Mary Bratko is very busy Toronto event planner, Wedding Girl a superhero blogger. She’s a very influential on the evolution of all facets of wedding fashion including shoes, clothing, jewelry and.. hair cuts.    Mary Bratko was recently profiled on Canada Blog Friends.   Her monthly traffic is huge because she has a knack for spotting trends and writing search engine friendly posts that are filled with good information.

Mary tells me that she knows her Wedding Girl blog brings comfort to a lot of people who find joy in weddings, and follow emerging trends in wedding fashion, jewelry and marriage rituals,  exotic traditions, signature beverage ideas, decorations, menus and all that stuff.  When you are young its fun to read and dream about true love.

Mary Bratko is a recently appointed Lenzr Judge and will probably be appearing in the January Lenzr video which decides the winner in two matches, Old vs New and Bad Weather Hair. More on that later.

Wedding Girl wrote a post about the Wedding Girl on AVEDA hair school scholarship video contest were you born to Style? as she described all the machinations of the adjudication process in this difficult but highly rewarding challenge.  Aveda Institute Canada is giving away five hairstyling scholarships!  The winning candidates will receive the grand prize of full tuition at one of their top hair schools in Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria.  Its a three step process:

STEP 1: MAKE A VIDEO
Create a video to show the Judges your passion; it takes a lot of mustard to truly become a master and you have to really want to develop your hairstyling skills with the Aveda Institute Canada.

STEP 2: UPLOAD & SHARE
Upload your video and share your entry with the world! You should be proud of your submission and the promotion matters.

STEP 3: HAIR SHOWDOWN
AVEDA Institute’s own panel of hair and beauty professionals and faculty members will chose five aspiring hairstylists in each city to advance to the final round. These young hairdressers will participate in a live head-to-head competition and runway show putting together a complete look in front of the style experts. The winner in each city will be awarded a full scholarship to the Aveda Institute hair school!

Be sure and check out the Aveda Institute scholarship video contest. Enter before March 31st 2011 and one could be one of five applicants to win free tuition at an Aveda Institute across Canada, in Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria. There’s more good information on Aveda Institute 2012 contests on Arob Glowphoto blog which covers more details than were expressed here and has different pictures and blog perspective.

Contest starts Thursday December 1st, 2011 at 12:00:01 a.m. ET
Last day to submit a video is March 31st, 2012 at 11:59:59 a.m. ET

VIDEOS WILL BE JUDGED on their 1) boldness and clarity of artistic vision and 2) their originality and creativity, 3. Also the candidate must demonstrate that they are  fashion forward and understands the Aveda mission and 4) the overall impression they create will impact their score.

AVEDA Institute sponsors two Lenzr photo contests to promote hair schools in Winnipeg and Vancouver

Modern crowd science can employ user generated content collection mechanisms like photo contests to measure popular opinion, plant notions and improve their client brands’ myths. But these online attractions can also be used to harvest ideas… On Lenzr in 2012 the Aveda Institute is using / watching and will help judge the boards with two contests of their own design that are engineered to collect and celebrate creative new ideas for 2012 hair styles. Emerging trends elegant expression will be rewarded with votes and comments. On December 27th 2011 it was announced that Justin Bieber and Emma Watson had the most influential haircuts of the year.

Can you pick the next trend?

The Hair Styling Trends for 2012 fashion photo contest on Lenzr asks photographers to please look ahead and help predict the future of fashion. Submit your original photography showing what you believe will be the hottest hair fashion trends of 2012. Sponsored by Aveda Institute’s Winnipeg hair school, the PRIZE is a healthy gift basket sent in the mail containing $500 worth of AVEDA Pure Plant and Flower Essence Lifestyle products. Which is very compelling especially if you like the brand.

In Vancouver the weather is mostly rain.  So Bad Weather Hair is a bit of an inside joke. The challenge asks people if they like how they look in the rain. Its true, that some people , especially those folks with short hair, look great in all weather conditions. Indeed this particular match on Lenzr photo contest website was actually inspired by the client’s memory of a recent Lady Gaga’s performance in NYC rain shower.

This generous contest asks to see people making the best of their bad weather hair. Sponsored by a Vancouver hair school, the match offers $500 worth of AVEDA Pure Plant and Flower Essence Lifestyle products as prize package worthy of a queen.

