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Rosemarie and I had a nice weekend together. Soaking up all the sister time that we can get before she leaves for Fiji. We played Carcassonne (with two expansions), cooked Shepherd’s Pie, painted our nails, did crafts, watched Parks and Recreation, and went to the food convention together! I only heard about the convention on Saturday so I was pretty happy that Rosemarie agreed to go.

Eat! Vancouver was AWESOME! It was $14 to get in (you save $2 if you buy your tickets online) and we stuffed ourselves with zillions of free samples from all sorts of food companies big and small. It was amazing. There were samples that cost money too (from $0.50 to $4) but we didn’t actually buy any because we were stuffed from all the free stuff.

I definitely did not take a picture of every single thing that we tried. We tried 50+ things!!!!!

Some highlights:

  • calamari salad
  • seaweed salad
  • butternut pumpkin and fennel soup (I didn’t taste fennel, it was more curry)
  • pomegranate and blueberry smoothie (McDonalds!)
  • tofu with a gross hot sauce
  • butter pecan fudge
  • a million different dips
  • a million different salsas
  • a million different hummuses
  • a million different salad dressings
  • olive tapenade
  • pistachios
  • ice cream and gelato (both salted caramel flavour)
  • hot sauce on styrofoam crackers
  • corned beef
  • salmon jerky (yuck)
  • weird noodles made out of tofu (yuck)
  • fancy butter
  • mushroom cream cheese (one of the most tasty things we tried)
  • lots of different types of fancy pop
  • lots of different types of juice (Purity Organics strawberry paradise was my favourite)

And MORE!! I can’t believe how many free samples there were!!

I bought some praline fudge. It is really good. People really liked my sushi shirt, if I had some business cards I totally would have made a sale. Rosemarie took this picture of me and my food related items.

They also had some kind of FOOD ART competition going on. I think the first two pictures there were made out of chocolate, and this last one was made of carrot, daikon, ginger etc. SO COOL!!

It was my first time being in BC Place ever. That’s the new roof that they spent 50 billion dollars on that isn’t even that great. The stadium seemed pretty good though, like everyone would have an equal view of the field.

They had Food Network celebrities doing shows around the outsides and we sat to watch one of them but the video screen that showed the counter was too hard to see so it wasn’t very interesting. We left early. There was a cheese seminar too but we missed getting in, bummer!!!

We got tons of swag. Magazines full of recipes, tons of coupons, samples, MORE COFFEE etc etc. We also got free shampoo samples at the Skytrain station! MEGA SAMPLE DAY!

All in all it was an excellent way to spend the morning. I recommend going right for the time it opens because it was pleasant then, but then started to get VERY busy around 12 or 1 PM. The only criticism I have is NEEDS MORE CHEESE SAMPLES!! There were almost none!! Booooo. But anyway we left with very full stomachs and had lots of fun. Definitely worth $14 and I will definitely be going back next year.

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Well I hosted another end of year party for my class. It was fun, everyone came except for one, plus Brian and Scott. We drank way more this time, oh jeeze. After 11 finals I guess that’s ok though. After like 6 hours at our house we went downtown to dance it up, which was pretty fun too. I like my class.


This picture is just so ridiculously funny and stupid. I am GLAD it’s blurry!!!

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Driving up the Sea To Sky Highway up to Squamish. CANADA IS AWESOME AND AMAZING.

Rose and Rob planned an awesome BBQ for last Saturday. They really had everything, delicious homemade hamburgers with tons of toppings including guacamole, delicious kebabs with TWO kinds of halloumi, and a variety of drinks including freshly blended lime margaritas! Rob rigged up a blender to a battery that could be charged from a solar panel. SO NERDY.


My burger. Om nom nom.

Me blending up a margarita (for everyone else, I’M NEVER DRINKING AGAIN).

Also check out that view!! It was a great location and the most perfect day for a BBQ.

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What a wonderful weekend. Friday afternoon/evening we had my class party and went downtown. I’ll write about that some other time. Saturday morning Scott and I drove up to Squamish in our rental car, and arrived at Murrin Provincial Park just in time for a wicked BBQ, which I will also write about in another post.

I have never been outdoor rock climbing before so everything was new. I was worried I was going to be as horrible at climbing as I was at Christmas when Rose took me in Ottawa, but either it was easier, or I was better, because I did actually make it to the top of three different walls. GO ME!

We did a few climbs at one area, then moved to a much farther away area, then camped overnight at a free camping spot north of Squamish, and then played on another mountain (Cheakamus) on Sunday morning before driving back on Sunday afternoon to clean up our pig-sty apartment and prepare for first day of work/Edmonton.

Rose being a belay slave. There were a bunch of n00bs so her and Rob did A LOT of belaying for us. THANKS GUYS.

Scott climbing a crack. He’s kind of scared of heights so that was kind of a major accomplishment. He did good this weekend. He climbed to the top of three or four walls!!

Me climbing.

