Rain Drops & Cherry Blossoms Nails

Today's nails are brought to you by the letters V, A, N, C, O, U, V, E and R. It was a rainy day yesterday, and it most certainly influenced my nails.

In addition to the rainy day, I also happened upon this announcement from CraftyNail which outlined some nail art link-ups that will be happening throughout the month. The first of the April nail art link-ups had a theme of Rain/April Showers, which is especially relevant here in Vancouver... though it's rainy here pretty often, not just in April. Anycrap... hence the rainy nails.

And obviously, the cherry blossoms are starting to pop off around here as well, as evidenced by some of the photos that I shared earlier this week. The blossoms were already pretty much begging me to translate them onto my nails anyway, so I decided to combine my rainy nails with my cherry blossom nails.

I got to play around with a whole bunch of polishes for this mani. OPI Isn't That Precious, Sinful Colors Rain Storm, Milani Tip Toe Pink, Sinful Colors Snow Me White, Essie Little Brown Dress, and a Revlon Matte Top Coat:

I did two coats of Snow Me White on all of my nails, followed by the matte top coat. Using Rain Storm and the small end of a dotting tool, I made the raindrops by making a polka dot and then dragging the dot while lifting away from the nail, to create the drop effect. On my ring finger and thumb nails, I painted on the brown branches using a nail design brush. When the branches dried, I covered them in light pink polka dots, and then went back in and added some of the darker pink dots randomly.

I actually really like this mani! It's not perfect, but the color combination of the blue and the pinks makes me happy - especially against the white background.

If all goes as planned, I should be going on a great hiking and camping trip this weekend!! It's been way too long since I've gone for a hike. The plan is to head into Garibaldi Provincial Park and up towards the Red Heather Hut - a little hut that I wrote about back in January as well. We're keeping our eye on the weather reports to make sure that everything stays calm enough for us to camp out. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

What are you up to this weekend?
Anything fancy on your nails today?
Do you get cherry blossom trees where you live?

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{Linking with The Nail Files, Beauty Buzz, and Friday's Fab Favorites}

Pops of Green in Grey Vancouver

One of the things I love about the weather in the Pacific Northwest (which is how I continue to refer to Vancouver, even though technically I should be saying "Southwest" now that I'm a Canadian resident), is that the mix of rainy days and sunny days makes everything a gorgeous, healthy shade of green.

This past Sunday started out as a beautiful clear day with blue skies, so I thought it would be a perfect time to head out for a walk with my camera and try to snap some pictures around my Kitsilano neighborhood. It seemed like too long since I'd taken some good Vancouver photos, and I was excited to see what sorts of pretty things would catch my eye out in the sunlight. Unfortunately by the time I'd finished getting ready to go outside, it had turned rather overcast again. Womp womp. Not to be deterred, I still donned my jacket and hat, stuffed my camera into my pocket, and headed outside. Here are some of the random snapshots from my walk:

.  the monkey puzzle tree  .

.  fern growing in the nook of a mossy tree  .

.  thick, bright moss growing on a tree  .

.  this tree was completely covered in moss on its north side... and devoid of any on its south side  .

.  half mossy  .

.  mossy curb and pavement, as seen from directly above  .

.  green lines  .

.  slightly different green lines  .

The grey skies were an omen, obviously. It started raining on me when I was still several blocks away from my house that afternoon. Not that I really minded -  I just tucked my camera away and scurried home. It's been raining off and on for over a week now, which is normal. We'd been spoiled by unseasonably sunny days for several weeks prior to this rainy stretch, so I can't really complain. After all, without all the rainy days, we wouldn't have all these pops of green all over the place!

I hope you are all having a great week. Has it been rainy or snowy wherever you are?

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Sweat Round Up of the Week

Man, what a raaaainy week we've had here in Vancouver. Get used to hearing me say that sentence for the next 7 months! Yesterday we took a mighty wet hike up Mt. Seymour in North Vancouver, with at times torrential rain fall. I'm not sure exactly what we were thinking, but at least it was a way to get some outdoor exercise!

Here's my workout round up of the past week... it's not lengthy.

9/23 (lower body and core)

20 mins elliptical

12 split squats each leg, 10 lbs each hand

30 Russian get ups, 5 lbs each hand

30 alternating lunges, 10 lbs each hand

30 weighted v-sit twist, holding 10 lbs

30 heel presses each leg

50 Brazilian crunches

- 10 bridges

- 10 "pretzel lifts"

- 10 single leg hip lifts each leg

- 10 bridges from toes

30 lying overhead raise + double crunch, holding 5 lbs

12 deadlifts, 10 lbs each hand

60 swimmers

9/26 (cardio)

25 mins biking

9/28 (cardio)
Hiked about 6km on Mt. Seymour

The hike yesterday was so wet that we couldn't really even take out our cameras to snap any pictures. Our friend Evan managed to snap this one picture of his 3 hiking companions - Lauren (Dave and Evan's colleague), me and David:

.  moisture  .
.  thanks for letting me steal your pic evan  .

