Beauty, Daily, Photos, Reviews

Dior Vernis — Limited Edition

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Dior-Vernis-Spring-and-LillI decided to share the love with this collection of limited edition Dior Vernis. While I was home in Newfoundland I received an abundance of Dior goodies from the company. My younger cousin lucked out, as I gave her two of the four, for her nail polish collection. She even did some nail polish swatches for me, for this blog — thanks Claire!

We’re a bit different in what we like in regards to nail polish formula and brushes. I’ve always said, Sally Hansen & Dior are my top two brands of nail polish I prefer to stick to. Primarily because of the nice shape and size of the brush. Where as my cousin Claire stated to me that while she likes the nail polish she found the brush too wide. She mentioned it was hard to keep it within the nail. Brands like OPI and Essie have smaller brushes which she prefers — and I definitely do not.

Here are the swatches. Spring-and-Lili

Dior Spring is my cult classic this Fall. I have been wearing it for weeks, and only wore Lili simply for the sake of taking nail polish swatches. Lili is a colour I’d naturally gravitate towards, but Spring — boy, that’s something special. A muted purple-grey. I’ve received so many compliments on it in person, and Instagram. It’s a beaut.

My cousin sent over some polish swatches of hers. An odd thing to notice but doesn’t she have the best nail beds? They’re so much longer than mine. Diorette-and-Star

 I’m not sure if it was a help from the Dior Gel Coat top coat or not, but when I wore Dior Spring — I hadn’t had a chip in 5 DAYS. I went climbing one of the days, and my nails were a bit scratched on the surface but still no chipping. I’m telling ya, you get what you pay for. The Gel Coat was bought by me, a number of months ago. But I love using it on top of any Dior polish as my top coat to get a shellac like finish that lasts. The 4 Dior Vernis colours are available at The Bay for $26 CDN and are limited edition, so get your hands on them now if you want to snatch one up.

Dior-Lili-Spring

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Climbing, Daily, FitFluential, Fitness

Throwback Thursday: Climbing edition

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If it wasn’t for my brother and Leo, his high school buddy, I would have never become a climber. 19 years ago, Leo and his family opened the climbing gym back home in Newfoundland Canada. From the beginning, when they recruited their friends to help build Wallnuts, I watched. I don’t recall much of it, but I do remember the warehouse transforming into the unknown. I didn’t have any interest in it back then, but I went to scope it out a few times.

My brother didn’t bother to climb much, but I went in for their daily kids camp and climbed til my hearts content. While I was visiting Newfoundland for five weeks this summer, I looked back on a few old photo albums I had as a kid and came across this oldie.

Wallnuts1995Shoes, chalk bag, and a harness — all rentals. This was me at the kids camp in 1995, the first year the climbing gym was opened. Umbro shorts and all, I am about to top out on my favourite wall in the gym: the roof. Wallnuts has since renovated their walls, including eliminating my favourite roof and looking at expanding to another location, all signs of growth.

My first pair of climbing shoes were the 5.10 MoccAsym’s. But the one’s to write home about were my second pair of climbing shoes, the La Sportiva (now men’s) Miura lace-up’s. An aggressive shoe with the perfect heel cup, amazing for heel hooking, and having fun at comp’s ;)RockFall05

highball-bouldering

orange-hair-bouldering

frontpageThroughout the years I had a few one-on-one coaching sessions with the guys, where I began to climb harder routes, how to climb quietly, when to chalk up on a route, and make the routes more efficient on my body to not tire myself out too much. Years later, I got the guts to get my lead climbing course done. I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to lock out the figure 8 belay devices, and ATC’s. I got used to it, I did the course and from there I started climbing lead confidently.

After 19 years of climbing, can you believe I am still afraid of heights? I suppose, that’s a good thing. I don’t want to be too daring or bold—it’s not in my personality. I like to play it safe. When I boulder at my new climbing gym here in California, I often down climb the boulder problems because falling is simply too spooky for me. The bonus side of that is that I’m perfecting my technique each down climb, gaining more endurance with the static moves I do.

I have a many awesome memories of climbing at Wallnuts, and I’m so happy for the experiences I had while I lived in Newfoundland.

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Daily, Food, Reviews

An ice cream cake tradition

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Tissue-paper-garlandI love celebrating other people’s birthdays, and making them feel extra special on their day. Over the course of a few days I spent some time thinking of what I could do, to make The Guy’s birthday a little different.

Party-Favors-and-BeerI ended up decorating our house with inexpensive ideas: Beer, snacks, tissue paper, balloons and confetti. What more could a guy ask for?

