HEY GUYS,

I'm so excited because I got some goodies in the mall which was the last thing I was waiting for before I showed you the new stuff I got. So this is like a mini collection of things I've gathered. Some I've been looking for and some I got just cause and some were risk purchases that turned out good. In my mini new collection I have a pair of black flats, 3 liquid matte lip colours, a floppy hat, a makeup bag and a new eyeshadow.



I wasn't ready to go home one day so I decided to go wander in Chapters because I love that store and wanted to stumble upon something to buy ahaha. We'll best believe I saw many things I wanted that got added to my wish list and walked away with two things. I found a cute little makeup bag because mines needed updating if I was serious about updating my makeup bag and I got a REAL bookmark because I was sick of using random pieces of paper to keep my page.



I have been DYING for a navy blue floppy hat; my friend has a black one that I borrow all the time but I wanted one of my own and I wanted navy blue because I can wear it with this one jumpsuit I bought a year ago and STILL haven't worn ugh. However, Top Shop blessed my life and had this one there, I seen it multiple times at many different Top Shops but wasn't ready to buy it and plus it was $52 and I knew I could get a better deal. Fast forward to like a few weeks ago when I was just window shopping and I found that same $52 hat for $13 and best believe I snatched it as quick as I could, it was meant to be.

These things I have been waiting two weeks for; the Stila one I got the same time I got my hat but the Colour Pop had me waiting a minute. The Stila colour is called Ricco and liquid matte is the best thing I have ever discovered, no mess colours on your lips that dry and stay there all day. The Colour Pop colours are More Better & Stingraye, they were very iffy colours for me but I took a risk and bought them because I needed some new colours in my new makeup bag. I tried them on and I love them and I'm ready for my next purchase from them. I also got a free eyeshadow from them called Birthday Boy because it was their two year birthday. It's a pretty neutral colour that works on about everyone so it might get me wearing eye shadow again.


Last but not least is these flats that everyone needs in their life, basic everyday black flats. I got them today because I have so many places that I need to be dressed professionally or business casual and black flats just fits well with that dress code compared to my red Vans or white Adidas. It's just a simple cheap pair I picked up from H&M that won't be giving me blisters.


I lied that wasn't the last thing. I also got white Adidas Superstars from the Adidas store when I was in Toronto about 3 weeks ago and been wearing them. They are my new favs but I am not tryina ruin them quite yet so I need to stock up on more shoes so I don't out wear my Adidas.

Today marks the first day of Ramadan this year so I would like to wish all my fellow Muslim readers a Ramadan Mubarek. This is the most holy month in the year all about forgiveness and repenting, fasting as well of course. 

So this past weekend I got to check out the first ever yoga festival, City of Om which was a pretty great experience; I had won a free ticket just before Parliament Hill Yoga had started one day. I had planned to come and stay all day and do as many yoga classes I can do before I headed home but little did I know that I most likely would not been able to last in that sun.


  8:30 am: showed up and checked out the event
  9:30 am: took part of my first yoga class of the day
10:30 am: yoga class ended
11:00 am: checked out the different vendors
11:30 am: grabbed a drink from the Blended Berry food truck
12:00 pm: got home



I had wanted to do multiple yoga classes but after the first one I did with the hot sun beating down on me I had decided to take a break until the next indoor class but the wait in the sun was just too hot that I decided to call it quits for the day. The class I did, Hatha Flow with Lucy Castell was such a good and zen class. I usually am little bit distracted in my practices but this class I was so into my practice I forgot about everything else in the world. I hope to have more great practices as that one and this festival has urged me to sign up to a studio and dedicate my time to become a better yogi.

One studio that was a vendor at the festival was The Dailey Method and their classes seem very interesting; they are everything I want in my workouts & practices so I would like to go check them out. They do classes with a mix of pilates, yoga & barre. I have been wanting to try out barre & pilates classes so this is my chance to be able to do both & yoga all in one studio. They say their practices "help you achieve a strong, lean, sculpted body by combining ballet barre work, core conditioning & muscle strengthening through yoga, pilates & orthopaedic exercise" which is everything I want in my workouts and more. So I shall keep you guys updated when I do check them out.

