Tracy Anderson

Try This Rebounder Workout At Home

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Celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson will put a bounce in your workout with a rebound routine that’s free on YouTube.

Tracy Anderson

 

FIT FOR FREE | Don’t hate her because she has an unattainably perfect body and fabulous celebrity best friends like Gwyneth Paltrow. For the past 11 years, Tracy Anderson has worked damn hard for her money, developing workout studios both in New York and L.A. and creating a series of eight killer DVDs based on the Tracy Anderson Method. And while her lifestyle advice and exercise routines continue to have their detractors—who feel her views on dieting are too extreme and her routines for dance-based workouts too quick and complicated to follow—her program has been proven to work if you can hunker down and stick with it. Read more

Kraft Paper Christmas Wrap

Make Your Own Kraft Paper Gift Wrap

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Simple white kraft paper offers infinite wrapping possibilities. Here are three to get you started.

Kraft Paper Christmas WrapWhite kraft paper, the kind that comes in big rolls from art supply stores, is the perfect blank canvas to use for wrapping  gifts. I like it plain, dressed up with beautiful ribbon topped off with greenery such as sprigs of holly or bits of twig. I also like it decorated in the ways I’ve shown here. Read more

Areaware Candlesticks

Useful + Fun Gifts For Design Aficionados

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3 inexpensive, purposeful home products from Areaware for picky design loving types.

Areaware CandlesticksCHEAP + CHIC | Sometimes subversive, typically surprising and always fun, the useful and poetic products by Areaware trigger an emotional response. This trend-setting New York-based company’s mandate is to “create thoughtful products that encourage a dialogue between people and their everyday surroundings,” and the first time I flipped through their online catalogue and discovered the marble and resin Distortion candlesticks shown here, designed by Paul Loebach, I wanted to give them as Christmas gifts to all my designer friends. I worried that something this original and arty might be too expensive, but discovered the opposite is true: these traditional-with-a-twist 10-inch-tall candlesticks are a steal at $24 each. Read more

Promo Code Button

Hello Promo: How To Work The Promo Code

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Two of the sweetest words on the Internet are Promo and Code. Here’s how to make this web-shopping tool work for you.

Promo Code ButtonSHOP SMART | If Santa didn’t have elves working furiously in his workshop, he’d be wise to buy all his gifts online.  No crowded malls, no parking traffic, no stress – in fact, if I didn’t know any better, he probably does this already.  And you probably do too. But did you know that besides saving time, you can also save money? All you need is a neat little thing called a promo code.

Chances are you’ve seen it before: that small box at the bottom of the checkout page where you can “enter promo code here”.  I burned through a lot of plastic before it occurred to me to figure out how to get one.  After all, you can find anything online, why not a promo code. Read more

Live, Potted Christmas Tree - Clinton Hussey

Super Sources For Eco- Friendly Christmas Trees

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A symbol of life after winter, the greenest tree is real, fresh, local and even organic.

Live, Potted Christmas Tree - Clinton HusseyLast year in an effort to simplify my life, I looked into buying an artificial Christmas tree, preferably one that came predecorated and opened and shut like an umbrella: I could pop it up before Christmas, then collapse and store it till next year. Then I discovered that the whole point of a Christmas tree is to bring evergreen trees or branches indoors as reminder that winter will eventually end and the world will turn green again.

Real Christmas trees are green in more than colour as they are a renewable crop and often grown on land unsuitable for growing much else. And like any crop, there are different shades of green.

3 Ways To Get A Real Green Christmas Tree Read more

Easy Appie #3: Herb & Pepper Goat Cheese

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Stellar food stylist/writer Béatrice Peltre makes goat cheese look amazing.

ENTERTAIN SMART | Some things are so stunningly beautiful that you just want to eat them up—like the arresting food photographs taken by Béatrice Peltre, a French expat who lives in Boston and writes, styles and shoots a food column for the Boston Globe. Peltre also shares her adventures in cooking and eating on her seriously addictive blog, La Tartine Gourmande, which has been (among its many well-deserved accolades) recognized as the best special interest food blog of 2010 by Saveur magazine. Read more

Granted Clothing Retro Hockey Mittens

Retro-Vibe Gifts For The Fashion-Forward Tribe

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Retro chic items from Vancouver’s Granted Clothing and Native Shoes make fashionable and affordable Christmas gifts.

Granted Clothing Retro Hockey MittensCHEAP + CHIC | Neo-retro fashion is a “time travelling aesthetic”— contemp- orary, eye-catching clothing and accessories with silhouettes and motifs that are vaguely familiar, mostly warm and fuzzy references to true vintage fashions you’ve seen in shops or items you wore when you were younger.

Granted Clothing and Native Shoes are two successful Vancouver companies that design and manufacture outerwear and shoes (respectively) with a neo-retro vibe. Granted makes premium, chunky hand-knit fashions, while Native makes some of the coolest plastic shoes on the planet. Both have a cult following internationally, particularly in Japan where being unfashionable is quite possibly a crime; both have received miles of prestigious fashion ink. Read more

Rachel Mara On Sale, Oh My!

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Rachel Mara On Sale, Oh My!

THE TURN ON: It comes as no surprise to us that Vancouver-born designer Rachel Mara’s fashions are much loved by celebrities and those in the know.
She understands what it’s like to be a modern woman because, well, she is one, so true to form, she creates clothes with different body types in mind. You just know her pieces will work as well off the runway as they look good on it.

WHAT’S THE DEAL: Rachel Mara can be found in the ritziest boutiques, including Fred Segal, Saks Fifth Avenue and Holt Renfrew, but it’s best to shop at her online boutique where you can currently save up to 80 per cent off select items. We’ve fallen in love with a versatile striped wrap that’s been marked down to $50 from $168. And with coats that were priced at up to $600 down to $100, we’re tempted to buy one of each!

WHY WE’RE EXCITED: Didn’t we mention the coats for $100?  Also since all her clothes are made in Canada, we’re feeling a little national pride.

HOW LONG WILL THE PLEASURE LAST: Until the items are sold out.

WHERE’S THE F SPOT!: online at rachelmara.com

Submitted by Natasha Muslih

Martin Tessler

Martin Tessler Views, Noshes and Shops YVR

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Photographer Martin Tessler is our guy with an eye for what to see, eat and buy in fair and rainy Vancouver.

Martin TesslerA favourite among Canada’s top shelter magazine editors and art directors as well as talented architects and interior designers from coast to coast, Vancouver photographer Martin Tessler is known for exploiting the most dramatic, least apparent angles of the buildings, rooms and gardens he shoots.

Tessler recently won both gold and silver honours at Canada’s National Magazine Awards and includes among his current high-profile assignments Douglas Coupland’s home and James Franco’s portrait for The New York Times. Oh, and he also covered Canadian Architect with Bob Rennie’s private and uber cool Wing Sang [art] Gallery located on Pender Street. Read more

Gift-Wrap That’s Easy, Quick And Reusable

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Forget gift paper and ribbon, traditional Japanese wrapping cloth is easy, quick and reusable.

WASTE NOT | The first Christmas morning my husband spent with my family was a culture shock. Before we opened our presents, my mother handed each of us a knife, which we used to carefully slit the adhesive tape instead of ripping the paper off in the mad frenzy my husband was used to. When all the presents had been opened, my mother collected and folded the paper to save until the following year. We would no more have thought of throwing it out than tossing the Christmas ornaments after dismantling the tree. Read more