About Cindie Ashton

Hi. I am Cindie Ashton, Cindy, Cynthia. I answer to just about anything and I love Kingston! I was born at Hotel Dieu Hospital 52 years ago. I attended First Avenue, Duncan MacArthur, Sydenham, Winston Churchill, and Bayridge public schools, Bayridge Secondary School — where I focused on sports and friends more than education — and St. Lawrence College. 

I have had the same friends for 52 years, 40 years, 30 years, 20 years, 10 years and today. I am a typical Kingstonian spending most of my life taking advantage of our amazing waterfront and all our great city has to offer.

And I love stumbling into one of those ‘Kingston moments.’

Some of my first jobs were at Ponderosa, Lookmakers in the old Kingston Centre and the old Kingston Park Raceway out on MacAdoos Lane where I worked the betting machines. I loved to shop at Kmart, Woolco, Woolworths, and one summer I even did inventory at Kresge’s. I learned to swim at Richardson Beach and, yes, somewhere there are pictures of a young Cindie sitting on the lion in Macdonald Park and the Carousel at Lake Ontario Park.

I have also spent nearly 75 per cent of my life as a single mom, raising my two amazing kids: a daughter, Kelly, 32, and a son Matty who is 21. Times were often very tight, though neither of them ever really knew it as I was always shopping the sales to be sure they had the best lunches, the right clothes and were in the right activities to keep them focused.

Obviously, they are adults now, though my son lives part-time at home and part-time with his buddies at their Queen’s University student house. He studies Economics and Politics and plays football. My daughter lives in Trenton, near 8-Wing CFB, with her Air Force husband and their two daughters. While none of them are here on a regular basis, it is still important to me that everyone has their space to make it easy to come home and visit.

I spent five years in an accounting role during my earlier “Belleville years” and more than 25 years, the majority with the City of Kingston, in the communications and media field offering strategic planning and crisis management expertise, and providing the supporting materials for traditional and social media. I guess I should add here that my opinions are my own and do not reflect those of the Corporation of the City of Kingston.

And I’ll just add shopping to my resume as well. Some time ago, when I was organizing my mother’s 50th birthday party, my dad pointed out that I was a great shopper (on his credit cards). My dad said, “You should find a job where you get paid to shop.” While writing this blog isn’t a paying gig, it’s still is a lot of fun.

I’ve recently suffered an injury that has required me to be off work and downsize my home earlier than anticipated. Given the unexpected circumstances, I’ve decided to make light of a difficult situation in my posts as I work through my recovery with my healthcare team.

A big shout-out to Lesley, Sanet, Mary-lou, Catherine and Heather and of course Sarah, Susan and Marie. Without your support none of this would have ever happened. 

I hope you enjoy my current and future ‘How Tos’ for decorating and fashion shopping on a budget with a few other random thoughts thrown in. Take advantage of my latest and greatest finds by coming back each week.

About this site

We are quickly approaching the end of 2020, the year of Covid-19. The year of layoffs, stores closings, product shortages and working from home.

The year the little things became more important again. And the year that March Break didn’t end until September, and forced even more people to stay at home. 

At home people started redecorating, finally getting to all those “honey-do” projects and cleaning out closets, basements and garages of their unwanted items and donating them to thrift shops rather than throwing them in the garbage and filling our landfills with perfectly good merchandise needed and wanted by others.

Regardless of your situation, you still want to look great, have nice things and establish a much tighter family budget. I hope you enjoy this series of ‘how to’ on the cheap and ‘how to’ for FREE.