Family Visits

April 1, 2013Leave a comment

Happy Easter everyone! I’m just winding down from a four day weekend with my parents and Sister, who all came to visit me in Toronto. As always, it was wonderful to see them, and have sleepovers with Allie, eat ridiculous amounts of delicious food, and walk the dogs around Toronto. I’m sad to see them leave, but at least I know it’s Spring now (sort of) so I can look forward to more regular visits back and forth between Toronto and Montreal (the highway between the two is miserable to drive in Winter).

I hope you all had lovely Easter weekends with your friends and family, too!

Posted by Meaghan

On dogs, tote bags and Capra

March 19, 2013March 19, 2013Leave a comment

Well, as I stated in yesterday’s post, we’ve all got a little case of S.A.D. these days around the Larkspur HQ. So, mostly, all we’ve been up to – when work and dance aren’t keeping us busy – is hanging with our dogs, reading, cooking giant pots of chili-that-last-for-weeks, and gazing sadly out the window, as it continues to snow and be grey. At least we have the shop to keep us busy! We’re into the planning stages of a Spring/Summer lookbook, which (hopefully) will make the warm weather come faster!

(I was the lucky winner of a recent Stay Home Club giveaway, and I don’t think I’ve left the house without my tote since I got it in the mail last week!)

(I went through a huge Capra phase a few years ago, but I just started this biography – and it’s making me love him all over again!)

Posted by Meaghan

Willa Cather, Winter Blues & Pretend Outfits

March 18, 2013March 18, 20134 Comments

1. Acne blouse, sweater & blue jeans …. 2. Madewell bag, necklace & mini wedges

We’ve made it to the middle of another endless March – when Winter promises to make everyone lose their minds. This time of year always makes me extra dramatic, and on my two-block-trek -through -blowing-snow to a bus stop, I start to imagine myself as a Willa Cather character – plowing a field by hand, in the middle of Winter, in the Midwest, at the turn of the century – and it toughens me up a little. The best I can do to stay positive at this time of year, is to tell myself “it could be worse”, and then compare myself to a character in a book – like the one I recently finished: Ann-Marie Macdonald’s “Fall on your Knees”, which I mostly liked because of Frances, the sassy middle child who reminds me of pre-code film, impish female leads and Marlene Dietrich.

But, I digress. None of these books have much of anything to do with this post, unless maybe I subconsciously created outfits that the sisters in Fall on Your Knees would wear if they were modern day girls (but I doubt it). These are just a few transitional outfits I would wear, if my mornings could be spent pretending I was in a Nancy Mitford novel instead of dark depressing ones (even though they’re my favorite ones to read).

Here’s hoping you have nicer weather than here, wherever you are!

1. Steven Alan Cardigan & Skirt … 2. Vintage Blouse … 3. Madewell Shoes & Bag … 4. Topshop Socks

1. Dusen Dusen dress … 2. Organic by John Patrick Oversized Cardigan … 3. Karen Walker “Anywhere” Sunglasses … 4. Tamsin Large Straw Clutch … 5. Madewell Necklace … 6. Swedish Hasbeens Braided Sky High Sandals

Posted by Meaghan

Balmy Beach

March 11, 2013Leave a comment

First thing Saturday morning, my friend, Danielle and I adventured out to the opposite end of the city to walk Lola along the beaches in the East end. It was the first warm weekend of the season, and everyone was out with their dogs and bikes. One of those days where you’d have to try extra hard to be in anything but a great mood. We wandered around for the better part of the day, just being glad not to be shivering and cold for once, before heading back to Parkdale for a celebratory taco night, at Grand Electric, for Kira, who just got engaged!

Sunday, I finally got Frankie back (she had to be spayed and have surgery for a hernia!) from the vet, and we (my two dogs and I) finished season 2 of Homeland, which made sleep nearly impossible.

Back to work today – Alex’s big show is coming up, so soon we’ll have posts together again! In the mean time I’ll be catching up on reading and baking and sleeping!

(We thought we’d stumbled across some really creepy old prison building, but it turned out just to be a water purification centre)

Ellis Wiley

March 4, 2013March 4, 2013Leave a comment

I stumbled across the above Ellis Wiley photo when I was reading this post about cycling in 1970’s Toronto on The Torontoist blog (I can’t wait for it to be warmer out, so I can start riding my bike around again!). A quick google search later, I was browsing a whole library of his photos on the Toronto History Flickr page. Despite how much I miss Montreal, I’ve grown to love this city – and Wiley’s photos somehow make me love it even more.

All sources say he was a Toronto born accountant, who took up photography as a hobby and wound up taking some great photos of some of this city’s most iconic buildings as they were being constructed. He used Kodachrome and Ektachrome film, the latter of which has a tendency to fade quickly. Luckily, the Toronto City Archives scanned and digitized his collection, so that I could make a silly little blogpost about him today!