TRAVEL ADVISORY | Ever dream of staying at a luxury hotel on a backpacker’s budget? Then Off and Away could be for you. This new hotel room bidding site features only the very best properties with all the luxuries and amenities you could ever dream of. What the site doesn’t have is a price tag. Read more
SHOPPING AROUND | Lamp shades are not something I shop for often, but when I do, I find myself frustrated by the poor selection and quality out there. My particular peeve is shades with plastic backing, which not only becomes brittle and cracks over time but also looks so, well, plastic. Read more
THE TURN ON: Cards and paper from Linda & Harriet, the Brooklyn-based stationer known for it’s chic modern designs with a vintage twist, are not as easy to come by as they used to be. Its delightful stationery used to be available online and at specialty stores everywhere but in May 2010, it changed gears to focus on just a few key products, such as its popular annual calendar (it features a postcard in the back to cut out and send when the month is over) and limited edition monthly projects.
WHAT’S THE DEAL: For a limited time only, Linda & Harriet have opened up an online outlet, where fans like us can shop for its letterpressed greetings and note cards. Even better, everything in its outlet is marked up to 80% off.
WHY WE’RE EXCITED: Greeting cards for $1.50 each (or a pack of five for $6) and boxes of six note cards for $5 – you can’t find cheaper at the dollar store! We’ve picked up several boxes of note cards, which will make for lovely hostess gifts and we’re also stocking up on birthday greetings and thank you cards. With June graduations just around the corner, we’re throwing in some congratulations cards too.
HOW LONG WILL THE PLEASURE LAST: just one more week – the outlet closes on March 31st.
WHERE’S THE F SPOT!: online at lindaandharriet.com —Natasha Muslih
Jordan Eng knows Chinatown inside out. As vice-president of Success Realty and Insurance, founded by his parents in the ’60s, he works from an office on Keefer Street in the heart of Chinatown. He is also actively involved in the community as vice-president of the Vancouver Chinatown Business Improvement Association, co-chair of the Chinatown Festival and past chair of the Vancouver Chinatown Revitalization Committee. Here are his suggestions for five cheap, free or worth-it things to do, see or buy in a new Chinatown that blends trendiness with tradition.
If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it dozens of times: “My eyeliner smudges all over my face and by the end of the day I look like a raccoon.” These women have confessed to me that they would love to be able to use an eye pencil but are intimidated by the application or worried that they won’t be able to make a straight line. Fear the eye pencil no longer! I’m going to let you in on a secret to applying an eye pencil:
STOP—trying to draw the perfect line.
START—applying the pencil in the centre of the upper lash line. Starting the line at the centre of the lash line as opposed to the outer or inner corner allows you complete control over how thick you want your line to be, and it’s much easier to ensure symmetry. Read more
German designer Dieter Rams, former head designer at Braun, is known not only for the stylish yet practical appliances he conceived but also for his 10 principles of good design (Good design is innovative, makes a product useful, is aesthetic, makes a product understandable, is unobtrusive, is honest, is long-lasting, is thorough down to the last detail, is environmentally friendly and is as little design as possible).
All of these apply toNew Zealand Icebreaker clothing, now available at the company’s first Vancouver TouchLab store, which opened last week. The garments are made of an ingenious merino wool fabric that is easy care, lightweight and quick drying like synthetics but also breathable, odour resistant and biodegradable. Unlike cotton, it does not hold moisture. Read more
FINISHING SCHOOL | Is there a form of procras- tination, which is defined as the obvious and intentional putting off of something that must or should be done, that is more acceptable than others? I think there is, and I now have a label for it: Productive Procrastination. I ran into this phrase recently on urbandictionary.com, a website I turn to for pop cultural understanding—or to avoid getting down to research and writing stories for this website.
According to the Urban Dictionary, productive procrastination is defined as “Doing stuff to keep busy while avoiding what really needs doing. When all is said and done, your room is clean, your laundry is folded—but you haven’t started your English paper.” The UD seems to imply that productive procrastination is ultimately undesirable, but I don’t see it that way. If the thing you do to avoid a task at hand is something that also really needs to get done—a necessary task that lingers on some long-standing back-of-brain To Do List—and you actually get to put a check-mark beside it, that can’t be bad thing, can it?
When is deadline is rock-solid and imminent, I will always perform. It’s when projects can wait—like the laundry, or rethinking the marketing strategy for my sideline, for example—that I typically find the energy for them when there’s something else I’m supposed to do. That’s how I roll (as they say on the UD), and I refuse to beat myself up about it because in the end everything always gets done.
That said, super long-term procrastination can be a huge problem. My happiness guru Gretchen Rubin writes a lot about this topic on her blog, The Happiness Project. Here are her top tips:
1. Do It First Thing In The Morning.
2. Try Doing It Every Day.
3. Have Someone Keep You Company.
4. Make Preparations, Assemble The Proper Tools.
5. Commit.
6. First Things First.
7. Reflect On The Great Feeling You’ll Get When You’ve Finished.
For specifics on how to implement these ideas, visit Rubin’s blog, www.thehappinessproject.com, or check out her article on the huffingtonpost.com —Annabel Lee
Photo: iStock
DO IT YOURSELF | So this is what it feels like to be taken to the cleaners. For the tidy sum of $17.25, I had a beloved blouse ruined by the professionals. It came home from the dry cleaners with an unusually strong chemical smell that no amount of airing out seemed to diminish—it was enough to finally make me try a home dry cleaning product. Read more
BUYER BEWARE | Sometimes a bargain is a terrible deal. Case in point: the 100-foot hose I bought on sale at Canadian Tire for $29. The Yardworks hose was advertised as “anti-kink” and “heavy-duty” and since it was only 29 bucks, I figured I had myself a winner. That is until I tried to use it. Read more
BE PREPARED | Though it looks almost identical to an image we saw on the Internet of the 6.3 magnitude earthquake that rocked and tumbled Christchurch in New Zealand recently, the picture shown here was taken just 200 miles south of Vancouver in Nisqually, Washington. It shows the destruction caused in 2001 when a quake with a magnitude of 6.8 ripped through this tiny community south of Seattle, sending tremors hundreds of miles in every direction. Read more