Drugstore Beauty Department Finds

c="http://www.loulou.to/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/drugstore-haul-feb-2014.jpg" alt="Shoppers Drug Mart Beauty Department Haul Feb 2014" width="640" height="460" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-22453 blk-brdr">Shopper's Drug Mart (a major drugstore chain here in Canada) has an excellent points program. In addition to all the toiletry items that you could ever need they also have a couple of grocery isles, so we go there regularly to grab milk and bread etc, and the points add up quickly. You can spend them on regular merchandise but every once in a while they make it even better by offering you much more bang for your points if you use them in the beauty department, and I always save my points for those special weekends.They had one a couple of weeks ago so I had a little shopping spree, getting $90 worth of stuff for free! It was fun to take my time looking at their huge selection and then to pick out what I was going to have.The store I go to has a friendly and knowledgeable make-up artist on staff to answer questions or help with your choices. Also this time I went in with some things I wanted in mind, a couple of which were repeat purchases of products but in a different colour, and a couple of things that I'd heard about on a Beauty Blog/Vlog I really like called Essie Button. (She is a Canadian girl named Estee, who moved to London to be with her boyfriend. In addition to having a passion for beauty products, she is so charming and funny in her videos. I never get through watching one without laughing out loud at least once.)First, here are the Lip Products I picked up :

Running Into a Couple of High Guys on a Street Corner

I was walking along King Street a few weeks ago and then ... well ... umm ... this.

When I got home I googled 'Inflated Men on King Street Building' and presto, got the lowdown on what this was all about (Aside : It's hard to remember a time without it but we sure must have been confused about a lot of things before the internet.)

These guys perched high up on a building at the corner of Portland Street are an installation called 'Ascending Giants', created by artist Max Streicher. They were commissioned by a members-only club that resides inside that building, called The Stoke Club, to commemorate their 10 years anniversary.

They were huge and a little floaty like balloons, because essentially they are balloons, made out of nylon, each with a fan inside to keep them blown up.

Having been installed at the end of January they weren't up there for long because when I went by that spot again yesterday they were gone. We've had a lot of wind lately and I imagine that could have been the reason for their brief showing.

Thrift Store Finds

Here are my finds from a recent trip to the Value Village thrift store.

We'll start with some wardrobe accessories ...Not only is this pure silk scarf a perfect colour scheme (in my opinion anyway ... love those jewel tones) it is also huge and in excellent condition. Being 34 inches square, it's big enough to wrap around my neck twice. Such a soft luxurious find that will add a nice pop of colour to my black coat.

A Waterfront Walk

On Saturday morning we awoke to the treat of sunny skies and a slightly warmer temperature, so we took advantage of the better weather and walked down to the waterfront.

Many people who've never visited the city don't realize we live on the edge of a big lake called Lake Ontario. It is 53 miles (85 kilometers) across and 193 miles (311 kilometers) wide and Toronto is located on the north western part of the lake. Canada wraps around the western part to Niagara Falls, where there is a border to the United States. So most of the southern edge of Lake Ontario runs along the state of New York, USA. These pictures of the water were taken looking south and the land you see out there are the Toronto Islands.

Although the city is right along this beautiful bit of water, it is very easy to forget that it is there in day-to-day city living, because it is kept separate by a stacked set of major roadways that someone had the bad idea to build right along the full length of the lake. To be fair, when it was first decided to put the major road there back in the late 1890s or so, Toronto was still a very small city and cars weren't even invented yet.

But then in the mid 1950s city planners agreed to the building of the second layer of this road, a highway built above it, up on stilts. I would think that those people should have known better and given more consideration to the effect this would have on the Toronto of the future.

It is ugly, noisy and constantly full of traffic, cars and trucks coming to and from the suburbs or just passing by the city completely. To walk down to the water there is no avoiding walking underneath it. It's quite dangerous and gross under there and most people wish it had never been built. For decades there has been talk about taking it down, but it is a major roadway and traffic would somehow have to find another way to get into or past the city.

This road is a hot topic in Toronto right now, as not only is the highway unsightly, it has come to a point that it is beginning to crumble and requires major repairs. The issue will take years and lots of money to take care of.

But enough with the complaining and back to the waterfront, because once you cross under the highway you find yourself in a very pretty place indeed. We walked along the stretch from Bathurst Street to Spadina, passing a marina, a small but very natural strip of parkland and an area that was once a parking lot but that has been transformed into a wetlands over the last decade, and which now supports a wide range of animals, insects, birds and fish.