What is this surprise?

Where to begin?  Around 2.5 weeks ago, Laura-Jean of Fresh Baked Goods and the Fresh Collective saw my Etsy Shop.  First, she bought a print (yay!).  And then she asked me if I'd be interested to put my artwork in her store.  This was a very exciting moment, and I am pleased to say that as of Sunday, my prints are now available in the Fresh Collective.  There are a few really cool things about this:

1.  I already knew of the Fresh Collective because Queen West in Toronto is my absolutely favorite area of the city

2.  Fresh Collective is a very local scene store, supporting local artists; I really like this idea, a la Deep Economy

That's my surprise!  On the weekend, Kittie, Mackenzie and I traveled down to the store, and gave LJ a large selection of the prints, a display box and some framed photos for her store.  She set it up, and let me know how things were going today. :)

I love doing creative work.  It is very inspiring!

Toronto's Queen West

We really love going into the city whenever we can find the time; in our P.B. (pre-baby) days, we would probably head into the city a couple of times a month. We're now getting back into the swing of things after the long parenthood-lose-all-our-friends drought, and have emerged from hermit-hood, and can now foray back into the city! Yay!

Toronto's downtown is a decent size, with many different cultural attractions, restaurants, clubs/bars and enough shopping to keep us happy. We were heading down to see the Ossington district, but when we got to Queen West just west of Bathurst, we knew we had to stop. This was definitely a good stop for us.

Our friends opened Balisi two years ago on College street, and just opened their second store, two weeks ago on Queen West. Their store is fantastic in the product that they carry (shoes, clothes, accessories), and also in how they have designed the store. It is progressive, comfortable and very trendy. We haven't seen them since the first store opening and it was great to catch up!

Another store that we came upon that we really like was Kol Kids. They carry some different products than the ones that you might see in some of the big box kids stores. It also appears to me that they carry interesting products from a variety of small indie designers (go handmade!). We really liked this store for its quality of selection, indie promotion and good service. We bought Mackenzie a music box called Busy Bug Music Box. It's so cute!

We love this place! As usual, as part of our day, Kittie and I managed to duck into a cafe for a quiet read of today's paper over a vanilla latte and a cappucinno! We do love our little cafes. On a side-note, tomorrow is another visit to my parents, which means: we're going back to BVB Cafe for more coffee and dessert! We're already thinking about it! Yes, we are piglets. :)