The Voyces - Kissing Like It's Love

This song has been playing on my itunes for the past few weeks and I still can't get enough of it. Their next video will star Shandi of ANTM cycle 2! LOL!!

the cotton anniversary

It's our 2nd wedding anniversary and while we stuffed our faces with poached eggs and bacon for breakfast, we decided to honour the cotton tradition. 2 new Threadless tees for us! Tree Town for Cornelius and The Emergence of the Easter Egg for me. What can I say, I love chickens!

I also love strawberries and this weekend I joined up some friends who took out a mini van from their car co-op and a-berry-pickin' we went! The berries were tiny and so flavourful...way better than the over-sized berries you find in the stores nowadays. Yum.

portland was great.

We ate a bacon & maple donut and loved it.
We soaked our naked butts in the same place Will Oldham soaked his naked butt.
We drank lots of great beers. Copecetic IPA, I ♥ you!
We bought shoes, and lots of 'em. Well, 1 pair for Cornelius and 2 pairs for me. Portland has no sales tax so it's extra worth it.

Road trips are awesome and I hope we can squeeze in one more before we head off to Europe later this summer.

ad free zone

I started this blog as an experiment. I wanted a way to keep track of the little things that caught my eye either online or in the real world. And I also wanted a separate space to write about things that weren't about food and recipes. When I started my food blog I decided to forgo advertising altogether but then I started this blog and decided I'd give it a try. It was out of curiosity at first but then I simply forgot about them and grew a severe case of ad blindness. Sure, I had dreams of quitting my day job and just living off the riches that Google advertising would ply me with, but of course, that didn't happen. This morning when I saw an ad for hutches on the side of my blog, it totally put me off. It's funny because I used to work as a web designer for Adbusters magazine and have always been pretty critical of the way advertising and media shapes our world, so when I clued back in to those ubiquitous Google text ads, it totally put me off. I always try to live responsibly and make a conscious effort to choose the better option, so having ads on my blog was something I felt was a wrong choice for me. I immediately deleted that AdSense code from my sidebar and I felt a whole lot better.

Getting money from advertising is something that I just didn't feel good about. I guess it's the same reason why I'm always turning down free product from companies wanting me to blog about their products. I want to choose what I'm writing about and being obligated to write about a product I could care less about doesn't interest me in the least. I want the people who read my blog to know that anything I write about is endorsed by me and me alone. But of course, if someone wants to pay me to write about something that I want to write about — say local events or my own personal stories, well, that's just perfect! And so I've just started to write for the Food Network Canada blog, Food for Thought and my first post about my trip to the local farmer's market was published this morning. Stop by and say hi if you like as it would be nice to know your thoughts about what I wrote there.

I'm also curious about your own ideas/experiences about advertising on blogs. How do you feel about placing ads on blogs or bloggers accepting products?

portland bound

In a few days I'll be heading to one of my favorite cities, Portland, OR. We'll be visiting good friends and definitely drinking lots of good beers, eating awesome meals and doing a whole lot of thrifting. Throw in a trip to some hotsprings and a hike in the Gorge and it's pretty much a dream mini-vacation. Although we'll be with our well-heeled Portland hosts, any must see/do/eat/shop tips are more than welcome!

hutch

After a couple months of looking, we finally purchased a buffet & hutch for our dining room. We had actually spotted it on Craigslist, went out to Coquitlam to view it, but price was $250 (more than we were willing to spend) plus we didn't have a vehicle to carry it back with us. While the owner had offered to drive it over, it just meant that there would be little chance to haggle (and I LOVE a good haggle!). So we let it be. Two weeks later, we received an email from the owner saying he'd knock off a hundred bucks and he'd deliver it the next day. So we snapped it up. I haven't had a chance yet to fill it with my treasures, though I'm definitely getting some inspiration from the blog, Making it Lovely. Behind those sliding wooden doors, however, hides a treasure trove of all our board games. Monopoly? Bohnanza? Ticket to Ride Europe? Scrabble? Boggle? Yahtzee? We've got a ton more too. Lots, lots more. What can I say, we're board game geeks! Now I've got to decide if I want to keep the mirror in the hutch or cover it up with some dramatic wallpaper!

summertime stride

Vancouver seems to have finally hit its summer stride. The past week has been hot and sunny and oh so perfect! There are no complaints here. This week there were beers on the balcony, hamburgers on the beach and bike rides around the city. This weekend has lots of possibilities too: midnight bike rides en masse with the EMB crew, gardening, walks for a scoop of gelato...so many options! I also have a lot of work that needs to get done, but it's easy to stay away from the computer when the sun is out.

Enjoy your weekend. And check out this little bit of bike porn: Vanilla Cycles out of Portland, OR. I could never afford their bikes, but every photo is completely drool-worthy.

Looking for some summer tunes to help you through the hot times? Check out the new monthly playlist to your right. HOTT!