The long weekend is almost here, and if you are not sure what to do there are lots of fantastic things on! So grab your sunglasses and take full advantage of the last long weekend of summer. Make it a great one!

Things To Do In Toronto

1.Take A Day Trip To The Toronto Islands (click here to read more)
One of our favourite things to do is to go the the Toronto Islands.

2. Go To The Beach (click here to read more)
The Beach is also a favourite place to be this weekend. Take a stroll on the beach, play some volleyball, watch the seagulls, or enjoy a delicious brunch along Queen Street.

3. Visit The Harboufront Area (click here to read more)
There’s also lots of great things happening at the Harbourfront in general. Read on to find out what to do, where to go, and where the best patio is!

Things To Do Outside Of The City

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4. Take A Day Trip To Niagara On The Lake (click here to read more)
Niagara On the Lake is an absolute favourite. Here’s a short post on what do while you’re in Ontario’s favourite wine country.

5. Go To Cottage Country (click here to read more)
Cottage country is gorgeous, and there’s no better weekend to enjoy it than this one! Here’s a link to a last minute cottage rental site…so tempting!

Things To Do Anywhere

6. Host A Fabuous Dinner Party (click here to read more)
It’s going to be gorgeous, so host a fabulous outdoor dinner party with these amazing recipes.

7. Go On A Cheap, Fun & Active Date (click here to read more)
Great suggestions for cheap, active and super fun date activities. If you’re single don’t fret, grab one of your girlfriends and make it a girls date!

8. Go Hiking With Your Girlfriends (click here to read more)
The great outdoors, great girlfriends…well it all sounds pretty great. And it is. Do something totally different this weekend, and go hiking with your ladies. You’ll love it!

9. Day Dream What Your Fantasy Life (click here to read more)
In a relaxed environment, with no pressure or noise, or stress, or anything to disrupt you, let your mind wander…and create a picture of your dream life. It will be the start of great things for you!

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Flipping through the extra thick September fashion magazines we came across these unbelievably cool Balenciaga shoes designed by Nicolas Ghesquiere.

They are so fun, colourful and spectacular. Normally we don’t welcome the cooler weather, but we can’t wait to ditch our summer sandals for these fantastic shoes!

Photo Credit: Style.com

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Can you believe that we are already in September? It’s crazy to think the summer is about to wrap up, school starts again for all the students, and for everyone else summer hours end and it’s time to get back at it!

But to be honest, we’re kind of excited about that! This summer has been gorgeous – maybe one of the best ever in Toronto – and now we’re ready to pull up our socks.

And what better way to get back at it than with the 30 Day Fitness Challenge from September 7th – October 7th! We’ve all had lots of summertime snacks, patio drinks, and probably a few too mojitos! Now we get to join each other in a fitness journey, have fun together and have the chance to win some great prizes!

That’s a WIN – WIN – WIN situation!

Join us for the 30 Day Fitness Challenge! Sign Up for the newsletter to participate

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The Emmy’s were last night, and there’s news all over the media about who was wearing what.

To make it easy for you here are Cashmere Clutch’s choice for 3 Best Emmy Dresses.

Pick # 1 – Lea Michele (from Glee) in Oscar de La Renta

The dress is gorgeous, and flattering and very classy. The detailing is amazing, and she looks like an American princess. She did not take home the award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, but she did get tonnes, literally tonnes, of coverage from her dress. Just goes to show what a great dress can do for your career!

Pick # 2 – Claire Danes in Giorgio Armani Prive

Oh, how we love this iridescent crystal-encrusted Giorgio Armani Prive gown. It looks unbelievably good on Claire Danes, and to top it all off she won the Primetime Emmy for Best Actress in a Mini Series or a Movie for HBO’s Temple Grandin.

Pick # 3 – Jenna Fischer in Versace

Thankfully somebody was wearing some colour at the Emmy’s! It was a a sea of black, white and neutrals, which made Jenna’s choice look even more fantastic! We love the flowy fabric, the bold colour, and how flattering and feminine the dress looks. Hooray for doing something different!

Photo Credit: Life

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If you answered yes to any of those questions than the 30 Day Fitness Challenge is for you!

From September 7th – October 7th join us for 30 fun filled days of fitness, healthy eating, and fun…plus you can win some GREAT PRIZES!

Want to know what’s up for grabs?

Here are just some of the prizes:
- 2 four week gift certificates to Booty Camp Fitness
- a fabulous gift basket worth $150 from Burts Bees
- 20 free book giveaways from Simon and Schuster Canada
- a gorgeous collection worth $200 from Upper Canada Soap Company

Join Us – all you have to do is sign up for our newsletter!

