New in store: the Torus necklace
We’ve just added a new design to our store: the Torus Necklace, which feature Chinese cloisonné, sea fossil and stone accents, all framed by a stainless steel torus.
The necklaces are available in 16″, 18″ and 20″ lengths and a lovely spring pick-me-up to freshen your wardrobe.
Make Your Own Monster for Mom contest: Voting starts today!
The art submission deadline for our little Make Your Own Monster for Mom contest ended yesterday, and we were up a bit too late getting the gallery ready for voting.
But it’s done! so go vote for your favourite design for a chance to win the winning artwork on a pendant along with a copy of the book Celebrate Green!
There are a total of 36 entries which you can see below:
Make Your Own Monster for Mom: Use your mad drawing skillz, get your own custom pendant
Blend Creations and the authors of Celebrate Green!, (a book about creating eco-savvy holidays, celebrations and traditions for the whole family) are teaming up to celebrate Mother’s Day by offering the opportunity for anyone to submit a drawing that could end up on one of our Metal for Monsters stainless steel pendants along with a copy of the book Celebrate Green!.
We’ll be giving away two custom-designed Make Your Own Metal for Monsters pendants, one to the artist whose design receives the most votes and another to a voter chosen at random. Not only are the pendants eco-friendly (since steel is a recyclable and highly recycled material), but $16 from the purchase of any pendant in the Metal for Monsters line goes to support UNICEF, the international children’s charity. Each person will also receive a copy of the book Celebrate Green! Creating Eco-Savvy Holidays, Celebrations and Traditions for the Whole Family.
Professional and amateur artists of all ages (that includes your kids!) are welcome to participate in this open call. Between February 26th and March 17, 2009, submit your artwork using this PDF template.
The template can either be digitally altered/scanned and sent to us electronically at MetalforMonsters@blendcreations.com, or simply drawn on and faxed to us at 1.888.563.9220. Make sure to include your e-mail address on your entry!
All submissions will be posted in galleries on the Blend Creations / Metal for Monsters and Celebrate Green! websites. From March 18-April 7, anyone can vote for their favorite submission. (Be sure to invite your friends to vote too!) The artist who has submitted the most popular work of art will receive their own Make Your Own pendant with their art on it. We will also randomly choose one of the voters to receive a pendant with the same art. Winners will be announced on April 8.
Obligatory Fine Print:
All artwork remains the property of the artist - we will not sell, distribute or reproduce the artwork except for viewing on the gallery pages and for production as a pendant for the winning artist and the randomly chosen voter of the most popular art submission. If you submit artwork for this open call, you, as the artist, have the option to purchase a Make Your Own pendant with your art, but we will not sell your art on a pendant without your express permission.
We reserve the right to reject submissions that we deem offensive or inappropriate. Corporate logos and artwork protected by copyright and not produced by you will also be rejected.
Please keep in mind that at the final size some details may be too fine to resolve. Be sure to check out other Metal for Monsters pendants to see what works well. The production process for these pendants cannot represent greyscale — it must be either black or white.
Lover, business partner, best friend - the Blend edition
I read a lot of blogs, and one of my daily reads (like thousands of other people) is dooce. Today she posted this meme about her and husband Jon. We too are a couple that are married, raise a child and run a business together.
I love reading memes but I’m always reluctant to write one. But writing one about both me and Eric together seems less daunting and much more fun.
What are your middle names?
My middle name is Wai Man. It sounds better in Chinese than it does in the butched English pronunciation. Eric’s is Roland, pronounced in the correct French way of course.
How long have you been together?
We’ve been together since September 24, 2001. We’ve been married since May 7, 2005. I say the dates just as reference in case either one of us forgets. :) If asked, we usually get our wedding anniversary wrong, since we originally wanted to elope on May 5, 2005, but when we decided to have a ‘real’ wedding, we opted for the next closest Saturday.
How long did you know each other before you started dating?
We met on my friend Tim’s birthday — at his birthday outing to Laser Quest. So if memory serves, his birthday is early June which made it about 4 months before we started dating. Eric remembers me as the girl who stupidly wore white to play laser tag. Doh!
Who asked whom out?
Eric asked me out. By e-mail of all things. So I gave him a rain-check, also via e-mail, until he at least had some good sense and asked by phone.
How old are each of you?
We’re both 34. Though, Eric is almost 8 months older.
Whose siblings do you see the most?
I have two brothers who both live out of town, while Eric’s sister lives in Ottawa, so she wins.
Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?
Probably any situation that finds us both frazzled or stressed at the same time — that could be work-related, or it could be Jack-related. Spontaneous combined melt-downs don’t go over well.
Did you go to the same school?
