It's funny because it's true

While I am an industrial designer and dabble in graphic design and other such creative endevours, long before that I used to be a big lab geek (in applied biochemistry -- it's a weird mix of backgrounds, I agree).

I found Ph.D. comics through a friend of mine (hi Shona!) who's a grad student. This one strikes me as funny because it's true (click to see the larger original):



(I particularly like the little floating fume skulls). My hat's off to Jorge Cham for capturing this and many other academia life moments in his comic.

Alphabet soup

I bookmarked this video a while back (found originally via drawn.ca).

I have a love for beautiful scripty fonts and I love how effortlessly the elder Wouters seems to write his letters. Of course, the younger Wouters' lettering is oozing with charm and appeal :)

Itching for some home improvement

It is with fond farewell that I bid adieu to the 7 FOOT HIGH snow banks that lived in our little courtyard for so long. There is no longer any trace of snow around any piece of property that's 'ours'.

Of course, in its place are neglected patches of (crab) grass and we're itching to do a little home improvement, both outdoors and in. As inspiration, I recently found "This Young House".

I love old 50s era houses (in their post-war mass-produced housing kind of way), and seeing what people do to them to make them right for today. Our house is a 70s era townhouse, so it's a little younger, but still needing some help in the updating department.

I've already wasted a good 20 minutes looking through their Flickr photos. (I'm really liking what they did to their master bedroom). Might as well share the procrastination ;)

Better get to work!

"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.

A new year :) and the top 7 highlights of the 2007 holidays!

We're now officially back from our little holiday hiatus. I'd love to say that we travelled to exotic locales and experienced warm tropical climes, but that's quite the opposite of what happened.

We stayed home, happy to take a break from work ;) (though again, thank you all for your orders and giving us enough work from which to take a break!), and experienced a few snowstorms. So what did we do with our couple of weeks off?
Here are the top seven highlights of Christmas 2007:

1) We.. er.. Jack, received the Encyclopedia Prehistorica collection of pop-up books.

Jack received these from one of his uncles and hopefully in time, he'll come to appreciate the art that is paper engineering. These books are recommended for ages 5+, but we'll probably wait until he's about 6 or 7 before handing them over. You can get them at Amazon for under $18 each, which is a bargain, considering just how much work must go into each one.

2) We watched a lot Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

If you've only experienced the show from what's seen on Fox, then I highly suggest you watch the UK version. We'd seen the UK version first on the Food Network, and then watched the US version, and it's not nearly the same show. The UK version is loads better and makes Gordon Ramsay seem less like an arse.

3) We made some presents.
Along with some of the jewelry we gave various members of the family, we also made these pretty things for our friend Julie (who is a personal chef):

They're cutlery-themed 'snowflake' ornaments. They were fun to make and we may even consider making some Christmas ornaments to sell on the site next year! :)

4) We ate a lot: we found quite a few good recipes on the interweb.

One of them was this curried carrot soup recipe, that I found after we inadvertantly bought 5 lbs of carrots before Christmas dinner and unsure about what to do with them. We like this soup so much, we've made it three times in the last 2 weeks, and Jack (who is beyond picky) enjoys it too (just leave out the cayenne pepper for the little ones).

5) We ate a lot: we went to the Urban Pear for a special night out (my birthday!)

Eric took me to the Urban Pear for my birthday meal. It's been the subject of a few rave reviews locally, and we try to make our (rare) nights out something special.

Overall, the food was 'okay', which is a little disappointing for those rare nights out. The antipasti plate was good, and reminded us how much we enjoy roasted garlic and brie :9, the olives were a little too vinegar-y though. We both had the duck breast which was very good, but the accompanying french toast that was a little too heavy for my liking. We also had the crème brulée which was disappointing since there wasn't enough crust on it for my liking, which made it a little too much like a pretentious vanilla pudding :(

Our next big night out will be at Beckta since we received a gift certificate (thanks Ray!) (Beckta is another local restaurant that's had quite a few rave reviews too).

6) We ate a lot: we got this series of cookbooks, which is a collection of the most requested Milk Calendar recipes from the last 25 years.

Every year the Canadian dairy board puts out a calendar with recipes using dairy products. You can find some of the more recent recipes here. They're usually pretty simple dishes that are made with things you've already got in your kitchen. Out of these books, we've made a really good mushroom and leek soup, apple custard crisp and lots and lots and lots of blueberry muffins. Yum.

7) We ate so much that now we're going to try and eat a little less and exercise a little more :)
In the past we've tried following the Body for life regimen of eating small meals and exercising regularly and it worked rather well. So we'll try that again!

Hope you all had a good holiday!

Merry Christmas, Happy holidays, Festivus, or what-have-you :)

Saw this via our friend Julia, (Hi Hula!), It's the a capella group "Straight No Chaser" of Indiana University. (I have a weakness for humourous, a capella music).



Anyhow, we'll be on holidays until January 1st, which means any orders that come in at that time won't begin shipping out until January 2nd.

