Friday Favourites – Braving the Cold, Vintage Canadian Winter Pictures & 2015 Colour Trends

Happy Friday Everyone! I hope you’ve been having a great week…and keeping warm. Our apartment is freezing, which means on any given day you’ll find both me and the dogs in at least two sweaters each, under the thickest blanket we have, with the space heater on. Even Garrett, who doesn’t normally feel the cold, has been walking around bundled up. I was roasting spaghetti squash last night not just to have with dinner, but also in the hopes that the oven would warm up the kitchen long enough for me to chop vegetables, ha!

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Dreaming of Spring: Our flowers from last week’s New Year’s Eve cocktail party are still going strong. It makes me think happy thoughts about spring and flowers…instead of the reality of the bitter cold outside.

Picking Up Old Projects: All this cold weather has kept us indoors even more so than normal, so I decided to pick up a knitting project I was working on last winter. There is something really soothing and calming about knitting…until I mess up a row and have to undo it. It’s a hobby that I’ve dabbled in from time-to-time, but I’ve never made the commitment to really finish a project until now. I’m soooo close to finishing it and I’m excited to share it with you next week!

On My Nightstand: Another favourite cold weather activity – burrowing under the covers with a couple of dogs and reading a good book. Garrett gave me this book for Christmas and I’m excited to dig into it this weekend. We recently watched a Netflix documentary about the estate used to film Downton Abbey and I’m interested to learn more about it. I’ve also got Amy Poehler’s Yes Please to start soon!

Goodbye Christmas: I finally started to pack up Christmas this week. Our bins were in storage and with the cold weather, we were both resisting digging them out. Now our living room is full of a tree box (with the tree still set up in the corner…oops. At least I took the ornaments off), Christmas decorations stacked everywhere and storage bins for sorting. I think I need to get another bin because somehow our collection has grown this year. I swear we only buy a few little tiny things here and there, but every other year we need a new bin!

Mindy for the Win: Ok, so I have to share my latest TV obsession. Over the holidays my sister was watching The Mindy Project and I caught a few episodes and got hooked. In the past two weeks I’ve watched the first two seasons and now I’m starting into the third as soon as I can get it from her. The show is funny but it’s the little side comments that get me every time. If you haven’t watched it before, I urge you to give it a try. Now that I’m almost done this show, I need some more suggestions! If you have a favourite show that has totally won you over, leave it in the comments below. I’d love to hear about it!

Kittens Get Me Every Time: Pretty much the only time I left the house this week (besides work and walking the dogs) was to go to the pet store for more dog food…and I came across these two adorable kittens up for adoption, hugging each other in their sleep. They were so cuddly and cute. If it wasn’t for my severe cat allergy…I’d take them home. (I don’t know how Whiskey and Cola would feel about this)

Canadian Winters: Last month I was digging through the Toronto Archives‘ online photos and I came across a whole bunch of images of people enjoying winter in Toronto during the early 1900s. I was looking at them again this week and thinking about how maybe I need to stop complaining about the cold and embrace this time of year!

I just love that someone thought to take these pictures back then. Considering that this was before we started having thick insulated winter coats and performance fleece and all that jazz, these folks look like they’re still having a good time.

#2015ColorTrends Twitter Chat: On Wednesday, January 14 at 8pm EST (5pm PST) Behr will be hosting a twitter chat with their Color Marketing Director, Erica Woelfel, to talk about Behr’s 2015 Color Trends. I had the pleasure of meeting Erica on the trip to California last fall and she is full of so many great ideas about colour and design. I hope you’ll join me in the chat next Wednesday!