sparkleshinylove - A lifestyle blog for girls who love a little sparkle!

Roxymandy February 4, 2015

Blo Blow Dry Bar and TOPSHOP at Hudson’s Bay Team Up

Do you every shop at TOPSHOP? I love visiting the TOPSHOP location at Yorkdale. The clothes are pretty much to die for, and whenever I walk in I usually leave with something. Or a few somethings.

Blo Blow Dry Bar is the largest blow dry bar franchise in the world, and now thay are teaming up with TOPSHOP Canada and will introduce dry style bars at four TOPSHOP at Hudson’s Bay locations – Yorkdale, Sherway, Square One and Vancouver Downtown early February 2015.

Each location will feature two Blo Out Dry Style Stations offering up dry styles from their signature Hair Menu for just $28.

Shopping AND a great blow-out? Sounds like a perfect day to me.

For women in need of top-knotch tresses, Blo’s expert session stylists will be on site at TOPSHOP locations every weekend, Thursday through Sunday. Walk-ins are accepted and online reservations are available for those pressed for time at www.blomedry.com or by downloading the Blo App.

You can find the hours and locations for Blo Blow Dry Bar locations at Topshop below!

Hours

Thursday: 12pm-8pm

Friday: 12pm-8pm

Saturday: 11am-8pm

Sunday: 12pm-4pm

TOPSHOP+Blo Locations

TOPSHOP+Blo Yorkdale

3401 Dufferin St. (at Highway # 401) | North York, ON | M6A 2T9

TOPSHOP+Blo Sherway Gardens

25 The West Mall | Etobicoke, ON | M9C 1B8

TOPSHOP+Blo Square One

100 City Centre Drive | Mississauga, ON | L5B 2C9

TOPSHOP+Blo Vancouver Downtown

674 Granville Street | Vancouver, BC | V6C 1Z6

Roxymandy February 4, 2015

What Do You Do if You Accidentally Curse in Front of your Child?

Let me just start with me acknowledging that that some people are not going to like this post. The more I share on my blog about my mom-fails, the more people comment to me online about how horrible my parenting actually is. I fully recognize that I am not perfect, and in sharing posts like this I am really trying to share my stories of what I have done (right or wrong), and hopefully I can help out other people who are going through the same things. Yes I make mistakes – more often than not! But every day I am trying to be a better parent, so go easy on me – especially after you read this one!

I am not sure if I have always been guilty of cursing a lot, but it sure seems like I do since I have tried to limit myself.

There are the injury-related curses that pop out of my mouth (caused by things like stubbing my toe, banging my knee, or stepping on a monster truck) which are more of a reaction to pain than anything, and there are the I-messed-up-bad curses when I miss a turn when driving through the city, or I totally forgot the most important thing I was supposed to remember. The worst times are when I am re-telling a story or event where cursing was involved and I think my son is in another room out of earshot, and suddenly he pops his head in to remind me of his presence.

If I truly wanted to practice some lady-like behavior then I wouldn’t be cursing at all. It’s not like curse words are part of my every day vocabulary, but when I get hit in the side of the head with a football Marsha-Brady style with no inclement of the football coming my way and my temple explodes in pain, something bad might pop out of my mouth.

I always catch myself and understand that I should not be using words like that in front of my toddler, but lately he has been reminding me why.

My son repeats everything my husband and I say now. We sometimes think he isn’t paying attending at all when we are talking, and he will suddenly pop in from another room to tell us what he thinks about what we are taking about.

It’s like we have just realized there is a real-life person with opinions and great listening skills living in our home.

So what do you do when they repeat the worst things that come out of your mouth?

We had a lot of snow last week, and on the way home my son and I got stuck in the snow. We were on a relatively quiet street so we weren’t in any danger, but I had to find a way to get us out of there since my husband was out of town and I had no one to save me!

Once I actually got stuck, a curse word popped out of my mouth. I actually said “Oh, Sh*$t”. Seconds later my son repeated it. Yikes. I tried to ignore it so it didn’t seem like a big deal. He repeated it anyway.

I tried to reverse the car, and I got us even deeper in the snow. I was starting to get a little worried and it popped out again – “Oh SH*$t.” The kid in the back seat repeated me again.

