I haven’t done a Friday Faves post in awhile! Truth be told, when I woke up this morning and noticed #NationalCookieDay trending, that was all I could think about. So made sense to share with you my three related faves.
Make Your OwnI love this recipeI found on The Girls on Bloor‘s blog for mint chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches! If I hadn’t made cupcakes last night I’d be in the kitchen right now baking this. Pinned it for later.
Bobbette & Belle – 1121 Queen Street East I’m pretty sure you wont leave here with just a cookie! I had their gingerbread cookies and they’re SO good.
I love my city! Don’t get me wrong, I love to travel as well, but home is where the heart is. And my heart has been and always will be in Toronto where I was born and grew up. There’s always something going on in Toronto, never a dull moment. This Friday I focus on Toronto’s newest start-up for your reading pleasure.
Fave Toronto Delivery Service:
There’s a new delivery service in our city and I’m certain it’ll be all over the world in no time! Favour is bringing bespoke services to a whole new level. Favours’ delivery staff also known as runners, will deliver pretty much anything to you. Food from any restaurant, your shopping needs, groceries and so much more. Imagine, all those holidays that are coming up, you’re running late at work and you can’t get out to buy your love a Valentines Day, Christmas, birthday present. Just Favour it!
[Tweet “There’s a new delivery service in #Toronto: @Favour_Toronto is bringing bespoke services to a whole new level. “]
Our city is full of people who love riding bikes and has already paved the way for such a delivery service to be successful. We have so many bike lanes all around the GTA. Delivery time will definitely be on point! And job opportunities through the roof.
So how do you get started? Download the app, set up your credit card information and put in your request. Easy peezy! Hours of operation are from 11 am-9 pm everyday and initially only within the area on the map below:
BONUS: Get your first delivery fee free with code: FAVOUR1T
Throughout the week while surfing the internet I came across some pretty cool stories. Here’s a round up of three stories that stuck with me and I thought you should check out as well! Stories of cool innovations.
Hitchbot
A sweet loving robot from Port Credit, Ontario. With a name like hitchBOT you’ve probably already gotten an idea of what this robot does. hitchBOT has hitchhiked across Canada, meeting so many new people and taking pictures during his travels. The pictures include his location and are tweeted right away to hitchBOT’s twitter account. Pretty cool huh? You can follow hitchBOTs twitter account to see the exact location the bot left or is at. Unfortunately, hitchBOT’s experience in the US wasn’t as great as it was in Canada. Someone vandalized hitchBOT and the trip had to end early. (Check out this video about venge-BOT. A little gory but kind of funny)
So the real question here is would you pick up hitchBOT? I would in a heart beat!
VarageSale
Tami from Toronto, while on maternity leave came up with this app VarageSale. It’s a virtual garage sale that is making selling products via mobile easy! Here’s her story.
Creating an account and getting started is quick and easy. If you ask me, I’ve already made a list of what to sell and I’m excited about all the new free space I’ll have in our storage area!
RingCam
Inventors from Michigan put a tiny camera inside a ring box to capture their fiancee’s reaction. What a great idea! Would save people a lot of money on stealth mode photographers, who have to hide behind bushes to get the perfect reaction shot. Well done.
Note: This Friday Faves is dedicated to faves around the web.
Fave food story
I’ve been seeing this story pop on different sites all week! (Esquire, Cosmo) As it is I’ve been craving Chipotle for so long and I haven’t fulfilled that craving yet. Probably because the closest Chipotle near my home is about 10km away. Not that far, but far enough for me to contemplate whether to go or not.Hmph. Anyways, this guy-Andrew Hawryluk, ate Chipotle for 153 days and had nothing but great stuff to say about the results of doing that.
Fave recipe
The way I love my tea, London fog. Now I can have my cookies like that too. Thanks to this recipe I found on the web:
Got a suitcase full of these chips😍 this week! As you know I love BBQ (see twitter profile) and when I saw their new flavour, BBQ.. You can imagine the excitement soaring through me! Yes, food can have that effect on me.These chips are made from the finest, carefully selected potato varieties in the county of Herefordshire England. Classy chipping. They also have no artificial ingredients, gluten free and vegan friendly.
Craving some Tyrrells? (Loblaws, Wal Mart etc has them)
What does your morning look like? Do you have essentials that you grab everyday or do they change based on your daily to do’s? It’s Friday and here are my essentials
Fave Perfume: I’m going to get real with you. I have way too many perfume favourites. I base my daily fave on the mood I’m in, where I’m going and what I’m wearing. So since today is an errand running kinda day, I’m wearing one of my fave freshest perfumes. Acqua di gioia by Giorgio Armani.
I keep this roller ball version in my tote bag in case I need to freshen up throughout the day.
