Last week I had a Biologique Recherche facial at Visage Medical Spa, a cult beauty fav The Olsens, Nicole Richie, and heaps of celebs. Honestly, my skin has been glowing ever since, it’s like I have a teenager face.
Biologique Recherche is from France and has alpha-hydroxy, salicylic acids, horseradish extract, and it exfoliates TF out of your skin. My custom facial included caviar, collagen, and placenta! ? Highly recommend!
The Visage Clinic space is beautiful. I am totally obsessed with all the designer wallpaper. The swans are GUCCI!
This is inside the FACE LAB where we used the Biologique Recherche tools to examine the elasticity and moisture (or lack thereof) in my skin. Visage Clinic is the only company in Canada that currently has these tools. I received a printout of my diagnosis and it will stay on file at the clinic for my follow up on a few months.
The magic!
This experience was a gift and I am so grateful! Thank you Ashton Marcus PR & Visage for the invite. I am down to try just about any beauty service. Anything to maintain a youthful glow!
This week is the calm before the TIFF storm that kicks off next week. Excited, can’t wait!
I can hardly believe it’s almost TIFF! It feels like we were just in France for Cannes! After our trip to France, I was so incredibly tired, I’d spent most of May traveling or at conferences. I posted a few photos in this Telus post about our Cannes adventure but I wanted to share more about the experience so I don’t forget anything. It was a really cool experience!
From the moment I saw the red carpet and Cannes main building I was in awe. I’ve been watching celebrities grace that carpet my whole adult life! When I picked up my badge, I had this moment of “omg, we’re really doing this!”. I was there in charge of content for The Holy City, a film co-produced by Sean’s company, Occupied VR.
I loved walking the streets and people watching. Cannes is full of character with old cobble streets, beautiful beaches, a merry go round on the main strip, huge yachts lining the harbor, and bustling patios lining the sidewalks. I was happy to learn there are multiple Zara stores in case you have a wardrobe emergency and a tuxedo rental place if you need one a hurry.
A couple of my fav moments were walking out to paparazzi behind Elton John, walking past Chloë Sevigny, and seeing Tilda Swinton sauntering down the street in a gorgeous muumuu. She was stunning!
Each day we walked or took an Uber down to the festival building. In order to get inside, we had to pass security including bag search and badge check. We spent most our time on the first floor of the building in the XR Hub, on the film sales floor, or at the international pavilions.
XR Hub, Festival de Cannes 2019
The Holy City premiere was on the 2nd day of our trip so the rest of the time was showing it to industry people, doing demos, and taking meetings. I was in charge of social for the film so I spent a lot of time walking around documenting. Totally in my element!
International Pavillions, Festival de Cannes 2019
The Canada Pavillion was just outside the main building and a good spot to take a break, get a coffee, sit on the beach, or charge my phone. They hosted a mixer on one of the nights, it was great to see some other Canadians in film.
Croisette Beach, Cannes
I ate a lot of baguettes in the first few days. ? After the novelty wore off, I was determined to find other options with less bread and butter lol. I imagine it might be a bit tough in France if you are vegan or vegetarian, lots of meat, cheese, and dairy.
We rented an Airbnb about a 15min walk from the main strip. It was a cute listing and had all the amenities we needed including a pull-out couch in the living room. That’s where I slept we had a big night our because I snore and move around a lot haha.
Our Airbnb in Cannes
Our place was the top floor od the building with a huge terrace. It was a nice place to come back to in between long days of being at the festival and then going out at night.
View from our Airbnb, Cannes, France
We had a couple fun nights out! Similar to TIFF, there’s big parties by production companies or film studios and a lot of premiere parties. We attended the party for a film that was up for the Palme d’Or (Portrait of a Girl on Fire) after meeting the costume team at a bar on the street. So fun! One of the other hot spots was Petite Majestic, a small dive bar that took over the street when it got late with all kinds of people drinking and talking loudly. It was my fav place!
Sean and the guys went to a couple of big premieres. Getting tickets when you have a pass was kind of like a lottery were you requested admission from the login portal. It was so Sean to see him all dressed up. What a babe!
I stated home and ordered Uber eats including BEER. I love France. Europe is amazing. Maybe one day we will have this in Canada? He did check my ID before handing over the goods from his motorbike.
People were dressed up at all times of the day, there were tuxedos everywhere! Patios were lined with people smoking and drinking wine, even the McDonalds patio was full with tuxedos grabbing a quick snack. I wish I had a photo of them! ?
There were also heaps of people dressed up looking for tickets to premieres with small handmade signs.
On the way home, we passed through Munich, Germany. Beautiful and clean airport, still can’t get over the smoking lounges though. Crazy!