Hopefully they make this a annual event that gets better and better every year because I enjoyed it but know that it could be better. In the Event Management program they told us once we learned all these things about how events should be run and what not we will never look at any event we attend the same anymore, oh how right they are. Throughout the 3 hours I was there I saw things that logistically could have been done different but it is their first year and you gotta make the mistakes to learn from them.

One thing I enjoyed about going to this festival alone was that I didn't have to check up on someone mid practice to make sure they were alive or doing fine, all I had to do was focus on me (it's not that people ask me to check on them but if I know you don't do yoga I just will check on you). It also gets me out there and checking out booths and conversing with vendors that I probably wouldn't do with other people.

this was a pretty good vegan snack Caven Nutrition Group was handing out

PEEPS!

What's up? How's life? How are my university peeps feeling now that school is over and summer has started? I can't relate cause while y'all were in school I was chilling and now that it's summer, I'm in school and y'all are chilling. It's all good though cause I'm going to be *hopefully* be done by the end of summer and continue on chilling and travelling like I was but this time with a job in my field aka making more money to spend on fun adventure stuff.

I'm now on week 3 of school & slowly getting into a routine with classes and work which means I can start posting on a regular basis. I will probably be posting on Wednesdays or Fridays my weekly updates and then other posts will start randomly through the week and then I will eventually have a day when it posts.

Yesterday was Victoria Day which meant it was a long weekend which is always an excuse to get out of town. I headed down to Toronto on Thursday and stayed till Monday afternoon. I came down for a concert, one of the main reason that i'm travelling and then my mom came down so I stayed with her a couple more days with her.

Thursday I got in late in the evening & didn't really do much because we were tired so we just went out to some spot and hung out with the people I knew there before going to bed and not driving anymore, driving is tiring work and makes your back sore.



Friday I woke up early and headed on over to Mississauga to see an old friend where we did some shopping at H&M & grabbed lunch over at Panera Bread. We did a lot of catching up considering I haven't seen her for a year which was nice. After leaving her, I headed back to Toronto picked up my friends and started the drive down to Buffalo. It doesn't take that long to get there maybe an hour to like an hour and a half but I got stuck in traffic for maybe an hour or two. Then finally made it to the show I came down for, Hands Like Houses; favourite band that i've seen 5 times and literally on Wednesday in Ottawa. It was one of the most wild shows i've seen and I've see HLH 5 times. The opening bands had the crowd rilled up and there were some hardcore moshpitters in the crowd. Then HLH finally came on and it was a WILD show. The crowd was jumping up on stage and creating a mosh pit and I felt like it brought everyone to a level where they were so into the music they were going crazy which made the band bring their all. I barely took pictures because I was soo into the show and then they played one song we wanted to hear which they had never played before that day, Degrees of Separation and they killed it. It's always a good show when I see HLH and that was my 5th show within the two years of knowing them and I love how they are always so friendly and just awesome guys. Till the next show....later this year in the fall ahaha.







The rest of the weekend was just random adventures around the city and finishing up some homework for class. I also did some shopping too and bought some things i've been looking for such as some sneakers that go with everything.

I'm currently working on my top 5 places to eat in Ottawa and my my fav coffee shops to do homework in around the city but I just can't pull away from my one fav spot right now, Equator Coffee which I will be heading to right now to do my homework and get a lot of stuff done while having a great drink and some good food.



My OBSESSION of the week has probably been trying to find different ways to style my hair because I just don't want to straighten it all the time. So I have been trying to leave it curly which my hair can't do so I force it into curls aka bantu knots which works well the smaller you make them and the longer you leave them in. I don't have a good picture but the next time I do it I will show you all how I did it.

