Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day!

Happy New Year - Lucky 13!

Wishing you all a healthy and prosperous 2013!

Happy decorating,

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi everyone!
It's officially Autumn and nothing makes it feel like Autumn more than Thanksgiving weekend. The leaves are all changing colours - beautiful reds, oranges and yellows - the days are sunny and crisp - my favourite time of year!

Hope you're all enjoying your Thanksgiving weekend with family and friends!

Happy decorating!
Lenore

Thank You Mr. Jobs ...

On the one year anniversary of Steve Jobs, I thought I'd repost then entry I did on his death. Also, here's the video Apple has shared for the anniversary.

 

Thank you Steve.

Steve Jobs. I’m sure the name is familiar. The world lost a truly genius man - extremely creative and ahead of everyone else. In the last few days a lot has been written about this man. I have taken the opportunity to read many of the articles to get to know the man behind that famous icon - the apple.

As I suspected, the reason I didn’t know much about him was because he was truly a private person - but during his 2005 Stanford commencement address, we were offered a sneak peek into the life of the man that spearheaded everything behind that icon.

Below is his address

"I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College [Portland, Oregon] after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz [Steve Wozniak] and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2bn company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling-out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologise for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, some day you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7.30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumour on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for "prepare to die". It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumour. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful, but purely intellectual, concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but some day not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called the Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of the Whole Earth Catalog, and then, when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words "Stay hungry. Stay foolish". It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Thank you all very much.”

What a beautiful speech ... I think that we can all learn from him and his address ... my favourite part is the following ...

“...Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary...”

As someone who runs two businesses, this snapshot from his address is very meaningful and inspiring. 

This man is truly behind a lot of what I have accomplished professionally. Twenty years ago I began using a Macintosh - the LCII. It was so exciting to be doing layout electronically at the time. After that I moved on to the Mac 8500, then the eMac, then the MacBookPro, then the iMac (which is what I still use today). I have always been able to rely on my Macs - unlike PC’s that would come and go in my life, the Mac never let me down. I haven’t touched a PC in over ten years and know that I will always be able to count on my trusty Apple products.

The Mac revolutionized the way that graphic designers could work, making layouts easier to create and type setting a work of art. Today I continue to create all of my corporate and personal graphic work as well as my space planning plans on the mac. I run two business with it - create quotes, samples, invoices ... anything needed to operate a business. It continues to make tasks easier and work a pleasure.

Along with my professional life, my personal life relies heavily on everything Steve Jobs has created. My trusty iPad accompanies me everywhere and keeps track of all of my personal contacts, photos and any other information I want handy. My iPhone never leaves my side - and in my opinion - no other ‘smartphone’ even comes close to what this little machine can do along with how beautifully it can do it.

Thank you Steve Jobs ... you won’t be forgotten.

Happy Easter All!

Wishing you a lovely Easter Holiday!
Ldesigns Team.

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! Wow - we're into 2012 - I can hardly believe it. 2011 was a good year for Ldesigns ... a few new clients and some exciting projects.

We've been putting our plans together for 2012 and we have a few neat things that we'll be sharing with all of you in the very near future - including a giveaway which we'll be doing in the coming days - so don't forget to subscribe to the blog and follow us on Twitter (we're tweeting more and will be taking you along on the design journey for some of the projects we're working on).

I'll leave you with some design inspiration for January - some gorgeous wintery white interiors - beautiful!

Happy decorating!
Lenore

(Images: Style at Home)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Her's a little background on this special day ...

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day (Canadian French: Jour de l'Action de grâce), occurring on the second Monday in October, is an annual Canadian holiday to give thanks at the close of the harvest season. Although the original act of Parliament references God and the holiday is celebrated in churches, the holiday is mostly celebrated in a secular manner. Thanksgiving is a statutory holiday in all provinces in Canada, except for Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. While businesses may remain open in these provinces, the holiday is nonetheless, recognized and celebrated regardless of its status.

