Spicy

Ever since I finished my afghan last month, I've been itching to start another DIY project.

During my ongoing design blog readings, I came across a project that sounded relatively easy and very practical.

I have quite a few spices, and I've been on the look out for a decent spice rack for a while now. I haven't been able to find any that I like for less than $50 (I have expensive taste, what can I say??) and my drawer full of little ziplock bags and various containers of spices just isn't cutting it.



Check out this homemade spice rack by Craftynest. I love how it fits 25 different spices, in neat matching containers. The tins fit perfectly and are available to buy online for less than a dollar a tin, and the labels are just the spice name printed on adhesive address labels.

One of my coworkers is a middle-age, father figure type man named Patrick and he's got a big workshop in his garage. He's constantly building things - new desks for work and other various projects. Pat had some scrap wood in his garage and was kind enough to cut all the pieces to the right size for me. I don't have quite all the tools to do that myself just yet.

So this morning when I got to work, there was a lovely stack of wood and a sheet of sandpaper, and off I am! I'm borrowing Pat's air nail gun later to assemble it once it's painted. I'm very excited.


I've also been reading online about stores in downtown Seattle to visit when we go there next month, and came across this really cool store called World Spice Merchants. It's essentially a store where you can buy any kind of spice in the world, including ones you've never heard of before, and at a much cheaper rate than you can find here in Winnipeg.




I'm excited to buy new exotic spices and put them in my new spice rack! Whole vanilla beans for $3.50 (they go for $7 or $8 here), Moroccan saffron (pictured below, isn't it beautiful? I love the color), lavendar flowers (I want to make lavendar crême brulêe; pictured above), Hungarian paprika (I need to find a good vegetarian goulash recipe; also pictured below, isn't the color wonderful?), gorgeous yellow tumeric. I can hardly wait. My sister has a list of things to pick up for her as well!

The Eve of Christmas

I got the most lovely Christmas present today (among other lovely ones). I got a big Annie Liebowitz book.

This is not an Annie Liebowitz photograph, rather it is a photograph of her and her assistant, on top of the Chrysler building. I'm sure they had a good reason for being there. Anyways, I'm very excited to read this book.

I went for lunch to one of my all time favorite places in Winnipeg: Fresh Cafe. Fresh Cafe is on Corydon, right close to my house, and was named one of the Top 10 Best Canadian Restaurants of 2007.


They buy as much local and organic food as possible, and have a lot of healthy dishes, as well as a huge juice/smoothie bar, both of which they make on the spot, once you've ordered. I got my favorite dish - in-house smoked salmon eggs benedict (sans the eggs, of course, and extra hollandaise sauce, I could eat their hollandaise as soup) with hashbrowns, and a strawberry/orange/cranberry smoothie, with vanilla creme brulee for dessert. It was delicious.

Architecture designed for children is some of my favorite, because there are no rules and anything bright and crazy goes. One of the coolest stores for kids I've seen is The Kids Republic bookstore in Beijing.


I have a feeling that if more bookstores in Winnipeg were like this, there would be a lot more children reading here! The store was designed by architect Keiichiro Sako.


Sako, known for his strong attention to graphic shapes and crisp lines, has also designed subsequent The Kids Republic bookstores in Tianjin and Shanghai.