Side Tracked!

So last weeks post didn't go up as planned, woops! Just as well though because this week we got nothing done on the trailer.

Alex's original on the phone quote for the trailer frame of "about 1000$" turned out to be something closer to 1200$ in person and if we wanted the bed inset between the wheels and the bed wrap around the wheels it was another 250$. Plus 100$ for plates plus I wanted fold down jacks for the corners which was going to be another 100$, plus 13% sales tax and we were looking at 1865$ for a trailer frame. I don't know about you but I've seen full blown utility trailers with walls and all at Lowe's for 1100$ or 1243$ after taxes and last time I was there they had 10% off, so at that time it was actually 1133$. This steps us back a bit to think.

We have a MIG welder and the capability to build our own so I'm thinking that's the road we're going to take. I found this website that breaks down step by step to build a trailer with pictures and everything so I will probably use that as my base design and assembly instructions. I still want to do the wrap around the wheel wells thing for more storage space and I'm planning to ask the Teardrops and Tiny Travel Trailer community on the leveling jacks.

All this came to a screeching sharp halt when 14 yards of clean quarter inch gravel and a back hoe showed up in my driveway Friday night.

The beauty we rented from Home Depot!

We spent the entire weekend digging and dumping and moving earth. We had three major tasks that we did not want to dig by hand:

1. Roughly 100 feet across the back part of our yard used to be a ditch but it's been mostly leveled out over the years and now it's more of a swamp in the spring. The plan was dig it up, put down some gravel, big-O filtered, more gravel, some weed paper, earth back in ground. 
2. Sump pump hose gets moved every time we cut the grass and it's been forgotten at the house a couple of times. To prevent there being water in the basement again we wanted to bury the pipe and have it run to a hole full of rocks.
3. We want to build a stone patio for our fire place :) (this one makes me the happiest!)

So that consumed our whole weekend. A flat tire later and a guy out to do the repair, me running to the store because we forgot to buy 200 ft of big-O, swinging by to take my moms dog to the vet and made for a chaotic weekend. We still didn't get everything done but we got a big chunk of it done finally!

And now for some pictures!!!

Looking left and right along the ditch at the back while we were dropping the big-O and gravel/digging

The "finished" product after I filled in the ditch again

Alex digging the trench for the sump pump line

Teardrop Features

Sorry this was supposed to go out last week, apparently the schedule feature on Google Blogs doesn't work the way I think it does.

If you caught my last post you'll realize that I have a passion for camping, and somewhat bitterly, no passion for rain soaked gear and deflated air mattresses. The natural conclusion here is the teardrop camper.

But with so many features where does one start? With the basics of course!

Sleeping Compartment:

I'm 5'10" which is fine for most sleeping arrangements but Alex is 6'2", this complicates things when a lot of plans define a sleeping space as 4' x 6'. Do I suck it up and sleep in the corner while Alex sleeps diagonal or do we jam up the kitchen space to add to the sleeping space?

Since my goal here is to make camping more comfortable for myself, sorry kitchen but you're getting smaller.

One could go pretty wild now with "niceties" inside the sleeping compartment (remember the bathrooms in some teardrop trailers?!). I'll just run through a few of our options and what I'm thinking for ours:


1. Doors, do we want 1 or 2? I'm saying 2 since I got to bed and get up before Alex.

2. Windows, in the doors? on the roof for romantic star gazing? At the front for a cross breeze? TBD. I'm hoping for all of the above to be honest!

3. Air Conditioning or just a fan/vent in the ceiling? AC dictates some kind of power supply, so does the fan but on a much smaller scale. I'm thinking fan to start but I'm asking my electrician (Alex, the Electrical Engineer boy toy with a cute butt) to wire for a potential AC down the road!

4. Additional sleeping space/storage space. If you take a look at this instructable he's constructed a bunk bed for his daughter quite cleverly, see also his photo below. I may someday have children so this would be nice to have and in the meantime it would make good storage space.

5. Entertainment: I've seen stereos and TVs and all manner of things but at most I want a radio in this thing. The whole point in camping is to get outside in the nature. 

6. Lighting: I want to have small reading lights at the head of the bed on each side as well as "patio" lights outside each door with switches (like the photo above) so that I can "leave the light on" for Alex when I go to bed and so we can see our shoes when we get up to pee in the night. 

7. Charging: as much as I want to get away we often need our phones, I picked up this solar panel at Canadian Tire last night because it was on sale. It's a Coleman 40 W solar panel, it won't give us much charge but we're hoping to keep the demand low and leave the house with a fully charged marine battery. Once we have an "electronics plan" we can determine roughly how long the battery would last us. 

8. Bathroom: just no in such a tiny space. I need to be able to escape that... odour. 

The Galley (fancy for kitchen):

Like everything, I've seen a wide range of possibilities here. Some trailers are just shelves back there and cupboards and some have built in sinks, stoves, the whole nine yards! 

So decisions:

1. Lighting, how much and where do we want the lighting for the galley? I'm thinking inside the galley cover and bright enough to illuminate an area around the galley. This location helps keep the bugs up and away from the food when we're cooking in the night. 

2. Water, sink, fresh water reservoir, grey water reservoir, where do I start? 

I know I want a sink for sure, and I know we won't have an endless supply of water like at home so we'd need some kind of control. I like the how in the instructable he made a circuit that if you push the button the water comes on for 5 seconds. That would be good I think in case the nieces and nephews discover how to make it work they can't just run all the water out! Plus we can brush our teeth at our trailer instead of walking over to the comfort station in the morning. 

If we have a sink we'll need a pump, a fresh water and a grey water tank. This could add a significant weight to the galley. Weight distribution impacts our trailer design. On this link Pass-n-Gas says " A good rule of thumb on a tongue pull is to place the center of the Axle"s" 1" for ever foot of combined bed and tongue length. behind the center of the bed." In theory we have even distribution the length of the trailer so that by setting the trailer axle back we have actual tongue weight and not a perfectly balanced teeter totter. 