Thanksgiving Day is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada. Because of the longstanding traditions of the holiday, the celebration often extends to the weekend that falls closest to the day it is celebrated

The reason for the earlier Thanksgiving celebrations in Canada has often been attributed to the earlier onset of winter in the north, thus ending the harvest season earlier.[17] Thanksgiving in Canada did not have a fixed date until the late 19th century. Prior to Canadian confederation, many of the individual colonial governors of the Canadian provinces had declared their own days of Thanksgiving. The first official Canadian Thanksgiving occurred on April 15, 1872 when the nation was celebrating the Prince of Wales' recovery from a serious illness.[17] By the end of the 19th Century, Thanksgiving Day was normally celebrated on November 6. However, when World War I ended, the Armistice Day holiday were usually held during the same week. To prevent the two holidays from clashing with one another, in 1957 the Canadian Parliament proclaimed Thanksgiving to be observed on its present date on the second Monday of October.[5] Since 1971, when the American Uniform Monday Holiday Act took effect, the American observance of Columbus Day has coincided with the Canadian observance of Thanksgiving.

Hope you're all enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends!

Lenore

(Image: table)

Happy Canada Day!

Happy 144th Birthday Canada!
Hope everyone is enjoying their Canada Day and first official long weekend of the summer!

Here's some background about Canada's birthday!
Canada Day occurs on July 1st, the anniversary of Canada's confederation. Canadians commemorate the day with parades, fireworks, cookouts, and concerts. The popularity of the holiday has been on the incline since the late 1960's and has since become a nationwide celebration.

Formerly known as "Dominion Day," Canada Day marks the anniversary of the Constitution Act of 1867, joining Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Canada province (now Ontario and Quebec) into a single country. The Constitution Act granted Canada a substantial amount of independence from England, although complete independence was not given until 1982. Prior to 1900, there was little Canadian nationalism as many Canadians regarded themselves as British citizens. The first official celebration was held in 1917 to honor Canada's 50th birthday. It was not until 1946 that Phileas Cote, a member of the Quebec House of Commons, sent a private member's bill to rename Dominion Day as Canada Day. The Senate responded by recommending the holiday be named the "National Holiday of Canada." Since no one could agree on the name, the bill was defeated. The government first recognized Canada Day in 1958 by holding a trooping of the color on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Canada's centennial marked the first widespread celebration in 1967. The event promoted nationalism and Canadian pride. The holiday continued to grow in the late 1960's and many Canada Day events were televised and broadcasted throughout the country. In the 1980's, the government began funding Canada Day activities in smaller communities. The holiday was finally made official by a unanimous vote on October 27, 1982; the same year that the Canada Act was passed, removing any remaining dependence of Canada on the United Kingdom. While the public had recognized the holiday for decades, this marked a significant change in the magnitude of the celebrations.

In addition to independence from the United Kingdom, Canada Day also marks a number of revolutionary breakthroughs and significant events. The first national radio hookup was initiated by the Canadian National Railway on July 1, 1927. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) held their first cross-country broadcast on Canada Day in 1958. The first color television transmission in Canada was held on July 1st of 1966. In 1967, the Order of Canada was inaugurated. "O Canada" was also named the official national anthem on Canada Day, 1980.
Hope everyone has a lovely long weekend!
Lenore

Happy Father's Day!

Wishing you all a wonderful Father's day! Hope everyone is enjoying this day with family.
Here's some information on the origin of this lovely day ...

The Father's Day tradition is centered around the honor of one's paternal influences (fathers, grandfathers, and step-fathers). The holiday is recognized in 52 countries worldwide, including Argentina, Taiwan, Germany, the United States, and Bangladesh. Fathers commonly receive special treatment, gifts, and greeting cards. In Canada, the holiday takes place on the third Sunday of June.

There is some speculation on the actual origins of Father's Day. Some say that it started as a pagan celebration of the summer solstice, but most agree that it began in the United States. A young woman named Sonora Dodd spearheaded the tradition as a tribute to her hard-working father. The idea for the holiday came to her during a Mother's Day sermon in Spokane, Washington. The following year, Dodd began the tradition of wearing a red rose to signify a living father and a white rose to honor a deceased one. Dodd did all she could to support the growth of the holiday, gaining support from the YMCA and Spokane Ministerial Association. Father's Day did not catch on for decades. While it is not an official holiday, Father's Day has been widely celebrated in Canada since the 1980's.
Have a great day everyone,Lenore
(Images tie)

Happy Victoria Day!

Wishing you all a lovely Victoria Day weekend ... here's some info on this special day ...

