a peek inside the fishbowl

These past days I’ve been researching a pre-Christmas piece for Ottawa Magazine. It’s basically a gift guide, and my task was to tra la la around Westboro and West Wellington and find cool gift ideas for kids. I had a great time with this assignment. What a lucky lucky gal I am.

I had the pleasure of talking to many many extremely friendly shop owners and managers along the way. The message I interpreted from them was ultimately this: (a) we should surround ourselves with beautiful things (b) beautiful things don’t have to cost a lot of money and (c) our children’s toys can be beautiful too.

I’m not going to tell you what it is that I picked out for the magazine spread. You’ll have to wait until the issue comes out and see for yourself, but I will say that our stretch of Richmond Rd and Wellington is home to many sweet little shops that deserve our time and attention. Hmmm. I should supply you guys with names and addresses, shouldn’t I? I could do that later if you’re keen.

This whole thing got me thinking about our home, and our things, and especially the things that I love around our house that give me a special little thrill. And if you happen to be visiting my house, stopped in front of any of these things and told me you liked them, well, I’d like you a little more just for noticing.

I have a few things I wanted to share with you, but I will start with this jar full of (mostly) vintage game pieces and old dice:

This is an ongoing collection. I picked these up at various yard sales etc.  I really like wooden monopoly pieces. They feel warm to me, like they’ve retained Friendly Ghosts of Past Gameplay inside them. Am I sentimental fool or what? :)

Although I started collecting these for myself, I’ve since discovered is that the contents of this jar comes in very handy when the girls are playing games that come as a magazine pull-out, or if they’re concocting their own board games with a pencil and a pad of paper.

These pieces are pretty when they’re all together, but because they’re not rare, breakable, or valuable I never worry about the girls losing them. That way, they’re enjoying Friendly Ghosts too.