The Frugal Couple - Vancouver

Guest Post : Transforming Vinyl Banners into Bags, Wallets, and More!

Annie Harrington is a small business owner, writer, and amateur photographer. In her free time she enjoys writing about ways other business owners can positively impact their brand image with unique window decals and poster printing.

There’s been a very interesting trend developing over the past couple of years. Quite literally, one person’s trash has become another person’s treasure. In this case, many people are benefitting from this overabundance of “trash,” while reducing waste and the environmental detriment vinyl can cause. Creative individuals are taking vinyl banners used for advertising and transforming them into genuinely useful, everyday items, such as handbags, messenger bags, wallets, and shower curtains, among a great many other things. Sellers have popped up all over the web, ready to sell you their latest vinyl creations, but honestly, why spend the extra money when you can make them yourself?

Of course, the projects you choose to pursue will come with varying degrees of difficulty. You can create your bags and wallets however simple or elaborate you desire. You are the master of your creative domain.

Before Starting a Project

Get some vinyl!

This can actually be the most challenging part of your project. Have a convention or exposition center nearby? Check there. Be prepared to do a little dumpster diving. Often after a convention, there will be a surplus of vinyl banners. They might be for a concert, a garden show, or a job fair, but they’re usually there. Get there quickly and you’ll have the run of the place. Just don’t forget to ask permission first before going headfirst into a dumpster.

If that doesn’t work out, check with local advertising agencies. Chances are, they might have banners left over from old clients and campaigns and no longer have use for them. They might try to charge you for them, but haggle! Those old banners take up space and are of no use to them, so use that against them.

If you don’t have much luck at either a convention center or an ad agency, you can always check online. Look on auction websites. The great thing about the online environment is you’ll have a fairly large selection of designs and color schemes to choose from. The bad thing about buying online is you won’t be able to inspect the quality of the material until it arrives at your doorstep.

Starting a Project

What You’ll Need:

• scissors or craft knife

• ruler

• vinyl Banner(s)

These supplies can vary from project to project, and you can change things up however you like, but I consider these the basic supplies. At this point, know what you want to make. A wallet? A purse? A messenger bag? This is your chance to be creative and how much vinyl you have will dictate the scope of the project.

Note: before officially beginning your project, wash your vinyl with warm, soapy water. You don’t know where that stuff might’ve been!

Using the ruler, guide the craft knife to create the outer edges of you bag or wallet. Cut out a variety of piece, whatever you think you might need. Once you have your basic pieces, you can go back with the razor or scissors and make sure everything is nice and straight.

Putting it Together

What You’ll Need:

• scissors or craft blade

• vinyl pieces

• nylon edging or duct tape

• Velcro (or other hook-and-loop fastener)

• bag straps

This list can vary on the type of project your pursuing, but basic construction remains the same. You can go extra frugal and put everything together with duct tape. I think it works awesome with the overall aesthetic of vinyl. These days, duct tape comes in a wide variety of colors and you’ll be able to find something that works with whatever pattern and colors happen to be on the vinyl you’re using.

Alternatively, you can use a nylon edging material for a cleaner look. You can find this at most craft stores. It comes in adhesive and non-adhesive varieties, so if you choose the non-adhesive edging, you may have to bust out the thread and do a little needle work (or a sewing machine works, too).

If you’re making a back, you’re probably going to want straps. You might have to purchase adjustable straps online or at a craft store. Or you can simple create straps out of more vinyl! Either way, you can’t go wrong!

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To sum up our trip, we drove from:

Vancouver to
Roseburg (OR) to
San Fran to
Las Vegas to
Sacramento to
Portland to
HOME !

Our drive down to Las Vegas was long. We had to connect to lots of different hwys to get back on to the main one to go to Vegas. When we got there, it was such a treat because we were staying at Caesars ! We got this on a very good deal because it was Christmas and is usually "slow" season there. We also tried one of the hotels down at the old downtown just to see the quality (because it was REALLY cheap). We've been to Vegas before, and going this time during Christmas, it had a very different vibe. It was very family orientated - no drunks on the streets, and definitely more quiet because lots of things were closed.

We decided not to get the 24 hour buffet pass this time because it was more expensive during that time due to Christmas holiday price. We actually found it was better without the buffet because we were not tied down to use the pass to its fullest and were able to try more specialty restaurants - and no 2 hour line ups.