We were really stuck, and I didn’t know what to do. And to make things worse my son was saying what I had said over and over again.

I tried to tell him that I had actually said “Oh shoot”. He didn’t buy it.

I tried giving him a better explanation and told him he had his hat over his ears so he didn’t hear me properly, and that I actually said “Oh shoot”. He said very clearly to me “No Mommy, that’s not what you said”.

At this point I was officially a potty mouth, and a liar.

Seriously, how was I going to get out of this mess? I was more worried about the curse word slip than the fact that my car was stuck on the side of the road.

Finally I took a big breath and I tried a different approach. A bit of trickery really. As I tried to get un-stuck in the snow, every once in a while I would say “Oh sugar”. I probably did it 4 or 5 times with an Oscar-winning performance attached to it to reinact how I was commenting earlier.

It worked. The whole car ride home I heard “Oh sugar” from him.

My son spent the next day saying “sugar”, until finally he seemed to forget the the unfortunate slang I had inadvertently taught him.

I’ve felt pretty rotten about the whole situation ever since. Not only is cursing bad in general anyway, I just cannot do it in front of my son. He’s too smart now! He wants to be just like his parents, but I’d really rather he didn’t take after his potty-mouthed mother.

To recover from my future slip-ups (if I drop a bowling ball on my foot I’m pretty sure something not nice will be popping out), I have at least learned I will need to be a little crafty with with how I cover up what I have said until he is older and I can explain that he shouldn’t repeat it. My main goal is to try to avoid cursing in front of him all together, and I’m hoping I can do it!

Roxymandy February 3, 2015

Indoor Skydiving with iFLY Toronto

I’ve never actually had the urge to skydive before, but when I heard a friend of ours wanted to celebrate his birthday by going indoor skydiving at iFLY Toronto, I was in!

I really had no idea what to expect at all. I just knew I was excited!

iFly Toronto is located in the Oakville Entertainment Centrum in Oakville, Ontario. Children aged 4 and up are able to experience the free-fall sensation in the tunnel. Once I heard the minimum age requirement I knew that I shouldn’t be scared since apparently even children can handle it.

Once we arrived at iFLY we were met with a front desk that reminded me of a check-in desk at the airport.

We already had a much needed reservation (the evening was totally booked), we were weighed to assist with the air pressure of our flight, and then we checked-in via their touch screen computers.

Next we headed upstairs to sit in the viewing area. This is where we could watch other groups skydiving! I started to get a little nervous at this point. Were we seriously going to do this? I knew nothing about skydiving. Sure everyone looked like they were having fun, but weren’t they terrified?

We were brought into a training room where we watched a video explaining our skydive, and we met our flight instructor. He allowed us to practice some of the signals we would use during our dive, and ask any questions we had.

We then went to change into our tunnel gear which included a flight suit, goggles, earplugs, and a helmet. The nervousness was increasing!

Finally we were ready to fly! We all had a seat in the waiting area where we could take turns for our flight time. The package we chose included two flights which were 2 minutes each. That may sound short, but it actually felt like a lifetime!

Its hard to explain what it felt like. It’s like there was no way you could stand up straight or fall over – you had no choice but to just fly.

It was really fun. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced, and I felt super safe with our flight instructor right beside us every second of the flight. There was no way I was going to fly off into the sky or, or fall to the ground.

IFLY Toronto also hosts birthday parties which sounds like an amazing and unique idea!

I would really like to go back and try out iFLY again. I realized later I was only breathing through my nose with my mouth nervously pried shut so I felt a little panicky, and I couldn’t fully enjoy myself. I really want to try again and see if I can relax more and enjoy the flight!

for more information visit www.iflytoronto.com.

Roxymandy February 2, 2015

Top Backpack Picks to Replace your Handbag

I wasn’t sure if I would get into the backpack trend, but do you remember how easy they made your life? The last time I had a backpack was university, and I couldn’t wait to get rid of my backpack, or anything to do with school at the time.

My favourite part of buying a new backpack at the beginning every school year was writing all over it with white out with stuff like “M loves D” and “BFF’s 4Ever” and then trying to hide it from my parents because they would be mad I just defaced my new backpack to make it look “cool”.