3. Cooling food.... there's a lot of options here. The most basic is salting all our food like they did in the olden days, man do I love me some prosciutto. But I also love melon so maybe this isn't the answer. 

Next option and still somewhat low tech is a cooler. This is good for up to a few days camping and works but we'd need to store it somewhere. This will need to be taken into consideration when planning the galley. 

Another option is a propane fridge. I have no concept of how much one of these fridges burn in a 24 hr period and it's not currently in the budget/I haven't been able to find one I like online. I would like to do some research though and at least make it an option should we choose to upgrade. Who knows, we may want to run away to the woods permanently if we had one? 

4. Food prep area. Obviously we need counter space to prep food so I like the trailers that have had the stove slide out on drawer slides so it can be tucked away for prep time. I'm still debating stainless steel sheets on the counters or wood or concrete (that's a joke). At it's core it will be wood even if we wrap it in SST so this won't hold up the design while I ponder :) 

For now that's all I can think of for features. I'm sure as we go there will be more!!!

What features would you want if you were building or buying a teardrop trailer? 

Teardrop Trailer Insanity!!

I've been a little obsessed with Teardrop Trailers these past couple of years, which I'm sure my friends and family could confirm... wait, did you just say "what's a teardrop trailer"?! Funny you should ask :)

I've read this several times now so it must be true, but the original design was published in a Popular Mechanics magazine and it was supposed to be a cost effective way for the every day people to go forth and enjoy themselves:

I know, probably the sexiest hunk of junk you could tow behind your vehicle ever right? Kidding. That being said, I'd rather sleep in that thing over an air mattress that loses it's air and a tent that was inevitably set up in a torrential downpour so all your gear is soaked.

In reality modern teardrops are pretty sexy! There's also a huge range, you've got your more basic models like Big Woody Campers:

To the significantly more complex and lovely such as Camp-Inns stretched Teardrop:

Bunk beds and I believe a Queen sized bed: 

I've even seen some with bathrooms jammed into that tiny footprint of a trailer! I feel like Alex would stink me out so no... no thanks. 

In general, when you're talking Teardrops it comes down to a fairly small footprint camper, low ceiling and with a swooshy type shape. I've seen some "teardrops" that were more akin to a brick than a drop of water but they were close to the general principles. I personally think a water drop shape on the top side is a lot more aesthetically pleasing.

You may be asking yourself about now, why not just get a "brick" and be done with it? Well, these Teardrops are generally lighter dry weight wise and more aerodynamic. I don't drive a big truck, Ford Ranger, but I still don't want to be pouring gas out the window! Plus, I understand that with a teardrop you can camp at a normal tent site with no special trailer site requirements. That's a plus for us since we do a lot of tent camping with Alex's family. 

How do you like to camp? Are you more of a rough it in the wild sort or is your idea of a camp out swiping your visa at the nearest spa hotel? 

Another Phone Rant

I know I just posted but I wanted to express my frustration at the recent phone updates. December 2014 I received an offer from Rogers to "upgrade free" 6 months before the end of my contract. At the time I was thrilled but I'm not regretting it. I upgraded from the Samsung Galaxy S3 to the S5 and I regret it. My main regret: memory.

I don't know what happened but every time I turn around I'm out of memory. On top of that I feel like I'm getting constant updates that seem to do nothing but cause problems. In the summer I received an update that required me to delete several photos/apps to make room for it. This October I got another update, deleted again, and now whenever my screen is set to the lowest range of brightnesses or when it dims just before turning off the screen flickers.

On top of the crappy screen thing something they keep messing with is the silencing feature. I used to be able to put my phone on silent and my alarm would still go off. I was late for work the day after I updated because they introduced this new "priority" feature on the sound. Apparently you need to tell it alarms are priorities. Go figure.

Octobers release took away my ability to completely silence my phone, now I can silence the volume but vibration is always on. So now in the middle of the night when I get a WhatsApp or Facebook notification I hear "buzz buzz" from my end table. Not impressed Android, not impressed.

OK, I'm done ranting. Not a bad thing but a strange thing, when I landed in KL in August my background spontaneously changed itself.....

Tardis Costume Part 2

So I believe where I last left you I had all the material purchased and pre-washed/pre-shrunk and nicely folded on the kitchen table. Yay that's half the work right? I wish!

The next step inevitably is cutting the material :( Thankfully my mom helped me with this one, before we could cut the canvas though mom pointed out that it needed to be damp ironed so I got to ironing while she got to cutting. There were many many many pieces to this pattern.... took us at least 5 hours to get it all cut, both of us working at a time!

Here's my moms kitchen table while we worked :) 

So there were quite a few parts to this costume. So many and so unusual to most, I suspect, that near the end of the pattern there was instructions on how to wear the costume. I'll post pictures in the next blog post showing each piece but here's a quick list:

1. Underskirt
2. Overskirt
3. Bustle
4. Corset
5. Shrug

On the bright side the fewer pieces you're lining up the easier a pattern usually is. On the not so bright side the sum of effort required for parts 1, 2, 3, and 5 was less than that required for part 4. The corset was... not fun.

I first basted all the outside blues to a layer of canvas I cut. I then had to baste the black top part to all these pieces. Then I sewed the pieces together. I then sewed just the remaining canvas pieces together while mom slaved away at the appliquer:

Then mom sewed the appliquer onto the corset. Unfortunately I cut it too big the first time and she didn't hem the edges so it was way too big to fit onto the corset panel so she did it twice... practice makes perfect? (I may never live this one down in my mothers house) I have to also confess that instead of basting I used that iron on hem stuff, it's amazing and your material has less probability of bunching or stretching differently on the top/bottom.

The upshot of the appliquer SNAFU was my idea to sew them onto the back of the shrug! Here's a pic of us trying to see if they were lined up.... they weren't by the way so I unpinned it and tried again.

