So, you want your kid to have a bedroom that’s decorated to match his dreams — but you don’t want to spend much money?

Sensible!

Especially if the kiddy’s wished-for bedroom decor is based on the latest from Disney or Pixar or whatever video game is hot in the school yard this week…

What to do?
Well, here’s one incredibly frugal solution to that decorating dilemma…

Block Posters lets you send any image from your computer (up to 1 MB size file), slice it up, print it out, and turn it into a giant wall poster — free!

Check the gallery of other people’s posters (like the lovely Nemo wall art that Phil made for his young daughter’s bedroom) for inspiring ideas like these:

• Leave the white edges of the paper on for a cool tile mosaic effect;
• Decoupage the pieces onto a room divider screen;
• Frame each paper tile separately in black and hang them really close together to look like a piece of stained glass;
• Go black-and-white or monchrome for an high-toned artsy look;
• Blow up a smaller image for a cool blocky pixelated effect (turn a nature shot into modern camouflage, anyone?);
• Posterize yourself!

Okay, maybe your children don’t really want your face looming down at them from the wall above their beds while they’re sleeping at night… but you could do a nice family portrait, or a favourite pop star, or a role-model athlete, or even a screenshot from a favourite game…

Your imagination is the only limit!

Or, to be factual, about 8 feet x 10 feet is the limit, finished poster size-wise.
But you don’t really need a larger poster than that, do you? Unless you’re making a mural to decorate a great room… hmm….

My sister-in-law, the mad daylily collector, was among 2000 who rocked our local Run for the Cure this past weekend, to help to raise funds for breast cancer research. She’s one good reason why DomestikGoddess.com goes Pink for October — well, even more pink than usual. She also comes from a long line of photographers, and that’s where this next bit comes in:

Yesterday, my friend Gui mentioned that Flickr’s gone over to the pink this month, too. Yahoo! will donate 1 euro for each pink photo added to the Pink 2008 Flickr group, up to 30,000 EUR for five charities in Europe that support breast cancer research and treatment. You can add up to 5 photographs each day until the end of October.

How cool is that? An easy way to support a good cause — easy as pinning on the pink ribbon, but way more creative — with the added benefit of getting much-needed funds to fight breast cancer. If you can’t manage the cash to donate to the cause right now, yourself, why not upload a couple of pics and let Yahoo! make a donation for you?

These are my favourite dwarf daylilies, by the way. Don’t ask the name, it’s Strawberry something-or-other, but I never can remember: to me, they’re just “those pretty bright pink ones”! I’m a lousy photographer, as we know, but couldn’t resist grabbing a shot of these daylilies just as their blooming season came to an end.

p.s. If you post a pink pic to Flickr’s Pink 2008, feel free to drop a link in the comments so we can all come over to your place and go ooh and ahh!

This photo album probably qualifies as a “developmental toy” for your infant, but much more important, it could do wonders for Happy Family Togetherness a few years down the road…

We usually think of baby photograph albums as something like Granny’s “brag book” stuffed with pictures of the adored new grandchild, but Baby’s My First Photo Album of Family and Friends really is designed for Baby.

What a clever idea, this little cloth-covered book! Especially with families all spread out over long distances, the way we so often are these days… Fill the wipe-down vinyl protective pages with up to fifteen 4×6 photos of family and friends — all the important people in your child’s life, who might not be there every day to make the goo-goo noises and play with him.

Hint, hint:
Tell your toddler all your fond memories of crazy-but-loveable old Auntie Jen as you turn the pages together at bedtime, and he won’t have forgotten her when the family gets together next holiday time!

I want to talk about picture frames, really I do. But first let me tell you how this comes to mind. See, last night I went to visit my friend Betty, interior designer extraordinaire. And whenever I visit her, I get all excited by the many and varied trapeze lights that she’s used in her chalet-style home. Those airy wire and metal structures seem to fly across the open spaces, yet are so unobstrusive! — and a surprising choice against all the natural wood.

Since I’m living in This Old Farmhouse, however, something as modern as a trapeze style fixture doesn’t seem quite appropriate here.

So, much as I love the almost-not-there look of trapeze style fixtures, I’ll likely stick with my early-1040s ceiling lights until something perfect comes along.

But what about flying a few sleek wires on the walls?

Ah, that’s a different story!

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got about fifty kabillion photographs to display and not nearly enough wall space! (Who isn’t always on the look-out for a nifty solution?)

I keep coming back to these Umbra Trapeze Frames that I’d first spotted some time ago at Amaroni — that’s a UK-based site, but the exact same Umbra frames are closer to home and considerably lower in price at Amazon.

And the reason why I keep coming back to this style is because they combine simplicity with elegance — and very practical, too. You can show a wide variety of sizes and types of photographs or drawings or whatever art needs hanging, and put the whole bunch up together as one graceful unit. I think it has a great uncluttered look that could work anywhere — in a ski chalet or cosy farmhouse just as beautifully as in a suburban bungalow or hip urban loft.

As those of you following the Canadian news (or my other River/Road post) may gather… we’ve had a spot of flooding, here in the St. John River valley of New Brunswick. And as I said yesterday,

When Nature gets nasty, know what we do around here?
We rush out and take pictures, of course.

Especially those of us who live up on high ground.

