I always enjoy class trips to downtown Toronto! I don’t really get a chance to explore its little nooks and crannies often—especially now during winter—so I enjoyed yesterday’s outing a lot! Another thing is that it’s usually the fun art teachers that take us to city trips.

Our first stop was the Toronto Star headquarters. Admittedly, I thought going there would be suuuper boring—I mean really, weren’t we just going to talk to some newspaper writers? WRONG.
I actually left feeling inspired and motivated (definitely not something you would expect to feel when leaving a dull gray building ) because of all the cool people we spoke to, such as: Steve Russell, the head photographer who told us about his experiences while shooting in places abroad, in dangerous war zones, the Beijing Olympics, etc; a new designer who talked to us mostly about university prep. and even gave us her card ; and a lady whose job it is to edit photos for print and who gave us some nice Photoshop tips.

Next up, we went to a place called Richtree Market Restaurants which reminded me a bit of Frankie Tomatto’s because of the little “town” inside of the restaurant. We even got water from a fountain in the “town square”.

I just dumped a bunch of stuff on my plate pictured above and discovered that I really hate black olives… blech!

After filling our stomachs with some good food, my teacher gave us the option of just going home or tagging along with her to a gallery where her artwork was being shown. Of course I chose the latter.

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It’s been live since Monday so I’m breaking the news a little late here—but I have a new layout!

Give me a chance to go all “web-design-nerd” on you and let explain why I wanted a new look:

• For one, I thought the last layout was too crowded. I noticed that the sidebar was distracting the eye from the actual blog posts and the whole thing didn’t look clean. Looking at all the minimalistic designs at SiteInspire made me want to try an all-white layout for myself—so I did!
• The previous version didn’t have any personality. I mean sure, there were little bursts of colors here and there, but it was very meh and I don’t think it really screamed THIS IS HAZEL’S BLOG!!!
• I wanted to incorporate a photograph into the new design. Even back when I still had a sub-domain and when my internet alias was still Lena, I never ever used a photograph in any of my layouts (probably only when I was just starting out and I was still using iframes—blegh!). It’s just been one of my big personal rules to never use an image on my layout that I did not take myself.
  And back then, my photography skills were non-existent, so the idea of taking a picture with my own camera to paste on my website never occurred to me.
• I don’t think I ever had a typical layout with just a header image on top before (I’m usually really obsessed about making my layouts ‘unique’) so I wanted to take a shot at it.

Putting a photo of hazelnuts on the header since my name’s Hazel—I don’t I could get any more personal than that! hahaha~

(notice how I can just keep going on and on and on about website nonsense. I am such a geek! )

Unrelated: On Thursday my art class had life-drawing sessions again (we did it last year too). Meaning a NUDE MODEL came to our class, stood in different poses, and we had to draw her. Unlike last year’s, this one was a lot skinnier—but still equally hairy And this lady kept on bending down in front of us!

Now I find that drawing a voluptuous model is much easier than drawing a thinner one. I guess for me, it’s more natural to draw curves? I dunno.

I’m curious: has any of you that took/takes art in high school had life-drawing lessons in class? I don’t reckon it’s allowed in many schools…

Yesterday afternoon, I received this message in my inbox:

I was one of the winners for FredFlare‘s boombox contest and won $100!! My face afterward was literally like this:
I checked their blog post to make sure I wasn’t dreaming or seeing things, and then did this weird, crazy, embarrassing happy dance (I think I actually twisted my hip bone a tad bit)

Now on to the question of what the hell am I going to buy?! I don’t plan on spending this gift certificate just yet; I want to wait for them to re-stock some of their great stuff and maybe for another sale to crop up.

But here are a bunch of things from their store I’ve been eying lately (and what I might just buy):

UrbanEars Headphones: $68 - made in Sweden and comes in other nice colors

Inés Sunglasses: $11

Lucy Sneakers: $48

Mini Umbrellas: $32 - Maybe this is too expensive for an umbrella?

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