It's hard to see from this picture but all the edges of this pattern have bias tape sewn onto them, this both makes it easier than hemming and finishes the edges very nicely! Thanks mom for sewing that stuff all over like crazy!!! She's a bias tape machine ;) 

Next post I'll share a picture of the dress being layered on and a little more details on how it was made but here's a sneak peek of the finished product when I tried it on:

Nevermind the dishes behind me... I'm a bad housekeeper! I will sew for dish cleaners, hahaha!!

Hallowe'en Costume - Tardis From Simplicity

Hello everyone! It's been a while since I posted, I was in KL for a couple months and all I did there was work work work and sleep, then work some more! I also started getting excited for Hallowe'en and planning my costume. You see many months ago I had stumbled across a very gallant Tardis themed dress in progress and I always thought it was really beautiful. I saw the work in progress and most recently I found the finished product, I honestly thought it was a lot prettier without the ball gown style bottom but to each their own :)

I thought it might be pretty cool to do my own Tardis dress, believe me there are many many many variations on this, some simple, some complex like the one previously mentioned. Some closer and some further from the Dr. Who inspired theme. I've been sewing since I was roughly 12 so I'm not intimidated by many a sewing projects but I have little experience in design, so my initial plan was to take a dropped waist dress and sew on some pocket "windows" and call it a day. That's when I came across this beauty:

I did some more digging and discovered this was a Simplicity pattern! I went to Fabricland only to find they don't sell Simplicity anymore :( I looked online then and ordered it but was extremely sad when I received notification that shipping was going to take 7 - 12 BUSINESS DAYS!!! This was for sure going to arrive after Halloween.

So I all but gave up and figured I'd have to do the simpler version I'd designed and run with it when one day I received notification of a package at the post office. I was a bit confused because I wasn't expecting anything at that time but lo and behold it was my pattern only 4 days after I'd ordered it, not 4 business days either. 

Two nights ago I picked up the material, a polycotton, the pattern recommended pure cotton but the polycotton was on sale and it holds both it's colour and shape better. The pattern also called for canvas for the bodice and 12 packages of double fold 1/2" bias tape. 

There were a few other simple notions called up, ribbon, elastic, lace for the bodice (haven't bought this yet because I don't know what kind of lace or where it's going on the bodice), bones (I wasn't sure if I needed cased or uncased so I opted to wait) and grommets. Now the pattern calls for 5/8" gromments times like 42. 5/8" ID grommets is gigantic.... 5/16" looked more like the photo but Fabricland only had that size in white so I'll check Michaels on the weekend. As for the bones I read the pattern and it says cut strips of material to case the bones, now the difference in prince for cased vs. uncased bones I think was 1.5$/m. I'm going to wait buying this because I need quite a few metres so if it so I may wait till I need to install it and see if I have enough remaining bias tape and use that instead of cutting cloth strips. Then I can use uncased bones. 

I got all the cloth home and pre-washed it and pre-shrunk it :) I also cut all the pattern pieces out (took a little two hours but I watched TV as I cut, hello Being Mary Jane!)

I'm curious to see how this pans out because it calls up a canvas for the bodice.... it looks pretty wrinkled after I washed it which means IRONING :(

Kitchen Sink Paleo Roasted Sweet Potato Soup!

Hey everyone! I've been meaning to do an article on the freezer exchanges I've been holding for awhile. Monthly me and some other folks get together with a bunch of the same freezer meals we've made and then trade for some variety. Saves money and time and kicks my butt into gear to make meals ahead! There's a whole article on it here so I won't repeat but this month I'm going to share a recipe I whipped up the other day. I call it kitchen sink soup because the first time I made it I used everything I had in the kitchen except the sink!

Let's get started, the ingredients are as follows (bear in mind I made 6 in one go for the freezer exchange but you can scale it back for a family sized portion, proportions are not a science here!):

• 4 costco bags of sweet potatoes
• a giant costco ham
• 2 boxes of almond milk
• 3 boxes of beef broth
• 2 jars of pickled jalapeno peppers (these are to taste, I didn't use all of them)
• cauliflower (because it was in the fridge)
• goats cheese (garnish)

So if you're looking at these ingredients this recipe is cow dairy free, grain free and sugar free! You could easily substitute the almond milk for some cream if you wanted it to be smoother or use regular cream cheese :)

I seem to have deleted all my photos so I'll have to remake this in the future to retake the photos, please bear with me for now! Bear in mind also that I cooked this up half at a time because of the size of my stock pot, but if you have a bigger pot you can do it all at once.

To prepare the sweet potatoes I smothered them in coconut oil then baked them on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet at 400F for 45 mins like they say on Nom Nom Paleo.

I let those chill in the fridge  overnight because it was late, not because it's necessary. The next day I peeled the skins off (they just slide right off by hand, which I guess it's good I chilled them after all!) and tossed them in my stock pot. I also put in my almond milk, beef broth cauliflower and jalapenos and cooked it on medium to high heat until the cauliflower was cooked. You can play around with the ingredients, honestly I don't think the cauliflower did much for the recipe except act as a "done" indicator.

I then took my immersion blender and blended it until it was a smooth silky consistency. I then poured in the ham and mixed it up. This was a lot of ham BUT it gave the soup some weight and made it more of a balanced meal. From there I scooped it into freezer bags and froze them.

What's your favourite make ahead meal? 

Bad Night Can Bring Good Things

So I had a bad Night Friday. I was tired, my boyfriend had been working the evening shifts testing at work and coming home around 2 am which totally messed up my sleep. To top it off I was trying to increase the amount of cycling I was doing last week and Friday night it all caught up with me.

I stopped at no frills to get the last few ingredients for my dinner and a bag of chips and a container of dip. When I got home I was TIRED. I'd biked a total of 49.5 kms in one week up from 16.5 kms. I sat down to the bag of chips because it didn't need to be "prepared" and I ate. And I ate. And I ate. And I looked in the bag and all that was left was crumbs. I mindlessly ate an entire bag of chips. I felt awful and quickly realized what I'm trying to do isn't working. I felt like crap.

