kayla marie hillier dot com

I haven’t posted in a while so I thought I’d throw some photos on here in an attempt to catch things up.

In April it was my friend Rosie’s 40th birthday- thus her lover Jeremy and sister Laura decided to stage a surprise party at the swanky Table 17. The surprise element didn’t necessarily make it out of the gate- there were a few blunders, but the evening was still quite delicious!

I decided to try venison for the first time- you can also see my potatoes in the bottom right corner which were mashed with duck fat. OH BOY!

I guess this is how you feel when you’re 40 ;) – Rosie and Jeremy.

Delicious birthday cake!

Rosie and Laura

So I finished unpacking (as you may have seen in my previous post) and with that came the huge purge of my belongings… but somehow these suckers made it through my first run.

Then on April 26th (to be exact) two awesome things happened.
First, my lovah mister Adam Cadwell flew to Canada for his first time ever to attend TCAF, but lingered a bit longer to spend a whole 2.5 weeks with me. :D
The second thing was: that evening we went to see Jeffrey Brown talk at a Toronto Library which made me swoon. The man is a bit of a hero, so I tried to reel it in. Heh, tried. Adam snapped this photo- the colour red FTW!

I tried to show Adam as much of Toronto as possible, (you can see his photo set here) this also included many Tim Horton’s excursion + Cold Stone Creamery. This is me tryin’ out the Birthday Cake Remix.

At risk of makin’ some people puke- I’m throwing some swooney lovey photos on here. Long distance relationships can be tricky so I believe I’m allowed to wallow in my happiness.

Marc and Anna came into town early May which was super rad. We had dinner in Dundas Square at Milestones in this hip 4th floor patio thinger.

The next day the four of us went to Niagara and enjoyed the Maid of the Mist and our fancy blue raincoats, which I must tell you- are really quite necessary.

Then of course there was TCAF! This was the first time since 2005 that I wasn’t working the show which was really, really nice. I sat with Adam for the most part, but one guy didn’t show up so I nestled in between Howard Hardiman and Ray Fawkes for a bit. My main goal was passing out 200 flyers for my webcomic.

Howard and I- you can see Jamie McKelvie to the left there and Adam and Anna behind us.

Howard and his boyfriend Jonathan as well as Julia and her fiance Nevs stayed at my place- it was a little crowded but it worked out pretty well. Sadly everyone took turns getting sick :( (Well, except for Howard and Jonathan who were fit as fiddles the entire time.) I do have to say that eating delicious cake and watching a Muppet film on their final night was the right way to make an exit. Cake always wins. Always.

But of course, because it was TCAF after all, there was some epic karaoke goodness on the Saturday night. I think Andrew and I were rockin’ out to Kelly Clarkson here-

I yoinked a few of these photos from Chris Butcher here and from Jim Zubkavich here.

So now- this is where I’m at. I have a visa to live in the UK for 2 years. I can work and do the whole thing properly- my plane leaves on June 22nd. Between now and then I’ve been working at The Beguiling, getting ready for Anime North which happens next weekend. I’ve been selling my furniture and going through all of my belongings once more. My apartment is literally only a shadow of the photos I took before. I’ve sold both my bookcases and had to pack them up a little over a week after I set them up. Things are kinda crazy, but I’m really excited. I’m thinkin’ about things differently. I don’t feel like I’m going through the motions anymore. I’m actually living each day which sounds so blah- but honestly- it is way too easy to get caught up in the 9 to 5.

More soon!
K