What have you been up to exercise-wise this past week? What's your favorite exercise?

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(Rainy) Vancouver in Bloom

All this flip-flopping between gorgeous sunny days and dreary rainy days is paying off... WE GOT FLOWERS!

A walk in the rain is now a lot more colorful of an occasion around here than it was a couple months ago - everything is blooming. Here's a taste of the Vancouver springtime flora on a recent rainy day walk:

.  there are cherry blossoms everywhere  .

.  these remind me of something dr. seuss-ish  .

.  bald eagle upper right  .
.  his nest, lower left  .
.  canada, dead center  .

As much as I appreciate it in the rain, it obviously looks a lot better in the sunshine. I'll post pictures of sunny Vancouver in bloom soon :)

Solo in the City + The Halloween That Wasn't

It's been kind of a dull couple of weeks with Dave away. We are pretty good at going off on mini-adventures together - even if it's just to spend an afternoon walking all over the city. Without him around, I still love going on walks... but solo walks tend to end up being a bit shorter due to a combination of boredom and my desire to not walk alone in the dark. It stays pretty dark here in the mornings until almost 8am and then gets dark again around 6pm, so my window for walking after work isn't huge!

.  fall things, things fall .

On top of that it's been very rainy (duh), which also makes walking less appealing. Going on drives out of the city hasn't really been on the agenda either since our car window was smashed. I haven't been able to get it repaired yet because it's not my car and I'm not sure how insurance will work up here in Canada, as we haven't gotten Canadian car insurance yet. Dave will be coming home tomorrow (whoop!!) and we'll have to deal with it then. In the meantime I did an ultra ghetto patch-up job of duct taping a black garbage bag over the gaping hole in the door. It's funny b/c the guy with the truck beside ours (whose truck window was also smashed) has a very nice, clear plastic temporary seal on his window that looks like a professional did it, and ours looks like Oscar the Grouch stopped by to help out with the repair.

I did manage to take the car to a gas station yesterday in the pouring rain and spent some time vacuuming the glass up out of the backseat (and trunk and front seat and window pockets and under the rugs and inside the center console and seatback pockets and and and and GEEZUS THERE'S A TON OF BROKEN GLASS HERE!!). As soon as I started driving away from the gas station, though, a fresh cascade of broken glass fell out of the window frame and left a new pile on the floor in the back of the car. Awesome. Dave very helpfully pointed out to me last night that, "Car glass will not stay together broken. It will just keep crumbling." Now you tell me!

You might be asking why I opted to do all that in the pouring rain, and to that I say: a) Hey, it's always raining here. What, am I going to wait for a sunny day to vacuum? b) It was something that was hanging over my head and I just wanted to be done with it.  c) ... I actually just didn't notice it was raining before I left my apartment to undertake this project. I didn't bring an umbrella or wear rain-appropriate footwear either. When I returned home a half hour later, drenched from head to toe, the 20-year-old in the elevator with me timidly suggested that I ought to get myself an umbrella. So I stabbed him. #jk

What else is going on this week? Halloween. I took turns emotionally dressing up as both Debbie Downer and a sad panda this past weekend as Facebook was flooded with pics of people dressed up in ridiculous costumes and partying with their buds. I absolutely love Halloween and I always have. When we were younger, my sister Mallory and I used to start planning our Halloween costumes in November practically. My mother used to frequent fabric shops like JoAnn Fabrics (#whatupPittsfield?) and there was always an entire section of pattern books in the back of the store. Mallory and I would pore over these books looking at Halloween costume ideas, literally any time of the year. Fast forward to 2012 and I am still planning my Halloween costumes nearly years in advance. I even started setting calendar reminders for myself in my phone - i.e Early last year I actually set "South park character halloween costume" as a reminder for myself in my calendar for October 1, 2011. No jokes.

This year was the first year probably in my entire life that I didn't dress up for Halloween. I had no one to spend it with and no house party to attend!! WAH WAHHHH. Dave said that we could watch Halloween movies together when he gets home but we'll just see how that pans out. Mostly because there is no such thing as a movie store anymore and I'm pretty sure Redbox is fresh out of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Hocus Pocus. Netflix, I'm not even going to bother with your streaming library. I know you don't have what I need.

In the absence of current costumes, here is a look back at some awesome Halloweens past:

.  2003 halloween at umass - i'm in the middle as bedtime bear . 

.   halloween 2004 at umass.  super troopers were the costume to beat that year, chuggin' ron roberto out of syrup bottles  .

.  2006 halloween at umass - bonnie and an apparently deceased clyde. whateva  .

.  halloween 2009 boston - all black everything .

