Bells and Peaches

You might be asking yourself what bells and peaches have in common.

Let's start with the peaches. Today we went to Kensington Market and bought the first peaches we had this year. They were grown very close to the city, in the Niagara Region of Ontario.

A great thing about the market is that the vendors pick their wares up directly from the food terminal every morning. This makes the produce the freshest it can possibly be, except if you were to eat it right on the farm! In the case of the peaches, the crate had just been cut open for shoppers to help themselves. No other hands had touched them, aside from the person who put them in the box, before we took what we wanted and placed them in our basket.

A Happy Sunday : Reading Time

My mother loves to read so when I visit her I inevitably come home with some good books. This is one that I actually began reading while I was still at her place, because it looked so interesting. It's called Secret Daughter, written by Shilpi Somaya Gowda. It's her first novel and I'm really into it. It deals with the dramatic juxtaposition between life in India versus that in America, as seen through the eyes of a girl who was adopted by an American family from an Indian orphanage. This is a third-time hand-me-down of this excellent book, as my mother got it from my aunt.

This fine Sunday afternoon found me reading on the deck, while enjoying a nice cold beverage. Have you ever tried Sir Perry Pear Cider? I really like it. It's too sweet for Nick, but I have always liked things a little sweeter than he does. Case in point ... he loves Scotch. I cannot stand it! But I do like this hard-to-find scotch liqueur called Glayva, that I first tried when visiting Scotland. It's like sweetened scotch. (I can't show you a photo of it, because we have only ever found it in Toronto on two occasions, and well, it got all drunk up!) Back to the Sir Perry .. I often have it served in a champagne glass because it's bubbly and actually tastes like sparkling wine, however the alcohol level is less than half. But today I use a regular glass because our kitchen is still a renovation disaster zone.

Singing In The Rain

On Tuesday night I met my friend Meghan at The New Music Night at The Horseshoe Tavern. The Horseshoe is probably the oldest venue in Toronto that features live music, having opened in their current location at 370 Queen Street west in 1947. It's a great place with a cool vintage feel, combined with up-to-date equipment and friendly staff.

For years, on Tuesdays, they've held a new band night, with no cover charge to get in and bands playing for free (exposure). The line-up is usually all over the map in regards to genre and you never know how busy the place will be, being held pretty late on a Tuesday night.

The band we were there to see were last up. They were called Singapore, and my friend had caught their show at another venue, earlier in the summer. She thought they were worth seeing/hearing again, so I joined her. And she was right ... they were good! The singer had this really low "crooner-style" voice, resembling that of Nick Cave. A unique feature of the band was the three female back-up singers, introduced as The Singapore Singers, who accompanied with perfect harmonies. Oh how I love sweet harmonies!

Their set was a quick 5 songs long and for a big band of 7 people, lugging and setting up lots of gear for a 20 minute set, must have felt like a lot of hard work!

I knew in advance that they would be hitting the stage pretty late so didn't arrive until almost 11, which is quite late to go out on a Tuesday night, but I'm glad I made the trek out.

Now, if it had been raining as heavily when I left the house, as it was on my way home, I might never have made it out the door! In fact, it appeared that rain was so unlikely when I headed out, that I didn't even bring an umbrella. By the time I got home I was soaked. I had planned on getting some quick photos of what I wore to the show, but when I got home I was a mess and you didn't want to see that!

Handy Band

This is the outfit I quickly popped on to accompany Nick on an impromptu walk over to Spadina Steet the other day.

I didn't have much time to get dressed since he already had his shoes on when I decided to join him! So I went with one of my go-to casual outfits, which is a black dress that I've had for a long time and have used in so many different ways. It's pretty short, so I always wear something underneath.

What We Wore

It was a gorgeous day out so I decided to go bright and cheerful with the outfit today! Well, there is a good dose of black involved in what I wore, but there is also colour folks!

I got this neat vintage necklace on e-bay a couple of years ago, and though I love it, I've only ever worn it once. That's because I think it should be restrung and I'm afraid it will break and I'll be left picking little pieces of fruit up off the ground. But I decided to be careful and risk it today and it fared the outing just fine.

And though we had no cocktails, I decided to wear my huge green cocktail ring for fun. The skirt is a little trickster, having a pair of shorts sewn right in. I do not golf, but it's actually a skirt designed for golfers! You can't see the contrasting top stitched pockets on the full outfit photo but it's a nice little detail. And the purse? This is one usually reserved for wear around Thanksgiving and Halloween but it fit right in with the tutti-frutti colours of today's outfit!