Not even close. We grew up in different cities.
Are you from the same home town?
Nope. Eric grew up outside of beautiful Cornwall, ON (if you’ve been there you know this statement is dripping with sarcasm), and I spent my childhood in London, ON and my high school years in Orleans, just east of Ottawa.
Who is smarter?
Eric is smarter. Hands down. He comes up with solutions and practical answers for everything in a blink of an eye. Ironically it’s me who can put more initials after my name.
Who is the most sensitive?
Ha. Shut up.
Where do you eat out most as a couple?
Back in our heyday of eating out (pre-parent stage), we were regulars at a couple of different restaurants (Oz Kafé, the Elgin Street Diner, numerous pubs), nowadays, we’d probably save it for going out somewhere extravagantly special. Our last great meal was at Beckta.
Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?
We’ve gone to NYC twice together. Though, for longest travelling time together, we’ve biked to Kingston from Ottawa and back again together over the course of a week. We roughed it by staying at B&Bs in small towns along the way.
Who has the craziest exes?
Neither of us has significant exes to speak of so it’s a rather moot question.
Who has the worst temper?
See answer to “Who is the most sensitive?”
Who does the cooking?
Eric does the cooking in our house. I plan groceries and find recipes, but I am merely a sous-chef to his inspired Chef Henri moments.
Who is the neat-freak?
I love my Dyson. I like the smell of cleaner. I get a little twitchy when things get messy. So I suppose that’s me.
Who is more stubborn?
I think both of us have our moments. So this one may be a tie.
Who hogs the bed?
I’m a foot shorter than Eric and weigh about 40 lbs less. But damn the winters are cold here so inevitably during the night, I end up crossing from my half to the furnace that is my husband.
Who wakes up earlier?
Neither. Or rather, Jack wakes up first and we go from there.
Where was your first date?
This has been up for debate, but the first ‘real’ date I believe we went on was to Haveli’s (an Indian restaurant in the Byward Market). Afterwards we were going to see a movie at the Bytown theatre, but a movie called “The Fluffer” was playing that night. We went up and read the movie description and decided it probably wouldn’t make a good date movie…
Who is more jealous?
See answer to “Who has the worst temper?”
How long did it take to get serious?
I don’t think it took long for us to realize that this was ’serious’. A few months after dating perhaps?
Who eats more?
Well, now Eric does. But sometime during my pregnancy with Jack I could really outpace him. Unfortunately this sort of continued for quite a while after Jack was born…
Who does the laundry?
We both do, but it seems that Eric does the diaper loads more often than I do, and those are more frequently washed than anything else in the house.
Who’s better with the computer?
Hm. That’s debatable. We now use Macs in this house, so for OSX, Eric wins. I win anytime we play “Find the answer on the interweb!”
Who drives when you are together?
Eric does, out of habit now, from when Jack was a newborn and it was my job to sit in the back and keep him entertained/happy/quiet.
So that’s that. That’s more than you can find out about us in our “About” page ;)
A couple of good interweb resources
Good interweb resource #1:
Similicio.us is a site that helps you find similar to sites to the ones you already know and love. (I found it because someone had surfed to our lovely jewelry site via Similicio.us.
In the words of its creator:
This is an experiment to see whether I can quickly find relevant web sites based on people’s tags/bookmarks on del.icio.us, using a home-brewed association engine. It answers the question “people who tagged this site also tagged what other sites”. I am using it mostly to find blogs that are similar to the ones I read, and to find new popular web sites that are in my area.
I’m an avid blog-reader, and while I don’t actually need more ways to waste my time ;) it is fun to see that our site has been tagged together with sites like dwr, etsy and treehugger.
Good interweb resource #2:
Gyminee was a site I found through Lifehacker. In a nutshell, it’s a way to keep track of your food intake, calorie consumption and basic nutrient intake along with your workouts. I’ve only used the free version so far. With the Pro version, you’re able to keep track of more than your basic carbs/fat/protein and delve into other nutrients, do meal planning and get access to specialized workouts.
I’ve used it for about a month and a half now, and I really like it. I know other people had recommended SparkPeople, but I couldn’t get into that site just based on the sheer noise involved with its main page. As a designer, I have to say I’m a little snooty about the user-interface of a site that requires you to interact with it. Gyminee’s main attraction for me was how clean everything is, and the overall look is clutter free (unlike SparkPeople). I will admit that it took me a while to find things on Gyminee though.
