by ·0 Comments

I bought some pretty light pink peonies at the farmers market last week. They were pretty tightly packed when I bought them but opened up by the time we got home. They look nice, but I don’t like the smell. They smell like sesame oil to me!!

PS how many geometric things can I fit in one picture?

We also bought a few plants. A little kale plant, two types of cherry tomato, and a unidentified tree. I repotted the kale already but I still need to get a much bigger pot for my tomatoes and a pretty one for the tree.

We got two sets of the cherry tomatoes so that Scott and I can have a tomato-off. Whoever grows the most/best tomatoes wins!

I moved the kale into the shady part of the patio because apparently too much sun makes the kale more bitter. I left my tomatoes and the tree in the full sun and have been giving each a lot of water.

I hope everything stays alive!

by ·2 Comments

Biggest blanket ever. I only have two more colours to add before I start repeating the rainbow. And I’m thinking I will probably end up repeating the rainbow three times. So I am NEARLY 33% done, I think. The final decision will come much much later.

It worries me how uneven the last few rows look, but hopefully adding more rows fixes it. It seems that way since the reds and yellows and green rows look good. This blanket probably won’t come out perfect but that’s fine by me for a first ever crochet project.

Harry Potter alphabet cross stitch. While it is infuriating having to switch colours just to do a couple stitches, this has still been a fun project. I love doing the lettering the most. Lots more to go on this project. Can you guess who is going to be after Snape?

Geometric cross stitch. I haven’t done much on this lately as blanket and HP > geometric, but eventually I will come back to this one too. I had to learn how to do half stitches for this project, which are a pain in the butt, but it’s worth it for how crisp and pointy everything looks.

by ·2 Comments

Eat Vancouver is going on at BC Place this weekend. Scott and I went yesterday after work to check out all the samples. My first impression was that it was exactly the same as previous years, but when walking around I found a lot of new vendors that I hadn’t seen before.

The Maille mustard booth was pretty impressive! Check out that seared tuna sample! I really enjoyed the spicy Provencal mustard. Very delicious.

The Oikos yogurt truck was there again giving out samples of greek yogurt and granola toppings. Super thick creamy yogurt. I saved one for my breakfast this week.

As usual we attended a cheese tasting from the Dairy Farmers of Canada. I love these seminars, they are generous with the cheese and you can learn new stuff from Reg. He walks you through different aspects of each cheese and it’s great. This time I liked the camembert, feta and pepper Boursin the most.

They have really ramped up their booth this year, with a new set design and long tables giving out tons of samples of dozens of types of cheese all the time. You can buy the cheeses right from them this year too, which is new.

I had a mini cone of Birthday Cake ice cream from Island Farms. It tasted like icing and sprinkles. AKA, SUGAR. I enjoyed it.

After eating lots of hummus and pistachios and pickled products you get thirsty. Luckily there is a four sided drink tasting booth in the middle of the floor. I love the lemonades. The other sides have tea based drinks, sodas, and… something else that I forget. Oops.

We bought a few tickets and tasted a few beers and ciders in the alcohol section. I always forget that they have great (free) seminars going on in the alcohol section too, dang it. We just missed a whiskey tasting session which I’m sure would have been awesome.

I didn’t get a picture of it but we bought some Bruce Cost ginger ale on the way out. It’s all natural and SUPER TASTY. Looking forward to making some cocktails with it.

The swag bags were pretty great this year too, I got a big bottle of Reggae Reggae Jerk BBQ sauce, a gummy vitamin, some coupons, and a 1L carton of juice.

Disclaimer: our entrance tickets were provided complimentary, but all opinions are my own.

by ·0 Comments

sonobe

Scott really wanted to put his sonobe on his head. He mentioned it to me three different times.

Rosemarie and I are going to Listowel next month to visit our grandparents. We managed to get a REALLY REALLY REALLY good deal on flights thanks to YVR Deals. $278 roundtrip including the taxes!

Casual life is weird. When I look forward in my calendar I look really NOT busy, but when I look back in my calendar I see that I worked 3-5 days a week pretty much every week. Finger crossed this keeps happening for the next month until the summer schedule kicks in (where I know I have tons of work).

Scott’s citizenship application has been officially received. They sent him his study pack today. For his test in…. approximately 24 months according to the immigration website.

I should do another crafts update because I have been doing a lot of crocheting and cross stitching!! Soon.

I keep going through waves of emotion about off-season skeleton training. From “I SHOULD TRAIN SUPER HARD SO I CAN BE COMPETITIVE NEXT WINTER AND WIN RACES” to “I’M NEVER GOING TO ACTUALLY BE A COMPETITOR SO WHAT’S THE POINT” and back and forth and back and forth. I find it really difficult to train after working certain tiring shifts at work though, so my regimen hasn’t been super consistent, but I still have been doing weights a few times a week. And I actually started running again, something that I really really hate, but is necessary.

by ·0 Comments

Rosemarie, Lauren and I went spring skiing the other weekend up at Whistler. It was my first time spring skiing and I had tons of fun! The weather was soooooo nice.

The snow was still decent, up near the top it had the consistency of white sugar. I felt like I was spreading sugar on toast with my skis. Some runs the snow was a lot more stubborn which added an extra challenge, but it was still ok. A lot of the harder runs were already closed because of low snow cover, so in general we had a very nice relaxing day of skiing.

Lauren did quite excellent for a first time skier! Rosemarie had arranged a private lesson for him as a gift so he did that all morning and then we met up with him for lunch and skied with him after lunch. Rosemarie and I entertained ourselves by trying to do spins and ski backwards.

It was really hot out. I think it was 18 degrees in the village that day, and around 12 degrees near the top. I had jacket vents open and my snowpants unzipped (with shorts underneath). Very breezy!

Rosemarie’s ski selfie.