Since my school days I’ve always been lugging around a giant handbag and forgot what it was like to have the use of both hands again. It’s actually a pretty awesome feeling! Especially when I’m always holding the hand of a munchkin – convenience is key.

Basically every brand out there has a backpack right now so there are lots of different patterns, shapes and sizes for all price points in the market.

Check out some of my favourites below!

Forever 21 Quilted Faux Leather Backpack

Forever 21 Classic Faux Leather Backpack

Tory Burch Marion Quilted Small Backpack

Mango Suede Backpack

Herschel Classic Backpack

Michael Kors Rhea Small Leather Backpack

PINK Backpack

AE Baggu Backpack

Michael Kors Jet Set Travel Small Studded Backpack

MCM Stark Special

Roxymandy February 1, 2015

Liebster Award

I was nominated for a Liebster award by two lovely bloggers last week.

A Liebster Award is awarded in the blogging community, and I was nominated by:

Caffeinated Chaos

Mommy’s Time-Out

Basically there are 6 rules for the Liebster Award:

Acknowledge the blog who nominated them and display the award
Answer 11 questions that the nominating blogger gives you
Give 11 random facts about yourself
Nominate 11 blogs that you think are deserving of the award
Let the 11 bloggers know you’ve nominated them via social media
Give them 11 questions of your own to answer

Here we go!

11 Random Facts about myself:

1. My socks never match. If they do, one always has a hole in it.

2. I get into a really bad mood when I’m hungry. Like that commercial on TV where the guy turns into Joe Pesci. YouTube it.

3. I can’t eat an open bag of chips. I usually eat one bag a night (I know, it’s terrible), and it has to be a fresh bag.

4. I eat pizza with a fork and knife.

5. Sometimes I watch soap operas in Español hoping to learn a few phrases, and because they are so dramatic you don’t need to know what they are saying to understand what is going on. Best drama on TV.

6. I can’t parallel park or back into a parking space. I also failed my driving test twice.

7. It often takes me two times to do anything before I get it right. I’m not a natural at anything.

8. My favourite thing to do is take $20 cash to the store and just spend every cent on candy.

9. I buy flowers for myself a lot.

10. I’m pretty sure I apply deodorant 25 times a day.

11. When I make my husband his favourite meal of either sheppards pie or a roast, I usually pick up McDonalds and eat a Big Mac combo with him because I hate sheppards pie and roasts.

Questions for me to answer from the bloggers:

1. How did you decide on the title of your blog?

I was interviewed once and asked to explain myself using only a few sentences. When I was done the interviewer said you really seem to love things that are sparkly and shiny, so I came up with sparkleshinylove.

2. Wine or Beer?

Wine!

3. Where was your last trip to?

Turks and Caicos (also known as paradise).

4. Share a photo that represents you and explain why.

This is just my favourite photo right now.

5. What’s your go to meal or dish to cook? share the recipe!

It’s called a Quarter Chicken Dinner, and I prefer to order it online from Swiss Chalet.

6. Vanilla or Chocolate?

Chocolate

7. What are 1 or 2 blogs that you check daily?

Reality Tea and Lainey Gossip

8. How do you drink your coffee?

I don’t drink coffee – just hot chocolate, frappacinos and tea lattes!

9. What’s your biggest guilty pleasure?

Reality TV. All of it, I don’t discriminate.

10. What pandora station did you listen to last?

Oh god what is that?

11. Share the last photo you took on your phone.

It’s blurry but ok!

Round Two!

1. What inspired you to write your blog?

I’m not sure exactly what it was. I think I thought it would be fun to do something creative and fun, and I for some reason thought I had lots of time to do it.

2. Who is the woman you most look-up to?

My Momma and my sister – they both kick butt.

3. Favorite place to shop?

Um, everywhere.

4. Fave Dessert?

Chocolate Molten Lava Cake, or macarons.

6. Dream Vacation spot?

Bora Bora or the Maldives

7. Greatest personal accomplishment?

Raising a child to the ripe old age of 2.5.

8. Children, pets or Both?

One toddler, one Yorkie.