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snacks

Kitchen-table-snacks

Kitchen-TableIt may not be pinterest-worthy but I thought it was cute. It took a lot of work to individually cut that tissue paper garland and put it together, man. You know I love you when I blow up balloons for you. It’s a little fear of mine, because I don’t want to blow them up too much and have them bursting in my face. It’s a scary thing.

I had two surprises for him, one I will reveal and share with you next week. The other gift I wanted him to look away  while I got it ready. Our town house is an open concept so he probably knew what he was getting as his second surprise once I opened the freezer. Singing the Happy Birthday song to him, he made his wish and blew out the candles. He had questions about where the cake came from because we usually go for the Dairy Queen cakes.

Baskin-Robbins-icecream-cakIt’s been a tradition in my family for years to give the birthday-person an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. But this year when I went to BlogHer, I interacted with the Baskin Robbins folks and asked if I could potentially work with them in the future. I received a $30 gift card to go online to place my customized order on Baskin Robbins website.

Since I was given a gift card to purchase the cake I didn’t want to go online to do it because I wanted a bigger cake for him that ended up costing $49.98. I placed the order over the phone and picked it up the next day. Except when I went to pick it up, the woman charged me a $5 cake decoration fee, which wasn’t mentioned on the website nor did I ask for anything different on the cake. So I was a little muff’ed at that.

How does Baskin Robbins and Dairy Queen differ?

It’s clearly obvious the Baskin Robbins cakes are far more expensive than Dairy Queen, and I suppose that’s all due to the fact that you can do so much more with a BK cake than DQ, all the custom options, the shapes, and different flavours you can put into your personalized cake. Then again, I’m not sure how often we’ll be giving each other Baskin Robbins 9″ cakes for that price. It may have stung a little.

Did you know Baskin Robbins cakes are made differently than Dairy Queen? Clearly I didn’t because I was confused when the sales associates were telling me their cakes are half regular cake, and half ice cream cake. Luckily I was informed they had a fudge crunch cake (much like a Dairy Queen cake with chocolate on the bottom, fudgey gooy centre and vanilla on top). I went with their basic 9″ round cake that serves way more people than the two of us in the house. Perfectly okay with us :)

Baskin Robbins is more customizable with their orders. Their go-to cakes are mostly half ice cream cake, and half regular cake, but I went the full nine yards and asked for ALL the ice cream in his. Isn’t that the best? Then again, I never did have the other option so I wouldn’t know. I assume it would be good, who doesn’t like cake? I wasn’t daring enough to go for a customized option, even though cookies ‘n cream top would be incredible. There were so many options to choose from, but I went with ol’ faithful.

TheGuys-IcecreamcakeNow the most important part, the fudge crunch in the middle, absolutely divine. Best part of the entire cake, so fudgey and crunchy. The Guy and I agreed this was incredible. The vanilla ice cream on the cake tasted more like vanilla bean rather than a regular ol’ vanilla — it was a nice change. As for the frosting on top, it was pure sugar, and hard. As a candy and sweets lover, it was far too sweet for me, even. I prefer Dairy Queen’s creamy and soft icing.

I can’t wait to show you the second part of his birthday! For those of you who are interested in Baskin Robbins icecream and cakes, here’s a bit more information regarding up and coming cakes this season.

Some of their fun seasonal cakes include:

  • Pumpkin Patch Cake – This is one jack-o-lantern you will not want to leave on your doorstep. This creative dessert, decorated as a smiling pumpkin, will trick your guests and make a fun sweet treat at the same time with your choice of ice cream and cake flavors.
  • Fall Harvest Roll Cake – Delight in the season with a fudge frosted roll cake, finished with a festive decoration of leaves and pumpkins.

They’ll also be announcing two new mini-cakes available for $12.99. These serve 2-4 people — perfect for small gatherings — and cakes include:

  • Celebration Mini Roll Cake – This streamer and confetti-topped cake is the perfect sweet and colorful addition to any birthday celebration!
  • Rosette Mini Roll Cake – This trendy ombre cake design features rosettes in vibrant shades of purple.

Additionally, Baskin-Robbins is celebrating with guests across the globe on Twitter with its “31 Cakes in 31 Days Sweepstakes.” The brand will be giving away 31 Baskin-Robbins gift cards for valued at $31 throughout the month. and Anyone can participate in the giveaway simply by following @BaskinRobbins on Twitter and sharing how they celebrate life’s occasions with ice cream cakes using #BRCakeSweeps.

Do you have any birthday traditions?

Do you prefer icecream cake, regular cake, or something else?

When is YOUR birthday?

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