I went from having very little school work to A WHOLE LOT of school work very suddenly. Five midterms in the very near future, including three in a row. AHHH. A lot of assignments. So… I think I’m fully back to school life.

If you haven’t seen it already, Scott posted his February post on his blog!

Out of all the holidays that food blogs “celebrate” (ie. EVERYTHING PUMPKIN IN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER, or ALL peppermint Christmas desserts, or Chinese food OVERLOAD for Chinese New Year) I actually really enjoy the pre-Superbowl season. I LOVE party food, the grosser the better. Bring on the liquid cheese.

Scott is definitely watching the Superbowl this weekend but it is unclear whether I will have time or not to watch sit on the couch with my laptop. I may just have to whip up a dish of jalapeno popper dip, a bowl of guacamummus (guacamole + hummus), and a pot of queso blanco liquid cheese ANYWAY.

Check out these super beautiful quilts that my Auntie Hsi made for Scott and I as a wedding gift. They are so pretty!

A few months ago my aunt sent us a couple dozen fabric swatches in our favourite colours (me purple, Scott green) and we got to pick out our favourites and send the results back in a picture. Then a few months later these were ready! Rosemarie picked them up when she went to Toronto over the holidays and brought them back to Vancouver for us.

This is my quilt. Night.

And this one is Scott’s. Day.

They are lovely.

Every family should have a quilt and now we are lucky to have two super nice custom ones handmade with love from my aunt. I like thinking about how we will have them forever. I keep looking at mine and smiling. SO COOL.

Sarah Swan brought us back these alpaca sweaters all the way from Bolivia! They are made of alpaca and are very soft. And they have alpacas on them. I like that they are matching, hehe. I think I will wear mine next time I go to Whistler.

Also check out Scott’s pants. He was totally pro-shorts until I got him those for Christmas and I think now 95% of the time that he is home he is wearing them. Ha.


Here is (hipster) Scott at the (hipster) skating rink on Sunday.


Maybe you already saw this on Facebook, but check it out…. I managed to get the bucky balls back into their original 6x6x6 cube!! I am so impressed with my (hipster) self.

I think tomorrow’s post will be the end of the Awesome Gift series, but it’s definitely an amazing one, so stay tuned.

I’m about to eat some homemade olive bread with spicy zucchini soup! Nice work Scott!


My sister-in-law got me this pretty framed elephant print for my Kris Kringle gift. It’s so nice! She oh so cleverly noticed that I had pinned it on Pinterest and surprised me with it for Christmas. It’s really pretty. Thanks Jess!


Cassia got me these awesome pillow covers from Finland, as a belated wedding present. I really need to get larger pillows to put inside them, as the floppy ones I have now are not doing them justice! Anyway they match our couch very nicely and I really like them. Thank you Cassia.

Last night we went over to Brian and Morgan’s for drinks and games. They are going to Hawaii in a few days so we talked a lot about that. Now Scott and I really want to go back to Hawaii again! It was so nice there!!! I want to eat more ahi tuna.

I haven’t done too much today, but it’s ok because I still don’t have that much homework and finished it all yesterday. Scott and I did go skating though, which was fun. Scott was going a bit faster than I remember from last year by the end, so he is improving. I think we will start going skating more regularly.


I tried another Budget Bytes recipe yesterday. Slow cooker non-fried refried beans!

I don’t have any pictures (not very photogenic) but they turned out awesome!!! SO much nicer than canned refried beans, and way cheaper. Also they must be pretty healthy because the only ingredients are dried pinto beans, water, onion, garlic, jalapeno and some spices! No oil whatsoever, they just cooked in the slow-cooker for 8 hours and then I mashed them.

The recipe made about 5 servings of beans for less than $2. I bet I could even get cheaper dried beans if I bought a bigger package or got them in bulk. We ate yummy shrimp burritos last night, and we froze the remaining four servings for another time.


Scott did end up making the choc ripple cake. He whipped the cream by hand!!


It was tasty. I ate it with breakfast….. I’m still off chocolate after the morning. Actually speaking of sleep I’ve been pretty good at it lately! I fall asleep much quicker than before, although I still do have the occasional insomnia night when I’m really anxious/nervous but it’s really way less frequent than last spring/summer.


Dinner last week. Quinoa with shrimp, avocado, butternut pumpkin, corn, red pepper, green onion, lime. I made the quinoa in the rice cooker, stir-fried all the vegetables, removed them and seared the shrimp, then mixed everything together, added avocado, and doused it all with the juice of one whole lime. YUM YUM.

I’ll be back with another awesome gift post later today.