I turned to the internet, youtube to be specific. I arbitrarily searched "Mindful Eating" and what came up was a video by Dr. Melissa May. Honestly I'd been on her website and saw that she mainly catered to her US patrons with only one Canadian doctor posted on her site from Winnipeg so I wrote it off. Well wrote it off until I watched these two talks she gave:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze2W0-nsGy0
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSDaqBwG6e0

They're long but well worth the watch! I honestly cried a little at one point because I felt like she was talking about me. I went to her website and was about to order the Mindful Eating Toolkit until I got to the till and shipping was 33$!!!! This is a 43$ dollar package we're talking about. In Ameribucks. So I trekked on over to amazon.ca and found just the book for 25$ and roughly 4$ shipping. It's not the whole kit but it will do for now. You need to read the reviews for this book, with people not really giving it their all they're reporting losses on the order of like 5 lbs a month. Not a massive drop but clearly sustainable!

I've talked about The Thin Womans Brain before and how as much as I love that book I felt like she walked you up to a cliff and told you to fly but you had no wings right? Well I feel like Dr May takes it so much further. I took from Mindful Eating that I was to eat only until I was full and only when I was hungry otherwise I was BAD. Really it's not BAD to eat when you aren't hungry, the point is to think before you stuff your face mindlessly. You'll see clarification on that in the second video and hopefully more in the books, which I shall report accordingly :)

Have you tried mindful eating? Have you read Eat What You Love Love What You Eat? 

How do I eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full?

I've been doing a lot of thinking and reading about mindful eating and I think I can definitively say that I see two main categories of mindful eating behaviour: over eating in a sitting and eating when you're not physically hungry. For me what it boils down to is that most of my eating is procedural and habitual and as such I'm not thinking when I eat.

I remember way back to my elementary school gym teacher who told me "it takes 3 weeks to make a good habit and only a week to break it!" This is a little devastating because when I think of vacations I think of at least a week so in a week I could undo all my efforts. But I guess this is the point. I'm not supposed to be on good behaviour, I'm supposed to always eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full. Which means I'm allowed ice cream. And potato chips.

Anyways, I got a little off topic thinking about the poutine flavoured potato chips I left behind on the kitchen counter this morning when I left. At the time I wasn't hungry and consciously knew I would not get hungry for several hours after the fabulous smoothies I made Alex and I this morning. I'm regretting it now but not because I'm actually hungry. It's a craving. Which is not real hunger.

Back on track (I think I have EDD - Engineers Deficit Disorder, like ADD but it's untreatable because being an engineer is so awesome!) So I need to break my habits, but how do I do that? A quick google search brought me to this: 3 Easy Steps to Breaking Bad Habits. For the record I don't think knuckle cracking is a bad habit.

A quick summary though:

1. make it conscious, 
2. put it in writing so it really sinks in, and 
3. bait and switch. 

The last one I think you need to be careful with. You and I need to substitute eating for something healthy and productive. (Refer to the Before I Eat app for suggestions!)

I like steps and tangible things I can do. I also like a schedule so I'm going to draw on a challenge I saw on Pinterest not too long ago called How To Become A Mindful Eater In 10 Days, it was a mindful eating challenge. I see a lot of parallels between this challenge and the Thin Womans Brain steps for mindful eating, which reinforces my faith in it! I also saw something similar on Psychology Today so booya!

I call it a challenge because I tend to be more motivated when it's a challenge, and hopefully not demotivated afterwards. I also want to stretch it out a bit, so basically I want to spend three weeks on not over eating and three weeks focusing on not eating when I'm not hungry. I want to do it in this order because I can spend the first three weeks not actively thinking about but taking into account not eating when I'm not hungry while primarily focusing on over eating. So taking from the challenge the steps in a slower drawn out process that I hope will have more lasting results. I will spend roughly 3 days on each step:

Now I'm cheating a little here because I've been thinking about why I feel like eating when I'm not hungry and been aware of when I'm over eating and in general trying to curb my behaviour. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on until last night was that when I don't overeat I feel like I'm missing something. It's unreal to think that I'm so dependent on the feeling of being over full, which in reality doesn't feel good.

So over the next three weeks I'm focusing on curbing over eating! I will not feel like I'm going to pop from dinner. I will not feel indigestion because I ate too much of something greasy. I will stop and think and feel.

Will you join me in eating only what you need for the next 3 weeks? 

Eat When You're Hungry, Duh!

It's no secret, most people gain weight as they get older, myself included. Typically, women invest the most into weight loss products and plans than men. I have no stats to back this up besides common sense because every LA Weight Loss or Weight Watchers commercial has some lady that's lost 100+ lbs on such and such diet plan. When I started out this blog I briefly talked about my weight and eating habits and mentioned a book called "The Thin Woman's Brain: Re-wiring the Brain for Permanent Weight Loss." I also mentioned that I was going to try that and that I'd get back to you about it later.

Well needless to say I didn't try it. I instead put myself on a rollercoaster, buckled up and hit GO! I tried paleo, I did paleo Monday to Friday, then I did paleo whenever I could and then I just tried to eat healthy meals. In the end all I really did was obsess about the foods I couldn't have, deprive myself of them, obsess some more, then out right binge. BINGE on chips, chocolate, beer, ice cream, all that good stuff.

Then something changed. I realized nothing was working. I remembered as well in the Thin Woman's Brain that they had mentioned these so called "naturally thin women." When I read the book I was like "oh whatever, these people do not exist! Everyone I know that is thin is a calorie counting nazi that does 5 hours of cardio every day. Hrmph." But I have this work mate that I've known for some time and always envied her thinness but told myself that I can't be a calorie counting nazi. But then I talked to her about my weight and she said, and she could have been quoting the book, "I only eat when I'm hungry." She also suggested I talk to someone about my eating habits.

Being the cheapskate I am I instantly started reading and searching and found an app called "Before I Eat" (Android - Iphone). I saw several different apps but I figured I would take the plunge and download this app using my google survey funds. It was like 1.11$ I think? At first I just looked at the app and thought "meh," and basically disregarded it for a couple weeks. Then one day I was feeling fat and unhappy and figured I had nothing to lose and listened to the intro.