Hope you all have a wonderful and restful holiday. We like to celebrate Christmas with our families, and typically we do something for Festivus by dragging out the ol' aluminum pole and air out some grievances. The feats of strength are difficult, since our living room is rather small. ;)

Plushie! for the pattern impaired

Saw this via BoingBoing:


It's "Plushie: an interactive design system for plush toys". It's a little interactive program that allows someone who couldn't draw a pattern to save their life (me! me!) to create patterns for 3D plush toys. They've got a link for the demo program (see under 'Demonstrations'), but it's for Windows only and not for us lowly mac users. It looks intriguing enough though, that I'm willing to unearth my old, loud PC to give it a shot.

I've made plushies in the past, but they've been more along the lines of fluffified flat shapes, as evidenced by these:


These are my version of Eric's parents, done in miniature, about 5" high, with cardboard versions of their furniture. It was part of their Christmas gift a couple of years ago, and it's been hard to top... I figure the gift of the grand-child will just have to suffice now.

In any case, I'm already thinking I'd like to try more 3D plushies when there's actually time. (Time?)

Oh and FYI: next Tuesday the 18th is our last day for taking orders. Then we're closing shop until New Year's. We'll still be around answering emails though. And if you're stuck for a gift, and don't want to do the panicked, last-minute shipping, we've always got gift certificates.

Easy tree-topper

We have an artificial Christmas tree. I've never actually had a real Christmas tree, but that's probably a good thing, since it turns out I'm allergic to most tree and tree-related products. :/

As artificial trees go, ours is pretty run-of-the-mill and flimsy. So much so that when I picked up a star for the top of the tree from the local Ikea, it turned out that the tree was not robust enough to support the weight of the star. Then I saw this link featured on Rare Bird Finds. It's how-to instructions for making a 3-D paper snowflake, which in my opinion, makes a perfect Christmas tree topper.




I made one using two sheets of white bond paper (stolen from our computer printer in the office), and voila! instant tree-topper. It seriously only took about 15 minutes in all to make. Since it's just paper, it's very lightweight and a fun, easy way to top the tree.

When pigs fly

A while back, someone (my better half, maybe?) introduced me to the Flying Pig company, because they obviously knew that I have this fascination for paper engineering in its many forms (elaborate origami, pop-up books, whathaveyou).

I just love the idea that something that comes as a 2-D form can be manipulated into something almost magically 3-D.
The Flying Pig makes these wonderful paper animation kits that are "paper models you make that move."

And they do have some pretty elaborate and whimsical models. Of them all, my favourites include their namesake 'Flying Pig':



and the 'T Rex':


Make sure to check out their page of free downloadable kits too. They're FREE! (I downloaded one, but I haven't had the time yet to actually assemble it).

Working hard? No, hardly working! ;)

An exerpt from a site I recently found called "Things my boyfriend says":
"You shouldn't buy me things. Save your money for unicorn rides or whatever it is girls spend money on."

If you're looking for a little humourous reading to break up the work day, go here. :)

Addictions of the edible variety

I've never written about anything edible in this blog, because first off, I'm not really much of a cook. I enjoy really good food, but I don't think I can actually make really good food. Maybe just 'okay' food. I believe this is because it's impossible for me to ever attain the high culinary standards set by both of my own parents. The unfortunate thing is that their cooking isn't really recipes so much as what seems to be innate skill. If you do enjoy cooking, I highly recommend Oooh, you tasty little things (Never bashful with butter). I read this blog semi-regularly and more often than not, I'm drooling.

And while this isn't the same as cooking, I thought I had to share my latest addiction.


These damn things are soo good. They're thwarting my effort to lose the pesky remainders of my pregnancy weight. What I like best is that the nutritional info says "1 serving=56 chips". Now that's a realistic serving. They're not too greasy and just the right kind of crunchy salty goodness. (We buy them locally at the Bulk Barn).

The other food product I'm loving -- and unfortunately, we're now out -- is this mango chutney.


It is by far, the best chutney I've tasted outside of being in a really good Indian restaurant, and maybe even better than those. It's a good level of spicy and not overwhelmingly sweet like so many inferior chutneys. And, it's a fair trade product. It's available online from Peppermaster. (We got our jar from one of the local craft shows). It's $15 CAD, but soooo worth it. Excellent on salmon.

Of houses and wanting change

In a week, we'll have lived in our house for one year. This time last year, I was heavily pregnant, so we were happy to find a house where we could move in and not have to do much to make it liveable. Oh how things change in a year. It's not that it's not liveable, but it's not been made completely ours yet.

It doesn't help that I've recently discovered houseblogs.net, and more specifically, Nicole of Pink Love Brown's houseblog, Making it Lovely. Both are good ways to spend too much time on the interweb.

So I'm thinking and surfing and getting many many ideas... We've done a few things, and once I find the other lens for the camera (and figure out what to do with it), maybe I'll share some of what we have done...

But for now I'm eyeing this ceiling pendant. It's only $69 at Zonemaison (local in Ottawa), but possibly available for order online as well. (Zone has lots of lots of nice contemporary furniture and accessories).