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Recently while doing some research we asked several female entrepreneurs how much personality they show in business.

The answers were varied – some people showed a lot, even in some cases blogging about sexual experiences and other extremely intimate situations, while others not at all, and some said just be yourself and let your personality shine through….to a limit.

The way we conduct ourselves in business is largely a part of our personality in general. But for business, according to Darrell Zahorsky these can be categorized into 9 different personality types:

The 9 Personality Types of Entrepreneurs

1. The Improver: If you operate your business predominately in the improver mode, you are focused on using your company as a means to improve the world. Your overarching motto is: morally correct companies will be rewarded working on a noble cause. Improvers have an unwavering ability to run their business with high integrity and ethics.

Personality Alert: Be aware of your tendency to be a perfectionist and over-critical of employees and customers.

Entrepreneur example: Anita Roddick, Founder of The Body Shop.

2. The Advisor: This business personality type will provide an extremely high level of assistance and advice to customers. The advisor’s motto is: the customer is right and we must do everything to please them. Companies built by advisors become customer focused.

Personality Alert: Advisors can become totally focused on the needs of their business and customers that they may ignore their own needs and ultimately burn out.

Entrepreneur example: John W. Nordstrom, Founder Nordstrom.

3. The Superstar: Here the business is centered around the charisma and high energy of the Superstar CEO. This personality often will cause you to build your business around your own personal brand.

Personality Alert: Can be too competitive and workaholics.

Entrepreneur example: Donald Trump, CEO of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts.

4. The Artist: This business personality is the reserved but highly creative type. Often found in businesses demanding creativity such as web design and ad agencies. As an artist type you’ll tend to build your business around the unique talents and creativities you have.

Personality Alert: You may be overly sensitive to your customer’s responses even if the feedback is constructive. Let go the negative self-image.

Entrepreneur example: Scott Adams, Creator of Dilbert.

5. The Visionary: A business built by a Visionary will often be based on the future vision and thoughts of the founder. You will have a high degree of curiosity to understand the world around you and will set-up plans to avoid the landmines.

Personality Alert: Visionaries can be too focused on the dream with little focus on reality. Action must proceed vision.

Entrepreneurial example: Bill Gates, Founder of MicroSoft Inc.

6. The Analyst: If you run a business as an Analyst, your company is focus on fixing problems in a systematic way. Often the basis for science, engineering or computer firms, Analyst companies excel at problem solving.

Personality Alert: Be aware of analysis paralysis. Work on trusting others.

Entrepreneurial example: Intel Founder, Gordon Moore.

7. The Fireball: A business owned and operated by a Fireball is full of life, energy and optimism. Your company is life-energizing and makes customers feel the company has a get it done attitude in a fun playful manner.

Personality Alert: You may over commit your teams and act to impulsively. Balance your impulsiveness with business planning.

Entrepreneurial example: Malcolm Forbes, Publisher, Forbes Magazine.

8. The Hero: You have an incredible will and ability to lead the world and your business through any challenge. You are the essence of entrepreneurship and can assemble great companies.

Personality Alert: Over promising and using force full tactics to get your way will not work long term. To be successful, trust your leadership skills to help others find their way.

Entrepreneurial example: Jack Welch, CEO GE.

9. The Healer: If you are a Healer, you provide nurturing and harmony to your business. You have an uncanny ability to survive and persist with an inner calm.

Personality Alert: Because of your caring, healing attitude toward your business, you may avoid outside realities and use wishful thinking. Use scenario planning to prepare for turmoil.

Entrepreneurial example: Ben Cohen, Co-Founder Of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.

What’s your business personality?

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In just 14 short days the 30 Day Fitness Challenge is set to begin! That’s right, the kids go back to school and you go back to the gym!

And don’t say you didn’t get enough time to enjoy the summer – you have 2 full weeks to drink cocktails, eat sweets, and laze in the hazy last days of summer.

When you’ve had just about enough of the dog days you can pull up your socks, tie up your laces and join us for 30 FUN FILLED days in the 30 Day Fitness Challenge.

To Enter Simply sign up for our newsletter

Each week we’ll send you delicious (and healthy) recipes, an excercise plan and some motivational tips.

PLUS, each week we’ll have some fabulous giveaways from any of our fantastic promotional partners including:

Booty Camp Fitness
Burts Bees
Upper Canada Soap Company
Revolution Organics
Simon and Schuster Canada

Join Us – sign up for our newsletter to Have Fun, Get Fit & Win Prizes!