I need to take a pause here because as much as I agreed with the book The Thin Woman's Brain I feel like she took me by the hand and walked me up to the edge of the cliff and said "FLY!" but I felt like I knew there was the potential to fly but couldn't rationalize the how. She said "identify if it's real hunger and if it's not address what the real issue is." This is easy when it's thirsty but what do I do when I'm at work and sleepy and going for a casual stroll around the cube kingdom doesn't work? I was frustrated and felt lost so that's part of why I gave up. But this is where this app picks up. It has audio tracks to talk you THROUGH these urges. If you're bored it gives you ideas of things to do instead of eat, stuff like that.

So basically where I'm going with all this is that I'm going to try mindful eating and so far my toolbox contains the book "The Thin Womans Brain" and the app "Before I Eat." What I need now is a plan.

Do you feel like you're riding the diet rollercoaster? 

How to Host a Clothing Exchange!

Ok so I know this article should really be entitled "Malaysia Part 3" and I promise the next section of my trip is on it's way but in the meantime I went to my second clothing exchange on the weekend and thought it'd be great to share :) Also, in all the excitement I didn't take many photos but I promise you next time I'll take photos... in six months.

First I'll start with the pros of the clothing exchange I attended:

1. Great reason to clean out my closets, winter storage box, summer storage box, under the bed, bottom back drawer of my dresser, boxes of pipe dream skinny bitch clothes and the boyfriends similar nooks and storage crannies :) 
2. Get some new FREE clothes in the process
3. Give my old clothes to a good cause where they'll be much more loved than they were whilst being neglected in my home
4. Get together with a great group of ladies!!

So I'm hoping from my pros you get the gist of a clothing exchange. Wait, stop the bus, not everyone knows what a clothing exchange is? Basically you clean out your closets or wherever you hide clothes and meet up and other people go through these items of clothing and take what they'd like. The leftovers get accumulated in bags and donated to charity. I'm sure there are varying degrees of how organized one could get about this but I'll explain how the one I went to was done. 

First off you basically invite everyone you know and tell them to congregate in the largest house you can occupy. We typically have a Facebook page where people can post asking for things they're on the hunt for or motivational comments to get you going on cleaning out the closet!

On the day of the event there are rooms that have signs designating what sizes and gender each room will contain. Since so far it's mostly been women's clothes we've divided the women's clothes by size then had a room solely for children's and men's clothes. We've just used bedrooms of the house to do this or the rec room in the basement, you don't need anything special just an area like a table or bed to spread the clothes out on! 

So everyone arrives and distributes their clothes by size and then typically meets in the living room for some snacks and drinks until everyone arrives. Once everyone has arrived the routine was explained and the games begin!! I put that in underline and bold because as much as free shopping is once you've combed through the clothes what else is there to do? 

This is where you get creative as the host/hostess. The first time I attended one of these the hostess awarded tickets for various things such as inviting friends, those friends actually turning up, bringing a snack, purging the most stuff, you get the idea! Then she put all the tickets in a pot and drew them for various prizes she'd put together. I was the happy little girl that went home with a bottle of pink lemonade wine, hello summer drinks on the patio, here we come! 

This last one was a bit different and more interesting I think. Some of us chipped in a few little prizes, I made a package of 4 crocheted dishcloths that were surprisingly popular! Upon arrival everyone wrote their name on a paper and crumpled it up and threw it in a box. Every 15 minutes 3 names were drawn. These three people then either chose something from the table or stole someone else's prize! It got heated. And everyone went home with something even if it was just a balloon :) This also went on while the clothes were being picked through so you got a little break now and then!

I think I forgot to explain something. Once everyone has the game plan they're released on the count of 3 to go pick through the clothes. Essentially everything is first come first serve and negotiating is allowed. Once you've picked your load you pop into the bathroom to try on your finds! After everyone is done shopping and trying on all the leftovers get bagged up. 

Here's all the clothes we had leftover!

All of the leftover clothes get donated, and in the case of our clothing exchange the host only gives them to places that give the clothes away for free to people in serious need, she thinks this is how we can do the most good and I'm inclined to agree.

Have you ever been to or hosted a clothing exchange? 

Malaysia Part 2 - Sightseeing the first weekend :)

After a few days of crazy jet lag, bananas working and culture shock I had a weekend off to do what I pleased. Before leaving for Malaysia I'd done some research about things that would be good to see so Saturday morning I packed up my duds, grabbed some water bottles and headed out.

First stop, KL Sentral. Once there I picked up a Touch 'n' Go (TNG) card. Basically you load funds onto this card and then you swipe in at the train station then you swipe out at your destination and it automatically deducts the cost based on your trip. Super handy, funds last 10 years but the card must be used once a year to keep the funds active. The other option in KL is to pay at the incoming station but you have to know where you're getting off at or your pass won't let you out of the station. And their machines only accept small bills and coins.

If you're in KL Sentral looking for this place to buy the TNGs it's beside the 7/11.

From there I hopped on the Kmuter line up to Batu Caves. This was neat because there was a ladies only car, not that Malaysia is unsafe but being in a strange land alone I have to admit I felt a little more relaxed in this car.

So off I go on the train. It was a little confusing because I was watching the route map LEDs indicate our stations but then the train stopped. The route map said we were at Batu Kentonmen but the signs outside said Batu Caves. After a few minutes of confusion I asked some other lady on the train and she said I had to get off there to go to the caves. I get off the train and walk a bit to find this GIANT Bhuddist or Hindu Monkey Statue. I felt a little bad taking a selfie when people were blessing themselves at it but the damage was already done ><

I also found a temple where I had to take off my shoes to walk up to it. I got in shit for carrying my shoes up so if you go leave them at the bottom or stuff them in your bag.

From there I sought out the famous Batu Caves! I was walking and I saw a sign that said RM 5 and I didn't really register the signs. I found a cave with a bunch of statues and sculptures inside and a small trek up some steep uneven stairs. These were called Ramayana Caves * Suambu Lingam. (I hope this isn't just Malaysian for "enter here" because that's the only info I have a to where I actually was).

