Quick lamp makeover

I love spray paint. Seriously. There's no better way to change something so inexpensively and so quickly. Case in point: my lamps.

These lamps, purchased from Ikea a couple years ago, were starting to look a little blah. After a few coats of spray paint, they look totally fresh and new. I also picked up a couple of new shades, just for fun.

And, if I ever get bored with the turquoise (which I inevitably will) I can change the colour again. That is the glory of the spray paint!

In other crafting news, I have been busy recovering a few chairs for the living room (including the orange chair I wrote about in a previous post) which I'll share as soon as they're finished. I've learned that upholstering chairs is harder than it looks. It's kinda hard to make it look professional and neat rather than an amateur Trading Spaces project or something. (Not that I didn't love Trading Spaces. It feels a little blasphemous to take a shot at my beloved TS!)

It's interesting to note that a lot of my creative energy is being taken up by taking a picture every day for my Project 365. I have really been enjoying sinking my teeth into photography and challenging myself to find a new shot each day. However, it has meant that I haven't been sewing/knitting/etc. much lately -- not only because I'm devoting a lot of my attention to pictures, but also because it's a bit of a time commitment to take, upload, and edit a photo each day. I have a long sewing to-do list and I'm hoping to be able to commit some serious time tackling those projects in the next few weeks.

Since I have no new sewing projects to show you I'll leave you with my 365 shot from yesterday: some pretty pink Gerbera daisies (which happen to be one of my favourite flowers).

Hope you're enjoying your weekend!

Yarn bombed!

I was out for sushi dinner with friends on Sunday night and spotted this:



A yarn bomb!

There's been a movement in my hometown over the past few months to decorate a downtown street with yarn. The idea is to brighten up a sterile city space and make the landscape a little more friendly and colourful. I loved this tree so much that I made a special trip on my lunch break today to take a picture of it for my Project 365.

And how is Project 365 going, you ask? Well, it's been going swimmingly so far. I've been pretty obsessed with my camera over the past few days and have been trying to mentally document all of the pictures I can take over the next year. The real challenge will be to keep things going when my enthusiasm wanes three months down the road.

If you're interested, check out my 365 progress on Flickr!

Project 365

I hope you all had Merry Christmasses and that Santa was good to you! My fella and I treated ourselves to a new SLR camera for our mutual Christmas present, and I am VERY excited about it. In fact, I have decided to beef up my photography skills by taking one photo a day for the entire year (known around the blogosphere as Project 365).

I'm not hoping to achieve feats of great artistic genius with these photos. All I want to do is challenge myself to do something creative every day, to learn how to use my camera better, and document little slices of life. By the end of the year, all I'm hoping for is a cool collection of interesting shapshots.

I'm still getting the hang of my new camera and haven't uploaded any of my photos yet -- so in the meantime, here are some snaps that have caught my eye on Flickr recently. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Pretty vignette from one of my favourite Toronto bloggers - Karyn at Make Something

A sweet appliqued tea towel from Angelina 79

Another shot from Karyn at Make Something. I like this one because it was taken at the coffee shop around the corner from my house (called - you guessed it - Hula Girl).

Cross-stitched ornament from Lena Corwin

Rachelredlips' beautiful version of the men's shirt from Collete Patterns. I got this pattern for my fella for Christmas and he wants his in black and white gingham too.

An adorable mitten garland by jbonikowski. This is on my must-make list for next Christmas!

PS - I feel like I should name my camera. I have a habit of naming inanimate objects that I have a special attachment to (I named my wedding dress Evelyn, and my KitchenAid mixer is named Beatrice...because she beats things).  Any suggestions for my new camera??  Ruby? Stella? Sanchez?