Oh hi. What are those there?  Those are my new super-amazing, ball-bustingly awesome vintage folding theatre seats in a russety solid wood.

I love them so much.  Like more than someone should love an inanimate object.  Well… not this much:

..because I’m not a crazy person…but I still love them a lot.

I have this weird landing area in the lobby of my place that has been housing my bike for the last few weeks, but it has led to increasingly awkward shoe removal, where I jump up and down in some kind of off-beat fat-chick dance, trying to take off my shoes before coming into the house, while simultaneously trying not to knock over my bike, and looking extremely stupid in the process.  So I decided I needed a bench.

At first I was looking to get a church pew, but all the ones I found were like 11 feet and had big ol’ crosses on the side and that freaks the shit out of me, like “Rosemary’s Baby”-styles.

But then I found this ad on Kijiji where these people were selling vintage chairs and random thingies, and I busted over there the minute they opened.  I thought my vintage Pendleton would be appropriate for my vintage hunting…

Good thing I used the flash in broad daylight, or you might not be able to see me.

The bench was still there and scored I scored it for FORTY FRIGGING DOLLARS…

This is probably in my top 5 of vintage finds.  Orgasmic.

I also really liked this beat-up turquoise-blue set of theatre seating…

Being amazing people, they threw them in for twenty bucks!!

Hoooraaaayyy!!!!  All in all, an EXTREMELY satisfying and exhausting day.  Molly agrees.  She had “scary possessed crazy dog tired eyes” that night.

I’m fucking crazy. 

I’m in the infantile stages of understanding about art and arty things and how to select art for rooms and how to determine what art is good art and what art is not good art.  Sometimes I just want a damn canvas with some junk on it.  In cases like those, I choose to paint my own super-fancy ”Objets d’Art”.

I wanted something like, bright and flourescent and stripe-y for my office, mostly because I think it will make people think I am cool.  I mean, who has flourescent art?  ONLY SUPER-COOL PEOPLE.  That’s who.

So I moseyed over to Curry’s and selected a mis-mash of colours…

That pink is like NEON pink, and that yellow is like NEON yellow, but my iPhone doesn’t seem to pick up the hyper-super-wicked pigmentation. 

I also wanted something really simple and sharply graphic.  As per my “Watched Trading Spaces from 2001 – 2003″ training, I used some super arty painter’s tape and made some 1.5 inch stripes. 

And just kept on going until all the colours were used up.  I mean… it’s not the most symbolic or creative thing in the world, but it’s all graphic and flourescent-y and spicy!

And it makes my old-school record player look all fancy.  Like there are neon sound waves busting out of the record into the air.  SWOOOOOSSH!  NEON SOUND WAVES!  PEW! PEW!

Perhaps the most interesting part of my painting escapade, however, was when I was stupid enough to leave my tube of flourescent pink paint on the floor.

I went upstairs to take a break and eat dinner, and she plodded up after about 30 minutes and sat on my lap.

  
Notice anything?

Yeaaaah.  She found the tube of paint… chewed on it for a while on the bed… it splatted all over a pair of jeans… and now she has perma-neon whiskers.  It’s been a week and the paint still hasn’t come off.

For Halloween, I’m dressing up as someone who is permitted to wear cute 80′s vintage dresses to her conservative work environment.  Scary.

YES.  That’s right.

Shoebox Vintage is collaborating with Russet and Empire yet again to put together a men’s pop-up!!  This time, we’re joined by Hobb Apparel, who will be selling some wicked-cool handmade ties and bowties.  WHAAAAT? 

Seriously, though.  P-Hops and I really went ape-shit and picked up some AMAZING men’s stuff for the sale.  Like, if I were a man, I would be chubbin’.

What do we have??

• Jean Jackets by Levi’s, Lee, Calvin Klein!
• Vintage Pendleton!
• Leather!  Motorcycle jackets! Old-Man Suede Jackets!
• Vintage Member’s Only!
• SO MANY amazing oxfords!
• Utility camping bags!  Vintage leather artist’s bags!  A VINTAGE GUN HOLSTER!!!
• Plaid, plaid, plaid! 
• Bespoke shirts, vests, and other fantastical things!

