Decorating The Homework Club with art

Tomorrow is the big day – the TBBs will be doing the Extreme Makeover: Kindness Edition 2012 installation at the Foster Farm Family House Homework Club. And apparently lots of cleaning too. Not so excited about that part, but VERY excited to see the design plan come together! I’m also excited that we have some awesome donors who are going to help us decorate The Homework Club with art.

Posterjack.ca is transferring these drawings by three of The Homework Club kids to canvases. Such a great way to ensure that these drawings will last a lifetime.

 

If you’d like to preserve your kid’s artwork, check out the great options at Posterjack.ca – they can mount any digital image onto canvas, metal, birch wood, and even acrylic.

Sheila Cain has donated a print of one of her amazing pencil drawings – this is “Harley” :-)

Check out Sheila’s Heirloom Drawings to find out how you can work with Sheila to create a graphite drawing of one of your cherished items or keepsakes.

For the second year in a row, artist Matt LeBlanc has donated one of his awesome abstract paintings. It’s currently in transit and will be arriving later today. We won’t actually see it till tomorrow, but it should look a little something like this:

Matt has the hugest heart of anyone I know, and I’m so honoured to call him my friend :-) He has donated paintings to numerous charities and good causes, and a couple of years ago he raised $38,000 for cancer research with his Art For Life Campaign. Earlier this week, Matt resigned from his job at an advertising agency to focus on his art full-time. You might want to snap up one of his paintings now before he becomes uber-famous and charges millions of dollars for his work!

And finally, I thought it would be fun to create a painting for The Homework Club, inspired by our grey & red colour palette.

Thank you Tim & Posterjack.ca, Sheila, and Matt! And also THANK YOU to the following people who donated the last few pieces that we needed to complete our project design:

Spotlight Hair Studio & Spa	One Ikea side chair
Kristin Berit	One Ikea side chair
Tina Klein Welsh	Dictionaries

Sending you all great big virtual hugs!

And seeing as it’s Kindness Week, I think I’ll send out more hugs to everyone, just because :-) It would be great if you would share this video and pass the hugs along to your blog readers. It’s a great way to spread the kindness and make people smile – or cry, because it’s just so darn emotional listening to ♫ Hallelujah ♫ and watching complete strangers hug!

Like Ellen says, Be Kind!

Extreme Makeover: Kindness Edition 2012 update

Today is the start of Kindness Week here in Ottawa. Not that you shouldn’t be kind EVERY week, but this is a great initiative that encourages people to “choose to be kind”. And really, it’s not very hard to be kind – hold the door open for the person behind you, give someone your seat on the bus, smile at a total stranger… even the smallest gesture is appreciated.

As I mentioned in this post, this is the second year that I’m participating in Extreme Makeover: Kindness Edition. Next Friday, the TBBs and I will work our magic at the Foster Farm Family House Homework Club, a place where kids in the Foster Farm community go to do their homework. Over the last month, we’ve been rounding up sponsors and donors and planning the design. You might remember our colour palette inspiration…

Image via House Beautiful, February 2011

Well, just like any design, things change and evolve based on a number of factors – in this case, we had to adjust our colour palette because we couldn’t get the yellow chairs that we planned to use in the space. But never fear – just like last year, red has come to our rescue! And now we’re going with this colour palette…

Image via House to Home

Here’s a little sneak peek at the design board that our lead designer, Sonya Kinkade, has put together…If you want to see more, head over to the EMKE Facebook page and click the Like button.

I’d like to send out a huge THANK YOU to all of our donors and sponsors who have contributed products, labour, and money to this very worthy project. Can’t wait to see it all come together next Friday!

D.E. Kinkade Konstruction Ltd	Construction, labour, and materials
Ottawa Valley Kitchens	Built-it cabinetry
Sherwin-Williams store #8785	Paint
B.T. Kelly Painting Inc.	Paint labour
Barwood Flooring	New hardwood flooring
Marchand Lighting and Electrical	New lighting
Climate Works	New central air conditioning
Lafarge Canada	Supplied new school chairs
School Furniture of Canada	Kindly discounted the price of the school chairs
Tamarack Developments	Cash donation for homework room décor
Tag Along Toys	New school supplies
Smart Space Organizing	Office and school supplies
Ikea Canada	Office supplies
Future Shop	Wall mounted TV and Blu-ray player
Faye Fortune Drapery	New window treatments
Matt LeBlanc Abstract Art	New custom art piece designed for The Homework Club
Sheila Cain - Sample pencil artist	Custom art piece
Danielle Lynn Photography	Capturing the makeover with photography
Randy Little, Investment Fund Advisor	Donation of chalkboard paint

And of course, the TBBs design team!

Sonya Kinkade (Lead Designer)	Sonya Kinkade Design
Maureen Coates	Modecor
Nicole Duguay	Solace Interiors
Lisa Goulet	Lisa Goulet Design
Donna Hargrove	dh designs
Kelly James	JAX Decor & Design
Sarah Kidder	Sarah Kidder Design
Mary Anne van Gaal	Otta Decorate!

If you’d like to be part of Extreme Makeover: Kindness Edition, there are still a few items that we need to buy – a couple of chairs, a floor lamp, a long wall shelf, and dictionaries. If you’re interested in donating a few dollars to put towards the purchase of these items, please send me an e-mail or leave me a comment and let me know.

And to change the subject completely… I’ve got an amazing project to share with you on Monday. It’s been in the works for a few months, and I’m so excited that it’s finally done and looks even better than I envisioned! I’ll also be guest posting over at Lisa Goulet Design on Monday about a topic related to my project. I’m keeping it a secret for now, but here’s a clue…

Happy Weekend & spread the kindness!