musings | on planning and moving

so you may have noticed a distinct silence in this neck of the woods lately (ha! who would ever compare my blog to "the woods"...more like a little pink craft room really). either way, august has been one of the craziest months of my life!

my best friend got married on august 10th. she kindly appointed me maid (fine, 'matron') of honour and i was delighted to stand by her side at her beautiful wedding. these things of course, take a lot of prep in terms of events, wardrobe, gifts etc.

also, since january i've been planning a city-wide arts festival. can i just pause for a second and tell you what an amazing experience that was for me? on one level it was frustrating, time consuming and even as some points, heartbreaking. but it was also incredibly exciting, fulfilling and the stuff that dreams are made of. i was lucky to have a team of dedicated women who worked for me (for free!!). i owe them, and all of my friends, family and festival sponsors so much. in this past year i have learnt how to manage people, how to navigate sticky situations and above all, how to ask people for what i want. the experience also cemented something i was already catching on to: that it doesn't feel like 'networking', marketing or shameless self promotion if you are passionate about it. it just doesn't, because you care too much. i'll include a couple photos from the event below.

here's the other thing: we are moving back to ontario. i think that might be hard for american readers to understand what that means. so for anyone who has ever left small town iowa (wyoming, arkansas etc etc) to live near the ocean in los angeles (san francisco, new york etc etc), and then decided to move back near your hometown...well then you get it. i can honestly say it took us about a year to fully come to this decision. and even once we did, we went back and forth on what we really wanted for months. more about this next week...

integrate arts festival 2013