As most of you know, today is a celebration of Queen Victoria's birthday. This statutory holiday was first legislated in Canada West in 1845. Following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, May 24 was by imperial decree made Empire Day throughout the British Empire, while, in Canada, it became officially known as Victoria Day, a date to remember the late queen, who was deemed the "Mother of Confederation". It was first observed May 24, 1902, 16 months after Queen Victoria's death. Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier had designated the public holiday to fall on May 24, the Queen's birthday. It was later called Empire Day, then Commonwealth Day; in 1952, the date was changed to the first Monday preceding May 25th.

The birthday of Queen Victoria was a day for celebration in Canada long before Confederation, with the first legislation regarding the event being in 1845 passed by the parliament of the Province of Canada to officially recognize May 24 as the Queen's birthday.

The holiday is colloquially known as May Two-Four in parts of Canada; a double entendre that refers both to the date around which the holiday falls (May 24) and the Canadian slang for a case of twenty-four beers (a "two-four"), a drink popular during the long weekend. The holiday weekend may also be known as May Long or May Run, and the term Firecracker Day was also employed in Ontario.

Enjoy!
Lenore

(Images wikipedia)

Happy Mother's Day!

Here's hoping you have a wonderful day with your families!

A bit of history about this special day ...

Mother's Day is centuries old and the earliest Mother's Day celebrations can be traced back to the spring celebrations of ancient Greece in honor of Rhea, the Mother of the Gods. During the 1600's, the early Christians in England celebrated a day to honor Mary, the mother of Christ. By a religious order the holiday was later expanded in its scope to include all mothers, and named as the Mothering Sunday. Celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent (the 40 day period leading up to Easter), "Mothering Sunday" honored the mothers of England.

During this time many of the England's poor worked as servants for the wealthy. As most jobs were located far from their homes, the servants would live at the houses of their employers. On Mothering Sunday, the servants would have the day off and were encouraged to return home and spend the day with their mothers. A special cake, called the mothering cake, was often brought along to provide a festive touch.
Have a wonderful day!Lenore

(Images style at home)

Happy Easter!

Hi everyone!
Hope you're all enjoying your long weekend.
Here 's some interesting information on Easter and some of the traditions associated with it. Hope you enjoy!

Easter Bunny
Bringing Easter eggs seems to have its origins in Alsace and the Upper Rhineland, both then in the Holy Roman Empire, and southwestern Germany, where the practice was first recorded in a German publication in the 1500s (early 16th century). The first edible Easter Eggs were made in Germany during the early 19th century and were made of pastry and sugar.

The Easter Bunny was introduced to the United States by the German settlers who arrived in the Pennsylvania Dutchcountry during the 18th century. The arrival of the Osterhase was considered one of "childhood's greatest pleasures", similar to the arrival of Kris Kringle on Christmas Eve.

According to the tradition, children would build brightly colored nests, often out of caps and bonnets, in secluded areas of their homes. The "Oster Hawse" would, if the children had been good, lay brightly colored eggs in the nest. As the tradition spread, the nest has become the manufactured, modern Easter basket, and the placing of the nest in a secluded area has become the tradition of hiding baskets.

Decorated Eggs
Dyed eggs are given as gifts in many cultures. Decorated eggs bring with them a wish for the prosperity of the abundance during the coming year.

Easter Cards
Easter cards arrived in Victorian England, when a stationer added a greeting to a drawing of a rabbit. According to American Greetings, Easter is now the fourth most popular holiday for sending cards, behind Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Mother's Day.

Hope everyone has a nice Easter!
Lenore

Happy St. Patricks Day!

Just wanted to wish everyone a great St. Patrick's Day today! Drink lots of green beer and enjoy!

Did you know ...

St. Patrick used the shamrock to represent the Trinity. By doing this he could show people how the church was connected. He used this to symbolize how The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit can be separate but also part of the same entity.

Originally, the colour associated with Saint Patrick was blue.

The Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team was known as the Toronto St. Patricks from 1919 to 1927.

Happy Decorating!
Lenore

(Image Stonehouse)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy heart day everyone! My favourite colour is red so this holiday holds a special place in my heart - no pun intended!
I met with a client over the weekend to do a decorating consultation and met her two small children. They were adorable. Her son told me he had all of his Valentine's day cards ready to hand out at school and I thought that was so cute.
I remember Valentine's day cards as a kid. I loved writing them and receiving them - especially the little boy I had a crush on!
Happy Valentine's Day everyone!
Lenore