.  with princess leia and smurfette, photobomb courtesy of a wild thing . 

.  halloween 2010 boston - another year, another carebear. apparently everyone wanted to be childhood toys this year . 

.  we are laughinnnnnnnng .

.  halloween boston 2011 - mr. and mrs. potatohead and me as neon. so on trend .

I might not have dressed up in a costume this year but I sure have been eating as if I went trick-or-treating. Not sure where all this candy came from or why I'm trying so hard to give myself Type 2 diabetes but... Dave might come home to find that I've turned into a Rocket or a chocolate-creme cookie.

Hey here's something totally unrelated - Taylor Swift, the little angel-faced sweetheart, has a new album out that everyone is going nuts about because it has sold over 1 million copies in its first week. This isn't the important part. The important part is that this is putting good old 'NSync back in the news because they hold the all-time record for albums sold in one week, with 2.4 million sold. What up No Strings Attached and the year 2000?! If you knew me during high school, or paid any attention to my life at all, you would know that I was obsessed with 'NSync from at least the years 1999-2003. How obsessed? So obsessed that I knew without Googling it that No Strings Attached was released on March 21, 2000.

On that note, watch this:


And hell, watch this too:


Oh those boys, with their music video hijinks and puppet metaphors!

What did you dress up as for Halloween? Did you hand out candy? What was your favorite costume that you saw this year?

A Productive Saturday Followed by a Thus-Far Unproductive Sunday

Yesterday was filled with doing things. I even made a to-do list! Huzzah!

The day started well with a phone call to my sister Mallory, who turned 29 yesterday. I followed that up with a call to my UMass friends, who were all tailgating and partying it up together on the East Coast at a UMass football game at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. They passed the phone around and I got to hear the voices of several of my favorite people. There was lots of yelling, plenty of garbled conversation, many "wait, what???'s", and lots of UMASSSSSSSSSS! Love those guys fo' life.

Next I got pretty real with myself and decided it was seriously time to do something about the mountain of dirty dishes piling up in the dish bucket. The kitchen looked effing awesome by the time I was done with it, which filled me with the inspiration to actually cook something that night.

At this point it wasn't raining yet, so I took advantage of the sorta-sunshine and set off on foot to do some errands as well as continue my Saturday morning ritual of getting breakfast out at a restaurant.

I was going to (gasp!) repeat a restaurant and go back to Cafe Zen, but was deterred by the long line. I then noticed that there was another restaurant right next door, Abigail's Party, that was also serving breakfast and had no line. I scooted over there and was able to be seated at the end of a longer table immediately! Holla! That is one of the perks of going out to breakfast alone (Dave is still geo-manning in the Arctic) - it's not hard for restaurants to find room for one person. My seat even had a perfect view of the two cooks who were very professionally preparing the food and crafting the dishes behind the open serving station. I may despise cooking myself, but for some reason I love watching other people cook and put dishes together. It gave me something particularly interesting to occupy myself with while I was waiting for my meal, as normally I'd just people-watch and scope out the design of the restaurant space. I'm a very seasoned solo diner-outer.

My Brunch Clubhouse Sandwich was spectacular:  avocado, fried egg, bacon, local greens, multi-grain bread, aged cheddar, aioli. Really incredible. The smell of it as I took my first bite reminded me of Esselon Cafe in Hadley, where Dave and I met in 2007. #WhatUpHadley. My sandwich was also served with some of the best homefries I've ever had. They had the most delicately crispy exterior and were seasoned with dill (an herb that always makes me think of my Grandmother and her amazing coleslaw recipe, which is heavy on the dill). They basically just melted in my mouth. It's making me hungry just thinking about it! I'm definitely going to go back to this restaurant, and I can't wait for Dave to try it as well.

After breakfast, I headed up the hill to 4th Ave to find the post office.

[Sidebar, I was wearing a brand new, extremely freaking cozy, minty-colored sweater that I just picked up on Friday night from the Forever21 that's a breezy 45 minutes away. I was slightly devastated when I learned that Vancouver does not have a Forever21 store at all. (#SickJokes.) I was slightly less devastated to see that they're actually in the process of opening one Downtown :)  But truthfully my glee upon seeing the Forever21-in-progress was diminished by how much more work it appeared needed to be done before it would be ready to open. Fortunately, Google guided me to the nearest store in Burnaby, a town to Vancouver's slight southeast... but in Vancouvzie's traffic (which sucks) it was not a quick trip. After meticulously scouring the 2-floor store for about 2 hours, I ended up buying the mint 1/2 sleeve sweater and a new pair of earrings. Whoop!!]