A lot work went into making the 2011 Toronto Christmas Market happen inside the historic Distillery District complex at 55 Mill St near Cherry St and Lakeshore, which is perhaps the oldest part of the old ‘Muddy York’.

First the construction crew had to install and decorate a 45 ft White Spruce Christmas Tree that was donated by Trees Ontario. The tree is an absolute spectacle with over twelve thousand reed switch component light bulbs and ornaments and is topped with a shiny silver star.

Next they had to fix and reinstall the old fashioned clock tower. It disappeared from the site after it was knocked over by a box truck earlier in the year. This majestic chronometer really steals the scene and is the subject of countless photos taken here at the distillery. The fifteen foot tall clock  is always on time and doubles as a light source at night.

Is that a suction truck at the base of the clock? Yes. The Distillery is built on marshy land and not much higher than Lake Ontario. Today the water table is so darn high in the Distillery District that this truck is required to come and suck the water from the spongy ground before cement can be poured and foundations can be secured, even for such small things as old fashion clocks.

Next the construction crew had to assemble over fifty wooden box vendor huts from materials that were donated by Loews.

Also present on the list of achievements is the world class audio sound system that pipes holiday cheer through speakers hung throughout the complex, and the food vendors that serve delicious meals made fresh with organic ingredients and cultural delicacies imported from all over the world.

Oh yes the building of Santa’s maze in which you can see here was accomplished by an army of yellow safety jacketed elves.

The 2011 Toronto Christmas Market exists in the shadow of the  half completed forty four story Gooderham condominium building in the background, and the extension of the development upwards into the sky. Toronto mortgage broker says the measured strength of the cultural scene on the streets and below developments helps leverage the true value of the real estate market above.

The shopping mall below the two towers, some of which will be completed by spring 2012 is reputed to include a Toronto dentist beside a business center hair salons and a Japanese Sushi bar, oh and a Mexican restaurant with state-of-the-art web karaoke machines.
Now in its second year, the 2011 Toronto Christmas Market at the historic Distillery has more street vendors, buskers and costumed performers, more live stage shows and the entire compound is licensed for alcohol. The Toronto Christmas Market is a European market style attraction that’s slowly evolving by continuous improvement into its own uniquely Canadian festival.  There’s nothing else quite like it anywhere else in Canada.

Roberrific the Son of a Beekeeper is the principal writer. Here’s Rob standing tall as one of three sharp dressed men at the Small Business Forum in the Metro Toronto Convention Center on Tuesday Oct 18th, 2011.  Rob Campbell stands beside Jim Pagiamtzis and his friend Tom moments after they donned their special passport badges; they were heading into the trade show floor when I made them pause for a picture and we took several with a variety of smiles

That was around 10am in the morning and it wasnt until 11am that I attended the best session of the day. I had the good fortune to meet Jeff Quipp before his presentation and I wrote about

Roberrific of Lenzr Corp detailed Jeff Quipp Search Engine People Speaks SEO Small Business on the Page One Program blog

Jeff Quipp is a very good speaker and did a lovely job explaining the basics of SEO to a room filled with Facebook and Twitter savvy small business owners that are eager to take a DIY approach to marketing and as such they are keen to absorb as much as they can about social media contests and other unique strategies that are cost efficient and clever.

Recently the hero behind Ancestry Guru was called into action to write an article about a prolific writing team in Prince George BC as Arob12 wrote about Will Lewis being profiled on Canada Blog Friends, along with some insights into the life  and racial challenges of an aboriginal online magazine publisher.

On a more religious note the son of beekeeper waxed poetic and gave recent glimpses of the differences between medieval beekeeping and the art and science of a modern commercial apiarist and even more miscellaneous insights into the harvest of rare earths, minerals and organic ingredients for making bread and dinner buns.

Which brings me to the Art of Bread Making on Xanga and the secrets of soliciting votes for pictures on social media contests is also explained there

Harvesting Honey in Eastern Ontario Canada

Here’s a snapshot of some of the 2011 Honey Crop at Campbells Honey, this image is something that might be accepted into a photo contest concerning Warehouse Stockpiles on Lenzr. Here are seven barrels of Canada #1 White Honey ready to be shipped to market. I wrote about this Canadian harvest in an article The Business of Beekeeping in Southern Ontario that was picked up by Bizcovering magazine. Look closely in the background you can see boxes and a freezer that was filled with plastic tubs of creamed white honey.

