If you’ve been following me on Instagram for a while, you’ll remember last year when I posted about my first venture into textile design. Using a piece of my art made on iPad Pro, I uploaded the image to Weaver & Loom‘s digital platform and the process of creating my first rug began. 🤗 Fast forward to 2023, and I’m heading to Miami with the Weaver & Loom team! The first image below is my design from iPad, the second is a rendering of my 18 x 18 sample, the third is a color strike rendering of my 31 different colours, and the last image is my hand-knotted sample. The day I received my sample I was SO excited I decided to have a photo shoot with it! I was blown away by the construction and how vibrant the colours were. Going through the rug-making process with Weaver & Loom was incredible, as my rug went through production, I received updates from the weavers in Kathmandu, Nepal. Here’s my rug on the loom!

Ran for the first time in ages and I missed this feeling. Next, I got ready for the day and went to the polls just before they opened. I was the first person my elections attendant had for the day so there was a little learning curve but everyone was nice. Was back home in 30 min including the walk & wait time. I’m excited about this week. We’re recording two exciting episodes of Cast of Creators and there’s a new episode out on Wednesday. We also have an Instagram for Funday now, follow @fundayagency. In other news, John Tory is Mayor again.

Sean and I went to stay with our friend Jake at a cottage in Stoney Lake for a week and it was lovely. I honestly, can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t have to work on ‘vacation‘. A career in social means you are kinda ‘on’ 24-7′. I’ve never had a job like Funday/Hvr, where they actually value a break.👏 Grateful to work with such awesome people! This is the first time in my life my work was like ‘no, you’re on vacation‘ and didn’t reach out or ask me to do stuff. It was absolutely glorious! I took naps, read my book, listened to a whole novel on Audible and did next to nothing. Highly recommend Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister, get the audiobook, great story. My sister and I listened at the same time and texted about it non-stop. Sean also rented a sea doo (that he later purchased!) and we cruised the lake together in the sunshine. It was magical. I left the cottage feeling relaxed and refreshed. 😎

I went to Collision Conference 2022 and it was great! I’d been once 2019 and after two years of a pandemic, it was nice to be in a conference environment. There were 35,000 attendees and 600 speakers over three days + events and more. I shared some tweets from the conference on our @FundayAgency account and soaked up as much marketing knowledge as I could. One of my fav things was the TikTok booth, they had a 360 photo op. I loved it. See the video on Instagram. Nelson and I attended a few sessions in the afternoon and walked the conference floor. Some of my favourite talks were Global Marketing Trends, What’s in for Gen Z This Season, Censorship in the Era of Misinformation, and the Future of Journalism. Also met TikTok & Instagram superstar, Bruce, aka @falafel.kimchi. On Wednesday night Nadia went to the Collision After Dark party at Stackt Market. It was super fun. On Thursday, to close out the conference, Nelson and I did four episodes of Cast of Creators, our new podcast. The first ep we did there was with Raine Maida from Our Lady Peace. We talked about web3, NFTs, connecting with his fans and more. Collision is back in Toronto next year and if you can make it I highly recommend checking it out. I’m thinking about going to their next conference, Web Summit in Lisbon. In other news, making our show is super fun! I can’t wait to share the first three episodes of Cast of Creators with you on July 20th. We have really laughed and had some seriously good conversations.

We drove up to the cottage on Thursday night to spend the May long weekend in Muskoka. I haven’t been up North much this year but was really looking forward to a few days out of the city. It was meant to rain all weekend but Friday was a magical sunny day. I took FULL ADVANTAGE. Went for a nice 7K walk/run in the middle of the day and it was beautiful. At Funday, we get a bonus vacation day during our birthday month so I booked mine to make an extra-long weekend. We took the boat out and Sean wakeboarded even though the water is still pretty cold. I don’t mind being captain lol. Fun times! With love from the woods!