Dinner With a Friend in Yorkville

I mentioned in yesterday's post about my new necklace from Africa (here) that I had worn out for dinner with my friend Nyla on Friday night.

We went to Yorkville, a part of town that I don't get to very often these days, but I used to work nearby so know it well. I'm actually a bit haunted when walking through these streets nowadays, as I used to spend a lot of time in this neighbourhood with a dear friend who died suddenly a few years ago.

Back then we were poor students, and mostly walked around and window-shopped ... and window-shopped only, as this is the part of the city that is home to the most expensive retail in town! This is where anyone who wears designer clothes would come to shop.

It is also dotted with many restaurants, bars and swanky hotels, many of which have been there for decades, like the yellow one in the picture, called Sassafraz.

What I Wore Featuring a Necklace From Africa

A little while ago I received an email from a kind woman named Kelsey, asking if I would consider helping her to get the word out about the non-profit organization that she and her friend started, called the Uganda Community Project.

Their goal is to build community centres in this African county that will 'partner with local schools to aid children in literacy and technology education so they are better equipped to finish school and find employment as adults. These community centers will also function as a place where adults in need of economic aid can take job training classes offered by volunteers from their own community.' You can read all about this organization on their website here.

They're a new organization and are currently working on the first of these centres, which will be located in a community called Mmpummudde, (which is located just outside the second largest town in Uganda, called Jinja).

She asked if she could send me something that was handmade in Uganda, and I was quite delighted to receive this beautiful necklace. It is made of beads rolled from recycled paper and then sealed with a hard protective coating. This method of bead making results in no two being the same, which adds a lot of interest to the piece. As you can see it's a very nice length too.

At the Art Gallery and Lunch in Chinatown with Nick

c="http://www.loulou.to/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/in-elevator-at-ago.jpg" alt="in-elevator-at-ago" width="640" height="640" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-20023 blk-brdr">I don't want to be all Miss Braggedy Brag here, but I had the opportunity to see the David Bowie Exhibit at the Art Gallery on Ontario a second time last Thursday. My friend Meghan, who is a member at the gallery, thought this show was something that Nick would like to see too, so she arranged to take us during her lunch break from work. Since she had to get back to work she couldn't stay long so we were on our own for much of it. This was the first time that he and I have ever been to the gallery together.She was right and he did really like it, and I also enjoyed seeing it again and noticed so many things I had missed the first time. (The post about my first visit is here.)

Eddie the Time Travelling Cat : A Thanksgiving Photo Shoot

Hey look ... Eddie went back to 1973 for this fall themed photo-shoot, done in honour of Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend.

The holiday is to give thanks for the harvest and happens much earlier in the year (on the second Monday of October) than it does in the United States. This year we're having a quiet one although there will be a fancy dinner involved ... I can hear Nick already prepping things down in the kitchen as I type.

This photo session all began when I came downstairs yesterday morning to find he had made himself a nice little bed in the the old plaid blanket that had slipped to the floor before I went to bed on Friday night. So I thought I'd take advantage of his desire to sit on the blanket so I draped it over my keyboard case, grabbed some props and got snapping.

Tweety Bird was in our Twee

Ok, I know the real Tweety Bird from the cartoons is a yellow canary, and those don't just fly around these parts. But this little fellow who I caught sight of flitting about just outside our window, reminded me of him.