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I can’t say that I’ve always wanted to run away with the circus, in fact, the closest I’ve ever got to the big top was reading Fifth Business as a kid, and creating body image issues for myself in funhouse mirrors. But as I approached my 35th birthday, I wanted to do something different, something that would test my boundaries and help me to regain some of the fearlessness of youth. I decided to try the flying trapeze. Now it’s not an original idea – I admit I saw it on an episode of Sex in the City, but the key was translating this idea into reality. I thought it was going to be difficult to find a circus in Toronto, but through the wonders of the internet, I discovered that the Toronto Circus school offers drop-in trapeze classes in a hangar at Downsview park.

I convinced a few friends to join me and off we went into the unknown. When we arrived we were greeted by a pleasant looking woman who asked us to sign a waiver. I shrugged it off as a precaution and happily signed away my life – all in the name of fun. My friends and I looked at each other and broke out into a nervous giggle. This was safe wasn’t it…??? I tried to reassure us as we walked into the gymnasium. There was nothing to be afraid of. We would have a harness, a net, someone spotting us and of course a lot of practice before we even got up the trapeze.

Or so I thought. As we walked in, all I could see was the 20 foot ladder leading to a precarious looking wooden platform and the vastness of the distance between the trapeze and the net. We all looked at each other and gulped.

There would be no easing into the trapeze; we received a routine, saw a quick demonstration and were strapped in for the horror ahead. The first person up made it look really easy and gave us a false sense of security (we found out later that she was a regular). The trembling people that followed were more the norm. The closer we got to the front of the line, the more nervous we got.

As I had been the instigator of the madness, I had the pleasure of going first. I never thought I had a fear of heights until I got up to the ladder. My arms were trembling and I had to force myself not to look down. As I approached the platform, I kept worrying that I would lose my footing and plummet to the ground. The platform itself was probably only 3×2 feet wide and had to support the weight of two people.

I was sweating as I walked onto the platform and having some serious second thoughts. The spotter told me to grab onto the trapeze with one hand and perch my toes off the front of the platform. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as I looked at the net below. Then I was to grab the trapeze with my other hand and when she yelled “hup”, (carnie talk for “go”) I was supposed to jump off with my feet. She yelled, I jumped and swung like a pendulum. I could feel the rush of the air beside me and my arms being ripped from their sockets. I hung on for dear life and could barely hear the instructions of what to do next. After a few swings I was to tuck my knees up and throw them over the trapeze, let go of my arms and then release to fall gracefully onto the net.

This is what happened – I kept swinging, my arms quivering, my body feeling like a dead weight. Try as I might, I couldn’t get my knees over the bar and was stuck there in limbo. After what seemed like an eternity, I heard a voice say something that sounded like “let go”. So I did. I fell onto the net in a heap and rolled onto the floor. I felt exhilarated. I took a second to think about what I had done and smiled. I just did the flying trapeze. Now how many people can say that?

P.S. I did better the second time around.

Heena is a labour lawyer with a large Canadian financial institution and has contributed several articles to Cashmere Clutch.

If you liked this article you may also like Heena’s other articles:

Dealing With A Job Loss

Starting A New Job: How To Get Your Groove Back

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Most people assume that if you are an entreprenuer you must have loads of confidence…but that’s often quite far from reality.

You know how most of the time you feel pretty good about yourself, but then something little, maybe a comment in a meeting, noticing your clothes look ragged, or something huge like a big project falls through, just throws you way off.

When you are an entrepreneur you have to face these challenges every day! You are always putting yourself out there, trying to get as much attention as possible, and not being shy to tell people what you do, your company name and your 10 second elevator speech.

Confidence in your abilities or your business often intersect with your confidence as a person, and that’s where sometimes you may falter. And it will happen to everyone.

“The first time I did a show out in the field, it took 20 times to get my intro down pat,” says Amber MacArthur, 34, founder of Web agency MGI Media, technology specialist, TV personality and author of Power Friending: Demystifying Social Media to Grow Your Business.

If someone so accomplished can feel so uncomfortable, it’s easy to imagine that it happens to absolutely everyone, and it will happen to you too.

The best remedy is to “fake it till you make it”, but in a very real way, don’t pretend to be a German Sheppard when you’re really a Golden Retriever puppy. Just be yourself, with a great ability to pick yourself, dust yourself off, and go forth and self promote again!

Because, after all, you are your brand! You need to self promote to build your business, no matter what you are selling.