After this cave I cooled off a bit, you see someone in the office told me I couldn't wear shorts in the Batu Caves, something religious, so I should wear pants. The only pants I brought besides dress pants was jeans so I wore these. OMG it was hot. On top of that they rent a wrap for RM 5 at the base of the hill so don't wear jeans. Anyways, drank some water, walked some more and saw this:

This reminded me of two things about Malaysia: 1) hydro is subsidized and 2) as much as they have heat outside they like it cold (I'm talking goosebumps cold) inside. 

Anyways, I kept walking and then I saw it. My first thought was literally "Oh shit." Then I believe I texted my boyfriend a picture with the caption "Oh shit."

So I had a bit of a hike ahead of me. No time like the present right? So off I went. Thankfully I'm not the only person in history to think this is a bit scary and difficult so they had flights of stairs with resting platforms in between. I saw many people walk a flight, rest, walk, rest, which is similar to what I did. At the bottom there's an officer (possibly a social police?) and some ladies renting wraps, make a stop there to grab one of the lovely scarf wraps they have on offer. All up and down the stairs are these monkeys. I saw several of them snacking on things like gold fish and watching people. To be honest it was a bit scary, one asian lady pulled out a candy for herself and a monkey climbed up her and stole the candy and ran off. The monkeys are quite aggressive and I don't recommend feeding them or snacking en route.

About 90% of the way of I saw signs for this Dark Caves tour. Being tired and hot and sweaty I decided at this point to go check it out. It was a RM 35 tour of the dark caves, and as I learned later it houses some 200,000 bats, 2 types, one of which pollenates the flowers that grow Durian, a massive industry in Malaysia. They also had an array of blind wall climbing snakes, cockroaches, trap door spiders and a bunch of other cave dwelling wild life. I highly recommend going there, they even give you a helmet to shelter you from this highly valued guano (bat poop) dropping from all the bats.

I couldn't take many good pictures on my phone here but above is my selfie at the end of the dark caves where they have a "skylight" and on the right is a cave column that has formed over hundreds of years from dripping water. It's a cave enthusiasts wet dream in this place. So many different formations here, cave curtains, stalactites, stalagmites, the whole nine. 

After this tour I carried on up the stairs to the top. I kept hearing a rooster doing its morning call and it got louder the closer to the top I got. I completed the outside stairs and ended at this little landing before finishing a couple more runs inside the mountain, but it was here where I found the source of this morning call:

I guess living in a cave can get confusing on night and day and dawn...

Once I reached the top of the stairs I was a little disappointed because I didn't see much difference between the temple at the bottom and this one at the top but I made it! And here's my proof:

Once I'd gawked I headed back down the stairs to where my steel chariot awaited (MRT) and on to my hotel where I slept a solid 12 hour night. The next day I checked out the National Mosque and the Islamic Arts Gallery, I'll make another post on that because this one is already quite long!

Have you ever climbed the Batu Caves stairs? Would you do it again?

Adventure in Malaysia Part 1 - AKA my favourite things so far :)

So I'm in Malaysia a few weeks for work and let's just start off with it's fricken hot here. As we speak it is literally pouring down rain outside and I was told earlier today this is supposed to be the dry season. Dinner will have to wait.

Getting here accounts for roughly 24 hours of time in transit on top of a 12 or 13 hour time zone change. Let me say one thing quite clearly: I never want to take this trip in economy. That might sound stuck up but our company has a policy on trips like this to book us into business class and as much as this trip sucked it sucked a whole lot less than economy would have. My advice though, bring a pair of sweats for sleeping so you don't feel so icky sleeping in your travel clothes!! Also in business you get these cute little travel bags. The one I got had what I call travel slippers, a eye patch for sleeping, toothbrush and toothpaste, hand lotion, chapstick, a glasses cleaning cloth and face lotion. Sometimes they have a little candy in there :) I also love the multiple warm wet face clothes they give you to freshen up a bit.

So favourite things about Malaysia!!!

Unbelievable wireless rates

I pay roughly 80 CAD a month for my phone back home, that gets me 500 MB, unlimited talk and... that's it. Before I left Canada I picked up an unlock code off Ebay for 15 CAD for my S5. When I arrived in Malaysia at the airport I picked up a SIM card for RM 10 (RM 1 roughly = 0.32 CAD) and then added talk time and data for RM 30 each. Now I'm not entirely clear yet on the how the talk time works out, after every call I get a notification of how much money my call just cost and how much I have in balance. Somehow it worked out that I spent RM 30 and got RM 40 in credit. A week here and I've used less than RM 10. Data I bought 1 GB of data and got a bonus 500 MB. I have been getting texts about this other like welcome pack of 100 MB that I got for free too and there's wifi everywhere so I don't think I've even gone through the 100 MB yet. Plus social media apps don't cost me any data.

Downside, I get a lot of junk mail texts.

I can't figure out how to flip this picture and apparently I was holding my phone upside down when I took it...

Hotel Staff

I guess because the cost of living is lower here our "normal" hotel rate gets us some pretty fancy digs here. My hotel is more like a bachelor apartment, full kitchen, small living room, office, the whole nine. When my colleagues drop me off at the hotel some guy opens the car door for me and closes it then walks me to the elevator to push the button, swipe his card and push the floor number button for me. Call me spoiled! Everyone is so helpful, someone walked me to breakfast the first day because I didn't know where it was.

The Price of.... Everything

Stuff is just cheaper here. Admittedly a few times I've taken a double take when my bill says 60!! Then I remember it's RM not CAD and then I'm shocked that an entire nice sit down meal with drinks cost me 20 CAD. Walking around the mall I found the same things, not like bargain basement prices but I saw a dress regular price for 24 CAD at H&M. That's like sale price back home.

