Diversions
Well hello there. Looks like it’s been a little while since there’s been a blog update.
The household was (and still is) under siege by some lovely cold virus that seems to be making the rounds. So priority has been given to sleeping more, resting more and trying to convince the smallest member of the family that that is a good idea. (As I type this, he is in his room fighting the idea of a nap).
When we haven’t been working, we’ve been suckered into various online games like Loops of Zen and Fantastic Contraption. Both of which are quite fun and time-sucking. Oh yeah, in between those games, we got also got a Wii recently. In amongst all the fun of the associated games, we also made Miis from all our favourite shows (like most of the cast of Heroes) using instructions from this site. It’s helped when playing Wii fit to see Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan doing step aerobics with me.
In other news, Blend Creations has recently been mentioned in a couple of recent publications:
Dynamic Graphics + Create (for our Metal for Monsters line)
Family NJ (for our laser engraved wood necklace) and
Stationery Trends (for our washi line).
We’ve still yet to add the cover images and links to our press page though.
After three years in the biz, it’s still a nice surprise to see our products in print. :)
Metal for Monsters update
Mark your calendars, because the Metal for Monsters line will be available for sale as of Wednesday, October 1. But, you’ll be happy to know that we’re now taking pre-orders that will ship starting October 1. There’s a bit more background on the story with the previous Metal for Monsters post.
We also finally added our own Metal for Monsters designs to the site. Eric’s “Lil Devil”:
and my “J.J” illo:
Please help us raise some money for UNICEF and score yourself a limited-edition art piece at the same time!
The Omnivore’s 100
From Very Good Taste comes a list of 100 things that should be tried at least once. You too can take part, by following the instructions below:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here atwww.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.
And so, we at Blend Creations are playing along too. Since there’s two of us playing, anything that is simply bolded or stricken applies for the both of us, anything with * is for Vivian and ** is for Eric. Here we go!
The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea - No idea what a nettle is, so I have to assume that this is a British thing
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare* - Eric would try
5. Crocodile** - I’d be willing
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue* Cheese fondue**
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich - I’ve eaten one, but I’ve never been a big fan of PB.
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns - I can only assume this means Cha siu bau! :9
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries - There’s a fruit farm not too far from us that sold litre-sized containers of blueberries, which Jack happily eats with a fork.
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn**, or head cheese - This a very much a Brawn for me. Too many classes about prion-transmitted diseases thankyouverymuch.
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi - I love mango lassi, but never had a salted one.
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar - bleah.
37. Clotted cream tea*
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O*
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects - I suppose this would depend on how they were prepared.
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk** - I haven’t tried this. I’m not all that interested, but I’d give it a try
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more - Again, not for me, since I’m not much for the alcohol. Eric on the other hand is afraid to be “upgraded” :) (This is a Corner Gas reference)
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut - it saddens me that we still haven’t tried one.
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini- The alcohol just doesn’t appeal.
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake - or “Beaver Tails” here in Ottawa
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill* - No thanks.
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie - Do they still make these? I only ever remember seeing them advertised in comic books from when we were kids.
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant - Sadly, I don’t believe there are any Michelin-rated restaurants in Canada, but all the more reason to do some travelling.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare**
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse - not knowingly anyway ;)
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake
I guess we’ve got some new tastes to try :)
“Blues” sale
That’s just a small sample of what’s on sale. The sale starts today and ends August 30.
Happy shopping!
Carpal tunnel syndrome
Sometimes, we’re late adopters around here.
While we have four computers for 2 users (mind you, two of the computers are very very slow), we’re not much in the way of gaming, despite that fact that I have a brother that has a resumé full of work for computer gaming companies.
So when people talk about different games being fun or whatever, we sort of nod and smile and think “we’ll never have time to play that”, and it’s true, because we wouldn’t purposefully go out and buy a gaming system. (We do own one, but it’s a Game Cube from quite a few years ago, and it caused the ‘he’ part of the ‘we’ to curse an awful lot :D — which was funny considering it was “Sunshine Mario”).
In any event, Eric played Guitar Hero for the first time the other day, and subsequently found “Flash Hero“. (I’m sure this is really old, which will show people just how late we are at adopting this).
We’re both now suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome after having spent the last half-hour using our keyboards as axes.
Fun, but be forewarned that it’s not ergonomic fun.
1-2-3-4
I always thought the Feist song was pretty entertaining for kids, seeing as we used to play it a lot on our iPod (appropriate), and Jack would actually sing along, even filling in the line of “changing your heart”.
So seeing Feist on Sesame Street doing muppet dancing = awesome :)
And in a proud parental aside, Jack at almost 2 can almost consistently count to 10 — every once in a while he skips the number 7 though, and going up the stairs he can count to 14 if prodded enough :)
More virtual shopping spreads
When we did our “virtual shopping” mood boards a few weeks ago, we actually did a couple more than what were posted.
