Mercedes-Benz Start Up

On Tuesday August 14th, some of the Black Sheep Fashion girls and I attended the Mercedes-Benz Start Up competition here in Ottawa. Now I am going to rave once again about how much I love Twitter,  I actually heard about this event on Twitter and found out it was FREE! Free fashion event?! Those are words that you will hardly ever see in the same sentence. Just a few weeks prior we had attended a less than pleasing event (that we paid for!) and were a little worried about the quality of future events and the omission of a fee also made us skeptical. Boy, could we have been more wrong!
This event was wonderful, buried all our doubts and restored our faith in local events.

The event was held at Ogilvie Motors on St. Laurent and it was perfection. I brought along the boyfriend and Mercedes eye candy was the perfect distraction for him. To top it all of, drinks were provided, free of charge. Wine, champagne, beer, cosmopolitans, whatever your heart's desire! The only interruption in this service was during the actual show, where no cocktails were distributed, which at first put me off but in theory was probably for the best! If not, this could've resulted in me indulging in a few too many cosmos and some blurry pictures of the show.

The cherry on top of the cake was getting a chance to meet some wonderful Twitter friends! I actually was able to meet a handful of people I had been tweeting with recently. The cyber world is great and all  but it is always lovely to put a face and voice to a name (or tweets). It was great to finally meet Twenty York Street, Grace from Within Essence Productions and the stylish Carolynn Lacasse.

The designer line up of amazing Canadian talent included the dreamy Pure Magnolia, the sharp designs of Christopher Bates, cutting edge Caitlin Power, adorable Elise Bourque, and stylish Anastasia Lomonova. All of the designers were distinct and divine. The precious dresses of Pure Magnolia appealed the most  to my over developed feminine side and every single dress seemed to be more beautiful than the last. Even better, all of their designs are eco-freindly!

The well deserved winners of the event were Christopher Bates and Caitlin Power. Along with Pure Magnolia they will be heading to fashion week in Toronto. I even had the pleasure of meeting many of these designers in person after the show and they were all clearly passionate, talented and sincere people.

The event was a brilliant showcase and example of the amazing talent that we have here in Canada and I am so honoured to have been in attendance and to have met fellow fashion & twitter enthusiasts alike.

A huge thank you to all of the lovely designers, Mercedes-Benz, Ogilvie Motors and our nation's capital. I cannot wait until the next event!

The notorious "Sock Bun" : Curly haired girl rant

Alright, so if you have been on Pinterest, or are a university/college student, or have access to Youtube, you have more than likely heard of this infamous "sock bun". Even celebrities like Kim Kardashian have embraced the sock bun, as you can see.

In the small chance that you haven't, here it is. It is a bun (in your hair) made by a sock. Yes, those things you use on your feet, socks. Grab a (clean) sock and a pair of scissors and give it a whirl.

What this consists of is cutting the toe end of the sock off and somehow making a crunchie-like apparatus with said sock, pulling it over your ponytail, then wrapping your hair around it thus creating the perfect bun. Sounds easy enough, right?

If you have any form of curly hair, IT IS NOT! I have been baffled with the sock bun conundrum for months. I try and I try, I waste sock upon sock, to no avail. My sock bun consistently looks like, well crap. Where is this perfect bun they speak of?! All I seem to accomplish is a knot in my hair, along with the sock (figure that one out) and an hour of wasted time. I have come to the conclusion that the sock bun is another evil invention reserved solely for the straight haired girls. How convenient that all of the tutorials on are, yes you guessed it, STRAIGHT HAIRED GIRLS. One of my personal missions in life is to raise awareness about society's ignorance to curly haired girls. Yes we are people too, and yes we want all the same opportunities/privileges given to the lucky straight haired girls.

So, please, I beg of you, if you have curly/wavy difficult hair and you have mastered the sock bun, please, PLEASE share your secrets with me. I won't tell anyone, I promise, and you would actually be doing society a favour by not allowing them to further endure the bird's nest upon my head that is my attempt at a "sock bun". If someone could enlighten me about the mystery behind curly hair vs. sock bun it would be greatly appreciated!