No 'Poo

Ok, not related to Malaysia but last November I switched to no poo. So not only is my hair LOVELY now but it's less maintenance :) I brought my baking soda and ACV with me to Cuba in small plastic containers but the ACV melted the container (who knew) so I was thinking about how to transport it for Malaysia. I guess I didn't think enough because I completely forgot it. I popped over to the local grocery store and they had baking soda for RM 6 and white vinegar for RM 6. I couldn't find ACV but I found apple vinegar with honey for RM 16. A bit of a splurge but touching my hair right now, I feel this was the right decision, hahaha! So the el cheapo solution was 4 CAD, the splurge solution cost me less than 8 CAD. Where can you find conventional shampoo and conditioner that isn't complete garbage for less than 8 CAD? Winner, right here *points at self*

What do you like about travelling in SE Asia?

Cayo Coco Cuba

In the last weekend of January my boyfriend and I headed south to what we'd hoped would be a break from the chilly Canadian winter and it's sub zero temperatures! We booked our flight with Cuban Air and headed to the island of Cayo Coco where we stayed at the Hotel Colonial, a 4-star hotel.

Unfortunately on the last day our camera was lost, I'll explain that one later, so this won't be an overly photographic post! I'm also torn on recommending or not recommending this resort so rather than saying go no go, I'll relay the facts and you decide :)

Right off the bat we paid an extra 40$ each so we'd get an ocean view room. We thought that'd be awesome and we read some reviews online that said your options were essentially ocean view or delivery road view with load trucks coming and going all day. So this was our view:

Looking straight out the patio door

Looking off the right side of our patio was the pool and swim up bar which was kindof cool because from 10 AM to 5 PM there was music being played that we could clearly hear in our room. This might be a negative if you wanted to grab a quiet siesta in the afternoon.

We started our vacation by being told on the second day to head to the disco where our HolaSun rep would give us the run down on the place. The first day was a beautiful sunny day but we were pooped since we'd been up since 2 AM and basically missed the sun the first day.

Day 2 we head to the disco. It's overcast and generally a crappy day. Soon as we walk in the disco it hit me. An odor that struck me as a bit swampy and barny at the same time. My boyfriend didn't say anything so at first I thought it was just me... I looked at him and scrunched my nose and said "do you smell that?" He just responded with "yeah, I hope we don't have to be here long." Another day we did some investigation, they had a bit better ventilation going so it wasn't as bad but we found a bunch of standing water and mud in what looked like fountains that had one day worked but no longer did. 

It's odd, someone was always doing work on something in that place, replacing tiles, upgrading the gazebos, but some places that seemed to need to love the most looked like they'd been broken for ages. 

Our guide wasn't overly helpful, he told us there were excursions and an info binder in his office and told us that if we gave him our printed copy of the e-Ticket we could go to the beach part on Wednesday. We did not print said e-Ticket so we were shit out of luck. We later found out there was salsa lessons and spanish classes and three nightly shows: a comedy show of sorts, a kids show, and a dancing show in the disco. I found the front desk and resort staff more helpful for finding this info out. 

We caught the dancing show our last two nights, it was pretty cool, beautiful costumes, super fit dancers, good entertainment I'd say:

On top of the first few days being overcast we found ourselves extremely tired and napping every afternoon. After a couple days I realized I was waking up a lot at night... the bed was not very comfy, a lot like sleeping on a pull out couch:

The pillow top mattress has yet to reach Cuba ladies and gentlemen, the bed and pillows were also pretty musty smelling because the A/C wasn't all that powerful and the doors/windows didn't seal so the dampness inevitably crept in

The food and drink service was amazing! We ate something that hit us wrong (take Dukarol before you head to Cuba for sure! It's costly and you need to take it two weeks before you go but if your doctor prescribes it I think you can claim it through your benefits), I think it may have been some of the cherico we ate >< But otherwise it was good! There's 24/7 food and drink service at the snack bar, we had some pretty yummy omelettes on toast there as well as some amazing french fries! Everyone was eating fries like they were going out of style there!

On top of the buffets that normally had 3 or 4 options for food prepared in front of you they had 3 a la carte restaurants. We tried all 3, there was Cuban food (delicious but a lot!), Italian and international. I think the Italian was our favourite of the three but all were good! Service was a little slower than we'd expect back home, but we were on vacation, what's the rush? 

Drinks were interesting, I ordered a strawberry daiquiri at three different bars and got three different things, one was a real strawberry daiquiri, one was something else delicious and one was just way too heavy on the alcohol I ended up tossing it. The swim up bartender seemed to make us the best drinks, plus later in the week he had a popcorn machine and gave us cups of popcorn :) 

For drinks my boyfriend picked us up 20 oz bubbas, insulated cups, which was awesome for lying on the beach and not having to go back to the bar 15 times for mini drinks. 

OMG churros! They had a stand near the snack bar and every day this lady made fresh churros, there was always always a line up for those! She was also quite the card, she had many "boyfriends" that came to buy churros from her and one night she let her hair down and was bustin' a move up on the dance floor :)  In the mornings at this stand this guy also made fresh squeezed OJ which was also popular, if we weren't early enough he'd be out of oranges! 

The boyfriend fake smiling for the camera, lol! Unfortunately no pics of the churros, but she made them in heart shapes and flowers and just rings like a doughnut then drizzled all different flavoured syrups on them!

We didn't do much in the way of excursions because of the not sleeping well all we wanted to do was lie on the beach/at the pool. It was also pretty cold, like in the morning we'd be alright to sit on the beach in our suits but it got windy and cold so we'd head to the pool. Most evenings by dinner I'd be in jeans and a light jacket. 

One day we went to Pilar beach but it was soooooo windy and cold we didn't stay long. Had it been a nicer day we would have loved it. It's 5 CUCs to take this double decker, open top bus that does the milk run at all the resorts, then goes to Cayo Guillermo and drops you off at Playa Pilar. Once there you have a few options, for 10 CUC you can lay on these suspended beds at the beach and that gets you three drinks. You can pay 2 CUC each and just chill on the lounge chairs or you can hang out in the restaurant. If it were warm enough to swim it would have been lovely, the water was shallow for many metres into the water, the sand was smooth and very white! There was what looked like a pretty steep drop off eventually though so be careful if you go! 