My FAVOURITE TRACK of the week is This is What You Came For / With You [Rihanna Mash - Up] by Travis Garland. Travis Garland is my FAV artist and I discovered him through his covers and then started listening to his songs that he sings himself and LOVE THEM. His voice is just so beautiful and if you haven't checked him out, check him out.

Hey peeps, I don't know about you but there is nothing I hate to love then shopping for clothes. It's like the worst and best thing because you want some new fun clothes but you have to spend hours in many stores finding things that make you look attractive & fit your body & don't cost a whole lot all at the same time. Nevertheless, a few times in a year I seem to get some bits & pieces from all kinds of stores and then spend time trying to find a place to where them to. It's funny though because when you are looking for clothes you'll barely find them, but the best pieces are always found when you are just walking around the stores and not really looking for anything.

Let's get to it and lemme show you the few things I've found; some i've abused and wore a ton and some i'm still looking for a place to wear it too.


#1: This jacket i've wanted forever and is the perfect staple piece to any outfit and literally the new leather jacket; everyone's putting them aside to rock this new jacket. Bomber jackets for the win and the spring must have of 2016.

 I got mines from Zara Man because the women one's were being sold for more even though they were the same as the guy ones. I originally got one from TopMan for like $85 but found this one at Zara Man for $50. I got navy blue because everyone has the black or the army green. I LOVED the red one but couldn't wear it all the time it would only work with few things. Regardless, I love it and where it everyday and my leather jacket has been retired.....for now.

#2: These leggings were a random buy but as soon as I put them on I was so happy I bought them. I missioned all the way to Tanger Outlet to see if I could scoop these skinny sweats from Nike because I want to be different and not be rocking those Adidas track pants everyone else wears.
They unfortunately didn't have much sweats and nothing really looked appealing to me except the leggings I got of course. I got them in perfect timing too because Parliament Yoga has started up again and it doesn't hurt to have another pair of leggings to add up into my roster, gotta switch it up every week.

#3: This dress is the best thing I bought in a while. I was literally just browsing through the store and happened upon this beauty. It was regular price $25 which is a good price for this lovely dress. It can be dressed up with heels and some jewellery or dressed down with some sneakers and a jean jacket or a plaid shirt around the waist. I think its going to be worn a lot this summer in many different ways. I just can't wait to wear it. I found this dress at Zara in Yorkdale Mall and you can find it here.

• Distressed Jean Overalls
• Everyday Sneakers (Vans, Adidas, Nike)
• Maxi Skirts
• Variety of Plaid Shirts

Well I wanted to do like a quick little recap of my time just chilling when I decided to take a break from blogging. I did quite a few things I believe; it's been quite a while so I need to look back to see what happened then. I celebrated my 22nd birthday, drove down to New York City, spent three weekends in a row in Toronto (it's starting to become my second home), went to Buffalo, saw a few concerts, am getting into my culture more, got a new MacBook & am going back to school.

Quite a few things happened but then again I was gone for 7 months. I missed blogging but was still Instagramming of course which is in a way sort of like blogging so I got to post all those adventures I went on over there (go check it out).

My birthday was a good day. It was in the middle of the week and I was feeling shitty but I didn't let that stop me (plus all my friends were down to go out so I couldn't flop). We went out to get some appetizers at Ace Mercado in the Market which were okay, I think I need to go back and see if that place can redeem itself. After that we lost one member and gained two so we headed over to the Loft and played a game and just hang out. Then since we were not ready to go home we headed over to Warehouse for some cheap munchies cause yeah I was still hungry and ended the night there. It was a great night full of food, laughs, good times and Polaroids. That weekend I had a work trip but on the Friday I met up with a different group of friends and we went out to the Works where we caught up and hung out. Gotta top it this year for the 23rd though.