Thankful for the experience to go to Cannes w/ Sean and work on the film. Hope we can get back to Cannes another time but if not, happy to check this off my bucket list!
We worked a lot but also had a few dinner dates and long walks under the stars. All around great time!
I’m excited for TIFF19! I’ve been to one pre-screening so far and have a couple more next week. Tomorrow I’ve got a pre-TIFF facial! I’ll be doing a wrap up of TIFF films & events in 2 weeks.
Making the most of summer until then! Have an amazing day!
It’s been years since I’ve had my hair long as it is right now. I can’t remember the last time I was able to put my hair up in a pony, do french braids, or pop in extensions. I love it! It’s so fun to be able to play around with barrettes and accessories to change my look. At the start of summer, I stopped into SassoonTorontoto brighten up my blonde and trim my little bob.
LET’S COLOUR
In this post, I’m breaking down some of the different colour options you can get at Sassoon and what they mean.
I use to do all-over colour (blonde) but in effort to grow my hair longer and healthier, I’ve switched to highlights. They’re
BALAYAGE
This popular technique is pretty low maintenance if you’re looking for a look that doesn’t need a lot of upkeep. At Sassoon, they mix freehand painting with foiled highlights meaning you can have a natural sun-kissed look or something more dramatic.
Commitment: 2-3 Months
Great For: Creating soft, sun-kissed hair that is natural-looking, wearable, versatile
I love this look and it is VERY Sassoon. This technique uses darker tones underneath laters of lighter colors to create depth and tone. It’s a bit more of a commitment than balayage but so stylish! It really accentuates a haircut like this one I had a couple of years ago.
Commitment: 6-8 Weeks
Great For: Adding depth and tone to an amazing cut
On set for a shoot w/ Umbra
FACE FRAMING
Face frames blend into your natural colour accentuating your face and can be a variety of colours. This helps to illuminate your look and brighten your face without a big commitment.
Chances are you have probably had highlights in your life. if you’re like me and were in high school in the 2000’s you might have done the old cap/pull-through method as a teenager. Don’t try this now! Sassoon offers highlights and lowlights to either and some lights bits to darker hair or a few dark slices for depth and dimension. Highlights are great for hiding grey or if you’re moving away from all-over colour (like me).
Commitment: 2-3 Months
Great For: Enhancing natural colour, adding contrast, works on any hair length
Highlights
Lowlights
I think the most important things when it comes to your hair is finding what makes you happy. For me, my hair has always been a big part of defining my style and personality. I love working with Sassoon, they know who I am and how important my hair is to my look. I’ve learned over the years that a bright blonde is best and if I stray from that, I won’t be happy. Trust me!
BOOK A COLOUR CONSULTATION
Sassoon Toronto is happy to work with you to find a new style or enhance your current look with a cut and/or colour. I have my colour done by Kim, a wizard with blonde and cut by Tricia, the salon manager.
If you’re looking for a new look, they’re often looking for hair models for the Sassoon Academy or give the salon a ring at (416) 920-1333.
I was the opening keynote where I spoke a little bit about my career and how building my personal brand helped create opportunity.
In this video, you’ll hear 3 examples where my personal brand helped me get booked for jobs.
Excuse the audio, I was using a handheld mic and this is recorded on my iPhone. I will note that Sean wanted to shoot on a camera with a lav mic but I insisted on using the phone. Next time I will let the pro handle it!
Thanks, Bobby & the LinkedIn Local team for having me!
Looking for a speaker or host for your upcoming event? Send me an email or contact my speaker agent at The National Speakers Bureau.
I had to look up what day it was, Wednesday! The last week has been so nice. A great mix of perfect weather, bathing suits, casual clothes, no makeup, naps, and sitting. It’s just the two of us up here and we’re on day 6 of 12.
I’ve spent less time on my computer than I thought I would and more time making things in the kitchen, driving the boat, and reading by the lake. We got a couple of new small appliances recently and this week I made ice cream, hummus, and buttercream frosting in the food processor. Sean is really into cooking meats with the sous vide. I didn’t understand it at first but then he made me a sous vide steak and I fell in love. I even look online for the best home sous vide to get him for his birthday so he would cook me sous vide meals more often! He’s used it quite a few times and I’m always really happy when I see him pull out the machine.
Have had lots of fun with cottage friends, wakeboarding, surfing, and sunset drinks on the dock.
This is the all-star lake surfing team, a double wakeboarding mother-daughter team, Sean’s first wake surf, and Scott surfing behind the boat. I have wakeboarded but tbh, I’m most happy in the boat and being the photog.