Come on.  It’s a vintage men’s clothing happiness explosion, and you should be there.  Burt thinks so, too.

*Please note there will be no pink cowboy hats for sale.

So… let me explain.

Every year my company has a pumpkin-carving competition the Friday before Halloween as a launch to our United Way charity campaign.  Over the past 5 years, it has spiraled out of control, and now all the departments try to out-do each other by becoming crazy for weeks before the event.  As the years progressed, it became less about the actual “pumpkin” and more about the props and “broo-a-ha-ha” that the department would muster around the pumpkin.

This year, our theme was Cinderella.  I was one of the mice .

We created a huge pumpkin carriage:

Had a Princess Cinderella, and mice footmen:

A oversized fairy-tale-book (which I created last night.  It took hours):

And a fairy godmother:

Our pumpkin was carved into a castle, complete with gourd turrets:

We also created a huge “Toronto” backdrop for the pumpkin, complete with OCAD building, moat filled with real water and fish, and fabric mice helping the community by volunteering at the United Way:

When it was time for our presentation, Cinderella was brought in via carriage, the mice running behind her… the fairy godmother read our modified “United Way Cinderella” story from the story book, and we all freaked out and cheered…

AND WE STILL DIDN’T WIN.

Who won?  These guys:

“The Gourd from Ipanema”

In case you can’t see… there are sparklers and fireworks around the whole thing.  They also had a big long stop-animation video that shows the pumpkin-being creating itself from scratch.  It must have taken weeks to put that video together.

Yeah, my company’s pretty awesome.

I was sick on Tuesday.  I felt like a bag of rotten dicks.  Here is what I wore:

HOWEVER, it was a very satisfying day.  First, I happened to be sick during one of the most beautiful fall days of the year so far (well, the morning at least), and I forced myself to walk around and enjoy it.  Check out that “sun through power lines” arty photo shit below:

In the afternoon, it poured rain.  So I got to hang will Molly and nap on the couch for a few hours.  She has this new obsessive-compulsive thing lately, where all she wants to do is get rubbed between your feet.  It’s totally weird:

I also got to hang out with some of my new vintage pieces, procured off craigslist last week…

• My new credenza… it’s going to hold my vinyl and my record player (I still have to deal with all those wires and shizznat):

• AND my new fabulous bent-wood chairs!  Although they are not THE bent-wood chairs on my list, I love love love them and they were a fucking STEAL at $115.00 for all four:

 In the evening I was starting to feel better, so I decided to make some chocolate chip banana bread.  And drink some beer. This is going to be the hipsteryest banana bread EVER!

These bananas are completely INEDIBLE.  But they are appropriate for banana bread.

Grooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosssssssssssssss.

I was also bidding on some poo-green pants on ebay while making my banana bread.  I won them, because I am a ruthless ebay “last-second-bidding” mega bitch.  Yey!

Right before putting the bread in the oven, I realized I forgot the chocolate chips.

Here is an easy solution:

It got all cooked up nice.

Then I put it on my elevated cake-display thingie that I never use because I wanted it to  look fancy.  It made me feel better, because I felt like an adult who bakes things and puts them on cake display thingies.

Then I ate about three quarters of it.

I had a meeting today with some person who thinks I’m an idiot (probably), so I had to wear something all professional to make him think that I know what I’m talking about.  It makes me sad when I wear suits.  See my sad face above.

Sorry!  I’ve been sick.  Here’s what I wore yesterday… I was still feeling poopy, so I decided to wear all grey.  Yeah, it was pretty boring.  And my shirt looked like a shirt that a male ballet dancer would wear on stage while being all stretchy and “ballet-y”.

I decided that wearing berets is going to be my “thing” this season.  Berets, berets, everywhere.  And not like, floppy beret-hat-things, but like “So-French-That-A-Real-French-Person-Riding-A-Bike-In-the-50′s-Would-Wear-Them” berets. 

So that’s that.