June 24, 2013

Okanagan Love



Why look, it’s already time to sigh and say things like “ugh” because the weekend is so far away from now. That’s ok though, because here I am to save the day and entertain you!  Let me tell you a quick story about my days off. A friend of mine said we should go camping in the Okanagan because it’s beautiful there and I haven’t been there yet or camped in a long time. So naturally, I said “sweeeeet, let’s do it!” and off we went on a four hour car ride to get there. Now, it was raining in Vancouver (nothing new there) but the Okanagan was not going to be the same.
On the road we were and excited for our 1 night adventure, I got to see some cool places that I hope I can visit later on. I saw the beautiful mountains up close and personal which took my breath away. I spotted some Elk along the way…or maybe deer? I don’t really know the difference so forgive my ignorance please! 

Anyway, moving on, we go to the area we were going to camp in just to find out that it was also pouring there! We had my friend’s little boy with us as well so we pondered on whether it was a good idea to camp and decided to find a place to stay for the night instead. 

Our poor unused tents and our alternative tent haha



That brought up to Osoyoos, BC in the early evening, which turns out, will be where I retire! I fell in love with this city as soon as we entered it! It’s a cute place surrounded by beach, fresh fruit stands and vineyards as far as the eye can see.  Yup, sounds like heaven to me plus I love saying the name, it’s so fun! Oh right, I was telling you what happened, ok so we found a place to stay, put our stuff away and decided to go to the beach for a walk. It had stopped raining for the moment and it was a bit windy but it was worth doing because the view was beautiful! 



After our walk, we decided we would go back to eat and enjoy the view from where we were staying. We pulled out her camping stove..bbq…thing and made hotdogs to at least pretend we ended up camping. After hanging outside for a while, we settled inside and turned the TV on and saw the news. It then made sense why there was so much rain all over after I saw the piece on the flooding in Alberta. I truly hope that all those that are affected receive the help they need. It made me very appreciative that all we had was rain where we were. So the next day we took advantage of where we were!
We woke up all excited to get our day started! We had breakfast and hit up a couple of fruit stands but we were two weeks too early for all the varieties that become available. It’s ok though, I bought some cherries and nectarines, and man oh man, are they yummy! Hopefully I’ll get to try the rest some other time. After that, I got to try wine tasting and yes, I will do a lot of wine drinking in my retirement haha



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 We went to four different vineyards (and no her son did not have any) and I bought a bottle at two of them.  A Chardonnay from Gold Hill Winery which is a small family owned company and a Moscato D’Osoyoos from LaStella Winery. The latter is a very sweet white wine so I know not everyone would love it, but I sure do!
Once we were done, it was time to head back home and thankfully the sky stayed pretty clear for the ride home and only started spitting at us once we were close to home. We did stop by Manning Park and got to see and feed some Marmots plus a statue of a big bear along with instructions on what to do if you see one…eeep scary.  



 It was really nice to experience that area and I can’t wait to go back! Maybe even for a romantic getaway when I find a special someone ;).
                Almost forgot to include this picture for a co-worker of mine! Hehe BEAVERS (hope he sees this!

Ta-ta for now. :D

June 17, 2013

Painter's pain


Happy Monday!! No…that’s just too cheery, how about “only 4 days until the weekend!” unless you’re like me and have weekdays off and work the weekend, then that doesn’t apply either! Geez this is hard! I’m just trying to say hi, so maybe I should stick to that haha.

Ok Kids, today’s lesson will be in painting or at least telling you my experience and hoping you get something out it. I decided a few days ago to paint my bedroom as I just moved into a new place a couple of weeks ago and 3 of the walls were painted an extremely dark green and made the room look so small and it was an ugly shade. I opted for a light beige type for those walls and a dark brown for the 4th wall to be the accent wall. I had my mind made up so it was time to find the brand to use. I asked a few people what brands they used to paint their homes and looked into them all and was almost ready to choose one when all of a sudden out of nowhere, a random brand popped up in my search. I immediately fell in love with it! For anyone looking to paint, I recommend it 100%! It’s called Loop Paint and you can check them out here www.looppaint.ca

Are you ready for this? Ok, it’s a company based in Ontario that takes unused paint from home projects and recycles it! They reprocess it and it is then sold at a much lower cost than the big brands. The best part is that the paint is usually reclaimed from the big brands so the quality is awesome! They also plant a tree for every gallon sold so I’m all for it and I think you should give it a try. They do have a limited amount of colours but it’s still a good selection. Currently the only retailer that sells it is Wal-Mart but hopefully in the future they will be available elsewhere for those that aren’t near one or maybe don’t shop there.

The experience of painting on the other hand, left me wishing for more help.  Based on scheduling and not really asking people for help, I ended up doing it myself with a bit of help for about an hour from a friend. I would like to advise anyone thinking of doing this to stop and ask for help! It might be that I’m out of shape and so any type of physical activity harms me but I’m really sore today from painting one small room! You might be in a better place to do it yourself but I sure wasn’t! Nevertheless, I have finished 2 coats on each wall and only have some touch ups left to do. It was definitely a productive weekend but I didn’t rest as much as I would have liked. Now I’m feeling that today and wish I had the power to move things with my mind so I could finish without the labour tonight. I’ll be fine once it’s done as the colours are perfect for that room so yay!

 

That’s it for now, I may post some pictures of the end result but I won’t promise because I’m the worst for picture taking. Hope you enjoy the rest of your Monday and that the days go by quickly until your time off!  Byeeeeeeeeee