Friday Fave Lippy: Keeping today very low key with my make-up so I’m using my favourite subtle pink by Smashbox in Posy Pink.
Fave Read: You never know where you’ll be standing/sitting, waiting in line for whatever it is, bored out of your mind. I don’t know about you, but I can only do so much instagraming, tweeting and snapping. Sometimes I need to feel that old school paper between my fingers, turn pages for inspiration. That’s where the summer issue of Globe Style Advisor comes in! I just got mine and it’s going in my bag today. You can download the issue for FREE here.
Fave Tote: Confession: I have SO many totes lying around in my closets.Sometimes I have trouble transitioning from my tote bag days to carrying a nice purse. Especially since my totes carry a lot more than most of my purses.
Fave Jewelry Holder: You need one place where you keep your everyday go to jewelry. A’int nobody got time to be going through jewelry boxes early in the mornin’… This triple fish dish is made and designed by founder of rcboisjoli, Alexx Boisjoli and his studio is in Toronto’s junction neighbourhood. (The triple fish motif is based on old fish can labels, a weathered and textured look was created to give the fish an antique look.) You can also shop for his quality ceramics online: here. He was also featured in Style Advisor on pg. 28.
Travelling to new places and learning about the culture and history of different destinations is something my husband and I love to do. Some trips are planned well in advance and some last minute. Our last big trip was to South Korea and Japan. We also had booked a trip to China this week for two weeks that we cancelled due to the wonderful new addition to our family. Now we look forward to taking him with us on all of our trips. The first one being to a resort in Mexico this May.
When planning a trip, where do you look for information, inspiration or general tips?
Reading and collecting the lonely planet books has become a tradition. However, a lot of the unique suggestions and tips come from articles. Articles like the ones I read in the Global Style Advisor that released today. If you haven’t already, I’d go out and get this travel edition found in the Globe and Mail to keep as a reference for the many destinations mentioned or check out the digital version here. Love the resort fashion spread, that has left me inspired for our trip in May. Need to have that Hugo Boss dress!
If I were only allowed to take a few some items with me to any of the great escapes mentioned in this Globe Style Advisor edition, they would be the following:
Fave Fragrance
Try travelling with a light and fresh fragrance. Especially if you’re stuck on a long flight.
Fave Notebook
Everyone has that one notebook they travel with. Somewhere to keep all of their plans, schedules, tips etc.
Fave Cosmetics
All I need is Benefit’s new roller lash, blush and an awesome lip tint balm for the perfect amount of natural colour.
Fave Tag
Just in case you lose your luggage and just because it’s a cute accessory for your carry on. Plus, there really is no place like home. 🙂
It’s so easy to get enthralled by the speed of connecting digitally with people and the speed of answering your question via a google search. Some of us have turned into digital age zombies. Not able to have present human interaction because our minds are always elsewhere, thinking about checking our social media accounts, work or anything else but the person in front of us. Could it be because of the smartphone invention? Now that we have access to applications, the internet, messaging and more where ever we go, when ever we want. It has hindered us from being able to break from it all. Here’s a beautiful reminder that we need to wake up and remember to be present:
The 22-year-old founder of shipyourenemiesglitter.com, Mathew Carpenter has a found a way to make money off of the annoyance of getting glitter on yourself and not being able to take it off. I thought this was hilarious, innovative and pretty darn cool. Pranks are meant to be fun! You need to have a sense of humour to appreciate things like this and not take it personally.
Shipping your enemies glitter in an envelope could be mean or you can laugh about it and enjoy the glitter for years. Imagine this, you get glitter shipped to you, you open it and it blows up and is now everywhere! After hours of clean up, months later, you see a lone sparkle that was left behind. Would you flash a smirk or cry? I would smirk and maybe even laugh. I tip my hat to you Mathew. Well done and according to reports due to the high traffic on your site you’re starting to regret launching this idea and have put it up for auction.
Favourite Link
NERD ALERT: Do you remember playing MS-DOS games? I certainly do! I found a software library of some games you may have played back in the day: here
Favourite Tech
Introducing a PC games hardware called Razer:
Favourite Game
After watching my husband play Clash of Clans for weeks I started to get an itch to try the game out for myself. I’ve been using my Lumia 1020 ever since I cracked the screen on my Samsung S4. This game isn’t available in the windows store. So that being said, I recently got it fixed and the first thing I did was download Clash of Clans and I love it!
This song has been on repeat ever since I heard it during a drive home one day. It doesn’t have the best lyrics and is pretty random but the beat is just… awesome. But really, what the heck is an Albatraoz?
