Meryl Streep Was Here

In Toronto, giving a talk at the Royal Ontario Museum in early October, only I didn't hear about it until about 4 p.m. on the day it was happening. Apparently I probably wouldn't have gotten a ticket anyway, because there weren't that many to be had, they were only $50 a piece and they sold out in about 60 seconds. But still...if only I had known.

The day I heard about it, I was checking out the ROM website (here's the link: http://www.rom.on.ca/index.php) before signing up for a seminar I wanted to attend (which took place today, but I'll tell you all about that tomorrow). So I figured it would be best if I became a member of the ROM, in order to get advance notice of all the special events and exhibits they've got going on there. It turns out that general admission costs $22 a visit, or $28 if you want to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit currently in situ. But for $90, you can buy an annual membership. So of course that's what I did, because really, a little bit of history and culture in life is a good thing and surely I can squeeze in at least 4 visits to the museum over the next 12 months to make the membership worth my while.

Here are a few photos from my first visit today, some shots of what is known as the Crystal, as designed by Michael Lee-Chin. I took one photo when I arrived at 9 a.m. this morning and two more as I was leaving at 5:30. This addition has been pretty controversial, given that the pointy triangular shape is quite a contrast to the sedate, ornate stone facade of the original architecture but me, I like it.

Too Much Paper

I am feeling rather overwhelmed by paper today. I meant to clean out my four drawer filing cabinet last year before I moved and didn't have time, so ended up moving the cabinet as is, fully intending to get to the job once I was settled in my new home. It is now several months later and while I continue to file things away in their proper folder now and again, mostly in the top drawer (which holds my most often referred to files, the ones for day to day mattes such as utility bills, credit card accounts, etc.), I have not yet done anything with the contents of the other three drawers.

I also moved at least 2 boxes labelled "miscellaneous paper/to be filed". I have no idea what is in those boxes and they haven't been opened for 11 months now. At this point, one would think, how important could any of that stuff actually be if I haven't missed by now? I am not actually brave enough to throw them out without looking but I am hoping it will be a fast sort and purge when I do crack them open.

In the meantime, I have continued to collect various pieces of paper and stack them up in several spots on my desk and there was even one large pile in the midst of my bead stash area.

This morning, after spending twenty minutes looking for the paperwork I needed to renew my driver's license (thinking I was going to do that today, but that was before I got to the office after it closed, not realizing they close early on Fridays), including sorting quickly through the same large pile on my desk three, count 'em three times, convinced that it had to be in that pile (but only going as far down in the pile as the stuff that has accumulated in the past 3 months, because the bottom part of the pile is older than that and it really couldn't be there), before realizing it was quite possibly to be found in the bead stash pile. Of course, I had to go through that pile twice before I found what I was looking for and that was only after having to pick up all the papers that fell on the floor when the stash tipped over. Sigh.

It was in the midst of that craziness that I thought, enough is enough. From now on, every piece of paper that comes into my home gets put away where it belongs.

So far, so good. I came home after work and filled an empty box with file folders and labelled them appropriately. Because of course, I have all the empty files and tabs on hand, ready to get organized, I just hadn't put them to use yet! I then set the timer, turned on some music and spent 30 minutes filing the bead stash pile. Most of which had nothing to with beads, by the way, although some of the papers were pattern instructions that I had downloaded or pictures of other's people's work that I find inspiring. I hope to have at least two more filing sessions over this weekend doing the same thing, which should eliminate the bulk of the piles and free up some space on my desk.

Some of the new files I created today may be duplicates of the ones already in my filing cabinet but that's okay, because I can easily merge the two files when the time comes. For the moment, the new file box is strategically placed in an easy to reach spot that I will readily use until I have more time to tackle the actual cabinet drawers. Since I'm off to Tucson next week for a PMC workshop with Kate McKinnon, I will be spending most of my free time over the next few days getting things together and packing for that trip, but suddenly, today, it seemed that even that pleasurable job could wait until the paper situation was addressed, at least on a temporary basis.

Wish me luck!

Happy 40th Birthday, Janine!!

My little sister turns 4o today. Since she is the baby of the family, it makes me feel a bit old to realize all of my siblings are now over the 40 hill, but that could just be because as eldest, that means I am inching ever closer to the big 5-0.