WHAT IS CREAMED HONEY?  There is nothing added to the pure honey to make it creamy. The process involves mixing the fresh honey with a small amount of highly granular seed honey which teaches the liquid how to harden into a compact crystaline shape rather than the loose crystal pattern that would otherwise occur naturally. The honey is placed in the freezer and it hardens quick according to the code imparted by the tiny crystals from the creamed honey seed (last year’s creamed honey). I wonder if it would be worth saving some creamed honey in a seed bank with sophisticated inventory management and calling it an insurance expense.

Packing the honey in barrels and bottles and cardboard boxes is the last step in the honey production planning ritual that occurs every year at Campbell’s Honey in Warkworth Ontario.

Harvest time has always been a big deal in North America; take for example this popular song called “Shine on Harvest Moon”. Recorded over a hundred years ago in 1906, this song is still relevant to harvest season: “Snow time ain’t no time to stay outdoors and spoon,” are some of the lyrics… I wonder if “spoon” meant something different back then?
I’d thought the first day of autumn was today but it turns out it’s still summer…go figure, just when I’d gotten used to it. Anyway, in honour of autumn starting up in two days on September 23, Lenzr has just put out a great new photo contest!

Lenzr wants to see imagery of the Canadian Harvest–show us what’s growing in Canada before the frost. Pumpkins, apples, gourds and squash, wild blueberries… Harvest is a happy time because of the plentiful crops, but it’s also a little anxious because it’s the last food of the season. Try to capture these emotions and more in your photograph and you could win a great prize!

The prize is $400 in cash + a photo licensing agreement with the contest’s sponsor, a brand personality consultant who wants to license your winning photograph to her website.

This contest started September 1, 2011. Voting begins October 15, after which the  top ten  user-ranked photos advance to the sponsor for judging. The winning photograph will be announced on November 1, 2011.

Can you think of any cities made entirely of metal? No? That’s because there aren’t any…yet. This new Lenzr contest, Metal World, is asking for submissions depicting a futuristic-looking setting made entirely of metal. A black-and-white setting on your camera might lend  a formidable ambiance to your photograph–make it cold and impersonal!

The prize is a Sony Laptop with a very unique skin, courtesy of this contest’s sponsor, an Ottawa metal roofing company.

This contest started on September 1, 2011, Voting starts October 15, after which the top ten user-ranked photos advance to the Lenzr judges. The winning photograph will be announced on November 1, 2011.

This is an interesting time of year because September and early October contain the best of two seasons–summer and fall. The new Landscaping and Lawn Care photo contest on Lenzr is looking for submissions from late September–show the judges gardens in their zenith–flowers reaching up to catch the last rays of the summer sun.

The prize for this contest is $250 in eco-friendly garden tools, courtesy of an 100% emissions free property maintenance company.

This contest started on September 1, 2011. Voting starts on October 15, after which the top ten user-ranked photos advance to the Lenzr judges. The winning photograph will be announced on November 1, 2011.

Classy Summer Drinks

The Classy Summer Drinks contest recognizes the power of a mouth-watering drink at the height of summer.  Have you ever been stopped in your tracks by an impossibly good-looking drink?  Have you ever made an impulse purchase based on a drink’s picture?  Lenzr wants to be seduced by photos of your most delectable drinks under summertime conditions.

This contest is sponsored by a company devoted to providing the best stainless steel ice cube trays.  The winner will receive a package of stainless steel containers, which can be customized by browsing the sponsor’s sizable catalogue.

A Manufacturing Process

You may know all about cameras, from ISOs to shutter speeds.  But do you know how they are made?

Lenzr wants photographers to peer through closed factory doors in their newest contest, A Manufacturing Process.  Capture exclusive photos of automated machinery performing some sort of manufacturing task to win.

The contest is a bit different this time because the winning photos are intended for the sponsor’s website.  Specifically, the photos are meant for the sponsor’s pages on process manufacturing and lean manufacturing.   The winner will license their photo to Solarsoft for $250, and so will three other runners-up (at $75 each).  There’s also fair chance Solarsoft will feature winning photos on their site, but they are not obligated to do so.

