On Happy Valentines Day

For this Valentines Day, we didn't have much of a choice but to go out in order to have some alone, romantic time (although we do enjoy Warren & Chelsea's company, not so much on Valentines Day!). So it was my advice to Aleksy that this year we keep it simple, going out for supper at a smaller family restaurant that would be cheaper than the $200 suppers with the set Valentines Day menus in fine dining restaurants (which in the past we have done Valentines suppers at Blue Ginger, Tru, Copperfields, and Garlics and they were good... but not $200 good!). And in terms of presents, I suggested we do something small for each other, because Valentines Day isn't about showering each other in expensive presents but an opportunity to go out for supper spending time together, and exchange cards & small gifts to show you care. Because, in real life, we don't do that all the time.

Even my work celebrates Valentines Day! At work, I was delivered a surprise Valentines Candy gram to my desk (a candy kabob!) plus, we had a Valentine cake & coffee break in our cafeteria in the afternoon (and the cake was delicious!).

This is the gift exchange between Aleksy and me, simple, but thoughtful! Aleksy did the supper planning, and prepared me a sweet card and a container filled with various candies (which I am still working on!). Since I wasn't in charge of the supper bill, I did a little extra in Aleksy's gift and I got him a card, a bag of cherry cordial kisses and a bottle of bourboun.

Aleksy had our supper planned in advance in January. He didn't tell me where he had made the reservations, but we knew that we wanted to look outside of London, in an effort to save some money from the fine dining restaurants that catered to London. Aleksy had called around and made it a surprise. I did guess that it was in St. Mary's though! Woolfy's had some delicious food - we started with some baguette & hummus, had some antipasto, soup, then our main dish was chicken. It was very delicious tasting, but not so generous in portion (which is usually the case for fine dining). For dessert we had some raspberry chocolate mousse. Although our intention was to try to keep it at around $100 (which the lady said was going to be the case when Aleksy called), we ended up paying about $200 for everything ($58 each or our 4 course meal, plus a bottle of $40 wine). It was tasty, but a little more than we wanted to pay!

For next year, hopefully we will be in our own place and can make a fancy 4 course meal with a bottle of wine for under $50!

Getting in the Yoga Spirit!

This year has been a good one for yoga! For the month of January, Steph and I learned early on that people who work for non-profit agencies/organizations got FREE yoga for the full month. Steph & I took full advantage of that luxury and went on average 3-4 times per week for the full month. I never knew how good (healthy & fit) yoga makes you feel until I started doing it that often. Steph & I got many people out with us, friends, Steph's husband Al & Aleksy!! And everyone loves it. Now I know if at anytime I have one month to get fit, all I need is unlimited yoga and go 3-4 times a week and i will have success! 

So much time together doing yoga that we even dress the same!

We have been doing all our yoga at Moksha PLUS they just opened a new studio at Wonderland & Southdale and had a free week of yoga for their first week being open! We went three times in the first week, but it was ridiculously busy with all the advertising that the studio did so my mat was about 2 inches from the person beside me. I like to have more space than that so it was a bit frustrating! We went on the opening day on the 11th (which was the best yoga class that I ever did - they had 2 instructors in the room, one instructing and the other adjusting!) and they had snacks, starbucks iced tea, we entered a draw to win a Mini for a weekend (I dont think we won...), and we got 2 for 1 Yoyos ice cream (which we took advantage of that night when we went skating in Vic park with Al & Steph). Pretty sweet deal!

Now that I have Aleksy going, we are definitely going to incorporate yoga into our weekly workout routine at least once per week (it is a little expensive to do it more than that at $12-18 per class depending on whether you buy a 10 pass or not) and for the month of March, Steph and I are going to do the unlimited month at $40 (although we have been going for a while, we havent bought the beginners one month unlimited and we were informed we still can!). It's going to be a good year for yoga & fitness!

Why you should get an Air Miles Card...

