diamonds for the weekend

Jay from Popsheep has uploaded his band's new album on his site. Take, distribute and enjoy! I'm loving it lots.

good smells...plus, help me buy a candle!

I'm totally into scents right now. I bought some very delicious soaps from etsy seller Bonghinatura. I just finished the peppermint/eucalyptus blend and tomorrow will try the oatmeal, vanilla and honey soap. They seriously smell amazing.

Seeing that summer is also creeping up super fast, I figured I should try a new all-natural deodorant. So again, I went onto etsy and bought one from this seller to try. So far, so good. I wore it on an uphill bikeride to a concert on the weekend and it held up really well. However, I was nervous about it and kept sniffing the air throughout the show. I did smell some stinky pits, but it came from my husband, so my new natural deodorant is off the hook! Phew. It works and it smells great.

I'm also on the serious look out for a good smelling candle. If there was an Anthropologie here in the 'couv I'd totally be all over it. I'm a fan of herbal, eucalyptus-y scents rather than cloyingly sweet vanilla/food scents for candles. Any suggestions for in-town or online sellers?

tears of the black tiger & other nice things

This weekend Cornelius brought back Tears of the Black Tiger from the library. So fun and colourful!


It's going to be a hot summer in the ol' shop. This past Monday I introduced an old favorite to my etsy store. This has always been my favorite card and I hope it sells well too. Buy it, why don't you? My cards are now printed on super lovely thick 100lb uncoated cardstock. I hand-score and cut them too.


And speaking of cards, it's still officially birthday month, so cards are still trickling in. My brother and his wife sent me a cool card of him singing happy birthday. Unfortunately the gizmo that enabled him to record and play got damaged in the mail. At least I have Pomme Man to remind me of my sweet bro.

don't like high gas prices? then change your life.

Yesterday while drinking my morning coffee, I read one of the best articles about the high cost of gasoline. It's brief and very pointed about the energy crisis and how it can't be solved with finding new fuels or trying to find ways to keep up with our current lifestyle. Want changes? Well, looking for new fuels ain't going to cut it (I mean, look at what that has done to the rising price of food across the world). Everything has to change: the way we grow food, the way we travel, everything.

eat! vancouver festival

This weekend is the Eat! Vancouver Festival. I have a media pass and will be interviewing 2 Food Network Canada TV celebrity chefs for the Food Network Canada blog: Anna Olson and Bob Blumer. I've seen the Surreal Gourmet (Bob's old show) and caught a few episodes of Sugar (Anna's old show) when I used to have cable, but now they both have new shows so I've been researching them like crazy over the internet. I've done interviews before but always over the phone...this time I'll be meeting with them in person and just scribbling away. Needless to say, I'm a bit nervous.

The festival should be pretty fun with lots of tastings and new products to check out. Wish me luck and if you have any questions you think I should ask during my interviews, let me know in my comments!

And if you are interested in beer (who isn't?), my new post about cask beers on the Food TV blog is up.

big agnes is not only fun to say aloud...

I go camping quite regularly. Although we do car camp, often we ride our bikes, so we like to have lightweight gear that fits comfortably on our bike racks. A few years ago, I became smitten with the Big Agnes sleeping pad. It's much more comfortable than the more common Therm-a-rest and after trying it out in store, I bought it. It was the best camping related purchase I ever made. Until now.

Most light-weight sleeping bags are mummy-style, which means they begin to taper at the hips and I hate them. I had a fairly new North Face mummy bag that I had used on a few trips and I've always complained about it. I felt trapped and enclosed and this last trip, we spent a really cold night camping so I had to have my bag zipped up all the way to conserve heat. This resulted in a minor claustrophobic attack and I decided that the next time we passed through a town with an REI, I would purchase a new bag.

I walked out with a LuLu made by Big Agnes. Not only is it pretty (brown and baby blue), it's got a ton of room and is actually made to be used with the same sleeping pad that I own! The sleeping pad slips into a sleeve at the back of the bag and works as 1 unit. This also means that you never have to slip off your sleeping pad! Ingenious. The back isn't insulated (because the pad is) which saves a bit of space so that it is relatively light weight as far as synthetic (not down) bags go. I love it.

My old bag didn't go to waste. Cornelius took it over as he was through with his ratty old thin bag that he had used to take across Canada on a bike trip years ago. His bag was no longer warm so we both ended up with new bags. Unfortunately, I purchased the bag on our last day of our trip, so I was unable to try it out camping. But we did take the bag with us to the drive-in movies on the weekend, so I fought off the cold night air watching a movie, wrapped up in the bag lying in the box of the pick-up truck. It was perfect. I could wiggle and kick all I wanted to and there wasn't an attack of claustrophobia at all. Hooray!

back from vacation & still on holiday.

Our 10 day roadtrip through Washington and Oregon was pretty awesome. The natural beauty of it all was stunning as you can see from the photos above. So much driving though. I never realized just how much driving we could do between towns. At least we had our 2 ipods loaded and the scenery was pretty.

We got back into Vancouver ready for the holiday long weekend and the 30+ degree weather. So hot and summery! I loved it. On Saturday, we went out for breakfast and then over to Jericho Beach where we sat on a log and got in some sunshine. Yesterday was filled with gardening, patio meals and because we had a borrowed pick-up truck, we even went to a drive-in movie! Speed Racer was totally spazzy and colourful and awesome. I loved it. Perfect drive-in fare.

so long, farewell!

Today I got to hang out with a real cutie pie! Check out that baby I'm holding! This afternoon I met up with the wonderful Mel (of the Demo Derby empire) and her 5 month old babe, Sterling at the New Town in Chinatown.

So I'm leaving you with all this cuteness because I'll be gone camping in the wilds of Oregon for the next 10 days. See you when I return!