I'm thinking of having it as a replacement for the ugly ceiling fan we have in the office. (It's white! it's brass! and it has THREE! ugly glass shades!)

Fun with avatars

There's a fun little avatar making toy as part of the Simpsons movie interweb marketing.

With a little help from Photoshop, here's our nuclear family (HA!) as Simpsons characters:


To make your own avatar, just go to the top left-most link on the Simpsons movie page.

In Kenya we got lions

Remember this little flash toon?


Well, they. made. toys!


Yup. You can get both the Kenyan lion and the tiger together for $39.25 US. The price is pretty good for plush toys that are probably done on a pretty small scale -- I'm impressed that a little interweb cartoon site can churn out toys of their characters. Might just have to get these...

Hipster Bingo

Back in my day (said in the cranky old man voice), we played "Keener Bingo" during class. The cards had the names of all the people who routinely tried to impress the professor with their comments/questions. But I'm beyond that now....

Now there's Hipster Bingo. I think I'm getting older, because nothing in this Bingo (from the Catbird seat) applies to me and I do think it's funny. I find it's even easier to play now that the university students are all back in town ;)



Found via Oh My That's Awesome!

Stuck in my head

You know how sometimes, you get something stuck in your head and the only way to get it out is to expose yourself to the offending tune and hope that your brain gets satisfied and flushes it? Well, it doesn't work. The other thing to possibly do is to make other people get the same thing stuck in their head.



Misery loves company :)

Clever marketing ploys

Since becoming homeowners, we've been frequenting stores that we never needed to go to before. Case in point, in the last four weeks, we've been to Home Depot waay too many times. It's not that our house even needs any major repair work or renovations, but it's just all the little things that creep up on you, and so the easiest thing to do is just to go to the biggest hardware / reno / everything store around.

One thing I did discover that delights the very frugal (okay, cheap) person in me is the Home Depot Hammer Drop. Yeah baby. It's only on the Canadian Home Depot site and not the American one, but it's certainly a clever marketing ploy to make me keep going back to their website (not unlike a blog perhaps ;)? )



The Hammer Drop is a different featured item that they change every morning at 8am, and it's usually at a low low bargain price of at least 1/2 off. Neither Eric nor I have been too tempted yet and bought a Hammer Drop item, but I have a feeling it's coming soon. One day it was marine lights, today it's a 23-function-multi-tool-with-ratchet! Soo tempting.

Maybe we'll have to adopt the Hammer Drop marketing and offer a special Blend Creations 'hammer drop' (cleverer marketing name needed...) time / web address where you can get a bargain? Oooh, that little mental hamster is churning today. :)

Trained goldfish

Fun on the interweb found via BoingBoing. At first, it doesn't seem like much of a feat. Big deal. Gold fish swimming together -- but keep watching. They're synchronized!

It reminds me of that episode of Mythbusters where Adam and Jamie test the myth of whether or not goldfish have a five second memory by seeing if they're trainable. Jamie, Mythbuster extraordinaire, busts the myth by showing that indeed they can be trained.

If goldfish can be trained, maybe there's hope for 'higher' creatures!

What's that bug?

This is actually a photograph that Eric took, pre-digital cameras, quite a few years ago. He knew it was a red milkweed beetle at the time and it's actually quite a cute beetle portrait (compared to what these critters look like when you see them with their mandibles exposed).

Over the weekend, I had a chance to sit around and do nothing for a little while. "Doing nothing" in this case meant putting my feet up and reading three days worth of newspapers and the most recent issue of Real Simple magazine.

While perusing the magazine, I found this great link to What's that Bug? The site is run by two photographers, Lisa Anne and Daniel, and it originally started out as an art project of sorts. Over time, people have emailed in photographs of bugs that they'd like identified and the two consult entomologists to help figure out just what it is that just scurried away or that you might have squished.

Based on this site, I've seen some rather large house centipedes that were previously just called "Dear god what is that thing?!" in my mind:

It's good to know that these things are harmless at least, even if they don't look it. In any case, the site isn't for those who really don't like bugs. I don't like them, but my curiousity does get the better of me :) And at least now I have a name to that crazy fast-scurrying thing with multiple legs...

Architectural detail by faeries

Yesterday was a Civic holiday here in Ontario and/or some sort of holiday in most of Canada. So we're mostly recovering from a bit too much sun and a lot of good food and now I suppose it's on to the regular work week.

We'll start this week off with the faerie doors of Ann Arbor, Michigan -- I'd found this link not too long ago, but unfortunately, I can't remember exactly where. Apparently there's a few of these doors all over the city of Ann Arbor and because they're so wee, you might not necessarily notice them at first glance.

This one is at the "Red Shoes" store:


I love that the detailing of the tiny door and the fact that there's an inner door that opens.



Here's another little door at the Sweet Waters Cafe:


Apparently the faeries appreciate architectural detail and moulding on the door actually mimicks some of the moulding on the building exterior.

The Urban Faeries site is a fun little read, and it's run by illustrator/Faerie door hunter Jonathan Wright. He's got a Faerie door poster for sale on his site, along with info about his upcoming book about Faeries and their doors.