I am a large fan of points/rewards cards and I participate in many (Shoppers Optimum, Pioneer points, Marble Slab cards, and of course Air Miles). I definitely think it's worthwhile in the end, because you are going to spend money at those places anyways, you might as well get something out of it. Just before Christmas, I redeemed some of my Optimum points and ended up getting $125 worth of products for free!! I got many stocking stuffers with this and some items for gift baskets and ALL I had to pay was $15 for the tax = amazing! Aleksy and I have been saving Air Miles for quite some time and recently, upon discovering that we has over 600 points, I decided it was time to redeem. And THEN I discovered how much I could get with these points!! 

We got 2 free movie tickets to silvercity/cineplex including 2 drinks and a large popcorn PLUS a $50 gift card to Boston Pizza! And we still have points left over - even enough to get more movie tickets!

We get 2 date nights compliments of our shopping at Metro, Shell and of course (and mostly) the lcbo! Airmiles is amazing!! If you don't have an Air Miles card, then you definitely should get one! 

Our Weekend Ski Adventure at Blue!

The weekend on Jan 20-22 a group of us headed up to Blue for the anticipated Blue Mountain trip, which we have been planning for some time. We rented out a condo at the resort which was a 3 bedroom condo with a full living room with pull out couch, full kitchen and dining room. We stayed at Rivergrass which is located just outside the village at Blue. We left on Friday after work and checked in around 8pm. We drove over to where our condo was and those of us that arrived first called our rooms! Since Aleksy and I made the arrangements for the trip, we were lucky to get the master bedroom. And the master bedroom was massive! Everything was on the main level, then you go upstairs and the entire upstairs is the master with an ensuite bathroom! Pretty sweet! Once everyone arrived, we did some groceries for the weekend for all 9 of us with all the staples, PB &jam, bread, fruit & veggies and fajitas for Saturdays supper! The first night we chilled in our condo and had some drinks!

Saturday was our big ski/boarding day - we got up early around the 8am hour, had some breakfast then headed out on the hills for 10am. We split into 2 groups - Aleksy, Craig and I went together and Sam, Zac, Abby, and Nash went another way. It was amazing weather for skiing! about -5 and fluffy snow! We headed back to our condo about 2pm for some lunch (to avoid the expensive cost of the lunch in the village - PB & J it is!). This is the boys heading up to our condo

I didn't realize how much skiing had pooped me out until we got back to the condo. We had about an hour break and I found it hard to get motivated to get back on the hills! But we eventually made it back out for a few more runs. My legs didn't fall off, which I half expected.

Did I mention that Saturdays are RIDICULOUSLY busy at Blue??? We waited FOREVER in line here - yes this is a picture of where we are in line. It was about 20 min of waiting time before even getting to on the chairlift.

We decided to avoid the large crowds and went over to the south base thinking that less people would be over there considering "Happy Valley" is the only green hill, which meant that there were a ton of people on it! Aleksy absolutely convinced me (after already falling once on Happy Valley - because of someone else who fell in front of me) that I was really good and definitely could do any of the hills at South base. I definitely fell a couple time - one of the times losing my ski and going down the hill on my tummy face first: thanks for the encouragement that I'm awesome Aleksy. Obviously you were just looking to go on the big hills!

Saturday night we headed back to the condo around 7pm ish and made some supper. It was a very exhausting day and although we had big plan to head to the Village for some partying, we never made it out of our condo - we ended up playing 'catch phrase' instead - tons of fun!! I love games!!

I was concerned the next day that I wasn't going to have enough energy to ski, but I ended up doing lots! We went back out on the South base blue hills and I really improved my skills that day going down. I didn't fall at all on Sunday!


This is Aleksy trying out his tricks at the mini park. I also got a video of Aleksy and Zac racing down the hill (which for Aleksy's sake, I won't tell who lost... ha!)

One of my favorite parts of skiing, is taking an afternoon coffee break in the chalet (with half coffee and half french vanilla!);. I think its just as important as skiing to the weekend events!

As you can see, I was a little different from the others on our weekend adventure.

Everyone!! On the last day before we left I was determined to get a group shot! This is the last day (Sunday) just before heading up to the hills! For the low price of $210 per person for ski & stay the whole weekend, we should def make it a regular event! So much fun!