In honour of her special day, which she is spending on a dude ranch in the wilds of the Arizona desert with her beloved and hopefully having a wonderful time, I thought I'd post a few photos of her over the years. She'll probably kill me but then again, she's on vacation and might not see these pictures for a couple of days and by then, it will be too late! :)

Here she is with my mom and me when she was just a wee baby - she looks like a china doll, doesn't she? (And check out that groovy poncho I am wearing, lovingly made by my grandmother. )

I can still remember the night my dad came home and woke us up to tell my brothers and me that we had a new sister. I had always known the baby was going to be a girl, as I already had two brothers and knew I needed a girl to even up the odds. Thank goodness that worked out!

She is shovelling snow in the driveway in this next picture. Check out the snowsuit and those cool boots (mukluks, I think we called them?). Even at that age, she was very fashionable.

Here's a picture of the four of us kids together, which I have included so you can see her ponytails. Mom almost always did her hair like this. She still wears her hair long these days but try as I might, I can't ever get her to do the ponytail look.

This very glamourous photo is her high school graduation shot.

And here she is hard at work putting in the dock at the cottage this past summer with her man.




And finally, this is one of my favourite shots of her and I together, taken in January 2008 at my cousin Wendy's wedding.


Happy Birthday, Janine! Wishing you all the best that life has to offer for the next 40 years! You'll always be my baby sister and I love you.

P.S. Did you know that Sesame Street, which Janine used to LOVE watching as a little girl, turned 40 yesterday?! Imagine being able to say you are one day older than Big Bird - now that's cool.

Tissue Paper Creations

Last week's Creative Art Journal class was focused on the use of tissue paper. First we learned to attach random pieces with a mix of water and plain old white glue - here's an example I made with a picture from a magazine (I don't remember what the ad was for, don't recognize the name Teknion, but isn't it a cool picture, with the telescope and the eye chart and the guy in the bowler hat? Makes me think of that painting in the Thomas Crown Affair. Mmm, Pierce Brosnan, very sexy! Oh, I digress...)

This second picture was made by one of my classmates, Annette and I love it. The original black and white magazine photo was pretty cool on its own but I really like what she did by layering tissue paper over top and adding text - it just enhances the original picture so much.

Then we did some work with leaves that the teacher Toni had collected and brought in. She showed us how we could make lovely patterns by tracing outlines of the leaves and drawing in the veins, as she did in this picture, or cut out the shapes of the leaves in construction paper. Some people traced over the leaf with pencil and paper as we had learned a few weeks ago but the weight of the leaf was so slight that it didn't work as well.

The most important thing I learned last week was not to store my still wet creations in newsprint and then forget about them, because as they dried, the papers stuck together and when I tried to separate them, it left unsightly blotches of newsprint on my design and tore off bits of the tissue paper and the pieces of string I had layered underneath for effect - the end result was not pretty but the lesson was learned!

Movember

Having posted this photo of my great-grandfather yesterday and remarked on his rather large moustache, I was amused to hear about "Movember", an annual event held this month to raise awareness and money for men's health issues.

This event reportedly started in Australia in 1999 and made its way to Canada in 2007. Men are encouraged to grow moustaches for the month of November and get donations from their friends and families. Funds raised here are donated to the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation of Canada.

The idea - and their slogan - is to "change the face of men's health" - pretty clever, eh? 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. It is the most common cancer to be diagnosed for Canadian men and 4,400 of them will die this year from this disease.

As you may have heard, Andrew Lloyd Webber was recently diagnosed with this disease. Fortunately, I don't believe I know anyone personally who has this problem and I'd like to keep it that way. However, the moustaches seem to run in my family, as both my brothers have sported one over the years (see family photo, circa 1988). And of course, who can forget this famously hairy face??

You can read more about it here: http://ca.movember.com/. I also recommend checking out the website if you like collage art as they have a some really cool artwork and a clever format for their site. You will also find photos of various men who are taking part, one of whom sent in this photo:

Can you imagine living with that???

Of course, for those who are follicly challenged when it comes to facial hair, there is always this alternative:

So get growing, guys!

