In case you need further convincing that graphic designers have the best blogs, I present Emmadime by Emma Robertson, a designer, knitter and blogger from the Bay Area.

It’s chockablock full of quirky fashion…

Sweet food shots…

Design (’cause she’s a designer)…

And all that is beautiful in life. So bookmark Emmadime already and bookmark The Anthology while you’re at it.

[Images from Emmadime, naturally.]

P.S. Beef up your list of favourite links with The Anthology’s Bookmark picks.

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I’m hoping my kid grows up to appreciate beautiful handmade things instead of noisy plastic things (says the woman who thanks heaven every day for this music-making contraption). So as long as I have a say in things I’m outfitting the nursery in beauties like this leather mobile by The Alison Show (thank you, Amanda!).

It’s cool, it’s colourful and, unlike a newborn baby, it’s quiet.

[Photos from The Alison Show]

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The moment I saw Shannon Molenaar’s workspace on the Steven & Chris Show, I invited her to share her home office with us. It’s so proper! So personalized! In her own words, the Toronto-based interior decor blogger behind 8FOOTSIX takes us through the space, which is overflowing with objets and books and somehow manages to be very, very tidy.

Plus, how pretty is that wall colour?

1. I blog from our upstairs office. I enjoy spending time in here because it is filled with my favorite things – books, plants, art, and my collection of milk glass vases!

2. When I look around, everything has a story. Most of the furniture came with us from our condo.

3. The desk (Pottery Barn Kids), the leather chair (Mitchell Gold) and the two black end tables that hold the colour photo printer are a few of the things we didn’t want to give away when we moved, so we shoved them in the office – and it works!

4. I bought the tallboy dresser from Craigslist.  It was a gorgeous wood grain but smelled musty/fishy.  So I sanded it down and painted it white.  It holds… well… everything!

The picnic basket on the chair by the door was given to me decades ago by my sister-in-law and is now stuffed with felt scraps.

5. There are tons of accessories scattered around the room. There is a wooden fish on the wall from Bilbao, where I spent a summer studying Spanish.  There is a pencil crayon drawing of naked chickens (don’t ask) that I made in high school, along with my son’s first painting.

6. Treasures I brought back from Paris flea markets, like my little brass hedge hog, are sitting on the bookshelves, alongside things I found at local thrift stores.

P.S. Get a peek at Shannon’s latest projects here.

P.P.S. Creep the creative spaces of some very creative people, like Erin Shaw of Shaw TV, Erica Lam of The Style Spy, Niki Blasina of A Haute Mess, and Anya Georgijevic of I’m the It Girl in The Anthology’s Workspace column.

P.P.P.S. Know someone whose Workspace should be featured? Send a note to KDundon@TheAnthology.ca

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Typically I opt for bright colours on my fingers and twinkletoes (see exhibits A, B, and leopard-printed C). But there’s something about Estée Lauder’s Pure Color Nail Laquer in So Vain that has me putting a sophist-o-twist on my usual palette. It’s as neutral as neutral can be so it goes with everything and it’s slightly sheer so it makes your nails look extra glossy.

It gives me new hope for taupe.

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Earned stripes. My favourite striped Topshop maternity dress and a shirt that would look great on my baby girl once she outgrows all her onesies.

Faster than a… The world’s speediest (and blurriest) Jack Russell Terrier puppy and another kind of speedy beast, this time in wallpaper form.

Good enough to eat. A gourmet bakery-made Pop-tart from Vancouver’s Bigsby the Bakehouse and gilt Oreos.

Mirror mirror. A quiet corner of my living room (lamp from Pottery Barn, mirror from The Cross in Vancouver) and stunning(ly expensive) mirrored pitchers.

Sunshine in a bucket. A bunch o’ daffodils outside Quince Fine Florals and a bushel o’ apples turned into sangria.

Flower power. An orchid fit for my desk (thanks Nick and Shevawn!) and a floral bikini fit for the beach.

P.S. There are more photos where these came from so add The Anthology on Facebook.

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As far as I’m concerned it’s the bigger the better when it comes to photos. In fact, this one by British Columbian photographer Alison Francis would look amazing the size of a living room wall. As wallpaper, even.

Her work is on display at The Whip in Vancouver until May 29th and her prints are also available on Etsy. Happy viewing!

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As an arts journalist I’m used to interviewing performers who are nothing like the characters they play but I just had the reverse experience. Watching an actor play someone I know very well and sort of polish him up.

My old pal Mark Leiren-Young turned his Leacock Medal-winning memoir, Never Shoot a Stampede Queen, into a one-man show featuring Zachary Stevenson as him — a rookie reporter in his first job.

It’s just so weird hearing those funny stories I’ve heard forever coming out of some stranger’s mouth. Mark spent that first year of his career toiling at the Williams Lake Tribune and dined off the stories ever after.

It’s very funny. At 22, Mark was a naïf who was pranked by an editor trying to tease the gullible out of him and terrorized by beauty contestants known as Stampede Queens.

He thought he was going to a sleepy little town to earn his spurs as a reporter and he found he had landed in B.C.’s crime capital. He ended up covering stories he could sell all over the world. It’s a great story about growing up professionally, but a bit disconcerting for his pals because Zach and Mark look nothing alike.

And they sound nothing alike. And as Zach practically danced around the stage portraying a dozen characters in addition to Mark, I realized they dance nothing alike. Mark, whose two left-feet are legendary, would have tripped and fallen off the Granville Island Stage.  So I asked him what it was like seeing someone else acting out his life and, in some ways, being a better him.

“Oh, so weird,” said the journo-turned-author. “I had trouble watching at first. But then I figured that it was like getting an extreme makeover: Zach is way cuter than ever was.”

Stampede Queen runs until May 25 at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage and readers of The Anthology get $10 off tickets(!) with the promo code “buddyholly.”

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Tiles, I tell ya. It’s the DIY project that keeps tempting me but that I know better to embark upon. A mosaic necklace sounds like a much simpler — and more glamourous — bet. Gold beats grout every time.

Where: Tiles by Emery et Cie, as seen in the Melbourne home of Anna Charlesworth and Peter Stephens on The Design Files.

Wear: Lotus necklace by Lele Sadoughi, available in Vancouver at Rebecca Bree.

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Geometry was the only part of math I could tolerate in high school. Had it involved triangles like those at last night’s Met Costume Institute Gala, I might have been a better student. These cut-out dresses are certainly not as punk as some of the looks on the red-carpeted stairs, but they add up to some kind of spectacular.

Clockwise from top left: Emma Watson in Prabul Gurung, Carey Mulligan in Balenciaga, Taylor Swift in J. Mendel, and Dakota Fanning in Rodarte.

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My walls are covered with massive photos. One that Vancouver-based photographer Braden Paul took at Sasquatch Music Festival, another Barry Gnyp took for the Freedman Shoes SS/12 campaign I directed, and some I took travelling.

If I were to add to my collection, Barbara Cole’s ethereal underwater prints would be a (wet) dream.

The Toronto-based photographer’s Underworld series will be showing at Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver, May 16th – June 1st.

[Images by Barbara Cole]

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