Lets talk about our stay in old downtown. We stayed at the Golden Nugget. It was a bit smokey and old from the outside, but the rooms were not bad - since we've stayed in really ghetto places along the drive. We were pretty confortable with our room and everything was available. Since we drove, we can park our car in their parkade which was included with our room - otherwise you would have to pay. We will definitely think of staying in old downtown next time we go down since it was really reasonably priced and was pretty confortable.

To our surprise, finding parking on the stip was a breeze. All the hotels had free parking and their parkades were huge.

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Ahhh Looking good

Finally ! Days are getting longer and rain is holding back!

Easy peasy slow cooker ribs

I think I'm pretty lazy at cooking stuff and especially when I am low on time. Why wait for food to cook when you can leave it in the slow cooker without supervision??

Here's my recipe .. If you can call it that .. For slow cooker BBQ ribs.

Marinate you ribs for at least 15 mins with salt, sugar and spice.

Put the pieces of ribs into your slow cookera

Choose your favorite BBQ sauce and cover the ribs up, top and bottom.
ac
Set the slow cooker to high and leave it for 5 hr.

The end result will be delicious !

It's that time of year again ! I think it's mostly popular in Chinese restaurants, but you get the best price for your king crabs and its time to have a feast ! This usually happens around March for around a month.

Many Chinese restaurants will have set menus for the king crab. The most simple one would include 2 ways to cook your crab legs (garlic steamed or deep fried ) and you can usually add extra money to have a seafood fried rice with you crab shell.

Here's what ours looked like !

We found the best deal was conger noodle king for 14.99/ lb.

I find there's always something more to good taste in Chinese cooking. It has lots of history and often it is made for good health. Lot of thought has been put into paring of ingredients and has a rational behind it.

My curiosity lies in the soup...which to me is more like a remedy. Chinese soup is more than just boiling something that tastes good, but a prescription for good health. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Chinese medicine in a soup form. You can find soup for all your health needs. Growing up in a Chinese family my mom had always made soup and now that I've moved out on my own I want to remember and learn how to make those feel-good soup. I will try to keep a record of Chinese cooking - not only will this give me motivation to stay healthy, but I can also learn about the secrets of Chinese cooking and keep to my traditions.

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I've been looking for one of these Agate necklaces for a while and found the pretty expensive to purchase..so I've decided to make my own!

I bought a slice of agate that didn't have any holes drilled yet, so it was a bit more work to make this into a pendant. I found that the best way to do this is to get :

1. epoxy that dries clear

2. flat pad glue-one bails

3. sandpaper

All you need to do is sandpaper the back of the bail and surface of the agate and follow the instructions to the epoxy. It's as easy as that !

have fun !

To sum up our trip, we drove from:

Vancouver to
Roseburg (OR) to
San Fran to
Las Vegas to
Sacramento to
Portland to
HOME !

San Fran bound
The next day we woke up early to avoid traffic and decided to detour on to the coast instead of staying on the I5. Better rain than snow we thought. Our original plan to visit LA was crushed beacuse of the extended time it took us to trek out to the 101 hwy. If it wasn't for the rush and plans of getting somewhere, I would totally recommend the 101 since we were driving right by the Pacific and would have been awesome for sightseeing, but being on a time constraint, the windy roads and reduced speed limits was a drag. We drove by Cannon beach and it was definitely worth the sight. After driving in rain and sun and rain again in windy 30 miles/hr roads, we finally reached San Fran! We ended up enjoying the city there for 2 days and we stayed at the Francisco Bay Inn

Review: it was pretty decent, but the floors were very squeaky and heard the neighbour from upstairs walk around all night. It had some interesting characteristics, like they had a really old elevator that was swinging door. Other than that, it was what we paid for. But this was also because we got a last min deal rate. During the day, we had to try the famous pho challenge place, but once we got there, we realized...it was just impossible.

We did have an interesting dish there...on top of our large bowl (bad idea)..which was the garlic noodles. I would have to say it was a bit strong for me, but it was a interesting concept and people that like eating garlic would like it. Later we found the Mission district and around Valencia St. that is where it felt like the Commercial Drive of San Fran. If you want to see little boutiques and lots of different restaurants, that's the places to be. We decided to drive out of San Fran to stay the night in a really small town so we can get going for Las Vegas the next day. Spent the night at America's Best Value Inn and it was more like a place for truckers to spend the night. It had all the necessities, but was on the side of a highway. It was a bit sketchy looking, but we didn't really want to pay top dollars to just sleep for the night. Like What You See? Treat us to COFFEE!

