The One of a Kind Show came to the Vancouver Convention Centre last month.

This was its second year in Vancouver; having missed it last year I quite looked forward to going this year.

We spent the evening browsing rows and rows of unique and beautiful crafts, beautiful clothing, gorgeous jewellery and home and lifestyle products.

It was rather nice discovering local BC artists whom I didn’t even know existed, and of course talented artists from all over North America.

It was a beautiful show.

These adorable hand-printed linen baby slings from Ollie Golightly were quite a hit

That’s Pook the monkey from Pook Toques, that was a hit too.

I really wish the show was in December or closer to Christmas, the beginning of October is too early for me to start Christmas shopping.

I can totally see myself doing all my Christmas shopping here, my presents would have been unique and cool.

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The African Peace Festival has been going on every year for the past four years, and for some strange reason, I’d never heard of it until recently. What kind of African am I?

As luck would have it, I met one of the performers weeks earlier at the jazz festival who promised it’ll be fun.

The festival is organized by the African Peace Forum Society to raise funds ‘for a grassroots humanitarian project in Africa which is selected annually’.

This year’s festival was held at the Roundhouse Community Centre on the 18^th of July. I went there not exactly sure what to expect.

I imagined a peace festival would be a conference style sort of atmosphere with workshops and possibly breakout sessions where there’ll be lots of vague talk about how to bring peace to ‘Africa’. This isn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my Saturday afternoon.

Thankfully, it wasn’t anything like I imagined. It was a market place with a performance stage and seating area in the middle. I really liked the set up because I could browse, watch and listen to the performances too.

The market place featured an array of interesting vendors;

Pathfinder Press publishes writings and speeches from revolutionists like Thomas Sankara.

Afri-Pads is a Ugandan based organization that sews and distributes washable menstrual pads to girls in rural Uganda – it’s such an exceptional enterprise.

Performances included a poetry slam, musical acts and an acrobat dancer. Saw the Raging Grannies!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for the whole event because I had to be at the Folk Festival.

It was� overall great fun; I’m glad I was there,� saw some old friendly faces and discovered new ones.

Last Saturday Central City Foundation held its third annual Fair in the Square.

The foundation assists individuals in Vancouver’s inner city with “safe affordable housing and programs that enhances their lives”. It’s been in existence since 1907.

It was a beautiful day for a picnic out in the park.

There was live music, plenty of food, ‘community fair goods’ and support/information tables for anyone who needed help.

It was great to see the community of the Downtown Eastside come together and enjoy a day out in the sun.

I was honoured to be there to experience this different and positive side of the neighbourhood.

Live music was by a duo (whose names I unfortunately didn’t catch),� they did a rendition of David Bowie’s Space Oddity.

This is one of my favourite songs of all time – (side note: the Québécois movie C.R.A.Z.Y. is a must see for any David Bowie fan and it’s a great movie too)

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This is Tom, he and his wife live in the downtown Eastside. They are originally from the North West Territories and he calls himself an Eskimo.

They were enjoying their time out in the park with their young grandson, who likes playing video games and riding his bicycle.

Yesterday was another beautiful day, it felt a little like paradise.

Everyone was outside walking, biking or on their blades. Kids were running around and sweet music was in the air

I went for a walk and brought my new camera along, luckily, it also records videos.

We basically circled the downtown core; we walked as far east as Victory Square where Central City Foundation was holding their ’09 Fair in the Square picnic, we hung out a bit – listened to live music, took pictures and talked to some of the folks (I’ll do a post on that soon).

We walked back through Canada Place and the new Convention Centre.

We took a breather at the park in Coal Harbour, watched the kids (and some adults) have fun in the spray park and wished were that carefree.

We spent sometime with the gracious busker, and people watched for a while.

Eat! Vancouver, the food festival, took place this past weekend at BC Place. I went with my mom and sister on Friday night.

Eat!Vancouver is an annual event that I’ve been attending for the past four years, and even though I didn’t particularly enjoy last year’s, my mom insisted we go because she had fun at last year’s. Friday was the opening day and we got there with about only three hours to spare.

Chef Anthony Sedlak from Food Network Canada’s The Main was on the cooking stage.

There were some new and interesting vendors this year.

Rabbit River Farms in Richmond, BC produces organic, free range and free run eggs and chickens. They also raise special breed chickens that lay naturally colourful eggs, I learnt about the Araucana Chicken that lays the bluish/green eggs.

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These women managed to turn their passion for olive oil into an aptly named business called Olea Europaea. The company sells ten premium olive oils sourced from all over the Mediterranean.

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I actually discovered Bosa Foods at the very first Eat!Vancouver I attended, and it’s become one of my main places to shop, I go to the Kootney Street store at least twice a month to stock up on pantry items like pasta, beans, Italian sodas etc.

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These beautiful ladies gracefully posed for this picture after asking if it was going “somewhere on the internet” That’s the food Chef Anthony prepared and they both agreed it was very good.

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More pictures from Flickr below: