Tea for Two

Posted by Monica Graves

Here I am with Pearl Veenema, the President and CEO of Hamilton Health Sciences.  What a wonderful day this was!  I was invited to come and sell Hummingbird julz to a large group of powerful women.   All on a mission to raise money for the CIBC Breast Assessment Centre.  This event was called “Tea for Two” and it was fantastic!   glamjulz raised $400 that day!  Wooo Hoooo!

The setting for the day was gorgeous.  The venue was a family property in Stoney Creek, right on the water.  Look at the table settings.  So spectacular and all those little pastries were to die for.  I personally could not get enough of the scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam.  Yum Yum Yum.

All of the women wore fabulous hats and fascinators!  They all looked so amazing.  Very creative.  This was such a fun event and it it was their first year.  I know that next year will be even more spectacular and the hats even more outrageous!  Hope to see you there in 2012!

 

Parties with a Purpose!

Posted by Monica Graves

You glamjulz fans are all so wonderful!  Really, you buy our julz in stores, on-line, our studio parties, you come and see us at the One Of A Kind shows and now you’ve been asking for jewlery parties!  Do you have any idea how GOOD that makes me feel?????  Never in a million years did I think back in 1992 when I picked up my first bead and strung it on a piece of wire that all of your would show up in my life and ask for MORE!  I feel like a rock star on stage everyday, receiving one encore after the other.

Thanks to all of you that have been booking parties with a purpose and helping us to further our quest to give back to the community!

Here’s what you’ve all done so far!  glamjulz fans rock!

$85 to The Lincoln County Humane Society on behalf of Stephanie Jackson

$80 to The Alexander’s Public School Library on behalf of Janette Kincaid

$50 to The Preston Family via the Three Little Wishes fund on behalf of Audrey Milford

$40 to The Annex Cat Rescue on behalf of Catherine van der Oye

$40 to Cystic Fibrosis Research on behalf of Cheryl Galipeau

$60 to The ROCK (The Reach Out Centre for Kids) on behalf of Tracey Quennell

$40 to The CIBC Breast Assessment Centre on behalf of Marilyn McPhail

$100 to the Juravinski Cancer Centre on behalf of Karin Normann

$200 to the Dolphin Research Centre on behalf of Rachel Price

….and many, many more 🙂

I LOVE Daryl Hall!

Posted by Monica Graves

A 30 year crush???? Ahhh yes! The first time I ever set my eyes on Daryl Hall was in 1982.  My good friend Katherine (my morning exercise buddy) and I had just come back to my place after our Friday night skate at Kinoak Arena in Oakville.  We plunked ourselves on the couch in my parent’s basement and turned on our favourite show, SCTV! That night was special! Hall and Oates were guests! Keep in mind there was no Muchmusic then, so seeing rockstars on television was slim to none…….they did a live performance of “Did it in a Minute”……my heart was racing and so the obsession began.  All of my friends got a Hall and Oates album for their birthdays that year. Anyone that was in my world was also sucked into my love for Daryl Hall!


Last weekend I went to my 10th (???) Hall and Oates concert! Catherine and Carolynn came along, my latest victims! Ha Ha!  The show was outstanding!  Daryl is 65 years old now, my teen idol! A senior citizen?? Still the most charismatic rock star on the planet in my eyes!

Everytime I see Daryl Hall I regress to that 12 year old girl screaming on the couch in my Parent’s basement. I glow for weeks after and I am just so thankful to have such an attachment and love for the music this dynamic duo have created. Music is so magnificent, it heals, it takes you away and it helps to express what may be difficult to say in your own words!

Daryl’s Kiss will always be on my List!

 

 

What’s inside my jewelry box?

Posted by Monica Graves

Hmmmmmm……a jewellery box you say?  Well I do have one but I can never find anything in it!  It gets messy fast!  Since glamjulz is all about colour, I need to make sure that every morning when I get dressed I am perfectly accessorized in matching julz!  That means they need to be in clear view.

As you can see in this picture I have hung all of my necklaces and bracelets to my shelving in my closet…..not the most glamorous display of julz but it keeps them organized and well preserved.

Earrings on the other hand….that’s what I’ve used my jewlery box for……

Once again they are in clear view and easy to grab.  I really LOVE earrings, so I also have them all over the house in strange places like hung off of coffee cups.Sounds silly but you never know when you may have a desire to switch up your earrings.  I always seem to want to!

I also wanted to share with you a couple of pieces that are really special to me and have definitely influenced my desire to become a jewelry designer.  That is one of the most wonderful things about jewelry.  Each piece can tell a story and carry beautiful energy.  That’s what I love the most about jewelry.

This necklace was given to me on my 10th birthday from my Oma.  I love it because it represents everything I loved during that time.  It was the summer of 1979, and that was when all of my favourite shows like The Love Boat, Three’s Company and Charlie’s Angel’s were at their peek and I was allowed to watch them.  My Mom and Dad were really cool about letting me explore music and they encouraged me to play my Shaun Cassidy, Captain and Tennille and Air Supply records whenever I wanted! I look at this necklace it reminds me of that time.  I love the font especially, I remember how popular that font was back then and it made me feel happy whenever I looked at it.  My Oma was the coolest and she always found the latest and greatest for me.

This pendant is especially amazing to me.  It is an heirloom from my Mom.  This little gold heart has a dent right in the centre of it.  After World War 2 ended my Mom’s family ended up in Poland.  Since Poland was a communist country at the time citizens that were leaving to head west, back to Germany were forbidden to take personal possessions such as jewelry with them.  My Oma sewed many of the family’s jewels inside my Mom’s coat, she was only 10 years old at the time.  When my Mom sat down in the coat she dented the little heart.  It’s amazing what people had to do back then to hold on what was valuable.  My Mom’s Oma actually baked a cake and put everyone’s rings in the cake, which she held on her lap as they crossed the border.  Once they were back in Germany the family had to eat the cake and spit out the rings.

Thanks so much for reading and I hope that all of you treasure your jewels and pass them along to your loved ones when you are ready.  Jewelry is such a powerful touchstone for beautiful memories and stories.

Cottage Weekends

Posted by Monica Graves

It’s June and back to cottage for beautiful weekends and fun times with family and friends.  I seem to go through the same pattern every year.  I feel so protective of my weekends north and I am determined to let nothing get in the way of them.  It’s my 3 months of the year where I can, swim, walk, run, eat, drink and be merry all in my own back yard so to speak.  No desire to go on holiday, no desire to get away from it all.  A time where I am just happy to be in the present, letting magical moments unfold.  It seems like after Christmas I work every weekend from January-May.  The thought in my head is always that if I do it now I can have my weekends at the cottage without feeling like I’ve fallen behind.

This is where I can sometimes get myself into trouble.  Work, work, work even in doing what we love can sometimes cause us not to see or enjoy what is happening around us.  Now that I am once again enjoying my cottage weekends I have noticed that during that relaxation time I am receiving many gifts.  New ideas for glamjulz are coming to me so quickly, I feel more organized, I am enjoying my interactions with people so much and learning some great lessons from other like minded business people.  I have made a commitment to myself to be more mindful.  Every morning I am writing down six things that I am grateful for.  The first thing I wrote down today was that I am truly grateful for coming to the realization that relaxation is nothing to feel guilty about when we still have piles of work on our plate or other people to take care of.  Sometimes we do need to stop in our tracks, take 10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 days or whatever it takes to re-generate, re-focus and just breathe.  It is in those moments that everything truly does fall into place.

Joelle and Jeff’s Fashion Show!

Posted by Monica Graves

WOW!!!!!!  What an amazing night Dawn and I had on Monday.  We were invited to participate in Joelle and Jeff’s Fashion show to raise money for the Juravinski Cancer Centre Foundation to help build the CIBC Breast Assessment Centre.  If any of you readers attended you know that this power couple really know how to throw a party!  The evening was full of surprises for all of the guests.  The venue was Royal Botanical Gardens.  A red carpet lead guests to a screen, provided by Sony, to have their Hollywood  glamour shot taken with their friends.  Then tickets were given to each guest for a refreshing and icy cold Mojito.  Next there was the delicious sit down dinner, shrimps, chicken, mango salad….yumm yumm yumm and then desert was served up by the Burlington Fire Fighters!  Wooo hoooo!  What girl didn’t LOVE that action?

Joelle asked me to bring back my very first jewelry design for this event!  Remember the STACKERS?????  The first piece I ever sold to Joelle back in 1999!  We decided to make them a little more modern with nice chunky beads and within each bracelet a purple Joelle’s flower.  The bracelets were a huge hit and we were able to make a nice donation to the JCC because of all of you that purchased them. THANK YOU!!!!