So this is long overdue since we went on during Christmas break... But it's better late than never! To sum up our trip, we drove from:

Vancouver to
Roseburg (OR) to
San Fran to
Las Vegas to
Sacramento to
Portland to
HOME !

The trip down

There's a reason why people don't do road trips during the winter time, but we didn't really take in the wise words of people's cautions when we started out. We were ambitious and wanted to drive all the way down to Redding California on the first day. And because we're foolish canadians, we thought all parts of california would be warm and sunny. Boy were we wrong!

Towards the end of the first day - mind you we had a pretty late start due to washroom breaks and loading things up at walmart AND minimal daylight time - we decided we weren't going to make it, and decided to look for place in Roseburg Oregon. Luckily we didn't push for more milage because just south of us was the mountain range that was famous for dangerous driving conditions during the winter. Apparently the day we got there, the weather got so bad that they had to close the road, and everybody was scrambling to get a room for the night.

we were orginally thinking of staying at motel 6 and the other common motels, but it was packed with people, and it was full everywhere. We decided it was better to probably look for rooms available on Expedia rather than driving blindly. so we actually had to back track and found a room at Guesthouse inn and suites.

Our review: nice rooms, newly renovated, but we found some ants...

not going to lie, we didn't really care, and the customer service was pretty good despite the fact that they were over booked and had a line up going out the door

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Review: Brooklyn Olde Lantern

Well, I'm a sucker for infomercials. But most of the time, when I get the product, it doesn't exactly perform the way I thought it would in my gullible mind. The Brooklyn Olde Lantern is one such item that I thought would be so great for when I go fix my Tercel and film videos. Its supposed to illuminate the whole room!!! https://www.oldebrooklynlantern.com/ Well, not really. Lets take a look at this video

So you can see that in close range, its actually not bad, kind of similar to the iPhone that we used for lighting in the second half of the video where the lantern is turned off, the lit area remained about the same brightness. You can also see a lot of dark streaks around which is really not ideal when you're trying to specifically light up an area. I was trying to use that to light up particular impasses in my car while trying to replace the oxygen sensor that you will soon see here... it didnt work too well and we ended up using an iPhone because the focused light on long range just ends up being better for specificity. The build of the lantern also feels very cheap. The lantern is pretty light as a consequence. The lantern takes C batteries... not super mainstream but i happened to have a lot of them, they seem to be common for lights. Still, I can imagine this being really cool when we go camping or something because in pitch dark, it'd be enough to light up the wider area and not have to flash around looking for where you're going. I bought this for 17.98$ including shipping, which is really not too bad. Now you have to be very careful when ordering this on their website because you start by entering your credit card number and then they make tons of sweet offers that are so long to read you might just see the words FREE and HALF PRICE and MORE POWERFUL or PREMIUM. But whatever you say yes to, THERE ARE NO CONFIRMATION PAGE, you will be buying those as you click yes!!! So I somehow ended up buying 2 and it turned out i bought 3, and i called to cancel so i'd get 2, but they said my order was not in the system yet and to call back tomorrow. I saw Ok. Next day, when I called, they tell me the order has been shipped and that they can't retract it. After bitching a little about how the guy said it would be ok o call next day, they told me they'd refund me 15$ and so I accepted because, well, its not too bad of a deal. So bottomline, be very careful when ordering this piece. Like What You See? Treat us to COFFEE!

Went here for dessert and it was pretty packed. The place was a order up front place so it was good that they dont' have to seat your or anything. They sell mostly bubble teas, specialty drinks, waffles and shaved ice.

I find that their waffles were very decently priced ~$6 and they had really good waffles (can choose between liege and brussels) They made the waffle just as I liked it - dense and chewy for the liege. They used fresh fruits for their waffles which was a good.

Would like to go back and try their shaved ice and other waffles in the future.

Finally tried this place for dinner. It was a really small restaurant and we were surprised that it wasn't jam packed on a Friday night. Though we think lots more people order take out than eat in. It was more similar to other sushi places like sushi town and sushi garden, similar menu and it was owned by koreans. This is generally a good sign that it's a good value.

Out of all the dishes we like the spider roll the most. It was soft shell crab - and there was lots of meat in the crab. It also had a very nice grilled flavour. All the other items were pretty much standard taste.