Here are the flood photos that He Who Hogs The Power Tools took yesterday and this afternoon, while I wandered about with the dog and chatted with other flood watchers:

Highway 105 at Keswick, NB, 30 April 2008


Highway 105 at Keswick, NB, 30 April 2008


Highway 105 at Keswick, NB, 30 April 2008


Mactaquac Dam, NB, 30 April 2008


Mactaquac Dam, NB, 30 April 2008


Corner of Brunswick and Carleton Streets, Fredericton, NB, 30 April 2008


Back of Crown Plaza Hotel, Queen St., Fredericton, NB, 30 April 2008


Officers Square, Fredericton, New Brunswick 30 April 2008

Spring could come along just about any time now, if my dogs had anything to say about it.
(No argument here!)

I’m just saying.

Yes, December is defnitely here.

There’s a winter storm warning on for, well, almost all of the country, according to Environment Canada… Just in the past hour, the snow has been moving in quickly here.

He Who Hogs The Power Tools scampered out earlier than planned to do the first-of-week errands in town, and I’ve had the dogs out for some exercise (for the prevention of cabin fever — they don’t much like going out in a storm, so we have our fun now).

Meanwhile, a large buck white-tailed deer just walked purposefully up through the orchard from the road, heading for the back field. He’ll hunker down in a sheltered bit of woods and, no doubt, hope that the coyotes are otherwise occupied…

I was slow to grab the camera, and you’ll see that these two through-the-window snapshots are astonishingly poor — but at least they’ll give you a glimpse of today’s wild visitor. (Click the thumbnails for a slightly bigger picture.)

In another hour or so, it’s going to be a winter wonderland out there, and I’m feeling the urge to start a little festive baking and candy-making. Truffles and brown sugar fudge and maybe some shortbread cookies?

It’s Canada; it’s December…
Let’s eat!

The folks who spread the good word about Ferrero chocolates (a traditional stocking-stuffer in our family) dropped a note the other day about a new way to help fight childhood hunger in this no-holds-barred season of holiday treats. And how appropriate…

Send a virtual snowglobe to a friend by email, and Ferrero makes a donation to Share Our Strength.

Share Our Strength is a national nonprofit that inspires and organizes individuals and businesses to share their strengths to help end hunger. We raise funds in innovative ways–from holding volunteer-led special events across the country, such as the Great America Bake Sale® and Taste of the Nation, to developing cause-related marketing ventures and corporate partnerships.

I’m not usually a huge fan of electronic greeting cards (although saving a tree is always good), just because I’m a bit of a traditionalist here… but when you can combine a bit of festive cheer with a bit of festive charity, why not?

Pick from the selection of seasonal photographs for your snowglobe scene — or upload your own photo, for a truly personal greeting.

Technorati Tags: e-greeting cards, charity

Finding a way to display photographs can be tricky.

Especially if you haven’t got the spare moola to buy dozens of photo frames.

Or if the landlord won’t let you put a whole lot of nails in the walls, to hang them.

Here’s a possible solution, spotted at Urban Outfitters — a long clear plastic sleeve with space for 28 photos of 4″ x 6″ size.

That makes it 76 inches long by 10½ inches wide, which is large enough to make a real statement as a personalized photo collage.

Bonus, of course, is the fact that you can swop out the photographs as the mood takes you, to create an ever-changing display.

Technorati Tags: photographs, wall, decor

This past weekend was Thanksgiving, here in Canada, and I think I’ve figured out why we have our Thanksgiving so much earlier than the Americans do — it’s to take advantage of the fabulous Fall weather.

Around these parts, the colourful autumn leaves near at their best in the first week of October, and the apples are practically falling off the trees.


The weather is cool enough that you can cook up a big huge turkey dinner without overheating the kitchen to the detriment of the cook, and frosty nights make the ripe apples sweet… yet the sunny days are still warm enough for us to go out in shirtsleeves — on Saturday, the younguns were out in shorts and tee-shirts!

We get a lot of the seasonal yard work out of the way, on the weekends around Thanksgiving time, and entertain a lot of guests — sometimes both at the same time, as in the case of apple picking — and still (somehow) have enough energy left over to take the dogs for a hike in the autumn woods.

Here’s a little bit of show-and-tell (for Lara’sTalk About Tuesday to share the joy. No pictures of the big Thanksgiving turkey dinner, however — everyone was too busy eating to bother with a camera!

A pop-up photograph has a lot of the same appeal, for me, as a shadow box or diorama.

Wouldn’t it be fun to make a 3-d holiday display from family photos and bits of festive embellishments — ribbons, glitter, tiny ornaments, maybe a bit of angel-hair faux snow?

And then tuck the whole display into a glass-fronted shadow box…

Too much?
Go for a simple flat photo frame, then, and let the pop-out elements add their own special interest to the picture.

If you look carefully at one of those fabulous pop-up books that we knew and loved in childhood, you’ll see that the secret of the three-dimensional effect is a fold and two straight cuts, to make a pop-up box that sticks out from the main page or photo. This is what you’ll glue the individual cut-out elements onto, to make them stand out.

Another thing I love about this craft is that you probably have everything you need to do it, on hand, right now:

• Scissors or a craft knife
• Glue
• Several copies of the same photograph (so you can cut them up)
• Cardboard (recycle an old cereal box?) to stiffen the back of the photo if you’re going to display the work as a stand-up piece on a shelf or table top.

Hey, what about making your pop-up photograph into a greeting card?

Truly, a unique way to send your holiday wishes and share a special memory with friends and family…

[WikiHow via erinloechner at curbly]

Technorati Tags: pop-ups, photographs, crafts