That little kid is only 6 years old! She has been climbing since she was 3. O_O

More me climbing.

Scott looks funny.

Rose and Rob both up on the wall. Rob’s leg looks deformed!!!!

OK so I’m still not very good at climbing. At this point I didn’t know what to do so I just heaved myself on to this ledge bit and was now lying on my stomach. SMOOTH MOVES KATRINA.

Jen and I sitting around at the bottom resting and psyching ourselves up for the next climb.

Some spectacular views this weekend.

Rob’s friend Dustin hiked up this big hill and got soooo high up!! You can just barely make him out, he’s that tiny speck at the top!

This is the picture that Dustin took of us. You can see Scott standing at the top. Rose and Rob climbed this wall, and Scott and I hiked up. SO HIGH!!

They sure look relaxed for being that high up in the air suspended by a couple ropes.

Rose let me take her harness so I could rappel down. She’s so nice. This picture is her teaching me how to use the rappel thingy.

The worst part of it was moving from sitting on the rock above the anchor to hanging below it. Very awkward.

Rappeling is a way better way of getting down!!

Oh yeah, good place to relax. Woooo BC!

Ah, and if that was not enough pictures to satisfy you, you can see more in my Facebook album! Click HERE for that.

I still don’t feel the OH MY GOD I LOVE ROCK CLIMBING feeling, but I definitely did see the appeal more this time than last. I think I still would prefer to hurl myself DOWN things to get my thrills.

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Here we go… another nail tutorial! DIY nail decals this time.

I first tried this DIY nail decal technique a couple weeks ago, with not very much success. ATTEMPT #1. EW SO UGLY. Since then I’ve tried the technique three more times and have come up with a few tips and tricks for you.

ATTEMPT #2

I painted a huge thick gradient of three colours onto a Ziploc bag. It was very smelly. I let it dry overnight.

I then cut out ten pieces, one for each nail. One nail at a time, I painted on base coat, let it dry for 10 seconds, then peeled my DIY nail decal off the plastic bag and stuck it on to my nail. I used my thumb of my other hand to smooth out the part that was actually touching my nail as much as I could.

Here’s where things started to get difficult: the decals were far too big for my nails. Ripping off the edges did not work, so I used nail clippers to trim off all the extras, but that was not very successful either. Probably those small nail scissors would work the best, but I don’t have any. Once I got all the major flaps off I used a q-tip with nail polish remover to dissolve the rest and clean up the edges as best I could.

Two coats of top coat later, that’s what I ended up with.

Oh by the way, I use Essie’s Good To Go top coat now because my Seche Vite has thickened up wayyy too much. Rip off. Anyway Essie’s isn’t AS super fast drying, but it’s still pretty good and it’s not becoming thick. I like to do one very quick coat of top coat, very light and gentle so nothing gets smeared underneath, and then after that has dried, a second coat just to make sure everything has been covered. This makes my nails extra extra shiny and incredibly durable.

Well anyway that manicure looked pretty cool but it took a long long time, and getting rid of the extra bits around the edges was super hard and I wasn’t pleased at how jagged some of them ended up.

ATTEMPT #3

My nails still looked fine, so I got Rosemarie to come over so I could try another idea out on her nails.

The night before, I painted 30 hearts on a ziploc bag (so she could choose what she wanted).   Overnight drying seems to be good. If not overnight, at least let it dry for several hours!

She chose rainbow hearts, with gold underneath. I used pretty much the same technique as before: painted one nail at a time with the gold nail polish, then peeled off a little heart decal and carefully stuck it on her nail. I used a toothpick to push the edges of the hearts down gently. Once I finished all of the nails on one hand I went back and used my thumb to press the hearts down better.

Excuse her lizard skin please.

Two coats of top coat later she was done. There was much less clean up to do afterwards, no trimming necessary.

ATTEMPT #4

Rainbow nails, rainbow hearts + topcoat. I love it, I think it turned out pretty well!

It’s pretty neat how the two layers of nail polish end up fusing into one smooth layer. I haven’t had any cases of peeling whatsoever. The gradient manicure stayed on my nails for two full weeks, so it’s obviously nice and strong even considering you just stick it on to the nail as opposed to painting it on.

Tips & Tricks

– Thick is better than thin. Paint the nail polish on fairly thick on the Ziploc bag. I have not had any issues of the decals being too thick, but I HAVE had issues where the polish was too thin and the decal ripped.

– Probably best to just do little designs instead of the entire nail (the big decals were too much work, considering the results). Designs that have skinny or pointy parts (ie. stars) are going to be harder to peel off the bag than designs that are rounded (ie. hearts or circles).

– Do one quick light coat of top coat, then when dry do another coat, so you have less chance of smudging your hard work.

– You can use scissors to trim up your decals on the plastic bags after they are dry if you didn’t do a nice job of painting the designs.

– Let the decals dry for a while. At least a few hours! Also leaving my heart decals on the bag for a week did not seem to affect them at all.