Fave Food:
I’ve been in love with Avocados! Anything with avocado in it, I want it! My go to snack during my recent trip to South Korea and Japan was, you guessed it… avocado sandwiches!
and then today I saw this master piece of home made guacamole by @HungryHiba on Instagram. Just in time for National Guacamole day!:
Fave Fall look:
This weeks favourite fall look is knee high boots! I just love how you can easily dress up or down with these boots. It’s a 60-70’s style that has made a comeback for AW14.
Fave Make up look:
A dark autumn lip and a subtle cat eye.
Fave Purchase:
I’m obsessed with perfume and have an amazing collection of different scents for day and night, depending on my mood and sometimes just because the bottle was too cute! One of my recent purchases in Tokyo was an eau du parfum by a Japanese brand, Aux Paradis. The scent of strawberry, I’m in love.
I apologize in advance for this “after Friday” post. I had it ready to be posted but got really busy hosting a dinner last night. It’s been a busy week as usual. Between filming my next YouTube video, writing the post to go with it, Ramadan, preparing for my sisters upcoming wedding festivities and my full time job. This week I came across many images, posts and experiences that really made me think of the meaning of “Free Your Mind”.
Pause for a second and think about what that really means to you. What’s the first thing you think of? I don’t know about you, but my mind races to think of many things.
Free your mind of negativity, Free your mind of what the media says, Free your mind of worry… I can go on. Here are my faves that can help you free your mind and see things differently.
Fave strong message to spread awareness:
Don’t believe everything you hear in the news. It’s so hard to come by real news. I think since the peak of social media and so many varieties of it, like video, blogging and image databases it has been easier for people to seek the truth and seek the real news on their own. At least for those who want to find it. I’m all for research and spending hours trying to un-code from what is real and not real. With our time on this earth, we shouldn’t fill our minds with garbage and instead free our minds to have our own voice, our own opinions and do our part to spread awareness in every mean possible. This brings me to my fave strong message. Over the years I’ve seen a small group of people in my Facebook friends list who have been following the war genocide on Gaza with all of their hearts, minds and souls. One of them who even took a trip there and witnessed things that we will never get to see through media today. I watched, I listened, posted links on my Facebook wall, which sadly would get 2-3 likes compared to pictures of my cat Beep, that would get 100’s of likes.
I get it, some people feel helpless so they turn away and figure, “well we can’t do anything about it!”. That’s where you’re wrong. Free your mind from thinking that and you’ll see how much you can do. I appreciated seeing my Facebook news feed full of people voicing their opinions on what is happening in Gaza, with images, videos, blog posts and profile picture changes. Thank you to each and every one of you for taking the time to educate, direct and help people see the real heart wrenching media of the war genocide happening in Gaza.
There are a lot of variables within this conflict between Palestinians and the Israeli Government. I by no means wish to say the solution to this conflict resides with only the Palestinians goals achieved. The answer will undoubtedly consist of a two state solution with peace for both sides. However, on the road to this end goal, there should be absolutely no room for the collective punishment/genocide of either side.
I came across a post of empowering illustrations of women and everyday struggles they have of wanting to be free of what society says they should do with themselves. The illustrations are by Carol Rossetti. Confidence to be who you want to be, to be yourself, is something you should never lose sight of. Some can get caught up with what society thinks is cool or hot and start to mimic what others do or how others live their lives and totally lose sight of their own unique ways that made them special in the first place. What’s cool and hot is to be YOU. Your unique self shines brighter than being a carbon copy of someone else.
This illustration stood out to me because I can relate. I love heels! For the longest time I was self concious to wear heels around my girlfriends to events because I felt as if I was too tall. I was always told tall girls don’t wear heels, because heels are for those who want to be taller. I have freed my mind with what people use to tell me. I wear the highest of heels whenever I please. I won’t lie, it has made it easier to wear them with pride now that I have a partner for life who is 6’4.
Fave quote:
I experienced two situations this week that I hope no one has to witness. Nothing drastic or mind blowing to the average person. However, for me.. it definitely boggles my mind. One situation where I witnessed someone make hurtful remarks to another and another where their attitude and intentions were not in the right place. A place of negativity and hate. I handled both situations with peace and kind words. After all, if we did the same thing back then we wouldn’t be making the world a better place for ourselves and our future generations to come.
Lesson here is, if you find yourself in a situation where you see someone is being hurt instead of rolling up your sleeves and hitting them, which by all means I can do with my kick boxing skills. Don’t. Kill them with kindness. Smile and proceed in a kind manner. Chances are, you may have left that person re-thinking what they did and hopefully in the future they would feel ridiculous and awful to repeat it again.
“Be in charge of your mind and feed it with good.” – Hum JK
I haven’t done a Friday Faves post in awhile! Truth be told, when I woke up this morning and noticed #NationalCookieDay trending, that was all I could think about. So made sense to share with you my three related faves.
