Happy Sunday, everyone!

I’ll be attending the Contessa 2014 Awards tonight, which will be hosted by Noah Cappe, the TV personality and host of Food Network Canada’s Carnival Eats!

(You may remember that last year, I attended and blogged about the awesome time I had at the Contessa 2013 Awards. Last year, there was a circus theme. This year, there’s an elemental theme – i.e. earth, air, fire, and water.)

The Contessa Canadian Hairstylist of the Year Awards celebrates 26 years of Canada’s top hair talent, and it’s a grand event taking place at the Westin Harbour Castle in downtown Toronto.

I’m not a hair professional, but PR was thoughtful and generous – they invited me to the event and provided me with a courtesy ticket for myself and my “date”. 🙂 (Good thing, too, because earlybird tickets were sold for $175 CAD, and afterwards, leading up to the Gala night, you can buy a ticket for $200 CAD!)

A portion of the proceeds from the Contessa 2014 Awards ticket sales and corporate sponsorships go toward Look Good Feel Better, which is a national, non-profit organization that supports women living with cancer through workshops, which help improve self-image of women fighting cancer.

It includes cocktails, the awards show with artistic presentations, and dinner! There are going to be over 1,000 guests attending, so yes, it’s a big, elaborate event, and I’m looking forward to soaking it all up! (Learn more about the Contessa 2014 Gala.)

While the main stars of the show will be professional hairstylists, there will also be categories for makeup artists and nail artists.

Tonight, check me out on social media, especially Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, as I will do my best to post photos and video clips from the event live. (It’s my way of ‘taking you with me’ and sharing the experience, which is way more fun!)

Also, there will be an official Contessa 2014 Awards Webcast, sponsored by CND. This webcast begins at 7 pm EST.

The entire event is presented by Salon Magazine, and you can see from the image above that there are a lot of professional haircare companies who have sponsored the Contessa 2014 Awards.

I’ll do a recap blog post in the near future, so you can see more from photos of this event that don’t make it onto my social media.

Yup, I’ll be busy working on a bunch of recap blog posts for my lovely readers:

• Nicole by OPI 2015 Collection Blogger Dinner (Attended on October 30, 2014)
• OPI Hawaii Collection Spring/Summer 2015 Media Launch (Attended on October 31, 2014) – Read my recap post here!
• Contessa 2014 Awards

Please stay tuned for those, and be patient. As you know, I blog as a hobby, and these days after my full-time job, socializing, and doing personal projects, I come home feeling pretty exhausted. I’ll do my best to get the posts up as soon as I can. I hope you will find them worth the wait! 🙂

If you’re not familiar with the Contessa Awards, please continue reading the rest of this post because I’ve included the press release that PR provided me with. It includes background information.

Below is the official press release provided to me by PR:

Contessa 26
Canadian Hairstylist of the Year Awards

Celebrate 26 Years of Canada’s Top Hair Talent

Toronto, October 1, 2014 – It’s the biggest night that the Canadian professional beauty industry counts down to each year! The 26th annual Contessa Awards will take place on November 9 at the Westin Harbour Castle, 1 Harbour Square, Toronto, beginning with a cocktail party at 5 pm, in order to honour the best in creative hairstyling, artistic nail design and makeup. More than 20 awards will be handed out during an unforgettable gala.

Top industry talents are among the finalists in the 23 categories, including the Canadian Hairstylist of the Year finalists: Andor Bubelenyi, Alina Friesen, Rob Gaspar, Daniel Naumovski, Alain Pereque, Kellie-Ann Philbin, Tony Ricci, Jacob Rozenberg, Josie Vilayvanh and Julie Vriesinga.

Hosted by TV personality and host of Food Network Canada’s Carnival Eats, Noah Cappe, ELEMENTAL is the theme of the evening. Along with award presentations, stage performances feature top-tier hairstylists with captivating interpretations of the theme. Taking inspiration from the natural element of air, Schwarzkopf Professional’s team will kick off with a wind-swept display of hair and makeup, followed by Collega for Aveda’s which will feature representations of water. Revlon Professional closes the evening with an explosive adventure in fire.

The show is choreographed by Dave Campbell, whose recent credits include the 2014 Juno Awards and is known for choreographing Cats in Toronto and all six seasons of Canadian Idol, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and Deal or No Deal.

The Contessa competition is judged by an international panel of experts from the worlds of hair, design, fashion and beauty, including hairstylists Damien Carney, Mark Leeson and Sam Villa and well-known industry photographers Jack Eames and Andrew O’Toole.

A time honoured tradition to give back will continue at this year’s Contessas, where a portion of the proceeds from gala ticket sales, in addition to corporate sponsorship donations, will be given to Look Good Feel Better. This national, non-profit organization supports women living with cancer through workshops, which help improve self-image of women fighting cancer.

We look forward to you joining us for this dynamic and much-anticipated night, celebrating the top talent in Canadian professional beauty!

The Contessas are owned and produced by Salon Communications Inc., owners of Salon Magazine – available in both English and French editions – Salonmagazine.ca, Elevate magazine and ElevateMagazine.com.

Edit: Wow! Noah Cappe retweeted my tweet! 🙂 He made my day! I can’t wait to attend this event and see him host!