For months, I’ve had this idea to make a transforming Transformer costume for E for Halloween. We kind of steered him towards liking Bumblebee because I could gleefully translate that name into Cantonese (蜜蜂). But he likes Optimus Prime quite a bit, too, and at this point can’t pronounce “Prime” properly, it coming out something…
Cooking lately: Chocolate stout espresso cake
🍫 + 🍺 + ☕️ > 🎂! Every couple of years, I want to make a cake for NPY’s birthday – not mine, gosh no – and this year I wanted to make him the specific combination of his favourite treats: chocolate, beer and coffee! There were other recipes including these ingredients but they involved creating a layer cake and spreading…
Toronto adventures with the kid, Summer 2018 Edition
Okay, it took a while to get the first part of this trip blog out but I think I’m on a roll. It also seems to take me longer to blog if I’m concerned about uploading and dropping in photos. If I’m as good a writer as a fancy, photos aren’t necessary, right?? **** Thursday,…
East coast adventures with the kid, Summer 2018 Edition
I’m not sure what I’m waiting for exactly. A huge stretch of free time on a weekend afternoon? Hah. Not being exhausted one evening and blog away the night? When I am still awake after 10 p.m., I’m doing a whole laundry list of other things, usually household-related. A pocket of free time at work?…
Packing for adventures with the kid
I wonder if I have been as last minute at packing as I was for my last trip. Maybe? Yeah? Maybe not? Who cares? I have been relying more and more heavily on my packing list which I maintain a a Google Sheet and having all my thoughts and items listed there makes me feel…
The small spaces trend and milestones
When I saw the following floor plan in a The Brick flyer, I thought it looked really familiar… I lived in a 439-ish sf studio apartment at 2920 Ash Street between 2005 and 2011. Except for the open galley kitchen (mine was more enclosed) and it bedroom walls, the layout of the 300 sf apartment…
Best of Vancouver aka selling the city to a potential migrant aka super super-long August weekend
Today, I returned to work after a super super-long weekend that spanned started on Friday and ended on Wednesday evening where I took two days off on top of the Friday off freebie from work on top of the BC Day stat holiday on Monday. My sister and BIL arrived in town late Friday night…
Crafting lately: A mini house!
Timeline of events: Late December: purchased and received the Cuisinart Combo Steam Plus Convection Oven on Boxing Day sales Early April: finally opened the open and set up the oven Early May: sold the convection oven that this one replaced Late July: blogging about crafting the mini-house back in early April! Once I opened the…
Crafting lately: Rainbow wooden rocking chair
I checked back in my finances tracking spreadsheet and realized I purchased this plain pine kids rocking chair from Michael’s back in March 2017. I paid $37 (taxes in) and justified it against the $40 pricetag of the IKEA Sundvik that I could personalize it…. Fast forward over a year >>>> A few months ago,…
Quick update after one year of Mobi (bike sharing)
Whether I was going to get the Spring Sale rate or not, I was going to renew my Mobi (bike sharing) membership so it gives me the option. And while I stress out every time over various aspects of the ride home, the best way for me to overcome my fears (the root of the…