To make your brand building online Amber has these 3 simple suggestions:

No. 1: Make sure you have a website. Tools such as SquareSpace and Wordpress make it really easy to build your own site.

No. 2: Use a lot of social media tools to get out there and network. Integrate tools such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook into your website, so essentially your website is a home base for all of your branding efforts.

No. 3: E-mail really is a social network. The number of people who e-mail you on a regular basis is enormous. So within your e-mail network, turn your signature into something where you link to your personal website, Twitter and Facebook accounts, and really use that to promote yourself

As an example, preview the email signature below

–
Ingrid Menninga
Founder
www.cashmereclutch.com

Help Us Get to 150 Friends on this Facebook Page; Click and Like us Please

Twitter

Cashmere Clutch is a women’s lifestyle site focusing on living a balanced, fulfilling and fabulous life. Visit us at www.cashmereclutch.com

–
There’s lots of contact information above, and you can clearly figure out what the business is, how it helps people, and how you can stay connected online. Also, the “Help Us Get 150 Facebook Fans” Tactic is a new one, but seems to help increase the number of fans on the page.

Try it out for your business and let us know how it goes.

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Our latest Fearless and Fabulous Female Entrepreneur Series feature is Orlena Cain – founder of Sugarcain Entertainment, an online magazine that supports up and coming, aspiring female journalists, Belleville’s Mix97’s morning announcer, and The Shopping Channel’s TV presenter. Orlena also works closely with the Children’s Aid Society, and other charitable organizations. Busy does not even begin to describe Orlena, but you’ll be surprised by what makes her tick and what she would do differently if she could do it all again.

—
How did you start your business?

I created it 6 years ago to help me build my portfolio of interviews and I kept meeting women who wanted to come on board and do the same. 2010 marks the end of a significant run in the world of entertainment news for Sugarcain Entertainment. We started out with one and currently have 25 journos that are in Toronto, Barrie, Kingston, Ottawa and Montreal. Vancouver, BC, Los Angeles, CA and TEXAS! We really are everywhere!

What’s your typical day like?

Throughout the ownership of my own online magazine, I have also continued to work as a television host and now morning show radio host too. A typical day starts at 430am/530am depending on if I wash my hair or
not, which also depends on how restless my night was…lol! Its on air 600am – 1000am in Belleville on MIX97 radio (Mon-Fri)and then if need be I may have to travel an hour and 45 minutes to The Shopping Channel (TSC) studio to work an afternoon or evening shift. I usually work weekends in Toronto at TSC.

What was your biggest worry when you started your own company?

My biggest worry was that no one would find it interesting enough to read and to date we have 250-thousand readers! Not too shabby for no advertising and purely word of mouth.

How long did it take for you to feel confident about working for yourself?

For me confidence has never been something that I wait for to do something. I walk fearlessly and sometimes foolishly in the path of the least expected. Sometimes I fall flat on my face…but most times noone is around to see it and I dust myself off, wipe a tear away if it has strayed and keep moving. Life is a battle. You don’t stop – keep moving!

What surprised you the most about working for yourself?

I will tell you what surprised me most about working for myself – you can make anything happen and it is true, ” If you build it, they will come.”

What’s the biggest reward in working for yourself?

The biggest reward is that I have had a successful online magazine for 6 years and I have helped alot of young women help themselves. I feel incredibly grateful to have met over 50 women who have been affiliated
with Sugarcain Entertainment. Some have moved on to great jobs like Monika Platek who is an in house announcer for their live TV coverage for the TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS or Loriann Vilani who works on 102.1 THE EDGE as an anouncer.

What have you sacrificed?

I have sacrificed having or starting a family. I have sacrificed sleep. But I would change nothing, because, everything is as it should be.

Is there anything you would have done differently?

EVERYTHING IS AS IT SHOULD BE. If I could change anything, I may have told a couple of people to go SCREW THEMSELVES. However, the world is small, so I silently have said it and not verbalized it, even though they deserved it.

—–
Other Inspiring Women: Fearless and Fabulous Female Entrepreneurs

Ali De Bold – cofounder of ChickAdvisor
Equipped with a great business idea and loads of hard work she and her husband and business partner, Alex De Bold, started www.ChickAdvisor.com – Canada’s first user generated reviews community for women to share advice on their favourite products and local places. Find out how she did it, and the one thing she would have done differently!

Lisa Ng – founder of HelloDJ
Lisa Ng is a woman that goes after what she wants. She’s never worked in a corporate office, she owns her own DJ company, Hello DJ, and she’s not afraid to take risks. But how did she do it and what’s it like?

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