Voting for both contests will begin on Sept. 15, 2011 and run until Sept. 25th.  In each case, the 10 photos with the highest scores will advance to a panel of judges, and the winner will be announced on Oct. 1, 2011.  Contests open to Canadians 13 years of age and older, but unfortunately it’s not valid in Quebec.

CSR and Branding:

CSR is a great plan for huge corporations such as Coca Cola and Walmart that are often in the news because of their stance on ethical buying. Truthfully speaking, consumers are considerably smarter than they were 1 or 2 years ago. You can no longer claim to offer a green product without having someone dispute it if it’s not true. The rise of social media has given consumers a voice. If a company does something inexcusable, they can longer carry all the unanswered complaint letter with an air freight service over to the dump, they simply must speak to their faults. With sharing sites such as Facebook, twitter and YouTube, nothing is hidden from the public, and when addressing your consumers, you must be prepared and focused on the matter at hand. A great example of this is Nestle and the Indonesian Palm oil debacle. 90% of the world’s palm oil exports come from Indonesia and Malaysia, giving Indonesia the crown for highest deforestation rates of 4.4 million acres per year between 2000-2005. Nestle uses palm oil heavily in their chocolate bars, and in 2010, they started getting negative responses on Facebook because of it. It was no easy day at a Toronto bed and breakfast for Nestle, when a Facebook group was created with the primary purpose to shed negative light on the company. In order to take away from the bad publicity Nestle got heavily involved in the community and started to support charities to clear their name. this was a positive strategy but the company was only covering up the bad with some good and that will not hold for long.

The future of CSR is now:

Recently, I went into the store Lush Handmade Cosmetics purely for the scent. I was walking around, smelling and poking the products when I stumbled on a wall sized poster titled “ A Lush Life, we Believe.” I stood there for 10 minutes simply marveling at some of the things the company stood for: ethical buying, fair trade and quality products. At first, I was skeptical, so I called over a sales associate and asked her to explain further. She raved about the company and kept saying “we,” sounding like an extremely enthusiastic exclusive group. I nodded, picked up a copy of their Lush Times and bought my preservative free bubble bar on my way to the Yorkville salon. Even though it’s hotter than a furnace outside, I still could not shake the image of the writings on the wall. I couldn’t help but think, is this the new trend? Lush is a company that has been around for over 20 years, but CSR is not a thing they do on the side, it is their mission statement. With CSR on the rise, is this their time to shine globally? Is this the rise of the new company? Is it the evolution of the big bad corporation?

Corporate social responsibility is slowly evolving and turning into a necessity for a corporation’s survival. Within a year, I suspect it will grow and become part of corporations mission statements and lifestyle choices.

What the new site offers that the old Lenzr.com never had are ‘Community Contests’. These contests can be set up by anyone (an individual, business or organization) at any time, to show (not tell) the world about a story topic of their choice.

In addition to these exciting new changes, Lenzr.com has just launched four new sponsored contests, for prizes of laptops and digital cameras!

Summer Photo Contests on Lenzr.com

The Construction Sights photo contest is hoping to receive submissions illustrating a necessary summer protocol in the city: Construction. Like the glass analogy, there are two ways of looking at construction sites–positive or negative. On one hand, it’s hot, there’s dust flying around, and your bus has been detoured thanks to another construction delay. On the other hand, roads are being improved, housing is being created and many people are busily employed with construction work. There are two sides to this story–show us how you feel about the Construction Sights in your area and win!

The prize is a Sony laptop, courtesy of this contest’s sponsor, a family-owned Ottawa roofing company.

The Best Office Staff Party is looking to see submissions that juxtapose a stuffy office environment with a rollicking good time. How does your office let loose? Mini cupcakes? Interns working the ‘bar’? Who’s the life of the party–your boss? Show us your hilarious office party moments and don’t forget to include a sentence or two to put the photo in context. Also, while we want to see shots of people having a great time, make sure your co-workers are OK with your entry before submitting it–we are not responsible for any trouble you might cause!

The prize is a Sony laptop, thanks to an incredible IT staffing agency located in downtown Toronto.

