waterloo 2 on the CuteGecko blog.. which was also totally wonderful. The evening seemed to just FLY by:
As usual, there were too many gifted speakers to mention them all, so I’m going to stick with a few of my favourites. Patrick McMahon talked about the thrill of ‘soaring’ which is an air sport where the pilot fly’s a plane without unneeded things such as engines. Instead the planes glide on naturally occurring air current created by the earth. Ooo
Jennifer Gough from Minds Eye Studio got up on stage to talk about ‘the eternal question’: what would you do with your life if you could do anything? Jenn’s inspiring story of how she became an artist surely got some of the audience wondering if their own dreams could become a reality.
Another favourite was Rebecca Blackburn’s account of running the Boston Marathon. She described her training up to the event as well as a walk(run)-through of the whole marathon. What an experience that must have been! Running with Minnie Mouse? Congrats on an awesome talk as well as running the race Rebecca.
I also loved Natalie Brown‘s talk about… talking. Well, Natalie, we all know you love talking, but your subject was much more enlightening than just that. Natalie spoke about speaking up when you hear someone being racist, sexist, or just downright unfriendly. I even heard some people using her mantra after her inspirational speech.
And also…
KingandOttawa@commonthreadnat on Talking for social change. Requires listening. Talk is powerful: I have a dream. Yes, I can #IgniteWaterloo
Finally, another of the speakers that just ‘spoke’ to me was Natalie MacNeil. Natalie talked about the history of social media. Interestingly enough, her history included a time long long before the invention of the internet… or even computers! She noted that humans have been using social media since we were able to carve pictures and stories into rocks in order to be seen and understood by others.
Every one of the speakers at last night’s event was polished and spoke with pride about their subject. Congratulations to all of you, you’ve got something that I don’t – the ability to speak calmly in front of a crowd!
I’ve seen some other posts about this event – head on over to RQ Magazine for another fantastic recap
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Way back forever ago, when I lived in sunny Australia, I had a favourite song called ‘Here We Go Again‘ by Angus & Julia Stone. If you haven’t hear the song, it rocks, so check it out. It’s from the album “A Book Like This” which has a number of other awesome songs on it like ‘Wasted’, ‘A Book Like This’ and ‘Another Day’.
Here’s a little excerpt from Wikipedia:
Angus & Julia Stone are a brother-sister duo from Newport on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Australia. Their mother and father were both musical – they learned a lot of songs from their Dad’s cover band. At very young ages, they were introduced to music by their father who made them join his school band. Julia played the trumpet, Angus the trombone and their older sister, Catherine, the saxophone.
I recently picked up their latest album “Down the Way” released this past March. It’s unbelievable & I adore it. My faves would probably be ‘Hold On’, ‘And the Boys’ and ‘Big Jet Plane’.
If you are a fan already (or a new fan) and know of some similarly styled tunes, let me know! I’d love to hear your favourites too!
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