It’s always so wonderful to be a part of anything that Joelle and Jeff create.  They truly are an inspiration.  They surround themselves with such amazing people.  I know that they exceeded their fundraising goal for the evening and I am not surprised.  Whatever they touch always turns to GOLD!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Golf and Glamour Day!

Posted by Monica Graves

Talk about a fantastic Monday!  I woke up, went for my morning bike ride….made some delicious oatmeal blueberry pancakes and then put on my favourite Brenda Beddome dress with my perfectly matched julz and headed to the Flamborough Hills Golf Club for the 4th Annual Golf and Glamour Day.

The event was put on by the Rotary Club of Hamilton and the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce.  What an amazing group of Women!  This group is all about Women helping Women in their local communities.  I contributed by purchasing a table for the morning and selling lots of sparkly julz to these lovely ladies.  We also sold some of our beautiful Hummingbird julz which helped us raise some more dollars for the CIBC Breast Assesment Centre.

This is a picture of Nancy McMillan and I.  Nancy is one of the amazing women that made this special day happen.  Nancy is also an huge support to glamjulz and is BIG on promoting our Hummingbird julz as she also is on the committee for the Breast Assessment Centre.  How lucky am I to know someone as special as Nancy?  She is a great example of a person that makes things happen in the community.  Every time I get together with Nancy she always asks me, “What can i do to help you?”…….wow!  Talk about a selfless question.  This girl is a dynamite networker and I am so happy to have her as a new friend.

Isn’t life wonderful?  Woooo Hooooo!

Best Friends

Posted by Monica Graves

Here I am with my friend Jen!  We have known each other since 1977! Wow!  We were little then!  Jen has an older sister, my best friend, Sally……Sally and I were inseparable, we back packed through Europe together after high school and we were always known as a pair, “Monica and Sally”……. In the mid nineties Sally moved to England to be with her English husband and have 3 beautiful babies together.  That’s when Jen and I started to hang out together.  There are 4 years between us but Sally always said, “Monica you should hang out with my younger sister.”  Jen and I connected on so many levels.  We both missed our favourite Sally, all the way in England, and back in the mid nineties we were both single and had a ball together!

Jen since moved out to BC but comes to visit Wayne and I quite often.  We love having her here with us!  I feel so fortunate to have my best friends.  When Jen and I are together it’s so magical.  As soon as she arrives we both get into our groove and have the most fantastic time.  It’s not hard, there’s no effort, it all just flows.  We seem to have all the time in the world and can just talk about life for hours.  Jen knows me so well and can always tap into my insecurities and tell me all the right things to bring me back to feeling strong and powerful.

Best friends are so important, they are the family we choose.  I treasure all of mine and I am grateful everyday to have them.  Thank goodness for Blackberry Messenger….I keep them all close!

The Hummingbird Ball

Posted by Monica Graves

Every year in May Hamilton Health Sciences has their annual Hummingbird Ball!  I have had the pleasure of participating for 2 years in a row now.  I am there to launch the latest and greatest Hummingbird piece of jewelry to help raise money for the CIBC Breast Assessment Centre.

Many of you have purchased the bracelets that I designed last year and this year I have designed the matching necklace.  You will see these necklaces sometime soon on our website and in some of your favourite stores.

What a fantastic evening!  Joelle came with me again this year!  We had so much fun together, we sold out of the necklaces at the ball just like we did with the bracelets last year.

It is such an honour to be a part of events like this.  It really makes me realize what an amazing community I live in and how powerful people are when they come together for a good cause.

Thanks to all of you for all of your support!  It’s so great that glamjulz can help out those in need, we could never do it without all of you!

Cinderella Event

Posted by Monica Graves

 

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of participating in the Cinderella Prince Charming Project right here in Burlington!

What an amazing day!  I was so honoured to participate in this charitable event.  The organizers  invited in-need students in both grades 8 and 12 to experience a day of “shopping” through new and gently used Graduation outfits, accessories, and shoes.

It was so incredible to see the generous support and donations by local individuals and organizations.  Everyone came together to make dreams come true for these kids.

Some of the girls very kindly gave me permission to show pictures of how wonderfully put together they were so please enjoy their smiling faces!

I found out about the event when Joelle, owner of Joelle’s in Burlington, asked me if I would like to participate.  I was there with Robin one of Joelle’s sales consultants who was styling all the girls and making sure they left looking their best!

A big thanks to any of you that did make donations……I noticed some vintage glamjulz donations on some of the tables!  You glam girls are the BEST!