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Last weekend Scott, Rosemarie and I headed over to Vancouver Island to camp and go tubing down the Cowichan River. The weather wasn’t great but luckily the water was suuuuuuper warm so we could still tube.

The tubing is pretty neat, it’s about 2.5 hours long of floating. You can bring drinks, they even have floating recycling bins at various points down the river. Most of it was pretty calm but there are a few sections that go a little quicker. It’s definitely a lazy river rather than anything XTREME though. You do kind of have to paddle with your arms sometimes to make sure you go the right direction. I enjoyed myself though and I’m sure it’s a lot more fun when it’s a really hot day out and there are more people.

While it was kinda fun to be camping, it was too cold to swim or lay around and there was a fire ban… so we didn’t have a whole lot to do. Camping is all about the campfire!!! We played some games but it sprinkled rain on and off and the wind kept picking up our cards (and placing them into Scott’s hand). Eventually we just went to bed and read by flashlight.

nanaimo bar cheesecake

We decided to spend the last day in Nanaimo going on a Nanaimo Bar Crawl. They have a brochure that has 34 different places you can get Nanaimo Bar things. Unfortunately because it was Sunday A LOT of the places were closed. :'(((( We must have gone to at least 10 shops that ended up being closed. Bad luck.

But we did enjoy a slice of Nanaimo bar cheesecake that was SUPER YUM at Minnoz Steak & Seafood.

salted caramel nanaimo bar

And a salted caramel Nanaimo bar at Bocca Cafe that was also very good. I kind of want to sprinkle salt on all my Nanaimo bars now. They also had peanut butter, and chili Nanaimo bars and a lot of other really good looking food.

deep fried nanaimo bar

And then a deep fried Nanaimo bar at Pirate Chips. It tasted ok, but not as good as I expected.

All three of us liked the cheesecake one the most.

Then we waited 5+ hours in the line for the ferry back to Vancouver. UGH. It started off fun, we were playing Carcassonne on the ipad.

Then it got more tedious. And we got hungry, so I prepared a charcuterie dinner using a paper bag as a cutting board. SAFETY.

Ugh then we found out that the ferry price was not a return fare (like when you go the Sunshine Coast) and we all cried while we emptied our wallets. Yeesh going to the island is expensive!!!!!! We totally should have smuggled Rosemarie in in the trunk.

Eventually we did get on a ferry and we snagged a good games table to squeeze in a couple more games of Settlers before the weekend was over. I kept my eyes peeled for whales in between turns but didn’t see any.

Soooo in conclusion, tubing was fun-ish, camping was fun-ish, Nanaimo bar was fun-ish, etc. etc. And visiting the island costs A LOT and is terribly annoying on the weekends. Well I’m glad we went, but I’m not in a huge hurry to go back, at least not for just a weekend.

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A million years ago I had a birthday party. I hope everyone else enjoyed themselves as much as I did, because I had tons of fun.

We had a hotdog bar. There were several types of hotdogs and sausages, plus TONS O’ TOPPINGS. We had: guacamole, mashed potatoes, corn salsa, mustards, hummus, various cheeses, caramelized onions, beer mushrooms, sour cream, basil mayonnaise, bacon, salsa…. and probably more that I’m forgetting. IT WAS AMAZING.

Brian had a great idea of passing his hotdog around and letting everyone put toppings on for him. It ended up with a little of everything, plus a lot of sriracha, and a strip of watermelon. Haha. He still ate it.

Rosemarie and Lauren made me an awesome taco piñata. It looked sooooo cool!!!! Only problem was it was TOO DURABLE! We broke our mop handle and broom handle in the process of bashing the piñata open. But it was worth it for the amount of entertainment gained. I’m glad we didn’t get evicted for Rob being on the roof, especially considering we were being so loud we had a lot of witnesses from the other building. :D

We also played games. PS the above picture shows our answers for “How many acres is Central Park in NYC?”. Apparently Rosemarie thinks that Central Park is only slightly bigger than our cottage property, hehehehehehheeeee. Wits & Wagers and Cards Against Humanity are always fun times.

We really need to have people over more often.

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I decided a few weeks ago that I was wasting away too much time on the internets and I should try to do something more productive. I happen to work right across the street from a Michaels so it wasn’t hard to get a bunch of craft supplies and get started. Here are my current works in progress.

OK well this one is pretty much done, but I still need to iron and figure out what to do with it. Frame? Cardboard? Decorative pillow? (probably not the last idea).

My sisters-in-law always post lots of cute cross stitches on Instagram and they inspired me to try it. I do remember doing cross stitch at some point when I was like… 7, but I don’t think I even finished the kit that my mom gave me at the time. Cross stitch designs are pretty awesome these days… not so many cats in baskets, haha. Now I have to figure out what design to do next.

Granny stripe afghan. My mom taught me to crochet when I was little, I think I made about 3 squares and then quit. I guess I have more perseverance these days because I haven’t lost interest at all yet. This thing is massive… about 7 feet across!! King size! It’s exciting having it become more blanket-like every day. But each row takes me 30-40 minutes, so I still have a looooooong way to go.

I’ve been stopping at Michaels after every shift at work to buy another ball of yarn with a 40% off coupon. I hope I get some shifts next week because I’ve caught up and need more colours at the moment.

Australia Ticket To Ride. This project started off as just Sharpies on poster board, but then I accidentally drew a super ugmo points thingy on the side and had to paint over it to forever rid the world of its hideousness. Then when we tested it out ~some people~ couldn’t tell the difference between the yellow and green, and the orange and red, so ~apparently~ I have to redo that. And then if I’m redoing the tracks I might as well make the states look better (who makes the land part of a map blue). So basically I have to paint over the whole thing. But the water part looks pretty cool painted, so I’m excited about the whole thing. I just have to stop being so lazy and get my paints out some day.

Until next time… can someone wash my paintbrushes for me?

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Oh my. It’s been a while since I last blogged about regular life stuff. I’ve got TONS of stuff to talk about!! The next bunch of posts might get a little random in here.

Way back in December Lesley came over for another dinner and games night. Rosemarie was still living with us at that point so we got to test out my homemade Ticket To Ride Australia with FOUR PLAYERS. It worked! But Scott and Lesley kept mixing up the yellow and green so apparently I need to do some touch-ups on the board. ;) We still need to make nice tickets as well. I’ll post the whole thing when I’m done (probably in about 8 years at the rate I’m going).


We made stuffed crust pizzas for dinner. Scott made the dough, then we stuffed the crusts with cheese strings and/or hot dogs (!!). If you make these, be sure to pinch the dough tightly shut around your stuffings so they don’t leak out. I had chopped up tons of other toppings so we could each make our own custom pizzas. Plus lots of mozzarella of course.

The pizzas came out deformed, but delicious. DIY stuffed crust works, although I would probably just stick with the cheese strings in the future, the hot dog was wayyyyyyyyyyyy too salty (who woulda guessed).

This was also the night that I learned how to make margaritas at home. My latest favourite drink EVER. On the rocks, with fresh limes. There is an Asian grocery store down the street that often sells $1 bags of slightly old limes, perfect for squeezing! Anyway due to several PITCHERS of margaritas, no other pictures were taken this evening, haha.