I had an amazing time in Toronto, what a great city. Today I'm sharing a few of our photos of the events of the weekend, and tomorrow I will share the deets on the actual BlogPodium conference which was a huge success! I learned so much and I hope I can convey some of that info to all of you.
First up, the actual city of TO was amazing! Kind of like a mini-NY in many ways. I loved the mix of old and new everywhere you look, what a contrast:
My blog partner-in-crime, Barbara of hodgepodge, and I tried to hit up as many spots as we could. Especially places we are envious of here in Vancouver, like Designer Fabrics for instance. Fabric heaven, that's for sure! And of course we should have assumed we'd bump into someone in a place like that ... sure enough Michael Penney just happened to be popping out with a bag full of goodies!
From there we hopped over to West Elm, another great place we lack here in Vancouver. I spotted this lovely tufted sofa that made me believe leather sofa's can still be uber stylish :) I love the practicality of a leather sofa {especially with dogs or kids} but I don't love how mine look. Too bad this one didn't fit in my suitcase ... instead I came home with a couple of Turkish towels which are a little easier to pack!
We had the amazing opportunity to visit the fabulous Meredith Heron in her equally fabulous studio. Wow, I could have stood there for days just staring at all the beautiful things. How amazing is that oversized carriage fixture? And look at the fab legs on those chairs!
Can you imagine those brass chairs? I died ... can't wait to see what she does with them. Thank you Meredith for having us!!
Ok, I brought along a copy of the current issue of Elle Decor for the plane rides. It's a great issue and I particularly fell for the work of Darryl Carter featured on the cover. Look closely at the image below ... do you notice something weird/missing?
Don't see it? Look at the chairs legs. One has been photoshoped out!! The editors probably thought the image was too leggy. Funny! I noticed that while half asleep on the flight in.
A definite highlight for me was meeting so many great people like Tim Lam of Design Maze and Nicole Balch of Making it Lovely, who was the keynote speaker of BlogPodium. She was brave enough to give some all-Canadian poutine a try!
On our last day in TO, we hit up Aberfoyle, the oldest antique market in Canada. What a blast!
The lovely Vanessa of Damask et Dentelle was scouring the market for goodies ... I spotted hundreds of things I would've brought home, like this lovely desk ...
But instead I brought home this little Wedgwood Jasperware bud vase I fell for. Now I'm on a mission to one day find a couple of black and white Jasperware pieces like these ones Eddie Ross used in his desk vignette:
We stayed at the lovely Marriot hotel downtown, thanks to the wonderful people at AyA Kitchens who sent Barbara and I and covered our stay! THANK YOU! I had a giant King sized bed all to myself, I could've gotten lost in that thing. I'll cover more on the wonderful event sponsors, Nicole's keynote talk, and everything else surrounding the event tomorrow. As you can see I was a good student and took as many notes as I could!
And yes, if you are wondering my dress did have poodles on it :)
Thanks for reading through this massive post! More to come tomorrow ...