Day of the Dead 2009

As I wrote last year on this day (http://cynfulcreationscanada.blogspot.com/2008/11/dia-de-los-muertos.html), also known as All Souls Day, November 2nd is traditionally a day to celebrate the dead in Mexico. You can read more about this celebration by following this link to the Wikipedia listing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Dead.

In honour of this tradition, last year I shared with you a couple of photos of my grandparents. This year, since today would have been my dad's birthday if he was still with us, I thought I'd post a few photos of my great-grandparents on his side of the family, which I recently found in a photo album I hadn't looked at in a long time.

The picture on the left is of my grandfather's parents, my great grandparents, Clarence and Mary Ann. The picture on the right is also of Mary Ann - doesn't she look pretty in that fancy dress? Unfortunately, I don't have any information about what year these photos might have been taken but someone who knew the fashions from those days could probably tell from those sleeves!

This next photo is of Clarence's family, presumably before he married Mary Ann, as she is not in the photo. Judging by the beard on my great-great grandfather Isaac, it's pretty easy to see where Clarence got the idea for that handlebar mustache, eh? The little girl is identified as "Cousin Olive", her dad is the man on the far right of the back row, Clarence's brother Ernest (hmm, no sign of Ernest's wife, Olive's mother, seems odd). The handsome man on the far left (who looks like Al Gore, don't you think?) is Victor, the husband of Clarence's sister Constance (beside him), then we have the rest of Clarence's siblings, my great-great aunts and uncles, Monteith (Monty), Ethel and the afore mentioned Ernest (where did they get these names, I wonder?!)

One last photo of my other great grandparents, i.e. Mary Ann's parents, George and Jane, a rather sombre looking pair.

I never met any of the people in these photos but I'm glad there are photos to keep their memory with us and today, I am thinking of them.

Have You Been to the Fair?

The TBS Fall Bead Fair, I mean. If you weren't able to go yesterday, as I did, don't worry - they're still there today (from 11 am to 5 pm) and I did leave a few treasures behind for other people to buy, although I must say, it wasn't easy. I had set myself a budget - went with a certain amount of cash in my wallet and spent every penny of it and a little bit more on my VISA card. Okay, so I'm not good with a budget, it tends to end up as more of a general guideline. But man, it was worth it! Got some great beads!

Several people were dressed in costume, and an even greater number were wearing special jewellery (myself included) in recognition of the fact that it was Hallowe'en. Here's a lovely shot of Marilyn, Cindy, Sue and Kimberly in their orange and black outfits.

All my favourite vendors were there (and many more): Beadfx (picked up some copper findings), Black Tulip Designs (vintage beads and chain), Titan Beads (more copper findings - must be the fall season that makes me think I should be working in copper - and some multi-coloured agate stone beads that look like Cheerios), Laurie Wright, Erin Maloney (a.k.a. AirWynn Glass Designs) and Amy Waldman-Smith (all of whom provided me with glass beads extraordinaire), Marilyn Gardiner (finally got a small anvil, I've been wanting one for about 2 years now!), Iguana Beads (some beautiful but inexpensive Thai silver beads and some colourful chunky beads made out of I don't know what) and the Juicy Bead Ladies (who have the most fabulous vintage lucite beads, I picked up a lot of goodies at their booth but really had to hold myself back!)

The new facility, the CNIB building Bayview Avenue, is fabulous! Everyone remarked on the lovely big windows and the resulting natural light - even though it was a cloudy day, the windows provided a lovely view of the colourful trees outside - and having a cafeteria on the spot was very handy. It was also nice to have all the vendors in one large room, so you didn't miss anyone. Although I know there is one aisle I did not visit very carefully as I was already out of funds by the time I got to it!!

My sister Janine and I also did a two hour stint volunteering at the TBS membership table, which is always a fun way to meet new people. Here's a photo of Stephanie Dixon (the Volunteer Coordinator, a.k.a. The Dixon Chick and one of Swarovski's Crystal Ambassadors) and me at the table. If you are wondering about those little black dots above her head, here's a close-up - she had two bats attached to her headband, too funny.

So if you are wondering what to do with yourself today, head on over to the CNIB and do a little bead shopping - you won't regret it!