Tomorrow is Sean’s birthday and I’ve been giving him one present each day since we arrived. Today I’m decorating a bit and then will attempt to make a magical birthday cake! Yesterday I made a cute HBD stencil and painted the walkway. I haven’t used this stuff before so I really hope it comes off lol. The pressure washer should do it. ?
Reminding you today to take time for yourself, create space for personal projects, and slow down a bit. It’s not a race, the joy is in the journey, not the destination.
I’ve been going through old hard drives up at the cottage and wow, I’ve taken a lot of photos. There are multiple drives with hundreds of folders and nothing is organized properly. Many people would be stressed TF out by this but I’m really trying to take inspiration from my chaos. I’m finding so many things, texting old photos to friends, making notes, and making a new list of old ideas.
Each morning here, I get up, make coffee, some type of snack, and sit down at my computer in the kitchen overlooking the lake. I’m often wearing big noise-canceling headphones with nothing playing, I like silence or muffled sound when I’m trying to concentrate. Searching my drives is an endless adventure of, what could this be?! Folder names go from date_nameofclient to ‘iPhone2014 dump’ or ‘new folder4’, it’ a mess!
I love having all my memories in photos and videos, it’s so easy to forget the daily details of life. One of the things I’ve really noticed is just how many selfies I take in relation to how many get posted. There are a lot of deleted selfies.
Yesterday, after putting the boat in the water I came back and was feeling cute. Grabbed my tripod and set it up outside, snapped a bunch of photos with my remote and voila, the ones you see here. To be honest, I looked at so many of them, hitting delete and not feeling happy with how I looked. Yes, it was early morning no makeup, but how I felt before the photos (cute) vs how I felt after the photos (not cute) didn’t match up. This happens all the time but I’m trying to not be so hard on myself. Today, looking back, of course, there were some bad ones, it was self-photography in thenatural morning light!
DON’T BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. We all go through this and trust me if you feel that way today, you are not alone. Not one bit. Going through all these old photos I’m seeing how many different hairstyles I had, how skinny I used to be, and the story behind every selfie.
Archives, the Art Hives
I originally started my blog as a way to keep memories. Having a diary is one of the best things, I feel, you can do to move forward, learn, and grow. I’m on a mission to be a better human, to love myself more, and to consistently find happiness in simple things. I’ve always been a pretty positive person but this past winter with my shoulder injury, nerve damage in my face, a mishap with my hair, and some other stuff, I got really down in the dumps. HOWEVER, THE TIME IS NOW. I’m crawling out, finding my creative spirit, my strong Taurus energy, and sunshiney vibes.
Having a diary is one of the best things, I feel, you can do to move forward, learn, and grow.
Loving yourself is a daily process and becoming your best self takes work. The last few days, I’ve been listening to the Papaya Podcast by Sarah Nicole, aka @thebirdspapaya. Although I don’t exactly relate to the postpartum mom stuff, I enjoy the talk about self-love, body confidence life in general. You can find the podcast on iTunes here.
Sending you love and sunshiney vibes. I’m about to go drive the boat and take Sean wakeboarding.
Yesterday I wrote a blog about my new speaker and I seriously considered not reviewing the product here because it wasn’t sponsored and would people be thinking, “is this sponsored“? But, in all honesty, I jus really liked the thing. I like a lot of things. I hardly post sponsored stuff and sometimes my blog is about bike riding on a sunny day or speaking at an event. I used to blog about everything I liked, I’ve blogged for over 10 years. There are thousands of blog posts here about nothing in particular other than a thought or a feeling.
Almost gone are the days of people blogging because they love blogging or just want to get their thoughts onto the blog. But really, those are the blogs I love the most. The old blogs. The diary blogs. The blogs that tell a story and make you have feelings or brighten your day.
I want to bring back the blog, the writing, the thoughts, and all the feelings.
Today is a new day, a new month, an opportunity to make a change. Mercury is longer in retrograde and Leo Season is upon us. You’re in charge here.
Sedona, Arizona, shot on film
Blog Goals for August 2019: Write Something Every Single Day
I’m putting myself up for a challenge to write something new each day for the whole month of August. I love to write and the last few weeks months I have been in a bit of a slump. I needed to take some time to relax my brain and body. To find that place inside where creativity comes from and open the door. It took some time, but I managed to crack that door and I’m making my way in.
I’ve packed up years of hard drives and developed all my disposable cameras. Over the next 12 days at the cottage, I’m taking a deep dive into the archives, the art hives as I used to call them. I’m looking for inspiration in my own digital history and hoping that together we can make something new.
These photos are from a disposable camera I had on a press trip in Arizona years ago w/ some friends. The blog post from that trip here.
Here’s to a new month, new moon, and new creative adventure!
