A Toronto Weekend

Last weekend, Aleksy and I enjoyed our winnings from a draw at Aleksy's work. He put his name in and won: 2 tickets to the leafs game on Sat the 23rd (with awesome seats!), a hotel night at the Intercontinental hotel, and $100 spending cash!!

We arrived in T.O. at 2:30pm after being redirected off the highways twice because of accidents. It took us about 45 min to leave London that Saturday. Throw a little snow and ice on the roads, and no one moves.

We went immediately to our hotel to check in, and when we went up to our room, this is how close our hotel is to the CN tower: this is our window!!

After parking at the hotel and dumping our things in our room, we headed to the stores and of course, China town for some Dim Sum. It was a freezing freezing cold day, and although I'm usually all about trying different places, we wound up going to a restaurant that we have already been to. Too cold to search. But as always, amazing, variety of dim sum for only $25.

That sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves that's on our plates is seriously the best, along with those custard buns.

I don't know how to leave ChinaTown without going into the little pastry stores. I don't know why pastries are so darn appealing to me. They look and sound amazing (and are about $.80 each), but these ones weren't particularly delic. That coconut cream one was the only yummy one.

We did some shopping, but didn't purchase anything. I think going into the stores was more of a break from the cold than anything (because we're black Friday shopping TONIGHT and didn't need to buy anything at full price in DT T.O.). This was the closest we came to a purchase... garage decoration?

After finishing our dim sum, purchasing some pastries and new hats from the hat store in China Town, we headed back to out hotel and had a couple drinks before heading to the ACC for the game!

And our first Leafs game was friggin amazing!! It even went into overtime with a shoot out and the Leafs won!

When we left the game, we went back to our hotel and I began to read comments to a Facebook post of Aleksy's that some friends were staying in a hotel a block or two over. So we met up at a bar for one, or two, or three pitchers! We ditched the bar that had cover and went to this one.. I think loose moose?  Such a good (and amazingly spontaneous) night!

Christmas, Christmas time is here!

Only 38 days until Christmas! And all the signs of Christmas have been coming up over the past couple of weeks:

The Christmas tree went up the first weekend after Halloween! I felt a little deprived not being able to put up my tree until December last year (because we moved into our house Dec 6th of last year), so I decided to get the most of my pretty tree this year.

Watching Christmas movies just isn't the same without a lit up tree in the room!

We went to the Santa Claus parade on the 9th with my sister, brother in law and niece. She was all cute with her letter for Santa with everything she wants for Christmas. I figure Christmas season is in full swing after the Santa Claus parade. After the parade we promptly went home and watched Christmas Vacation.

I thought Santa and float looked much better this year than last year! This years parade was a little lengthy I found so by the time Santa came along, I was very happy to see him. Although this year I was prepared with my 4 extra blankets.

Another sign that Christmas season is here: we woke up to this on November 12th!! This is our backyard in the morning: bright and snowy. Too bad it melted within a couple days... Great for driving, not so great for Christmas festivity.

Yet another thing that is necessary for Christmas spirit when watching Christmas movies: candy cane oreos!! So tasty.

Now, we await egg nog. We have been searching high and low and have only found the PC kind that doesn't need to be refrigerated (which is just wrong) and the Mac's kind that is like drinking 18% cream.

And Aleksy waited for a mild weekend, and non-rainy day to put up the Christmas lights. They went up yesterday! It seems that many of the other houses on our street thought yesterday was a good day for Christmas lights too, because there are quite a few on our street now!

<--- This ladder/light situation is scary to me. Safety is not guaranteed, but it looks so much nicer with the lights at the top too!




And, Christmas shopping hopefully will be started and finished in 2 weekends when Aleksy and I brave the Black Friday in the states again this year. We plan to shop overnight Thursday the 28th just like last year!

Halloween 2013!

This post is dedicated to the exciting Halloween/Aleksy's birthday associated events!

At the beginning of October, we babysat our Rachel while my sister, Kenny and Brandon attended their friends wedding. That weekend, we harvested up our front porch with the Heemans porch package, and carved a pumpkin with Rachel!

Rachel and Aleksy unloading the pumpkin guts. Rachel told me I didn't have to because I may ruin my nails... so considerate!

We kept all the pumpkin seeds aside for a delicious snack with our Despicable Me 2 movie later that night (along with the chocolate chip cookies we made).

 We asked Rachel to design the pumpkin, and she was really into the circles. While she was ok with the job Aleksy did with carving the eyes, she informed Aleksy he did the mouth wrong (she even had a picture of her expectations for the pumpkin drawn down on paper!). Aleksy then added all these extra details like earrings and eyebrows to make up for her disappointment!

Because we carved our pumpkin the first weekend of October, by Halloween it was rotten and we had to throw it out (actually well before Halloween!).

And our costumes this year: Cruella Deville and her dalmatian, with our Joker photobomber!
This was our first Halloween party we went to: my Mom and her husband have a party each year and it was the weekend before our party (the 19th). We had our costumes all prepped for their party but the only difference is by our party the following weekend we were able to find a doggie collar that fit around Aleksy's neck!

My Cruella Deville costume: easy peasey with no sewing required and a total of about $28.

Aleksys costume: surprisingly the bigger challenge at the cost of about $25, running around to many stores looking for white pants/longjohns, and hours of sewing those damn little spots on!! Those pants (that I sewed) were thrown across our living room a few times!

This is the final products of preparations for Aleksy's birthday/halloween party at our place! I made a veggie tray look like a scary jack-o-lantern (and I got the 10 lb bag of carrots for only $1.88!), The little pumpkins are orange coloured chocolate that I melted and covered the pretzels with and picked out the green m & ms for the stem.
Unfortunately this year our good friend who makes the amazing cakes wasn't able to come, so I was left fending for myself for the creative cake. I made this pumpkin shaped cake: the face is from an icing tube and the green is melted chocolate! I dyed the icing orange with food colouring. I was quite proud of the way it turned out (its no Tabi cake, however i managed to make it look like a pumpkin!). I'm not going to lie though, the cake was from a betty crocker box, and the icing not homemade! And the last dessert in the picture with the wormies and dirt was a "puff pastry" dessert I got from a Facebook page with layers of crackers, cool whip, and pudding. We ate this for days after Aleksy's party. It has been a really unhealthy week!

All of our party people! This was the timed photo that we wanted to capture everyone and have no one left out! We decided not to re-take but clearly we should have because i see Al's hand in his face!
Here we have some b-dancers in the back (sorry zac and sam... can't see you guys past us :( ), Cruella and her dalmatian, Joker: Brandon (who was supposed to have a batman and catwoman to go with his costume but he got ditched by his parents):, Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus: Steph, Al & Colton, 2 football players: Andrew and Nicole, a monkey & a whoopie cushion: Andzelika and Paul, a ghostbuster and slimer: Kenny and my sister, the cutest little firefighter: Rachel, and 2 army people: Chelsea and Warren!

And of course, later in the evening, Aleksy blew out his 7 candles (with the help of Rachel) and we all indulged in cake (which I continued to indulge in when everyone left at 1am).