happy birthday to my boo (toronto)

h a p p y   b i r t h d a y ,

t o r o n t o !!!

Today is Toronto's birthday! My favourite city, and the place I call home. I love this city and feel beyond lucky to of been able to call it home for the past ten years! As soon as I was ready to live on my own, Toronto was where I wanted to be. In High School I'd take the go train downtown and walk around the city, shop, and admire the excitement of such a vibrant and diverse city.

I love Toronto for a lot of reasons. I've always been a city girl, and I am so thankful my hubby happens to share the love of city life as much as I do. We both love Toronto and are excited to stay living in the city rather than the suburbs. It's such a special city and we love to explore it together.

I love to share little bits and pieces of my love of Toronto on this blog and my Instagram for y'all! & I thought I'd do a little round up of some of my favourite Toronto posts today in honour of my boo's birthday today:

// leslie street spit:

// baddies:

// toronto flower market:

// make lemonade:

// kensington market :

// drake general store:

 // crown flora :

// v d e v maison :

// anice jewellery :

+ make lemonade +

happy monday :) - it's a chilly day in toronto (finally) and i'm so excited to share this post with you all, because it makes me very excited.

when i first heard of make lemonade i knew it would be a place that would instantly excite and inspire me, even hearing about the concept got me beyond pumped!

"Make Lemonade is a brand new, coworking space for women, in the heart of Toronto. Born from the idea that creating your destiny can’t be store bought, we’re on a mission to create a community of driven women who create, dream and get.sh*t.done"

last week i got to visit this gorgeous space in the heart of downtown toronto, and meet with rachel who is the talented gal behind it all. rachel was even more lovely, kind and inspiring then i could have imagined. it was so great to be able to chat with her and find out all about how make lemonade came to be, and hear more about her hopes for the future and sheer excitement of the response so far.

when i told rachel about my blog & brand, i explained how much supporting local, our community and uplifting others meant to me. toronto (& beyond!) is filled with so many creative women who i've been able to connect with in some capacity. i love seeing places like this pop up to help connect us all, and i personally left there feeling eager and excited.

make lemonade is a gorgeous, inspiring, cute-as-can-be space for women in toronto and i can't wait to head back soon! looking forward to planning some events with make lemonade & my work! also can't wait to head back to attend some of the amazing events that will be happening at the space in the coming months

follow make lemonade on instagram for some inspiration, and if you live in and around toronto you can stop by for a tour on monday, wednesday or friday at 11am -- there are lots of really cool events happening as well so keep up to date on those! so exciteddddd.

& now, a speak inside make lemonade:

(toronto adventures - the leslie street spit)

Oh hello & Happy Monday! (even though it feels like Sunday!)

I wanted to share some photo's that I took last weekend on a little adventure we went on in the city. Pete and I and my brother Dave and his boyfriend Mikey went on one very amazing bike ride! This day was fun for a bunch of reasons. First off, I've been really wanting to take my DSLR camera out more often to take photos, and I did just that. Second, I was dying to get out on my bike ride again for an amazing biking adventure! And finally, I am basically always down to explore a new part of Toronto.

We've heard nothing but wonderful things about The Leslie Street Spit (Tommy Thompson Park) and have wanted to go for a while. We live in the west end of the city, and the spit is wayyyy east. We biked along the waterfront trails which are awesome! It was a reaaaaally hot day, and it's a really long ride, so we definitely took it slow for most of the way.

The Spit is such a cool spot, for a lot of reasons, one definitely being the fact that it's filled with incredible views of Toronto. It's lush, filled with wildlife, butterflies, flowers and oh - the prettiest rocks (a bunch of which we got for our collection!) The whole spit used to be lake 50 years ago, and its now covered with detritus and lake dredgeate. 

The whole area is filled with cyclists, runners, families and people out exploring. No vehicles or animals are allowed on site since it's a bird sanctuary. I'd definitely recommend checking out the spit if you're from Toronto or visiting. There were so many great photo ops and here's just a few snaps! I didn't even get any on my DSLR from the bottom of the spit because it was REALLY hot and we were reaaaaally tired (lol)

(tiny) patio makeover

Hello & Happy Wednesday! We made it half way through the week (and what a week it has been!) I couldn't be happier to be at home snuggled on the couch watching movie (Perks Of Being a Wallflower) WHY is this the saddest movie ever?

I wanted to share some photo's of our recent patio makeover! It was one of the bigger projects we wanted to complete after we bought our house. Believe or not, this is considered a pretty decent sized patio for Toronto standards. 

Pete and I love hosting as I'm sure you've gathered by now. We wanted a perfect little spot where we could sit out back with a drink, a book, a coffee or just each other and enjoy some outdoor time!

Pete worked with my awesome Step-Dad Blair to make this custom bench and table with us. Since we didn't have a lot of space to work with we measured it up and did a sketch of what we pictured. I am legit over-the-moon excited with how it turned out, and Pete and I are LOVING spending time out there and having friends & family over. Now if we'd stop getting all of this rain, hopefully we will spend even more time for the remainder of the Summer. Below are some photo's I snapped:

//  B        E         F        O        R         E

// A         F         T         E         R

Cute Toronto - Crown Flora

//      c r o w n     f l o r a 

Hello beauties! Happy Monday :) Also, can we just talk about the fact that January is some how  almost over?! Annnnnd I haven't even posted my 2017 goals yet (coming soon, promise!)

It's been a while since I've shared a little Toronto lovin' with y'all, so here we go! I took these photo's in the Fall one weekend while Pete and I were exploring our hood. I pop in to Crown Flora often, to either pick up an awesome plant, or gift or just walk around to get a little inspiration (it's so pretty in there!)

This location is in Parkdale, but they recently opened a second location right on Queen Street (Queen West) and they've got the best, most badass selection of plants, fresh flowers, gifts and they even do awesome workshops! 

Crown Flora // 

1233 Queen Street West

740 Queen Street West

@crownflora on Instagram