This story category covers information of interest to Canadian readers, particularly those living in Vancouver.

Fashion On The Racks - Dreamstime

Fashionista’s Ball: Couture & Thrift Collide

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The Fashionista’s Ball promises to be the best sale ever, with clothes for couture tastes on a thrift-store budget.

Fashion On The Racks - DreamstimeSALES WE LOVE | Mark your calendars, fashionistas, and don your ninja shopping suit (that’s tights and tees for quick changing) because Sunday, May 29, promises to be one of Vancouver’s biggest—if not THE biggest— charity/shopping events of 2011.

The Fashionista’s Ball, insanely well organized by Pixie Riddle and her pals to benefit United Way, is a one-day pop-up fashion extravaganza (think department store scale rather than boutique) that includes 3,000-plus garments, gently worn or never worn (some definitely couture); hundreds of pairs of gorgeous shoes; beautiful handbags, Louis Vuitton and Bottega Veneta models among them; and accessories including sunglasses, scarves and both costume and fine jewellery items.

And guess what? Prices for all this donated merchandise are shockingly low. Read more

Drinking Tap Water

Stop Drinking Bottled Water This Instant

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Why you need to stop drinking expensive bottled water this instant—and something amazing to do with the money you’ll save.

Drinking Tap Water

 

JUST SAY NO | Since this is Drinking Water Week (May 1-7), we’d like to point out that anyone in Vancouver who continues to drink bottled water at home or in restaurants is choosing to waste their money, simple as that. Also, there’s every reason to believe that by purchasing packaged water, which is so effectively hawked by celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, they’re actually saying yes to a seriously inferior product. Read more

Grass Fed Cows iStock

Have You Tried Non-Medicated Meat?

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Beef, pork and chicken from “naturally” raised animals are purer than conventionally produced meats—and way less expensive than organic.

Grass Fed Cows iStockMONEY WELL SPENT | We’re fast coming up on barbecue season when everyone eats more beef burgers, lamb chops and chicken parts than usual. It’s no lie that meat is expensive and that organic meats, much as I would prefer to eat them, are even more so. So I was happy to learn about a less-expensive but solid alternative to the hormone-laden conventional meats in most grocery stores and many butcher shops. Read more

Purebread

Lesley Stowe’s 5 Things You Ought To Try

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Lesley Stowe, the mastermind behind everyone’s favourite Raincoast Crisps, picks five, cool things we really ought to try.

 

PurebreadParisian-trained chef and bestselling cookbook author Lesley Stowe is the founder of Lesley Stowe Fine Foods, the specialty food company that manufactures Raincoast Crisps, B.C.’s most recognizable snack and the number-one gourmet cracker for taste-conscious hosts throughout North America. Read more

Sonja Picard Jewellery

Sonja Picard’s Stunning New/Old Jewellery

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Designer Sonja Picard takes your unworn old jewellery and refashions it into stunning new pieces you’ll never take off.

Sonja Picard JewelleryMONEY WELL SPENT | Who among us does not have at least a few pieces of fine-quality old jewellery squirrelled away in the back of a cupboard. Maybe we purchased these items for ourselves way back when; maybe they were given to us by someone special to mark an important occasion; or maybe they were inherited. However we acquired these treasures, and sweet as they are steeped in both history and sentiment, we know in our hearts we’re never going to wear them for reasons as simple as looking unfashionable or as complex as reminding us of a time we’d sooner forget.

Rather than ignore this old jewellery—or sell it for a fraction of its original appraised value—why not combine it all together—gemstones, precious metals, everything—to create new, meaning-filled pieces imbued with the spirit, history and energy of the old ones, contemporary pieces you really will wear. Read more

Dirty Apron Cooking School: Brunch

Recipe For Happiness: Cooking At Dirty Apron

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Put your money where your mouth is—take a hands-on cooking class at the Dirty Apron Cooking School.

Dirty Apron Cooking School: BrunchMONEY WELL SPENT | According to psychological research reported on recently in The New York Times, “spending money for an experience—concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco—produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff.” Findings further suggest that the happiness accrued by spending money on leisure activities is amplified when the experience is shared with someone else.

Which brings us to our new favourite experiential “happiness place,” the Dirty Apron Cooking School. Everyone we know who has taken one of their four-hour hands-on cooking classes raves about it. Read more

Provide Interior

Style Maven Anicka Quin Shops & Eats YVR

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Western Living editor and style maven extraordinaire Anicka Quin shares a few of her top spots to eat and shop.

Provide InteriorAs the editor-in-chief of Western Living magazine—western Canada’s largest magazine dedicated to homes, food and wine, and travel—Anicka Quin spends a lot of time travelling the West to sleuth out her favourite design finds. A former Craigslist devotee—fed by an addiction to collecting midcentury modern furniture—she’s now a gatherer of contemporary pieces to pair with her teak. When she’s not travelling, she’s feeding her other great love: cooking fabulous food with friends and documenting it on her blog, Cardomom Pod.

Here are her suggestions for five cheap, free or worth-it things to do, see or buy in Vancouver. Read more

Keefer Bar by Battersby Howat - Ed White Photography

Jordan Eng Chows Around Chinatown

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Chinatown insider Jordan Eng takes us to his favourite spots in one of Vancouver’s trendiest areas.

Keefer Bar by Battersby Howat - Ed White PhotographyJordan 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.

Jordan Eng’s Fave Five Read more
Icebreaker Bliss Hood

Icebreaker TouchLab In Vancouver

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Made from nature’s perfect fibre, Icebreaker wool clothing is so versatile and long-wearing that you don’t need to buy a lot.

Icebreaker Bliss HoodGerman 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

Roots Village Bag In Vintage Tribe Leather

The Village Is The Bag To Collect Right Now

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Forget the Baguette and the Birkin, this modestly priced casual bag by Roots is the one to collect right now.

Roots Village Bag In Vintage Tribe LeatherMONEY WELL SPENT | If there were such a thing as an International Handbag Hall Of Fame, the highly coveted Baguette by Fendi, Birkin by Hermès, Speedy by Louis Vuitton and 2.55 by Chanel would be among the first bags inducted. It’s a tribute to their iconic good looks that these stratospherically priced luxury items are respun by their European manufacturers year after year and continue to maintain a “must-have” status.

Of course, it wasn’t hard to come up with this quartet of hypothetical inductees; the selection is so beyond question Anna Wintour will be rolling her eyes when she reads the list. But we do have one more, less-obvious submission some students of fashion insist belongs with this group. It’s a Canadian entry: the Village Bag by Roots. So why do they think this modestly priced everyday handbag deserves the same recognition as these pocketbook giants? Read more