I love the current trend of cafes in retail spaces, marrying the happy pair of caffeine and shopping. As evidenced by the success of places like The Wired Cup and Zocalo (covered by the Journal in a recent story),  sipping a cup of coffee amongst charming giftware is a nice alternative to the bustling cafe. [...]

Mack and I made it to Yellowknife, despite arriving to the gate ten minutes after our scheduled flight time – the line-up to get through security was madness! It’s colder here than in Edmonton, but there is more daylight than I expected (around 5 hours). No photos to share yet, as we had a pretty [...]

A few weeks ago, Jenna Herbut, the organizer of Make It!: The Handmade Revolution offered me the opportunity to give away ten pairs of tickets to their upcoming show in Edmonton. In addition, I was also provided with free tickets to attend the show myself, which was a nice bonus, and one I took advantage [...]

In honour of Shop Local Month, Keep Edmonton Original’s campaign to remind citizens to buy local, I wanted to write a post about my favourite gifts to give, purchased from small businesses based in Edmonton. For example, I love to give: bottles of en Sante, especially to those who are unaware that Alberta had a [...]

Working on an article on Saturday, I kept looking up from my laptop, distracted by the scene outside of freshly fallen snow glistening in the warm afternoon sunlight. At some point I decided I needed some fresh air, and to kill two birds with one stone, wandered over to High Street to get some Christmas [...]

While it took us a few months to finally visit the revamped Southgate Centre, because of the convenient scheduling of Kingsway’s  grand reveal, we were able to hop on a bus right after the Holiday Light Up to join the festivities at the mall. Kingsway all decked out for the holidays In particular, I was [...]

With some time to kill before dinner on Friday, we made the most of my conference hotel and venue being on the north edge of Calgary and merged with the weekend traffic towards Balzac. CrossIron Mills, which holds the distinction of being the largest single-level shopping complex in Alberta, has put Balzac on the map, [...]

When supermarkets in Edmonton started introducing self-checkout machines to their till areas last year, I was elated. More often than not, my complete purchase numbers less than 10 items, and I always found myself in for a lengthy wait, even in the so-called “express” lines. I know some people are against the idea of having [...]

In the same way that farmers’ markets are rising in popularity because of the public’s interest in supporting local farmers, so are arts and crafts fairs that showcase the wares of area artists. I’d been meaning to stop at the quarterly Royal Bison Craft & Art Fair for some time, and finally had the opportunity [...]

After the great experience I had at the Holiday Stop and Shop a few weeks ago, I was looking forward to checking out the 18th annual Butterdome Craft Sale for the first time. Funny how I never thought of stopping by the event during my numerous university years, but no time like the present to [...]