The A Counting Exercise photo contest is looking for submissions featuring a repeating visual pattern to be counted. Tap into your inner Count von Count and take a look at the world from an arithmomaniac’s perspective: sure, those may be faces in a crowd, lines on the highway or a handful of pretzel sticks, but they’re counting exercises, too! Get creative with this one–this contest has received a lot of entries already featuring many amusing counting exercises. Show your never-ending profile in a three-way mirror, the Lego pieces your kids left all over the floor or a parking lot full of bicycles in a progressive European country–give the Lenzr judges something to count and you could win!

The prize is a Sony laptop, courtesy of this contest’s sponsor, a team of North York accountants.

Finally, the Shafts of Sunlight photo contest is looking to see tangible lines of natural sunlight in the submissions. There is something divine about the way light can take on the appearance of matter–observe in the picture to the right–these shafts of sunlight look almost like monkey bars sent down from the heavens. Try to capture a similar effect in your photo. This is the most specific contest; the rules state very clearly that shafts of sunlight, not other light tricks, are the desired outcome. Snap the most spectacular shaft of sunlight and you may win!

The prize is a Sony Cyber-Shot digital camera, courtesy of the contest’s sponsor, fittingly, a sunrooms installer.

Here in Canada we have a federal election on May 2, 2011.  Here’s some important old information to help readers make a more informed decision before voting in what appears to be a very important Federal election.

There is no doubt, this election will be a ‘game changer’ in Canada. Here are some very good reasons not to vote for Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada during this 2011 election:

The Conservative government is the first government in Canadian history to be found in contempt of Parliament for refusing to reveal the cost of its planned crime bills,

Conservative minister Bev Oda has admitted that she lied to Parliament, and narrowly escaped being found in contempt of Parliament.  Harper Government stops funding CAIROS

Harper’s G20 Summit wasted 0ne billion dollars; Canadian democracy vanished for three days and there still hasn’t been a full public inquiry!

Internal government directives insist that the Government of Canada be referred to as the “Harper Government”:

The government is spending millions of dollars on Economic Action Plan ads, which are thinly disguised partisan advertising. More taxpayers’ money has been spent on ads in three months than major advertisers normally spend in a year.

The Conservatives are proposing harsher punishments and more prisons, even though the crime rate is falling and “tough on crime” measures have proven ineffective

Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament in 2009 to avoid questions on the Afghan detainee issue.

In recent campaign speeches, Harper has repeatedly raised the spectre of a “Bloc/NDP/Liberal coalition”, and has implied that a coalition not containing the first-place Conservatives would be illegitimate.

The Conservatives claim that the new fighter jets that they plan to purchase will cost $15 billion. The Parliamentary budget watchdog says that the cost is actually $29.3 billion.

Here are details from Wikipedia on the “in and out” election scandal, which may have made the difference in the 2006 election:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_and_Out_scandal

The government lobby in the House of Commons now contains far too many photographs of Harper.

In the current election campaign, Stephen Harper is limiting the press to five questions per campaign stop.

In Parliament, Conservative cabinet ministers are often not allowed to answer questions:
http://bit.ly/c6m9Uj

The view from Australia (written by a Canadian): “Canada watches its democracy erode”:
http://bit.ly/fJ0OZE

The history of the industrial age is written in glass. The ‘slug plates’ that make the embossed labels in Canadian whiskey, soda, dairy, liquor and medicine bottles, read like pages in a book.  The names of the merchants and the contents of the vessels are from a simpler time of men and machines.

There is no better place to study this history then at a large bottle show in an urban center. The area’s most valuable glass is on display and the dealers are storytellers with lots of rare and precious knowledge locked up in their heads.

The annual Toronto Bottle Show, was Sunday April 17th 2011.

The annual Toronto Bottle Show event is produced by the Four Seasons Bottle Collectors, one of Canada’s oldest and most respected clubs.  On this wet and rainy Sunday afternoon, more than forty antiques dealers tables proffered over 5,000 glass bottles, crocks, jugs, cans, cards, comics and period advertising pieces on tables inside the Humber College gymnasium.

In the picture above you can see Dwight Fryer sitting behind a massive collection of pretty blue and green ‘window bottles’.  These are actually poison bottles and he’s one Canada’s foremost poison bottles experts – almost all of the very pretty cobalt blue and green and amber glass you see here was priced to sell quickly between $30 and $50 each, and Dwight was selling off these gorgeous glass bottles hand over fist. It was a moment in time.