Then November came around & one of my favourite bands, Hands Like Houses was playing in NYC & we had to go because they were gonna be playing some new stuff & it was a world tour & we just wanted to go so bad. It was a good mini escape from the city as well so we made the show into a trip & stayed for 4 days. Since no other girl had their licence I was the driver there & back and let me state here for the record, that was a crazy mission. We headed out of here at 12am after we got some A&W & made it to our hotel around like 8/9am. I legit just stopped twice all the way there, once to stretch and the second time to rest for a bit because I was starting to sleep on the road....oops. It was a great trip there and the weather was soo nice so I got to do things that I wasn't able to the first trip there. We hung out in Central Park, went on the Brooklyn Bridge, had rainbow bagels & saw our show of course. Driving there was nice & the views were too pretty & I got to drive on the New Jersey Turnpike which was cool cause I used to always read about it but now I know what to picture & what it's like. Driving their was insane though & I brought crazy driving habits from NYC but I don't mind because it's taught me a lot. When they say to get experience between your G2 to the time you can get your G I think they mean driving on the highway in your city but I chose to drive to Toronto, NYC, Niagara & Buffalo. I mean I guess I'm ready for my G.


Well let's just wrap it up because this recap is getting waaaay too long & plus I have new posts to share. New Years was fun and pretty basic; watched fireworks downtown and then slept over at my friends house where we stayed up watching Grease & eating pizza. I made some basic resolutions to accomplish for 2016. They are:

1. Make an effort to look NOT like a bum when I leave my house. update my wardrobe, shoe collection and makeup pouch.
2. Go on adventures & get out of my comfort zone.
3. Become the best version of myself & look at the positive side of life
4. Become more money conscious & develop some sort of savings account.
5. Get fit & eat healthier.
6. Spend more time getting to know myself; on the days I get my hair done I can go grab some food & dress up & treat myself if I want to 

So i've been kinda working on them but I am actually going to try harder to stay on them because these are like basic things I should be do in life anyways.

Then March came, the month where I spent 3 weekends in a row in Toronto. It was wild & I was exhausted as hell, I would work Monday - Thursday & then drive down & spend my whole weekend out and about in Toronto. Weekends are supposed to be time to chill & rest from the work week but I just kept going and going. I ended up having the last weekend of the month to rest & come back to life again. 

First weekend was Niagara Falls for my friend's birthday which was a really fun weekend full of laughs, adventures and good times (no good food though in my case at least. i tried a lot of shitty things). Then the next weekend was the concert I went to in Buffalo, NY; it was a co-headlining tour with Set it Off & Tonight Alive. Amazing show & I didn't know Tonight Alive before the show but I loved them there and am a dedicated fan who gets to see them again at Warped Tour woo! We spent the next day just hanging out in Toronto before heading back home & got to see Kensington Market which was pretty cool. Then the last weekend in Toronto I went with my mom & her friends for an Oromo concert. It was a short & quick trip but a fun time indeed. It's the weekend that got me wanting to know more about my culture & listen to more Oromo music & even want to learn how to dance the dances. It was a wild month but so worth it and so much fun.

That was March & April is now. I'm back and posts are going to be current from here on out. Next month I go back to school to finish my last semester of my program, Event Management, I go to Buffalo again for another concert as well as see a concert here in Ottawa (yes someone cool is coming here), Ottawa ComicCon is happening and I have a trip to Montréal that may or may not happen. So far May is looking fun and I'm sure the rest of summer will be too. So follow my blog and see what's to come.

xoxo,

lamrou 

Welcome back to my new and improved blog y'all. I've changed my whole template and layout and I am loving it. I hope you guys enjoy it and are here to stay a while and see the new blog cause I'm here to stay this time. I've been gone a while I know but I had a few setbacks such as my computer getting water damaged and I needed time to just figure out life and whenever I could work on possible blog content. I'm back now and better I have things figured out and I know how I want to make this blog happen. So stay tuned for some good posts about the things I have planned to do, especially for the rest of this year.