Twitterverse vs. Blog World

My first attempt at Twitter was way back when in 2008 and it doesn't make for a successful nor interesting story. I opened an account, spent about 5 minutes creeping around this new social media tool trying to figure it out, was beyond confused and gave up. Fast forward to 2010 and attempt numero dos. This time I found a few relatively interesting people to follow, oh and look at that! I've got 8 followers! As you probably guessed, round 2 wasn't pretty either. Finally, sometime in 2011 enough was enough. I am studying communications/PR for goodness sakes! Who am I to talk to people about the importance of social media and promoting their brand when I myself can't even figure out how to use the damn thing? This time I was NOT going to fail. I convinced my good friend and social media connoisseur Sarah Bustard to give me a hand on how to use this foreign tool and god bless her patience with me. She kindly explained to me the concept of retweeting, hashtags (I thought it was just a number sign!) and suggested people that I should follow. Slowly but surely I got the hang of this phenomenon called Twitter, and now, 2,421 tweets later, I am a self proclaimed addict. I truly believed that I could never love a social media website more so than Facebook. As with many other things in life, I was so very wrong.

So, where is this going? Well, ever since I created this blog I am finding there is a direct correlation between how much I tweet and how much I blog. When I first got into Twitter, it was a sporadic affair. I would tweet maybe once a week, if that. As time has progressed, so has the multitude of my tweets. I honestly couldn't even tell you have many times a day I tweet now (especially if this definition includes retweets). What I have found is that the more I tweet, the less I blog. Once you wrap your mind and keyboard around 140 characters or less, writing a whole blog post is a much more daunting task. The more I tweet, the less motivation I seem to have to actually sit down and conspire a blog post and it makes sense. Twitter is the efficient, spontaneous cousin of the blog. Twitter is always there, it provides immediate responses and you can express yourself in that exact moment. The blog on the other hand, requires more time, more thought and more effort. It is the very definition of "slow and steady wins the race" It is the turtle and Twitter is the hare. In today's fast paced society no wonder most people opt for Twitter!

Now I am not saying that people should blog just for the sake of blogging, by all means if you haven't got anything to see please don't write a tedious blog post about what you ate for breakfast this morning (thats what instagram is for). What I am suggesting is to take a little more time to reflect your thoughts and think about things that you DO want to say (and in more than 140 words). Personally I find the process of writing therapeutic and necessary. Twitter offers immediacy that we so desperately crave, but it doesn't offer the insight that we need. Take the time to write a blog post about something near and dear to your heart and try to avoid thinking "Why should I blog about it when I can tweet about it?" If you are passionate about something, anything, one lone tweet will not help your cause. People want to read about other people. Its in our genetics to be interested in other human beings. If you want to feed the hungry and you tweet "Feed the hungry please" well I am not sure how compelled I will be to help with your cause. If you write a blog about how important it is to you and why, and I can see your passion and enthusiasm in your story, well than hell yes I will support you!

Anyway, these are just my thoughts. I love to write and love to read even more so it is quite possible that I am biased. I am making it a personal goal to try to tweet less and blog more. I hope to be able to bang out at least one blog post every two weeks and hopefully my chronic tweeting doesn't affect this!

What are your thoughts about tweeting vs. blogging?

Ottawa, you are growing on me

I not so recently moved to our nation's capital, Ottawa, Ontario and although its been almost a year since the official move happened, I still feel like such a tourist in my own city. Could be because I've ran away to Mexico twice (for almost 2 months each time) since then, or that my current life consists of work, homework, school and the odd time sleep, when my schedule permits - who knows! But for what is left of the summer I am determined to get a little more intimate with this city of mine. It's embarrassing that i still dont know my way around, get lost whenever im attempting to get anywhere, and i get a blank expression on my face when people tell me "You know, across from the (insert notable landmark here)."

If you've seen Sex and the City, you remember the "Anchors Away" episode of season 5 where Carrie dates New York city. I want to date Ottawa. I want to know all about it, the good and the bad, the ins and the outs, it's dirty habits and hidden gems. I've discovered that a great way to get more interactive with your city is to attend events. My last post about Avah Taylor was a great event I attended at local boutique Kania, and last week I attended a Third Tuesday Ottawa event to hear Gini Dietrich speak about her book "Marketing in the Round" and her website www.spinsucks.com. Although I felt a tad out of place, being a mere student amongst all of these business professionals, Gini was very entertaining and clearly passionate.  She drove home the point of "measuring your results", as  you can see how she signed my copy of Marketing in the Round. She stressed how important measuring results is, and correctly assumed that as communications/PR people, complicated math probably is not our strongest point. Nonetheless, advanced algebra is not necessary, just solely the simple act of correctly measuring your results. Companies and business want numbers. They want to know how many people have followed them on Twitter, liked them on Facebook, bought their product or visited their website thanks to you.  I am a guilty member of the "I'm in communications therefore i don't need math" club (maybe even the president), but Gini shed some light on the fact that yes math is necessary, and no it does not require a master's degree in economics. Thank goodness! As a student not yet out in the workforce, this put me a little more at ease. This sounds like something I can actually do. 