The post office near my place is actually located inside one of Canada's many versions of a Walgreen's/CVS, Shopper's Drug Mart (who came up with that one?). I managed to not buy any new nail polish while I was there. Of note was that my two favorite face washes (this scrub and this cleanser) are sold for $10.49 each here in Canadian dollars (that's $10.54 US dollars, as of right this second. Curiously the US dollar has become slightly more valuable here in the last 72 hours), compared to the approximately $6.50 that they each cost in the States. So that sucks. #CanadianProblems

I mailed some bills (super exciting), bought my first Canadian stamps, purchased an In Style magazine to cut up for an upcoming collage project, and picked out a special card for my good friend (and loyal penpal) Stephanie.

Quick stop at a slightly inconspicuous coffee bar off of 4th Ave for a mocha before continuing on to
Urban Outfitters, where I walked around for 25 minutes holding two more of their nail polishes before deciding that I wasn't going to purchase anything else and probably shouldn't buy the nail polishes either. So I put them back and left.

After my morning of spending Canadian money, I headed back home to tackle my laundry issues, of which I had many. Like four loads worth of issues. It finally started raining while I was moving things from washer to dryer, prompting one of those popular "weather conversations" between myself and a stranger in the laundry room.

While the laundry was in the dryer I slipped in a grocery trip to make good on my promise to cook something that evening for dinner. With a 45-minute window I made it to the Safeway and back, picking up some kale, ground turkey, parmesan cheese, chicken broth, *cough* chocolate cake *cough*, sweet potatoes, and bread.

I had big plans of making a fancy grilled cheese for dinner, with kale chips and a sweet potato on the side. Successssful on all counts!

My grilled cheese consisted of:
  - cheddar cheese
  - parmesan cheese
  - sauteed onions
  - mango chutney
  - baby spinach

I'd never made kale chips before and I was only assuming that the mango chutney would taste good with my grilled cheese. That they both turned out very well was a pleasant surprise! Cue chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert. Cue also guilt for not having gone to the gym since Thursday night.

I finished out my evening by watching The Other Guys (which just recently popped up in my Netflix streaming options, to my joy and surprise) and the newest episode of South Park. 

Today I didn't even get out of bed until 11:30 - that never happens! Ever!! I blame it on both my new pillow and my lack of children. And also on the dreariness of the Vancouver rainy season, because it makes our bedroom extremely dark in the mornings.

Now it's 3:34 pm and the most constructive thing I've done today is paint my nails while writing this blog and half paying attention to the Patriots game. Perhaps not coincidentally, I also just played the word "LAZY" in my ongoing game against my brother in Words with Friends.

I hope you're having a great weekend! What have you been up to?

A Walk in the Vancouver Rain

In case you hadn't picked up on it yet, we really enjoy going for walks. If a destination is within 2-3 miles of our home, there's a solid chance we'll opt to walk to it rather than drive. I'd add "weather permitting" to the end of that last sentence, but I'd be lying to you. Even when weather is not permitting, we'll still usually walk. Case in point:  we once casually walked from our apartment in Falmouth down to the beach... during 2011's Hurricane Irene, with tree limbs large and small ominously scattered EVERYWHERE and wind whipping tiny pieces of who-knows-what into my eyes and face.

Well that was all quite a lot of build up to get to, "We went for a walk in the rain the other day." Sorry.

This past weekend was so rainy but it seems like a waste to not go for a walk in our new awesome neighborhood. We live right next to the beach and a great bike/walking path that conveniently takes us right to the popular Granville Island, so how could we resist taking a stroll along the oceanside walkway?

Even in the fog and rain, our tree trunk-lined beach and the large ships in the English Bay are a sight to see.

.  dark spots in the water in the background are ships  .

As I've mentioned before, Vancouver is very well set up for getting around on foot or bike, with special bike lanes on the roads and drivers who appear to be very respectful of giving pedestrians and bikers the right of way, when appropriate. They also have this great bike path that goes along the beaches - the aptly named Seaside Bike Path.  Here's part of it, where you can see it's split in half and demarcated for bikers and walkers:

.  very little room for confusion  .

Here are some things we saw from the path:

.   Downtown Vancouvzie  .

.   bitches be sailin'  .

.   let's get dangerous  .

Granville Island is a popular market area beneath the Granville Bridge. It's sort of a cross between Disney World and Pike Place Market in Seattle - lots of vendors of all different kinds of food, goods, shops, fishing boats, and what-have-you. I'd imagine it's pretty bumpin' on a sunny day.

.  Canadian Epcot  .

Our walk was about 3.5 miles (5.6 km) round trip:

.  professional map-doodler by evening  . 

Everything seems so very walkable here - look how freaking close we are to the city! It reminds me of living in Brookline, when we'd take walks from our apartment in Coolidge Corner all the way down through Boston to the harbor. Here in Vancouver, we're even closer to the city - with the bonus of also being right next to beaches and mountains and bike paths and big bridges. Not. Too. Shabs.

Eventually we'll put our walking to even better use and hike some of these mountains!