Here's a picture from lonely planet:

At the opposite end of the route there was supposedly a market but the cold gave us a chill so we opted to head back to the hotel. 

We tried going on the snorkeling excursion, it was advertised as 25 CUC/person and that got you a couple hours snorkeling, BBQ and drinks and a trip out on the glass bottomed boat. Apparently the boat didn't come on Fridays and the guide was having issues getting in that day so we waited around from 9 AM to 12:30 PM before we actually set out. They only charged us 20 CUC each because there was no boat, booze or BBQ. No biggie since it's all inclusive but a bit steep for just snorkeling.

He took us out on a small catamaran with two other Argentinian ladies to the middle of the ocean and tied up to a buoy. There were a couple other boats there and he seemed to do some kind of negotiation then he asked if my boyfriend and I knew how to swim. We geared up and he told us to jump in where the water was dark. Being the polite one I said to my boyfriend "after you!" hahaha and I jumped in where I could see the bottom. The guide gave my boyfriend a water bottle full of bread and a swarm of fish just followed him around the whole time! It was pretty beautiful from my perspective :D Then he went to pull out our waterproof camera from his pocket and it was gone.... with our pictures....

We swam around a bit but we were super cold and got out after a bit and headed back. We then went back to our room and used up the hot water tank trying to warm up and then had a lovely siesta!   

There wasn't too much eventful that happened, I had interesting bathroom experiences... at the airport there was a lady with a bucket she poured in the bowl to 'flush' it after every use, another bathroom I went into I encountered a couple.... ladies of the night. There was no TP or locks and the seat... well I had to implement the squat position and hover. Stall walls are also short there, like chest height for me. But marble everywhere in every bathroom, that part was beautiful. 

The colonial also gets you to sign out a towel at the beginning of your trip and it you don't return the towels and hand in your voucher they charge you 15 CUC per towel you took out. It kinda sucked because we left at 8:45 Saturday but the towel hut didn't open till like noon so we had to drop them off the afternoon before we left. 

Another helpful tip, we used Park Sleep Fly so we drove to Toronto, stayed a hotel overnight and they let us leave our vehicle there for the week for free. Just a heads up though, parking was offsite for us which meant Friday night we checked in, dropped off the car then took a shuttle back to the hotel, just takes some extra time. Also, the e-mailed me a code for 20% off for my friends, use: FBFRIENDS115 There's no disclaimer in the e-mail for how long it's good for so good luck! 

Sorry there aren't many photos but next time we vacation there will be much more because we won't lose our camera! Up next for me is Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia so keep your eye out, I'll definitely be taking photos :) 

What's your favourite vacation spot so far? Where do you want to try next?

Valentines Rant!

Hey everyone! Happy St. Valentine's Day!!!

I say this with enthusiasm and a little nostalgia for the days when I was anti-Valentines. In fact I might still be part of a facebook group against Valentines. I feel like I should feel like a traitor to all my friends still sitting in that camp but I also feel like that Valentines is what you make of it.

I am thinking about this because every year my boyfriend and I have done something different but this year we did the conventional, get dressed nicely, make a reservation at a fancy restaurant, go have a nice sit down dinner where we're facing each other (and not the TV!!!) and actually talk. Well mostly we talked, we kept getting distracted by the girl at the next table who's boobs kept falling out of her dress and she'd re-adjust.... well I got distracted because we were sitting diagonally facing each other. Not sure Alex noticed, or he is really good at looking without me not noticing :)

But I digress. So I used to hate Valentines and now I love it, how did that happen? Actually, I liked it then hated it and now I like it again. As a child my mom showered my brother and I with love and on Valentines she'd make these great cheesy gifts like puffy painted hearts all over these rockin' white t-shirts! If I had a picture I'd share, that's how great they were. I love my mom and all the things like this she did for us.

Fast forward to University. I was busy a lot, not much time for relationships between engineering school and the army reserves so when I did have boyfriends they were not serious and I didn't have much time for them. The closest I got to a romantic Valentines gesture was when one of said boyfriends was in Texas and someone I wasn't interested in sent me a bouquet of white roses. Needless to say my initial excitement was dashed. And from there Valentine's day just never picked up again. Insert Anti-Valentines Facebook group. The cover art I believe was a picture of dead cupid with an arrow through his chest.

So that's ok, Valentines day is just a big marketing scam meant to steal my money and leave me with a fat ass (thank you over indulgence in chocolate) and dead rotting flowers that make my trash bin stink a couple weeks later.

Then something happened. After school I moved out West then I got a job and moved back East. I was living alone in an apartment with my dog feeling sorry for myself. Then it's like I woke up. I had a good job. I had a great dog! I was actually quite pleased with myself.

Like every year Valentines rolled around and instead of feeling crappy about it and dreading it I went shopping the day after and bought flowers (yay discounts!!) for my apartment and made it such a happy place with flowers everywhere that smelled lovely!!! I forgot that they'd all rot but seize the day right?! So something strange happened. I realized that Valentine's is not just about buying things (yes I cleaned up on unwanted flowers but wouldn't you?) and being with someone else, but it's just about love. I loved myself. I loved my dog (sorry I make you wear silly things like heart antenna head bands Navier). 

This also opened me up and broadened my expectations when I met my boyfriend. The result is that I don't feel like he doesn't love me if he doesn't have 5 dozen long stem roses delivered to my door for precisely 7 am when I wake up on February 14th. I'm happy to be with him. And if I'm not with him some day I'm happy to be with me :) 

Now we've done some crazy Valentine's stuff, our first year I made bacon roses (your'e welcome) and he origami'd me some paper roses (which is still up on my fridge) in my favourite colour (purple!). Another year he dropped a Valentines bomb on my desk before I got to the office: 

One year we sat on the couch and watched Escape Plan (Sylvester Stallone), drank Mickey's and ate Costco poutine. Epically romantic. That was the best year with Alex so far I think! 

How do you celebrate St. Valentine's Day? What do you do for yourself?