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Well summer is now over. :( I didn’t actually complete all my summer goals but I’m ok with this. I did do a lot of them! I think it was a pretty successful way of keeping me motivated and off the couch this summer.

  1. Finally paint the cheapo wooden drawers we got from IKEA. done.
  2. Make delicious popsicles in my new popsicle mold. once (strawberry lemonade). twice (strawberry frozen yogurt). thrice (strawberry raspberry vanilla frozen yogurt).
  3. Go swimming in the ocean for the first time in Vancouver. done!
  4. Ride the rides at the PNE. well we went on ONE ride. :/
  5. Watch fireworks. done.
  6. Finish my Settlers paintings.
  7. Sell a pair of shoes or a shirt or a painting.
  8. Go to one of the night markets in Richmond. done. twice, actually!
  9. Regularly visit the farmers market on Saturday mornings. once. twice. thrice.
  10. Read some books while I actually have the time. Insurgent (Veronica Roth), Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (Jenny Lawson), The Art of Fielding: A Novel (Chad Harbach), Geek Love (Katherine Dunn), Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn), currently reading The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern).
  11. Make a nicer looking menu planning board. done!
  12. Find a new person to play board games with. done!
  13. Try a new fruit. I guess fresh figs counts for this one.
  14. Do a successful venipuncture on a real patient. I’ve done about 75 now.
  15. Make a new blog header.
  16. Take more pictures. nope.

Basically the things I didn’t finish are the more major art projects. I need the perfect combination of time and space and inspiration to get those done!

I don’t think I will make a new goals list immediately because I’m too busy with school now. But I’ll definitely do this again next summer!

Our house is a total disaster area right now. We’ve got some serious cleaning to do this morning. Happy weekend.

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I had a really great long weekend. Warm weather, lots of food, a bit of travelling. It was a fantastic way to end the summer. 

Horseshoe Bay, BC

More Horseshoe Bay, BC

Me and the nosebleed shirt on the ferry

On Sunday I took the ferry out to visit Lesley who lives on the Sunshine Coast (HI LESLEY). We pretty much spent the day catching up (she was out in Nanaimo for the whole summer) and eating tons o’ snacks and BBQ. It was lovely. We watched a movie too. I can’t remember any other things we did but that’s not to say it wasn’t a fun visit. I would totally go back!

British Columbia is pretty

I stayed overnight and then we took the ferry back together on Monday afternoon.

BEFORE

I FINALLY painted our wooden IKEA Rast drawers. I have been meaning to do that for like 14 months!!

AFTER

I think they turned out decent. Not super beautiful or anything but kinda neat. At least they are more personalized now and not just ‘cheapest option at IKEA’. BTW, I am gradually turning our house into a rainbow kindergarten.

Yesterday Scott and I went to Washington, but I’m going to leave that for a separate post.

I have failed miserably so far at my photo of dinner every day plan, it’s September 5th today and I have a grand total of ONE dinner picture, and it’s from today. OOPS. I’ll wait until I have a few and then post them all at once I think.

All for now. Posts to come: our mini road trip to Washington, a back-to-school update, and MAGNETIC NAIL POLISH pictures.

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Only 22 more days left for me to complete my summer goals list!!

  1. Finally paint the cheapo wooden drawers we got from IKEA. I think I’m going to go do this RIGHT NOW.
  2. Make delicious popsicles in my new popsicle mold. once (strawberry lemonade). twice (strawberry frozen yogurt). thrice (strawberry raspberry vanilla frozen yogurt).
  3. Go swimming in the ocean for the first time in Vancouver. done!
  4. Ride the rides at the PNE. well we went on ONE ride. :/
  5. Watch fireworks. done.
  6. Finish my Settlers paintings.
  7. Sell a pair of shoes or a shirt or a painting.
  8. Go to one of the night markets in Richmond. done. twice, actually!
  9. Regularly visit the farmers market on Saturday mornings. once. twice. thrice.
  10. Read some books while I actually have the time. Insurgent (Veronica Roth), Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (Jenny Lawson), The Art of Fielding: A Novel (Chad Harbach), Geek Love (Katherine Dunn), currently reading Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn).
  11. Make a nicer looking menu planning board. done!
  12. Find a new person to play board games with. done!
  13. Try a new fruit. I guess fresh figs counts for this one.
  14. Do a successful venipuncture on a real patient. I’ve done about 75 now.
  15. Make a new blog header.
  16. Take more pictures. completely failing.

Last night was lots of fun. We drank enormous drinks that had candy in them and I ate SEVEN KINDS OF CHEESE in one meal!! (Our table shared a trio of fries [poutine, fries with gorgonzola, and truffle oil fries with parmesan], I had a three cheese grilled cheese sandwich, and my salad had feta in it). EPIC MEAL.

Scott stealing some of my drink.

I hope I can get a job at VGH next year. They are really fun/great people there.

Thinking of another challenge for me to do this month: take a photo of every dinner I have. I know I already post food pictures here and there on this blog but I only ever really post the special stuff. I think this month I’ll try to document every dinner so you can see some of our more regular dishes. We’ll see how it goes.

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I achieved another one of my summer goals this weekend! We had some friends-of-a-friend to come over to play board games with us on Friday night and it was fun. We played two games of Wasabi and one game of Ticket To Ride. I totally smashed them at Ticket To Ride, I somehow managed to complete Vancouver to Montreal, Seattle to New York, AND Los Angeles to New York. That’s a lot of points.

We went to the Vancouver farmers market again yesterday. We didn’t buy that much because it is SO EXPENSIVE! We just bought 6 figs, a loaf of cheddar jalapeno bread, and one corn cob (Scott doesn’t really like corn). I am extremely excited to try cooking with figs for the first time. I’m going to make a pizza with figs, goat cheese, and prosciutto.

The farmers market is nice because everything is good quality, but I’m not at the point where I want to spend a lot of money to get organic products and fancy stuff. I would prefer a farmers market where everything is dirty, I don’t need perfectly lined up tents and neatly stacked up pyramids. I just want cheap produce!!

We also went swimming at the outdoor pool near our house. It’s a pretty big pool, and it wasn’t crowded. Too bad we didn’t really know about it until the very end of the summer!

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On Saturday I made Thai green papaya salad with shrimp for dinner. One of my new favourite recipes ever!! I made it a bit too spicy though… next time I will definitely put less red chili. Underneath all the heat though it tasted fantastic, and it’s nice and healthy!

After dinner we met up with Zsofi downtown for more fireworks.

The show was from Italy. It was good!! Definitely better than Vietnam the week before, although we heard that Brazil’s show on Wednesday was the best. Shame we missed it. Scott even won tickets to sit in the bleachers for that show but we ended up selling them for $50 because I can’t stay up that late on a weeknight.

I give Italy +10 points for those cool fireworks that looked like arrows going upwards that I had never seen before, but also -10 points for putting off those lame-o smiley face fireworks that I HATE.

Also the smoke from the fireworks was really thick and sometimes it blocked out a lot of the fireworks (like in the above picture). I don’t think that is really their fault though, I guess it just wasn’t breezy out.