weekend round-up

This weekend Marc and I hit the big bad city of Toronto for a wee bit of a weekend getaway. We headed down Friday afternoon and kicked things off with an out of this world dinner at Colborne Lane for our friend Michael's birthday. I've had a lot of good meals in Toronto in my life but this was truly spectacular. The Globe and Mail called it better than marvelous and Toronto Life says this restaurant is the only one they've given 6 out of 5 stars. It was absolutely glorious. First of all, look at it -- it's stunning! Designed by the ladies at Mute (Sarah being from Sudbury no less) the atmosphere was complete luxury. My favourite aspect? The huge tables! None of this trying to squeeze all your food onto this tiny table. This place has huge harvest style tables and feels more like eating in your dining room than some uppity restaurant.

Anyway, the food was that highly stylized variety you see mostly on TV. You know, the long skinny plate with the 3 piles of food and the puddles of this and that with a swoosh of some sauce and a crazy garnish and even though you read the menu and know what you're getting you still can't identify the food on your plate? One of those but in the best way possible. Outstanding. If you go, and I highly recommend you do, I insist you order the tiramisu ice cream that they make at your table complete with dry ice -- it's the greatest thing ever! A giant bowl of dry ice is brought to your table and when you pour in the cream and spices all that lovely dry ice smoke pours over your whole table and onto the floor and the tables around you and everyone ooh's and aah's and it instantly turns into ice. You keep adding the cream and the waiter keeps stirring and before you know it you have glorious smooth ice cream. FUN! Colborne Lane really is one of the best places I've been in Toronto and I would gladly go again and eat exactly the same meal.

Post meal we waddled our way over to the Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar for cocktails only to leave immediately in favour of the Pravda Russian Vodka Bar -- a huge error in judgement on our part. To be fair, this bar is gorgeous and a fantastic idea and as Brittainy said, at 2pm on a Thursday would be her favourite bar. Friday night though? Not in any lifetime. We were far too old and married to be in this bar and in comparison to the other girls there, I may as well have been in full Prairie garb. This is a place to be on the prowl and to be prey but beautiful to look at and we did appreciate the full-on Russian opera music sandwiched in between the Daft Punk and Radiohead. Needless to say we pounded back our drinks and got the heck outta dodge before anyone started pointing and singing "one of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong..."

Saturday was day o'design!! Yay! Made our way to the grand opening of the Toronto Design Within Reach store and did some serious furniture oogling. So much so that it's worthy of its own post so stand by for that. In a nutshell, I visited my George Nelson lamp and petted some things for Kaili. Onwards to the Interior Design Show at the CNE (also solo-post worthy) and was more than a bit overwhelmed. I took tons of pics of all the stuff I liked so keep your eyes open for that. Possibly even later tonight depending on how ambitious I feel. Strange run-in of the day? Practically walking into friends/cousinSylvia and Randy in the Fluevog store only to find out they were staying in the same hotel as us! Wha? Crazy indeed. Even crazier, me not buying anything but shoelaces at Fluevog. Even though I tried the "but Randy's letting Sylvia buy new Fluevog boots!" argument and the "But I'm going to Austin and I need these Fluevog cowboy boots" with Marc, he was not easily swayed. I drowned my sorrows in 2 new coats from Zara so that helped -- a cuter than cute red swing coat with a wide stand-up collar and a retro floral pattern blazer with big white buttons.  No pics I'm afraid cuz the website is on hold at the moment.  After the shoe disappointment etc we took a trip to the Distillery District to see our pal Leif Benner who made my engagement ring and our wedding bands, to get Marc's ring sized (Leif does amazing work and here's one of his pics of my ring for curious folks).  It's only been about 8 months so we figured the time was right.  Then a visit to Soma, the happiest place on earth for Mayan Hot Chocolate and treat buying.  Then (and I'm still mad) Marc tricked me into walking from the Distillery District all the way back to our hotel which was FAR AWAY.  Unfair.

Supremely yummy and well-deserved dinner at Il Forchetta (bresaola of Arctic muskox = yum!)brought us to our Cowboy Junkies show at Massey Hall. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Massey Hall is THE best venue and my absolute favourite place to see live music in. I would rather drive to see an artist at Massey Hall than see them 5 minutes from my house in Sudbury. The sound is phenomenal and it just has that feeling of the thousands of artists who have played that space lingering in the air. It's just a place populated by people who love music and I can't get enough. Venue aside, the show was amazing, despite Ryan Adams being too ill to play the show (poor Marc). The Junkies really just keep getting better and Margot? Damn woman! She is sexy!! Still!! She looks just as good as she did 20 years ago leaning on that mic with her killer red shoes! Basically, this was a show I've been waiting my whole life to see. Trinity Session is just one of those records. I've got lovely memories attached to it and artistically it never fails to give me goosebumps and man, did they ever do it justice. Joined onstage by Sudbury's own Jaro Czerwinec on accordion, this show was them at their best. Tara had 2 hours of swaying happiness and all was right with the world.

Sunday we ventured down to the very end of Queen West (and I do mean the very, very end) for breakfast at Easy, one of my fave breakfast spots due to being smack in the middle of the Queen West junkshops. Scouring the junkshops is one of our favourite things to do whenever we've got time in Toronto, especially now that we have a house. Alas we didn't buy anything but saw tons of great stuff. Homeward bound with a quick stop at the Holt Renfrew Last Call store in Vaughn and Bob's your uncle. Made a quick chicken-on-a-bun stop and made it home in time to pick up Bailey from my folks and in time for the Oscars (also worth it's own post). And to think Marc did it all while sick! Poor guy. And poor Tara actually as Marc is the grumpiest sick person I know. He's off to Toronto again this week for work so I'm flying solo. Can you say workout dance party??????? I'm taking soundtrack suggestions.