This week I went to the 2020 Ikea Catalogue media preview where they announced their partnership with Sonos. I love IKEA and smart home accessories so was keen to learn more. Through this partnership, IKEA is focussed on enhancing your home with sound and lighting. This post is not sponsored by Ikea but I would love if it was!
I was given the new SYMFONISK speaker and set it up as soon as I got home. Wanted to share my thoughts right away because I’m super impressed. It’s my first Sonos and by far the nicest speaker I’ve ever personally owned.
Symfonisk Setup
In a few minutes, I set it up on my home wifi, connected it to Apple Music, and my Amazon Echo to work with Alexa. The SYMFONISK I received is a bookshelf speaker which is quite the coincidence because I have been looking for the best bookshelf speakers recently so this was perfect timing! It can go vertical or horizontal and be mounted as a shelf that can hold up to 7lbs. Multiple speakers can be paired for surround sound, paired over wifi, or to your TV. You control the speaker with the Sonos app and can set up voice controls. Mine is connected to Alexa and works perfectly!
Symfonisk Design x Quality
Both speakers in the series come in black or white and are designed to blend in with your home decor. The bookshelf speaker is $149 and table lamp speaker is $249. Pretty good price for the sound quality and Sonos brand. For the one with the light, you can add in smart bulbs like Phillips Hue or Ikea’s own smart bulbs to make the light change colour.
My Symfonisk speaker in the IKEA KALLAX shelf
At the media preview, they had a bunch of the speakers paired together for ‘party mode’ which was pretty rad.
One of the really cool things, when you set up the speaker, is it takes you through pairing it to your specific room from the app. You slowly move your phone up and down around the room in a wave-like technique to pick up on the room shape and tone, this allows the speaker to perform the best sound for the space. Safe to say I am loving how loud it goes and clarity of sound.
The speakers are available online and instore August 7th. If you are buying online, make sure you sign up for Ebates first because they have 2.5% cashback at IKEA right now.
Last week I took a couple mystery disposable cameras to be developed and one was from Australia in 2004 while I was at university. It’s crazy to think how many apartments and places this camera has been. My life has changes to much but this year was such an important time of my life.
Let’s go back in time, this is pre-blog and social media, I was 21.
I decided to go to Australia because it was the furthest place away from Canada. I’d always felt a down under connection my family is from NZ and I am New Zealand citizen. My BFF Cheryl and I both had no idea wtf we wanted to do after college so this was a really great option. We could drag out school for another year, spent it in Australia (hello beaches & babes!), and turn our marketing diploma into a degree. Australia is just full of amazing beaches and the best way to experience them is to hire a campervan from somewhere like campervan hire Brisbane, so that you can park up metres away from the sand and sea. That way, you’ve always got everything you need and you save so much money on accommodation, as well as having some amazing views.
I think this exact day was the first time we went to Bondi Beach. These were taken at the top of the hill before you go around the bend and see the water. It’s so beautiful, if you haven’t been, I highly recommend it. One of the most beautiful and magical places. Cheryl and I ended up making friends with some people who lived in the white building overlooking Bondi Icebergs. There were so many internationals living there, it was like nothing I’d ever seen. So many people in their 20’s, different accents, young, hot, and having fun.
Cheryl and I eventually moved to Bondi from the suburb of Paramatta after finding a way to get out of our residence agreement. We went through two shitty apartments and worked part-time in different stores. My shop sold cute outfits on Hall Street and Cheryl worked at the shoe store down the road closer to the beach. I remember going into the kitchen in our second place and seeing the hugest cockroach in my life. Nobody ever cooked in there. Cheryl and I shared a bedroom with two beds, there were clothes everywhere. Through the magic of great scheduling we only had classes Monday-Wednesday, leaving us with plenty of time to spend all our money, make heaps of friends, and tan tits out on the topless beach. It really was A TIME.
When I think back to who I was then, I was so green, so new. I thought I had it together but when I got to Australia, realized I was really in for a real adventure. That year defined a lot of who I am today. It was the first time I was on my own, solely responsible (or irresponsible) for every decision I made. I made a lot of dumb choices, was bad with money, and drank too much but it was really fun. I learned so much about myself, what I wanted, who I was, where I wanted to go.
That’s the thing about growing up, nobody really knows what they’re doing at the time but if you know what you want, you can make a path in that direction.
It took me years to pay for university in Australia but even that taught me a few lessons. It was an investment well worth it. By studying in Australia, I learned so much outside the classroom about life, love, and taking chances.
I’m often not sure where my path is going on the day-to-day but I try to stay in line with my values. It was such a treat to find this camera and the photos brought back heaps of memories. Even before I had a blog I loved to document.
Here’s to digging up old memories and whatever the future may bring!
