The Sweetie’s lovely and talented sister is visiting from Victoria which gave me the perfect excuse to yet again drag The Long Suffering Sweetie to Aberfoyle Antique market. Knowing that his sister is a fellow treasure hunter, I could pretend that I was suggesting a Sunday excursion for her benefit. It isn’t that The Sweetie is adverse to antique markets, he is a patient and curious Sweetie after all, but each trip has filled him with a mounting fear that our house will be overrun with clutter. He dreams of one day having a stark, minimalist home, and every ridiculous bird creamer and Santa snow globe I discover takes him further and further away from his zen fantasies. I can see him visibly cringing when I am fondling salt and pepper shakers shaped like corn cobs or cooing over rusty bird cages.

Luckily for me, The Sweetie is an indulgent brother, and his sister and I had a wonderful time exploring the stalls and finding beads and baubles for future jewellery making projects.

After many hours of hunting, our hands dusty from rummaging through piles of trinkets, we had a lovely picnic to replenish ourselves.

Sunshine, treasures and loved ones make a perfect summer Sunday.

Despite my somewhat cynical feelings towards Valentine’s Day, I  am still  being sucked into a Valentine love bubble.

My heart started pounding and my breath quickened when I saw this sweet little number, created by the lovely Amy at Smitten Kitten.

I felt the love, and knew we had to be together.

Happy Valentine’s Day to me.

My perfectly adorned yoga buddy did it to me again dammit. First she tempted me with her gorgeous boots and I succumbed. This week she sashayed in wearing a gorgeous Soia and Kyo coat over her yoga gear. Bitch.

I love Soia and Kyo coats from Montreal. Montreal women know how to look chic in the cold. I spent two winters in Montreal but never mastered the artful je ne sais quoi art of tying a scarf just so. I wore most of the contents of my closet and looked like a very un-sexy un-French Stay Puft Marshmallow man from October until April.

I want a new winter coat. In order to endure hellish Canadian winters it seems only fair that everyone should be entitled to a new winter coat (and boots) on a yearly basis, considering it is our uniform for a good six months of the year.

I have a functional puffy coat that resembles a sleeping bag with arms that isn’t winning any style awards but keeps me semi-warm in frigid temperatures. I also have a boring coat that may be nearing its tenth birthday. It makes me feel kind of mannish, but it’s classic enough in a boring mannish coat way. It is, however, starting to self destruct and I have been reduced to a single button. I suspect it was a desperate attempt on my old coat’s part to encourage me to liven things up a little, add some spice to our stale relationship and open my eyes to some new possibilities.

With that and my fiscally challenged bank account in mind, I decided to replace my pinged off buttons with new ones. A new coat can wait. I have pennies to save for a beach vacation, which is much more crucial than being fashion-forward. For now, some shiny new buttons on my old coat will do.

I was lucky enough to attend a gleeful girlie swap this weekend. It was definitely worth leaving the house and violating my self-imposed hibernation policy. These days, with dreams of a beach vacation and debt that doesn’t seem to be disappearing on its own, shopping in other friends’ closets makes frugal sense.

Over wine, cheese and strawberries with some delicious creamy dipping sauce I forgot to ask about, we grabbed clothes and magazines and gabbed about blind date set ups, work woes, and the status of Mickey Rourke’s busted up face.

It is always exciting to see old clothes get a new life. With a dash of vision and ambition, boring, wrinkled discards can be resurrected. A skirt from a previous swap reappeared as a Doctor-Zhivago-goes-to-chef-school hat, a millinery project by one of our more ambitious swappers.  Old lumpy sweaters reappear as pillows or get felted into tea cozies. Too tight blouses always look sexy on the skinny bitch we keep meaning to ban from future swaps.

We were snarky, supportive and noisy, and came away with new stashes of goodies and baggies of leftover cookies. With the warm glow of  female bonding and wine guzzling, I felt a little less assaulted by the cold trudge to the subway.

Damn you California Sandwiches, I can’t quit you. Why do you have to be so tasty? And so cheap? $6.00 for a delicious gooey eggplant sandwich, smothered in cheese and hot peppers, how am I supposed to resist that?

Regardless of my proclamations that I will work on the ever inflating inner tube attached to my waist these days, I just have to picture your saucy goodness and my steely resolve flies out the window. I don’t stand a chance.

Between the misshapen baby blanket and my weird knitted bear on steroids, my handmade baby gifts have so far been a bit of a bust. I decided I had better have a decent offering for my new nephew.

I found the perfect onesie at my friend’s groovy store , Nathalie-Roze and Co. She carries indie Canadian clothing and accessory designers in her adorable shop nestled in Leslieville.

SLO, a Toronto designer, makes funky onesies from recycled tshirts. Crafty and environmentally friendly, what more could a new auntie ask for? I found an adorable recycled Rolling stones concert t-shirt and knew this would be the coolest baby ever. Even though I can’t look at Mick Jagger without thinking of Don Knotts, or Keith Richards without thinking of an expressive grandma who spends her winter’s in Florida wearing silky caftans, they were great in their heyday.

The problem arose when I showed it to my sweetie and he was appalled at the back. “You can’t have skeletons on a baby!” he exclaimed, “that’s creepy and wrong!”

To tell you the truth, I don’t think I even noticed the the skeletons on the back. I was too busy admiring the giant Rolling Stones lips on the front and patting myself on the back about my cool auntie status. Too late now. The nephew is getting his onesie, inappropriate or not.

I figure:

1) It’s a baby. It won’t care if it has skeletons on it’s back

2) It’s a boy. He’ll care even less about what he’s wearing, and the skeletons will make him feel tough

3) His parents drive a Prius and buy organic food, so the green bragging rights of having a recycled t-shirt onesie should override the creepy skeleton factor

4) The creepy skeletons signifying death are a stark contrast to the cuddly baby wearing it, perhaps acting as a symbol of how closely life and death are intertwined. It will give baby something to ponder between feedings and pooing