Ship Shape

We moved in yesterday! Wahoo! And today is filled with lots of fun projects. We're hoping to be open on Wednesday for business, so posting may be light here until then. Jane and I have certainly got our hands full.

Oh Noes!

So our first minor hiccup in the renovation process happened last night. In the midst of all the chaos and tight quarters, my tripod came crashing down (HARD) with my camera attached to it. I believe my camera made it through the trauma alright, but my one and only lens is definitely cussed up. But if that's the worst that's happened so far, I'm pretty ok with it.

I'll be buying a new lens this weekend to capture the finished product next week, but until then, enjoy the last couple of frames that I (and Jane) captured of the progress. Everything looks darker because it was past midnight when these were taken but you can see the walls painted, ceiling painted, trim installed and painted, wallpaper halfway done, and behind that swinging diner door is our changeroom. Starting to look like an honest-to-goodness store, I'd say.

TA DA

A sale you say? What perfect timing because we've added all these super cute things to the shop this week, and more!

W4M

I had to repost this from Meg's blog today because I love it so much. Brooklyn artist Sophie Blackall illustrates the posts she reads in Missed Connections. So good. I wonder if she leaves out most of the pervy ones, or they just come across as lovely once illustrated?

Cat Fanciers

Jane and I are part of a cat-sitters club for the next little while. For reference I'm Mary-Anne and Jane is Kristy. Anyways, our friend Brad is in the mountains of Banff enjoying the scenary and wildlife and filling his mind with photography goodness for three weeks. I am beyond jealous. Luckily, he has a sweetheart of a cat, Bowie, who was able to distract me from my seething envy.

I instantly fell in love with her. She seems affectionate and gentle-natured and sociable. She is a delight to take care of and I'm so happy I've made a new cat friend.

Something else I fell in love with? Brad's apartment. OH MAN. Hamilton, you never cease to amaze me with your incredible living quarters.



Those are Brad's closets. There is one built in on either side. And they light from the inside. They might be gone by the time he comes back, because Jane and I have been trying to figure out how to remove them inconspicuously and use them in the new space.

Alternatively, I could pay you rent and live inside them, Brad?

Pose Pose Pose Pose

This is a little late, but I couldn't not share one of the more exciting parts about art crawl. All the scraping kind of overshadowed everything last week. Anyways, that Friday, I was getting everything ready for the evening when a package arrived in the mail. I thought it was just a last minute arrival of some new product, which is always exciting in itself, but it was so so so much better.

It was a beautiful vintage dress from Victoire. And not only was it everything I dreamed of and more, but it fit perfectly. A new dress is always exciting, but to get it on the day of art crawl? Pretty much made me the happiest person alive.



I kind of want to wear it to every art crawl. Do you think anyone would notice? Thanks so much ladies! This is hands-down my new favourite dress.

Ah Yeah

Ainslie Wood Co. is having a sale all week, until May 31st. We will also be adding cute new things all week. Things that are on sale. Can you stand it? Yes! You can!

Multi-Tasking

Are you sick of hearing about our new store yet? Good, because I'm not sick of talking about it. This week is going to be one of those weeks. There are about a million little projects to get done (and a thousand big projects as well!) and not nearly enough time. Today, I'm multi-tasking.

(Also, these pictures look weird because I forgot my camera and used Hollie's photobooth instead)


White brackets spray-painted black, drying outside the shop.



Black shelves spray-painted white, waiting for their 2nd coat. Yup, we got white brackets to spray-paint black, and black shelves to spray-paint white.



Lots of jars cleaned and drying. Waiting to be turned into terrariums.

Lots to do, lots to do. My dad also just got back from living in the Dominican for the last six months, so I need to make time and go visit him too. At least I'll get dinner out of it, since I haven't had a single opportunity to pick up groceries in the last week. Hollie's mom baked her a bunch of casseroles to get her through the week. Mom, are you reading this? That was such a great idea!

Two Four

In midst of all the craziness that's been going on, we found time to have Mike's brother and his girlfriend over for a barbeque on Sunday evening. It was a lovely evening; the perfect kick off to summer.

In Bloom

Hey guys, we're having a spring sale over at Ainslie Wood Co.! Enter "SPRINGSALE" into message to seller at checkout, and receive 15% off your purchase until May 31st! We'll be stocking great new pieces every day this week.

Progress Report

We finished wallpaper scraping! We love these walls!

