About Ottawa's Glebe

Yesterday I bought a bird.

We went to the Lansdowne Market. Normally, the market ends in the fall but the Cattle Barn has been let to the local producers for a few Sundays. The guidelines for the market are locally produced goods and food within a 100 mile radius - with the exception of fruit from Niagara. It was a bit of a surprise to see how many crafters have rented booths. It was the best of both worlds - shopping for food and for gifts. There is one more Sunday (December 18th) left to go and get your baking, bread, meat, fall veggies and hand crafted goods.

I found a wonderful booth of wire-made ornaments, wall hangings and free standing birds. I fell in love with a gorgeous little crow. This is the photo of the little guy settling into the bookcase. The artist, Denise Atkinson, said that this was her favourite bird so far, that the irregularity of his wings is true. I had to have him and know that there will never be another identical bird.

I have noticed that we like to decorate with birds. Since the beginning of time, man has used birds in his art - they symbolize energy and freedom. There is significant symbolism for each bird, many that we seem to know intuitively. When I looked around, I found that

• Crows: Intelligence, crafty and omens of change
• Doves: Peace and faith
• Bluebirds: Happiness
• Peacock: Abundance and good luck
• Rooster: Ward off evil (is that why the black rooster is so common in some kitchens?)
• Cranes: Longevity

If you are decorating or staging your home for sale, look at birds as part of the decorations and check what symbolism they reflect.

It is a rare bird who is not attracted to avian decorations.

These lovely glass roses are individually made and adorn a very unusual feature of an atelier (workshop). Can you guess where they are located?

This is the inside of one of the glass workshops. Doesn't look too bad but then, it is open to the public who visit Murano.

Okay, I just used that as filler so that you would have time to guess where the roses 'grow'. Now, for the reveal........

Ta da.......

If you have lots of lemons, make lemonade.

If you have lots of glass, adorn a doorway for the whole world to enjoy your work!

After a full week of work, Agent Valerie finally had an afternoon to spend at her desk doing paperwork and research for her real estate blog. She had not heard from Home Seller Mark and had decided not to call him. Some investigating was necessary. Could a grow op go undetected? Did the police really raid the house?

With a few minutes available, she first went to the City's Grow Op registry. Unfortunately, only current convictions were listed and the site did not go back four years. Valerie called the police, was transferred to the drug enforcement section and identified herself as a real estate person in the throes of possibly listing the house. The woman who answered the call said that there had been a conviction from the address four years ago but she would provide no further information.

Valerie thought she would test the power of the internet. According to recent newspaper articles about privacy, information never fully disappears from the internet. Information was always ‘out there' and waiting to be found. She entered a number of possible search words with no results. Finally, she put in Mark's address. Holy Hannah, there was an article about the drug bust in the community paper from four years ago. It specified the address, along with three others in the same neighbourhood. The home owner was not identified nor was the renter(s). It was clear that something had been going on in the house. The next step was to look at the land registry to see how many people and who had owned the home in the past four years. It appeared that the house had sold twice in the past four years. Finally, Agent Valerie decided to look at the listing for the house at the time that Mark bought the house. There, in a small part of the agent's comments, was a disclosure that the house had been used to grow marijuana. Well that did it. Now it was clear that Mark was also trying to sell his home without disclosing the house's history and possible defects.

At the weekly office meeting, Valerie decided to let others in the office know of the issues with the house, in case they were taking their clients to see the place. It seemed that that would be the sum total of her involvement as she did not hear from Mark since she left him with the news about his pricing. However, having done just a little investigation, she decided to give Mark a call and warn him that he would be committing fraud if he continued to sell his home without disclosing the house's history. He could be sued by a Buyer when the history of the house was discovered and it was evident that Mark knew the history in advance of the sale.

Valerie was to learn later that week that

No good deed goes unpunished.

Photo credit: Something Wicked this way comes

Look at current decorating magazines and you will see that the days of a filled cabinet of crystal glasses and serving plates is over. Decorating has gone a little more minimalist, with displays of a few good things not a whole jammed armoir. When Buyers are looking at a living and dining room, they often stop to inspect a home owner's collection of china, framed family photos and all those little collections that are housed in the dining room china cabinet.

If you can, empty and remove the top piece of furniture on the cabinet, leaving only the serving/side cabinet, tables and chairs in the dining room with only a vase of flowers and two candles for decoration. Have Buyers appreciate your room(s) and not your collections.

Like bunnies, ornaments breed inside a hutch and overpopulate the space.

Photo credit: Bunny Rabbit

I saw the movie, The King's Speech. It was fabulous and one that I would recommend to anyone who likes humour, history, great acting and a joyful conclusion. What struck me during the movie is that we are a bit like King George VI. In the movie he said that he had a right to be heard and that he had a voice. Well, so do we. Think of your blog. You have an important message. You know the world deserves to hear your message.

Now, let us assume that you have a speech writer at your beck and call. Do you think the professional writer would let you ramble? No. The speech writer will want you to:

• Grab attention
• Motivate the audience to want to hear what you have to say
• Get to the point(s)
• Review and indicate the action(s) the audience should take
• Conclude

To me, a blog is more like a speech than a text book and more like the elevator speech (15 seconds to 3 minutes) than the Sunday Sermon. Using the basic parts of a speech, look at this or any post on AR.

• Does it have a catchy title?
• Now look at the first 3 lines (usually on the left side of the AR Blog page). Would you continue to read it? Is there anything that you can see in the first couple of lines that makes you think you want to know more?
• Okay, so now you are interested. Go look at the post. Has the author made a couple of point? Did you learn something? Was there a lesson, a tip, a reinforcement of what you already believe?
• Okay, so now you have read the points. Is there something you can do or change or take away from the post that is of value?
• Finally, did the author conclude the post or just leave you hanging wondering if the server failed and cut off part of the post?

You have a voice and, if your post is well written, you will be heard.

Photo credit: From the website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1504320/