If you study glass bottles you’ll find there’s no better place to see such a huge assembly of everything that’s decent and worthy of display in the antique glass bottle collecting discipline.  Here’s some of the great stuff.

These are absolute treasures – look here at the aqua green and cobalt blue torpedo bottles in Terry Matz display case . These are all dated between 1855 -1885 and they are all super rare. The average price for any bottle in that display case is approx $1200.  The guy sitting behind all those pretty torpedo bottles is Terry Matz, and he’s an expert and very passionate storyteller.

There not making anymore of these salt glazed stoneware jugs.

A real sweet spot for buying antique bottles,

Old advertising signs are growing harder to find and more valuable because they look great in modern offices and condominiums. The contrast between the new building and old signs is cool. The white walls need old paper posters, framed glass pictures and painted metal panels , and two or three colour wood or good condition cardboard advertisments. There are a lot of freshly painted white walls in our society that need embellishing with antique signs

People generally bring really rare, one-of-a-kind pieces to the bottle show.

The fellow named Ed Locke, seen in the photo to the right, brought in a Solnhofen Stone printing slab which was used in the early days of lithographic printing – $150 this piece shows an early advertisment for a Brandon Manitoba brewey which is also extremely rare.seen below

This is real early lithographic printing technology with a period  advertisement stamped on the surface of the limestone.  The piece stands as a reminder of how far we have come; there is a lot of water under the bridge in the evolution of this platform to the digitally replications done today. Our modern printable coupons have barcodes and expiry dates. To make such a system in the 1800s would mean hand carving a new stone for every coupon issued  Yet there are examples of the world’s first discount media buyers doing exactly that in the early 1900s. This exremely fine limestone block may only be obtained from one quary in Solnhofen Germany.

The history of pop bottles and beer bottles is another fascinating chapter in this Canadian history book. The screw cap is a very recent invention, and today’s most dominant closure method.

The closure mechanisms slowly evolved from simple corks to cod stoppers and complex ‘gravitating stoppers’, hinged plugs and Charles G. Hutchinson’s five bottle-stopper patents.

Here’s a cream and tan stoneware ginger beer bottle from a proprietor named H. Christin who was a brewer in Ottawa in the 1880s. This vessel was made by Brantford Pottery right here in Ontario, or  ‘Upper Canada’ as it was then known.

This bottle had a cork stopper and from this point forward there would be many different closures vying to be the dominant method. The crown cap became industry standard for this type of beverage in the 1920s.

Sharpen your eyes for cottage kitsch

Cottagers know that Kitcsh is King and the most simple furnishings and colourful trappings look great in cottages. The bottle show has lots of stuff with charm and character like some Mennonite furniture and folk art,

The chemistry of our culture dictates that cottages needs campy collectibles to feel cozy.

The modern Muskoka cottage suffers from being too sophisticated, clean and culturally void of character

Each new domicile in the Muskoka Lakes needs large amounts of kitsch to look and feel more quaint. So many of the million dollar mansions that border Lake Muskoka are ultra modern constructions. They’re not made of pine or poplar anymore – they’re not timber frame houses at all, but rather insulated concrete forms , steel and glass monstrosities.  They lack the quaint charm of a cottage and often feel too sanitary. They dont have the charm of a family cottage, but rather feel like a house in the suburbs.

Things that look great in new cottages include,  utilitarian items like 1950′s 60s and 70s kitchenware and beer coolers, antique fishing lures, vintage boating equipment, art deco furniture and native crafts. These items find ready buyers in antique markets and in online auctions

I wrote a longer and more detailed account of the 2011 Toronto Bottle Show on Dumpdiggers blog; it’s about ten pages of text with over twenty pictures. The piece profiles 15 of the 35 dealers present at the show.

St. Andrew’s College is located in Aurora Ontario. They are an all boys private school with a long history and proud tradition. Their alumni include famous actors, Prime Ministers, professional hockey players and great artists. This is a video from St. Andrew’s College Athletics Department.

If you like Ontario minor league hockey news, read about St. Andrew’s latest victory over Upper Canada College last week. The Saints are crushing this season, like they do every year.

The next St. Andrew’s College Open House is on May 4th 2011.