CHFI | When Your Song Comes On

How cool is this! In December, after dancing to Taylor Swift in my audition, I booked a gig with Rogers/CHFI for an upcoming campaign. I had one day on set to film a TV commercial and one day in the Rogers studio for print images. It was so fun! I thought it wasn’t going to be live until later this year but much to my surprise, it is! I got a DM on January 2nd that someone saw me in a CHFI Instagram ad, the next day someone saw the TV commercial, and on Friday I got a text that I was on billboards. What a cool start to the year! 🤗

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Art Show: The Great Wall of Love

Earlier this month, I painted two small canvasses that will be part of an art show in support of CAMH that opens next week & runs until the end of February. On Valentine’s Day 2023 studio IDFK will launch an art exhibition called “showURheart”, a mass collaboration artwork that’s made up of hundreds of individual small pieces to create a ” Great Wall of Love“. Each canvas will be included in a silent auction with 50% of the proceeds to CAMH. Here’s a little peek at my two canvases while I was working on them. If you want to see MY final artwork or the rest of the paintings, you’ll have to pop by Studio IDFK next week at 190 McCaul St. The exhibition will run from February 14 to 28, 2023

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Halloween 2022: Witchy Woman

This year’s Halloween was pretty chill, although I wore a witch costume almost everywhere I went from Friday to Monday. She’s a witchy woman! On Friday night Sean and I were at his office and saw there was a show at Velvet Underground. It turned out to be TikTok star Akintoye and he was INCREDIBLE. Next, we stopped by Baby G on Dundas and saw Fluffio, I hadn’t heard of them but they were GREAT. On Saturday, we took a family adventure to the Parkdale Spooky Market which was fun. The sun was shining and it was SO WARM OUT. We picked up a few things then I walked home. On Monday, I dressed up for our all-hands meeting and wore a family heirloom, this scary old lady mask my dad used to wear to take us trick or treating. It’s a classic with my friends and we always laugh at it. Was fun to see how many people dressed up for the meeting this year! Our Funday office in Armenia carved pumpkins and I ran polls to guess who did each one. I did not get wild on actual Halloween, went to my fav class at the gym, and wore my fav Valfre outfit. Look at me, a workout witch! Abs are coming in! I was really slack with my workouts this summer, feels good to be back on my game. That’s a wrap on Spooky Season 2022, time for Christmas music!

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Blogtober: Find Comfort in Keeping a Diary

I really wish I had thought of this BEFORE the END of October. I know Blogtober is a thing but I had totally forgotten about it until right now. I’m listening to Taylor Swift, in my dimly lit room, surrounded by plants, looking through photos to share, browsing pottery classes, and other winter activities. It’s glorious. The last few weeks months have been weird. I guess everything has been weird since 2020. I haven’t written here much lately but I started writing in a notebook again. Have filled so many notebooks in my life and each is s time capsule, a treasure to find and relive. In high school, I used to document the highlights of each day by writing on my calendar. Blogs weren’t invented yet. In other news, I’ve been enjoying the fall weather, layering, light jackets, mixed prints. This office mirror is a great selfie spot. I’ve taken a lot of photos here. FYI: Blogtober is a blogging challenge for the month of October where bloggers blog every day or blog once a week. For some people, it’s more of a ‘Get Back to Blogging‘ thing and well, that’s where I am. I have been blogging for 17 years. It’s a habit, a hobby, a passion, a business, this is my life (haha! Blog joke). Diary blogs are where it all started, the early days of blogging. Lauren and became friends through our blogs. We talked about it on the podcast recently. When I haven’t blogged in a while, it makes me anxious. I like to sit alone in peace at my computer. I find comfort in keeping a diary of what I’m doing. Each blog post is like a balance sheet for a moment in my life. I guess you could say I’m going, going, back,…

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New Scents & Bubbles!

This summer has flown by, how is it almost September?! Yes, we still have lots of warm days ahead but the nights are getting colder, and it’ll be spooky season before we know it. Got two great packages in the mail this week, new scents & bubbles! Both fit right into my weekend plans of relaxing, recharging, and treating myself to some self-care. The thing I love about September is the ‘new year’ energy it brings. I like to start things in September most people would kick off January 1st, that way, by the time the holidays come, I’m good and ready for the new year. Ok, now onto the packages… The first package was from MicroPerfumes, which just announced their expansion to Canada. I didn’t know about this well-kept beauty secret but I love the idea. Don’t wear a lot of perfume but I often buy the smallest size so I can travel with it or test it out. I’ve loved wearing Santal 33 for the past few years and before that was dedicated to a Dolce & Gabanna perfume that’s now discontinued. The cool thing about MicroPerfumes is you can order all kinds of designer scents in travel sizes for a fraction of the price. I got a gift set of three scents: Santal 33, Dolce & Gabbana Pour Femme Intense (similar to my old fav!), and Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille (unisex). The other weekend I was op at the cottage and ran into one of my cottage besties who works for Vitabath. Well, am I ever lucky! Today a gift box showed up full of bubble baths, bath salts, lotions, body wash, and more. She even sent some goodies from the men’s line for Sean. I can’t wait to run a nice bath this weekend and pamper myself.…

