Expressing My Gratitude

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians! I hope you had a great weekend with your family and friends and were able to find time to enjoy the gorgeous weather and beautiful colours of the leaves that have been changing rapidly over the last few weeks. I had a wonderful weekend and was reminded of all the fantastic things in my life that I have to be thankful for. While different than last year’s list in some ways, many of the elements remain constant.

I am thankful for my beautiful friends and family with whom I had the pleasure of spending a lot of quality time with this weekend. I neglected to take a ton of pictures of my beautiful walk through our neighbourhood with Nicole (my new roommate!), but managed to snap a photo of our delicious almond chai lattes from Broadview Espresso. On Friday I enjoyed a delicious lunch at Fresh with a delightful friend and then spent the afternoon basking in the sunshine on the U of T campus. [insert giddy Ashley here]Friday night also marked the first of two shows I saw this weekend, fuelling another one of the things that I’m thankful for this year: performing and being inspired. I’ve been so lucky this year to be a part of some amazing shows and it’s absolutely wonderful to go see other talented folks onstage and feel inspired. Ashley and I had the pleasure of seeing [title of show] at the Toronto Centre for the Arts. I’m so sad that it has since closed, because I would tell all of you to go see it. It was smart, hilarious and brilliantly performed and both Ashley and I left the theatre feeling inspired. I laughed my face off, left humming the songs and plan to adopt the song Die Vampire, Die! as my new theme song when I’m feeling insecure. I loved the show and was so thrilled that I had the chance to see it.

The Ashleyx2 adventures continued with a matinee of Banana Shpeel on Saturday.

We had a lot of fun at the show. The sets, costumes and lighting were breathtaking, the featured performers were ridiculously talented and the ensemble were awesome too. We had fabulous seats and truly enjoyed ourselves. Cirque du Soleil is pretty amazing…

Both shows left me wanting more and feeling inspired to come home and work on my own art. I want to be performing more and more these days and I feel so blessed to be surrounded by so many talented people to influence my art.

It goes without saying that I’m thankful for my health, and one of the reasons for the way that I feel is how I eat! Gluten-free vegan living is so normal to me now and I was thankful to enjoy some delightful fall/Thanksgiving inspired treats this weekend including Fitnessista pumpkin chocolate chip muffins Snobby joe lentils stuffed into acorn squashand my weekend pride and joy – a gluten free vegan apple pie!I’ve never made a pie crust before, so it was pretty exciting that my first one was actually gluten free and vegan! As usual, Meghan’s recipe rocked and the crust was super easy to make. I made the apple filling from 2 lbs of peeled & diced apples (Granny smith/Pink lady combo), cinnamon and agave. It was delicious!! I had so much fun baking, eating and sharing it – I felt so domestic and the house smelled amazing.

It was such a great weekend and demonstrated that I have a lot to be thankful for on top of a pretty amazing year… what are you thankful for?