So without further ado, here they are:
I’ll admit I fortgot to ad in the captions this time around but, you can get full shopping details on the polyvore version of the spread (click on each of the images). (As before, with Eric’s “guy” shopping, everything can be found in one store: Bluefly.com, and he paired it with the Blend Creations “Dragon” stainless steel pendant).
I love a really good LBD (little black dress) — probably too much since many of my “nice” dresses tend to be black. I also really like wearing red accessories with them and I think there’s something quite “classic’ about it. The Blend Creations red bamboo pendant and earrings have quite the shock of red and perfect for the LBD :)
Finally, the last one makes me wish that it would stay summer just a little bit longer:
It’s a watermelon-inspired colour palette with our “Pink plum blossoms” necklace and earrings paired with a bright pink jersey dress and the tailored bag. (I have a thing for structured purses it seems).
Happy shopping :)
Metal for Monsters (yet another long-winded story)
We’ve been keeping a secret. And well, because we’ve been outed by a couple of people, we figured we’d break down and do a little mini-announcement here to all four of our blog readers. ;)
Earlier this year, Eric and I went out for coffee at our local Tim Horton’s. (That’s not the secret).
It was a Sunday and we’d gotten the paper and we were thoroughly depressed after reading this horrific account in the Citizen about kids in Africa who were soldiers of war and others who had to resort to unbelievable things just to feed their siblings. Here we were, having our cushy life of being warm and fed and generally free from the really huge worries (like war) in life, and if everything goes as it should, it would point to our son Jack leading the same sort of comfortable life as he grows up — a stark contrast to what the kids in the newspaper story would be facing, if they even get to grow up.
So we started thinking. (That’s not the secret either).
What if anything can we do? We’re designers, not doctors/social workers or other more immediately helpful professionals. It’s really hard to save the world with a really great piece of jewelry or an illustration! Or is it?
While having this discussion at the Timmy’s, our little monster was being pretty rambunctious, and it was the line of thought above and our own little monster that lead to this: Metal for Monsters.
Neither of us are really fabulous illustrators. But — we love the work of some really fabulous illustrators.
These illustrators:
S.britt, Stefan G. Bucher, Jon Burgerman, Anna Chambers, Justin Hillgrove, Adam Koford, John Martz, Jay Stephens and Brian Taylor have kindly agreed to collaborate with us and have supplied us with some really really cool monster art.
Together, we’ll be offering stainless steel pendants that have their awesome illustrations in limited editions of 100 of each pendant. (Both Eric and I have made our own monster illustrations for Metal for Monsters, but they’re not up yet!)
And while the illustrations are really cool, what’s cooler is that a good chunk of the sale of each pendant will go directly to UNICEF as our way of trying to help kids that don’t have it nearly as well as we do here.
So here’s a preview as to what they look like:
We don’t have an official launch-date yet because we’re still ironing out some matters of production. But, if you’d like to be on the notification list of when they’ll officially be on sale, join the newsletter. Our goal is to raise as much money as possible for UNICEF, so pass on the Metal for Monsters site to anyone who loves monsters or wants to help raise money for UNICEF!
Where did summer go?
I realize it’s been a few weeks since the blog saw any updating. Unfortunately, it seems that whenever we get a little bogged down with the comings and goings of what is just life, the blog will be the first that gets de-prioritized (for which our son will probably grateful that he won’t have to go to therapy years from now because we to blog over spending time with him ;).
We had some good quality time with him in the last few weeks since July is when our daycare provider takes her holidays, which inevitably forces us to slow down, breathe, and just enjoy some time together as a family.
In the past few weeks, we’ve also made a some subtle changes to the store. Most importantly, we’ve thoroughly updated our Frequently Asked Questions list. It is truly a compilation of the most often asked questions that we’ve had in our last three years of business. Chances are, if you’ve got a question about Blend Creations, it is answered there. If not, feel free to ask away and when we answer it, it will likely be added to the next FAQ update.
We’ve also re-vamped our refund and return policy. Over the years, we’ve heard directly and indirectly, particularly from Canadians, that they are often a little wary of making purchases online usually because it’s a greater risk to buy online, sight-unseen than it is to go to the mall and see and touch the tangible objects of desire. As such, we’ve now got a 110% refund policy. If for whatever reason, you’re not satisfied with your Blend Creations purchase, return it to us within 30 days and we’ll refund the full cost of the merchandise, along with any applicable original shipping costs. In addition, we’ll send you a PayPal payment for 10% of the merchandise cost. That way, buying with us will be as pain-free as possible :)
So that’s it for now. We’ll (hopefully) be updating a little more frequently for the next bit.
As an aside, it seems that our site has been hit by spammers lately, but thankfully Wordpress has a lovely spam-filter for comments. So a big hello to all our spam-bots/underpaid-human-spammers out there. :P
July newsletter is out today
Are you looking for a Blend Creations coupon code?
The latest coupon code that we’ve released is a 20% discount off orders of $50 or more that expires August 16.
“But how do I get that coupon code you ask?”
Easy-peasy, join the Blend Creations newsletter within the week and we’ll send you a copy of the latest newsletter and at the bottom is where you’ll find the coupon code.