So for me personally, the Third Tuesday event was a success. Coming up I have a "Ladies who Lunch" business women's lunch on the 31st, a fashion event "Modern chic" on August 9th, possibly being followed by fashion show Aug 11. I'm so excited for all of these future events, and not only get involved with my city, but with topics that interest me. Communications is my education, fashion is my passion. 

I really cant wait to see what other events and opportunities Ottawa has to offer me. Ottawa, you have inspired me and  I truly believe that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 

The Black Sheep Fashion

I have recently started writing contributions for The Black Sheep Fashion, which is a Canadian fashion website highlighting Canadian designers and style collaborations and I LOVE IT! Love the concept of the site, love fashion writing. This will be a short post, it's Sunday, I'm tired, and i don't have much more to say other then check out the The Black Sheep at www.theblacksheepfashion.com. It's awesome, it's Canadian and it's fashion. Can't get much better than that!

Here's my first article about FERI jewellery Every girl deserves a FERI tale. 

Avah Taylor Launch Party

Last Thursday evening my friend Katherine and I attended a launch party for avahtaylor.com (check it out- it is the latest add to my blog list) and had a wonderful time! It was my first time meeting Avah, but upon arriving at the location (Kania, a boutique here in Ottawa) i knew instantly we would get along just fine.  Providing cupcakes, wine, fine jewels and even finer fashion Avah sure knows the way to a girl's heart! The cupcakes were delectable, the wine delicious and the fashion darling. I particularly enjoyed the throwback to the late 90's with Destiny's child tunes pumping. Katherine and i were singing (horribly) "ladies leave your men at home, nah nah nah nah nah"all the way home. Be thankful we didn't start until we left the party (to the streets & pedestrians of Ottawa - i do apologize, it was the wine i swear!)

 Although it was a scorching 32 degrees here in Ottawa that day, it didn't seem to faze anyone (other than my poor hair). The location was full to the brim with fashionistas. Fragrance expert Sid Cratzbarg was there (he is SO much fun), as well as beautiful jewellery from Logan Antiques and Vivah Jewellery. I am relatively new to the Ottawa area (okay that is half true - I've been here since September but between finishing up my degree and working i have turned into a grandma and never go out) so for me it was extremely interesting to find all these local stores that were right under my nose that i didn't even know about! It was so refreshing to meet so many stylish people interested in my passion (fashion)! I really do have to get out and get to know my city a little more.

Overall verdict: awesome night, awesome people, awesome city!  My thanks go out to Avah for the great event and to Katherine for kindly allowing me to be her +1! Thanks for a lovely evening ladies! Hope to do it again soon! xxx

Pastel Pants

Pastel coloured pants are a huge trend these days, but if you are anything like me you see other people wearing it and think "man that looks great on them but i could never pull that off!". It's a trend that i have admired on other people but never thought i could do myself. I'm not a size 0, i've got hips and make it a habit to generally steer clear of light coloured jeans. That being said, for one reason or another i decided to give it a whirl. I'm 23, i figure why not try it when i'm young and i can? I reluctantly bought a pair of pink jeans from Zara, and even more reluctantly wore them out. To my pleasant surprise, i received SO many compliments on them! From women young to old, girls to men, everyone loves the pink pants! I tend to get stuck in my ways, and usually rather stay with the tried and true than attempt something new style wise. In that sense i think i am a bit frumpy for my age, and am trying to break out of that mold. If i can, you can too! The cliche YOLO is applicable here, because well you DO only live once, so go ahead and try the pink pants! I promise you will be pleasantly surprised with the results. If you are a little self conscious of your hips like myself, you could wear a longer, looser shirt to cover the area, or maybe add a cute cardigan. Other fun colours to try could include mint green, yellow and purple.