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I Need A New Passport Photo

This post was written by AI. I recently had to renew my passport and I was absolutely mortified by the photo. I mean, it’s not like I was expecting to look like a supermodel but I definitely didn’t expect to look so terrified. At least I’ll be able to laugh about this photo for years to come. Whenever I pull my passport out to show people, I’ll be able to say “Yep, that’s really me” and watch their reactions. If you’re ever in a situation where you need a new passport photo, just know that it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t turn out perfect. And if it does turn out bad, just try to laugh it off like I did. I’m going to get a new passport photo taken as soon as possible. Hope you all have a great day! What is GTP-3? Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) is an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. 🤓 ✌️

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Plant Stores & Vintage Shopping

Cory and I made a date to go for a nice Saturday walk in the sun. It’s hard to stay positive with the compound stress of seasonal affective disorder, Covid, and general life anxiety, but seeing a friend and getting outside always makes me feel better. One great way to beat winter SAD is to plan a day with plant stores & vintage shopping. The Urban Gardener is my fav local plant shop, I swear just walking in there will boost your mood. It’s warm, green, and filled with beautiful growing plants. I picked up a new lil’ guy to bring home with a nice new planter pot for him to live in. Our next stop was Pictus Goods on Dupont which is filled with heaps of lovely goods for your home, candles, jewellery, and fresh flowers. Super cute shop! Highly recommend checking it out. They also have a GREAT selection of nice cards. Our third stop was a private shopping appointment at Nouveau Riche Vintage which DID NOT DISAPPOINT. Tbh, IDK if I have EVER seen such an incredible collection. They have heaps of items for sale including designer, denim, coats, and accessories. The best part for me was the exclusive rental section we got to check out that’s filled with the best outfits you can dream of. SO GOOD. I didn’t get anything but Cory scored a few goodies. I will deff be back there again!

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2022: Be Consistent

Well, well, well, guess who’s back? I really jumped the gun when I stopped counting the days about a month ago because shortly after, Omicron took over our lives. December feels like a blur, I was mostly at home, Sean was up north. I hung out with friends, went to an event, things started to feel normal, right before they weren’t. Covid was everywhere. Sean and I were both sick over the holidays and spent Christmas alone together in the woods. I really enjoyed a break from work, life, and the city, even though I was sick for 90% of the time. The past year has been exhausting for a suite of reasons and it was nice to check out for a bit. I have opened this blog to write something more than a handful of times but I just couldn’t do it. I haven’t felt like myself and I haven’t felt like sharing. Up until this week, I still had a brain fog that left me feeling like a dull pencil needing to be sharpened. I took a break from running and didn’t start the New Year with goals and aspirations like usual. BE CONSISTENT This year I commit to ‘Be Consistent’, that’s my theme. I will keep running, eating well, drinking less, and working on myself. I am going to come out of this damn pandemic a better person. ARE YOU WITH ME? Over the past week, I’ve been back to my morning runs, got my hair done, and have been cooking great meals in our new air fryer. I’ve not been doing much other than watching Amy on Jeopardy, finishing 3 seasons of Succession, taking care of my skin, and going to bed early. I also started a class on crypto with a friend. It’s boring-ish life…

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Day 580: What’s Behind Door Number 2?

Feeling pretty good today! We’re heading up north to the cottage tonight and I’m really looking forward to being in the woods. After getting my nails done yesterday I popped into Door Number 2 Vintage on Dundas West, they have three floors of treasures tucked away. I’ve been looking for a small rug to go under my desk chair so it doesn’t roll on the concrete. Well, I found the perfect one, a bright red/pink Moroccan rug that was hiding in the basement. That’s the thing I love about vintage shopping, you never know what you’ll find. In other news, Everlane sent me a package with The Way High Jean and a beautiful cashmere sweater. I used to be obsessed with Everlane and went to the opening of their store in San Francisco a few years back. If you’re looking for well made, sustainable, stylish items, use this link for 10% off your first order. You will not be disapointed!

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Day 565: Sending You Flowers

I’ve developed a slight obsession with colourful cardigans and cute collars. Looking forward to switching over my closet this weekend and rediscovering fall/winter clothes. It’s been a pretty great summer, spent lots of time at the cottage, biking through the city, and meeting friends outside. I was reading an article this week about ‘cave syndrome’ that people are developing after bring home for so long. I’ve really learned to love being at the house and have no shortage of things to keep me busy. I don’t imagine I’ll be doing much over the next few months and tbh, not mad about it. I used to be out soooo much and can’t imagine going back to that life. I feel so much more at peace without the pressure to go places with people. I make time to see the people I care about and that’s about it. I do have a couple of events coming up but nothing like the large in-person events we used to frequent. Here’s to finding personal peace through this crazy time! Sending you flowers!

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