Spring Sale at Blend Creations!

Here in Ottawa, Canada it's a far cry from spring in terms of weather (we still have snow banks that are more than six feet high). But, the calendar says it's spring on March 20, so in hopeful celebration, we're having a spring sale starting today and lasting until March 27.

Originally it was going to be an "anything green" sale, but we decided to take that further and put over 200 items on sale.

In other news, we've added some new products to the store. Engraved wood earrings to match our engraved wood necklaces and pendants.


Also, some new foliage necklaces:


All of the foliage necklaces, all washi jewelry and all earrings are on sale until the 27th.

Happy shopping!

Cheap Eats Ottawa

We recently ordered (and finally received!) our copy of Cheap Eats Ottawa (v2).


This little book is "Ottawa's guide to good inexpensive restaurants" and lists over 200 eateries which all must meet the following criteria: Is it good? Is it cheap? Does it have at least one seat?

We have yet to specifically try any of the establishments based on the guide's recommendations, but we have already tried many, many of the places mentioned. As expected, there are many Asian restaurants in the guide since on the whole, Asian cuisine is a pretty good deal! Some of our favourites are Ben Ben for noodles and the "rice with two-treasure sauce" (aka "Ying-Yang fried rice) :9, and the New Mee Fung (on Booth St.) for Pho and the crazy multi-layered drink with the coconut milk and the beans (the name of which escapes me) -- it sounds a little odd, but it's so good! If, just talking about food doesn't do it for you, there's a Flickr group dedicated to gratuitous cheap eats food photos.

We like having our little eating adventures about town whenever possible, so using the Cheap Eats book as a guide should be fun, and by all accounts, pretty cheap. On the shortlist of places we'll be trying are: Culinary Conspiracy, the Blackburn Arms Pub, and Oh Basil.

At a glance though, the book is certainly a good comprehensive guide for out-of-towners who want to eat like locals. You can buy one on the Cheap Eats site for $12.95CAD. If you're in or going to Toronto, there's also a Cheap Eats Toronto available.

Habitrails for all sizes

A Habitrail for those of you that never got the opportunity to look after the class mascot in grade school, is a really cool system of cages, tunnels, observation areas etc. designed to keep your little hamster/gerbil/mouse active and happy. As a kid, I envied the fun that the hamster must be having!

Well, now I can envy fish too.

Octopus Studios has these Habitrail-esque aquariums that look so amazing. The company is based in France, but they ship worldwide -- though, prices start at $3400. And then there's that small problem of cleaning... (Found via Gizmodo)

Thankfully, we've recently found human-sized Habitrails locally.

If you're in Ottawa, and you have kids, I highly recommend checking out Cosmic Adventures. It's a little on the pricey side if you're going for a single visit, but since we live fairly close, we opted for the super-deluxe annual membership, where we've already broken even with 8 visits in 6 weeks. Since our son is still young enough to require constant supervision, we've made the sacrifice and gone up to the upper eschelons on the play structure with him ;)

My inner child is quite happy there.

"Make my logo bigger!" cream

This will probably only be really funny to the designer-types out there. Though, it might also strike a little too close to home for anyone who has ever had a client who has hired them for their expertise, only to have said client request the opposite of what you've recommended (you know, as the "expert").



The folks over at Agency Fusion created a (very long) parody infomercial for a bunch of products: "Make my logo bigger!" cream, "White space eliminator" spray, "Starburst" dust, "Fluorescencesizer", and "Emotionator".

"Now that's what I call stand-out advertising!"

For just three easy payments of $29.95, you could get all of them above! The video on this site is long, but it's worth the chuckle.