The progress is coming along nicely. Thank goodness for the long weekend in Canada (Happy Birthday Queen Vic!) because Jane and I were able to spend every gained minute towards some kind of store errand. Every thought that has run through my head for the past week has been

"WEAREOPENINGASTOREINAWEEKINEEDTOBEDOINGSOMETHINGBUTIHAVENOIDEAWHATISHOULDBEDOINGTHEREISSOMUCHTODOOOOO!"

This weekend made me feel so much better about things. We got everything on our to-do list done and then some. We even cheated a little bit and took an unplanned trip to Aberfoyle for some new decor for the shop.

Let me give you a hint: bears.

Earth Needs More Folks Like Gary

Last night Jane and I got home from a night of scraping (ALMOST DONE) to find that a "Gary Buttrum Fan Page" had been created on Facebook. Gary is our good, good friend. The first friend we had on James Street North, actually. He bought the diner (with some partners) and is the one responsible for renovating and renting such a beautiful building to us. He also owns a couple of other buildings on the street and is passionate about downtown revitalization. Oh, yeah, and he's the proprietor of the farm. Lots of good things. Even the paper thinks so. They wrote an article about him a couple of years back.

I don't think that you could find bigger fans of Gary around these parts, so Jane and I both went crazy uploading photos and liking everything about that page. But when I logged in this morning, the page had mysteriously disappeared! Gary does not have Facebook, and is a little shy, as you can see. So, he asked for it to be removed.

I'm just wondering, do we have any Gary Buttrum fans on this side of the blogosphere?

Busy Busy Busy

We are just over a week away from our moving date, so as you can imagine things are a bit crazy around here. Luckily, we're still adding things to the shop.

King of James Street

Hey guys, meet Sean, Sean, and Peter!

These three gentlemen were at White Elephant on Tuesday, and we got to talking. Besides having excellent taste in accesories, turns out they were down from Toronto for the James Street North public art meeting. Sean (in the middle) and Peter are going to be submitting something. GREAT.

At this point in the conversation I nerded out a little (ok, a lot) because the public art plan on James North is kind of a heated topic around these parts. At the meeting last year everyone got a little intense, and there were choice words and angry emails sent around. I believe someone even mentioned a mutiny.

This is all to say that most of the people on James Street care about James Street very much. We're all pretty invested in what happens to our little community, so this public art competition is pretty exciting for all of us.

Good luck guys, I hope you design something incredible. Also, come to art crawl, June 11th.

Uninterrupted Eye Contact

I've been following a bit of MoMA's exhibit of performance artist Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present. Abramović sits at a chair in silence, and museum guests can sit across from her and stare. People have been lining up and waiting for hours to be able to get a chance to sit with her, and a good number of people end up in tears once they are across from her. Marina Abramović Made Me Cry has been documenting this.

I found out yesterday that MoMA has a live feed of the performance, so I've been periodically checking in on it all day. I find the piece very intriguing. I can't help but wonder what it is that is making people break down so frequently. Are we that disconnected from each other that intense eye contact with a stranger does us in? Bizarre.

Labour of Love

In case you are not aware, Mike and I bought a house in October and the renovation process, which we thought was going to be quick and easy turned into a nightmare because we spent THREE WEEKS (solid!) scraping seven layers of wallpaper and paint off pretty much every square inch of wall in our two-storey Victorian home. And that was with one full day of help from a group of between 15-20 people. We had that much help, and it still took three weeks afterwards to get it all done.

So, naturally, we said we were never going to scrape wallpaper again.



Oh .Wait. The diner has wallpaper that needs to be scraped? Cuss. CUSS.

Last night I went by myself to get a couple of hours of scraping done. The horrible memories came flooding back. I had to keep repeating to myself in my head "wallpaper scraping is good for the soul, wallpaper scraping is good for the soul" and I believe it is, in a way. There's something cleansing about shedding the previous layers of a building and letting it breath for the first time in more than a century. I wanted to leave the wallpaper in the above photo because it is SO beautiful, but I found out this is one of the only walls that is going to be drywalled over. At least we don't need to scrape it.



Being alone in the diner at night on James Street was somewhat terrifying though. Especially when a light bulb burst from the construction lights in the first 15 minutes of me being there. The glass just came clean off the base, and the light bulb lay intact on the floor. I've always heard that lights and spirits have some kind of connection, so after that happened I spent the next 10 minutes talking to Suzy (the woman who owned/lived in the diner up until she passed away a couple of months ago) trying to explain that I love this building as much as she does and would like to share that positivity and love for this place with her. I hope it worked.

These next two weeks are going to be a blur. I'll try and capture as much as I can for you.