We decided to get the awesome roll because we were still hungry and it looked really nice from afar. I didn't really like it once i got it because it was kind of messy to eat - they topped it off with deep fried yam fries which tasted like noodle snacks.

Overall it was a decent place to go, service was good and price was decent. Will probably go back for another meal.

A new place in Gastown. The decor was very modern and sleek. We went here for dinner, and to my surprise, this place a bit quiet for dinner time. The food was in tapa sized portions, in the more upper price range. Nothing especially special about their food, tasted good, but wasn't filling for sure. We ordered the fish and gnocchi. They were able to accomodate our special request to have our gnocchi served with a more cleaner sauce since we didn't want to have a too heavy of a sauce.

Went to this place for dinner. Found this place through Groupon, and we chose to go on a week night since it required reservation. We thought that it would be a quiet week night, but we were wrong! It was pretty decently packed for a week night and they also had live entertainment. The live entertainment didn't last very long, but at least they had something. The food was a bit slow coming out, but well worth it. The atmosphere was very retro, kinda fit their theme - they also had some pretty psychdelic music and some pretty epic soundtrack music.

We ordered the salmon and lamb shank as entrees and had mussels as an appy. To our surprise we were very pleased with their mussels. Their mussels were cooked just right and they were huge mussels ! The chorizo sauce was very well done also.

The salmon and lamb shank were average - nothing special about them, but if you're hungry, it'll be perfect because they gave us a lot of rice. We were definitely full.

Had an early dinner at Le Parisien on a Friday night and had lots of small dishes to try instead. Overall, the food was reasonably priced and service was good. We had one of their fish that was new on the menu the day we went. It was wrapped with prosciutto and the flavor and texture was really good.

My Thoughts in the words of the Thought Catalog

THIS. Awesome things to do with your friends. Like What You See? Treat us to COFFEE!

Looper, what if it didn't happen the way it did

SPOILER ALERT!

Just watched Looper, it was mind-blowing. let's talk about it, but if you havent watched it. trust me, just watch it and then we talk.

Looper (and back to the future) is a great movie.

So let's start from the beginning. Nice concept of time travel. And I just watched Bill and Ted but is of course another type of time travelling movie where no matter what you do, it seems the future is predetermined, and theres not much suspense because its a comedy.

We hear about this illegal organisation which sends guys in the past so they get killed and disposed off there. And there are a bunch of people who's jobs are to kill the guys being send back in time. That doesnt necessarily sound good. So there's this new boss who starts to "close loops" which is when you send the looper's older self to himself and his job is to kill is older self. This comes along with a huge load of Gold and you are supposed to just go and enjoy the next 30 years until you get bagged and sent back to get killed by your younger self. I would say this is actually pretty good treatment, just dont like the way you're being dragged out of your life,, perhaps a more agreed upon way would have been nicer than to come and raid your house.

So there is a new boss in town, the Rainmaker. He's a mysterious guy that has been closing loops. He is seen as a bad guy because our protagonist is a looper. But in my opinion, loopers are probably closer to being bad guys, and would be doing to people what money laundering is doing to money. The fact that the Rainmaker closes loops is not necessarily an Evil thing. and he's sending them a huge load of gold, if you're not into drugs you would enjoy that money quite a lot. Now killing the looper's wife, that aint cool, but thats about the only thing that I dont really agree with.

so what if Rainmaker didnt kill Bruce Willis' wife? would he have just accepted death? I would imagine so becuase he would really have no reason to fight back and break the cycle. Though the character is somewhat of a selfish guy, so you never know what justifications he could have given himself to know he shouldnt die.

So why did the young guy didnt shoot Bruce Willis? its not like he ever looks at the guy before shooting... its like he pulls the trigger mechanically when time arrives, like a reflex. But yeah, no head cover, I guess that might break the reflexes. I was astonished at how the young guy only cared about killing Bruce Willis so he can close his loop. So what if he had killed Bruce Willis?

Old commericals

Another trip down memory lane. Funny how some tv commercials stick in your mind and you will remember forever. One of his most memorable tv commercials was of the McLobster! McDonald's is as creative as they were before!

My current obessions are ...Terrariums! These geometric plant holders looks just like a necklace pendant. Unfortunately, these ones cost a fortune =( So I got a fish bowl plant holder....when I gather enough materials, i hope mine will look something like this :