In the last month and a half, I’ve been able to keep a pretty good record of what I’ve been eating, and how often I’ve been working out, and in the process lose 8 lbs of ‘holiday weight’. Now my Wii will no longer mock me for being overweight - fun :) Seeing as I already had a workout plan I was happy with (I follow the Abs Diet work out), and we’ve been eating in the Zone, (we’re all a mish-mash of health trends in this household), I haven’t felt the need to upgrade to Pro. It turns out that the general eating guidelines that Gyminee suggests do fall in line with the Carb/Protein/Fat ratio of the Zone eating as well. So yeah, that’s my unpaid thumbs-up for Gyminee. Oh and if you end up joining and need a gymbuddy, you can find me as “vivcheng”.
Check out our sample sale!
We’re making an attempt to clear some of the clutter out of our studio.
In doing so, we’re putting a few of our sample items up for sale.
All of the samples are in perfect condition. They’ve just been sitting in our studio with no one to wear them! (Normally we make things as they are ordered, so we don’t usually keep a stock of finished items).
We’ll be changing what’s available on that page from time to time. Sometime soon we plan on adding some of our more unique or discontinued washi pendants, but here’s a sampling of some of the stuff that’s there now:
Well, hello
Happy belated 2009. I always feel a little odd about wishing someone a “Happy new year”, when we’re almost two weeks into it.
We had a fairly relaxing holiday and I thought I’d share some of the highlights:
1) We raised over $1400 US ($1700 CAD) for UNICEF with our Metal for Monsters line:
In some ways this might not seem like a lot of money, but it means a lot to us because Blend Creations is us, and just us. And, it’s especially not bad considering the global economy situation, and the fact that we only launched this line in October.
2) I received a surprise Metal for Monsters pendant:
Jack and I spend a lot of time playing with his crayons and large sheets of newsprint. One day he happened to scribble something, pointed to it, and said, “Butterfly!”. Since Eric has some sneakiness in him, he and Jack ended up giving me this as a present:
It’s one of our “Make your Own” Metal for Monsters. The funny story is that Eric gave this to me on Christmas eve while we were folding laundry. I found the wrapped box in the laundry basket and just about had a coronary because I thought it was an order that had gotten misplaced. He says my face was pretty comical as the reality of the out-of-place gift hit me. (I should’ve realized sooner when I saw how the ribbon was tied — if you’ve ever received a wrapped Blend Creations box, chances are it was wrapped by me and not Eric ;).
3) We had a truly fabulous meal at Beckta:
If you’re ever in Ottawa and you want to experience some exquisite haute cuisine, then I highly recommend Beckta. Even beyond the food was their attention to every single detail, and seeing how we dine out so infrequently nowadays, it was really enjoyable to experience really excellent service.
There were many other things I’m sure, but they don’t seem to be flowing out of mind and into my fingers to the keyboard right now.
I hope you all had a lovely holiday as well and that 2009 brings with it many joys to come.
Flickr fun
If you’ve got a Flickr account and you want to add a little ‘festive’ to it, add a note to a photo and type “ho ho ho hat” or “ho ho ho beard” and you’ll get a Santa hat or beard added to your image that you can scale and place (unfortunately you can’t rotate it though).
(Found via Lifehacker).
Where all the good toys are
This will only matter to the small sub-set of blog wanderers who a) have kids AND b) live in the Ottawa area. We’ve just made a discovery that left us a little overwhelmed: Less than 1km from our home is a giant, unadvertised “teacher supply store” called All About Kids. (Be forewarned that their site isn’t pretty, nor very functional since it relies on large pdf files for their catalog).
It’s full of all the sorts of toys that we prefer that Jack play with — that is, toys that don’t require batteries. Or more specifically, toys that encourage imaginative play, that help teach some sort of concept (like counting for example), or help him develop his fine motor skills. If we were the sort of parents that spoiled him (and I’d like to think that we’re not), they have giant castle building block sets, tricycles, sand-box toys and wooden puzzles. Their inventory is dizzying.
We walked away with merely a pack of flash cards and a sheet of stickers. He’s on a sticker-kick right now. The “number” flash cards are to help him count beyond 10, and hopefully start to recognize numbers. When asked, he’ll usually enthusiastically tell us a number is “three!”
Muppet Whatnot?
We’ve been going through a muppet stage around here. For most toddler-families, that would involve copious amounts of Sesame Street. But alas, not for us. Or at least, not yet anyway. We’ve been watching lots of the first season of the Muppet Show, and Bear in the Big Blue House on DVD. I highly recommend both — especially since the “Brush Brush Bree” song on Bear in the Big Blue House has helped us wrangle Jack into brushing his teeth.
Now if it weren’t for a crappy economy, this would be a lovely, over-extravagant gift, from FAO Schwarz: the Muppet Whatnot for $130 US (it doesn’t launch until February 15 though). See the video for what a whatnot is:
