Tonight I'm heading off to Scotland with my sister and her friend for two weeks. I haven't had a real vacation (and by real I more than just a long weekend) since I started my job over 2 years ago. So it's about time I be off for one right? I've been wanting to return to Scotland for a while now. I've been once before, but it was with my parents back when I was in high school. I'm sure thigns will be a little different this time around.

We plan to

• see men in kilts
  
• get lost on 3 day hiking trip through the highlands
  
• see some gorgeous scenery
  
• be on the look out for Nessy
  
• visit the farm where my great grandfather lived
  
• see pretty castles
  
• check out some scotch distilleries
  
• ride the train that was featured in Harry Potter
  
• see the isle of Skye
  
• try some haggis
  
• and of course hit up Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness
  

I'm so excited I can't wait!!

On Sunday June 5th, I'm participating in the Ride for Heart again this year, in support of the Heart and Stroke Foundation. This is the charity fundraiser were you get to bike on the Gardiner and DVP!! I had so much fun last year, so I'm pumped to do it again. I have a new goal, to raise $200 for Heart and Stroke Foundation research. My grandmother died of a stroke, so it's personal!!



I was wondering if any of you wonderful people could sponsor me; help me reach my goal and support a great cause! Any donation amount is welcome. $20, $5 or even that shiny toonie in your pocket. You can donate through the link below, or through Pay Pal to kodama_no_mori [at] hotmail [dot] com.



Along with raising money for this great cause, I'm also trying to promote healthy lifestyles. I'm not saying that everyone needs to stop eating chocolate and go run a marathon, but just be more aware what food you're eating, and getting out for a 30+ min walk every now and then. By just keeping up a semi-active lifestyle you can greatly reduce the risk of countless number of illnesses (including strokes!). It's always hard to fit things in your busy schedules, but you feel so good afterwards. I love to go walking during my lunch hour. I'll pack a lunch and just eat it when I get back.

Anyways thanks so much for reading and your support! xD

Over the past year or so I've been making a conscious effort to live a more healthier lifestyle. Getting out and exercising as well as watching what I eat. I wouldn't consider myself on a strict diet, but just being conscious about portion control and not eating too many unhealthy or fried foods and such.

More recently I've been focusing on a more low carb diet. In the morning for breakfast I used to always eat a bun with jam and almond butter, or a bagel with fake cream cheese, or a muffin; all things loaded with carbs. And if I didn't get around to exercising, I noticed some fat creeping back to hang around my waist.

So I started looking for a lower carb count breakfast. I can't eat bananas, so that's out unfortunately, and I couldn't just get away with an apple in the morning without hearing moans from my stomach. I made some granola loaded with nuts and seeds a bunch of times, but it's a lot of effort to make each week. Two weeks ago I started trying out a protein shakes in the morning. And after just those 2 weeks, I've got to say that I've definitely noticed a difference! I no longer have those extra carbs forming around my waist and thighs, so I've slimmed down a bit. I also feel great in the morning!! (and full!!)

My parents always made a shake in the morning with just milk. I remember trying it out when I still lived with them, but I got bored after just a week or so. I'm the kind of person who can't have the same thing for more than a week straight. So in order to keep this up, I have to mix it up a bit, and that's exactly what I did.

Every day I try a new slightly different combination with my vanilla protein power and fruits. Typically canned or frozen fruits (though the latter has a much milder flavor) or fresh if I can get them, mixed with milk, yogurt or ice cubes, and sometimes with some additional flavouring like mint from my garden, spices, or peppermint/almond extracts, etc. Today I tried adding in ground up flax seeds too to help get a better consistency as well as for the omega-3 goodness. I got some chocolate protein powder mix from my dad and that's increased the yummy combinations I can make!

Here are some of the combinations I tried and liked:

With Vanilla protein powder:

• Canned peaches in water, soy yogurt, almond milk, with maybe a sprinkle of powdered ginger
  
• Apples, sprinkle of cinnamon and nutmeg, honey and almond milk
  
• Pineapple juice, soy yogurt, almond milk
  
• Honeydew melon, soy yogurt, milk

With Chocolate protein powder:

• Almond butter, cocoa powder, honey and almond milk
  
• Canned pears in syrup, almond milk (couldn’t find pears in water unfortunately)

I love it cause it's quick and easy to make in the morning! I just shove things in my magic bullet, do a few taste tests and adjust as necessary, and then pour it all in my water bottle and drink it on the way to work. I can't wait till summer when I can start using fresh Ontario fruit!!

Each year as AN approaches, I get more and more stressed out to get something finished in time. Yesterday I took a good look at the calendar and realized that there's no realistic change that I'll finish my Valefor costume in time for AN. Even if I drastically reduced the amount of detail I had planned to do, there's just no way I could get the bare minimum done in 2 weeks with work.

Each weeknight I have 3 precious hours when I get home to do stuff. Whether it's grocery shopping, cooking a nice dinner, catching up on a TV show (I seriously need to find less shows that are an hour long >_> ), raiding, or exercising. It's a rare occasion that I do more than 2 a night, esepecially with my spontaneous urge to try out new recipies. My weekends have been pretty busy too. How am I supposed to find time to work on my costume too?!

I've noticed lately that I've been skimping on things in order to make time for this, and I don't like doing that. I kept wanting to see people and invite them over to hang out, but couldn't if I dreamed on getting this costume done. Now at least with my regretful acceptance of the truth, maybe I could do that if everyone is not already desperately trying to get their own costume(s) done.

With this extra time, hopefully I won't just procrastinate again. It's been hard to find motivation for finished (when I do find time to work on it), but hopefully I can push myself to complete it. I do still plan on still getting this sucker done, with the next projected implementation date being the Toronto Island picnic, if it's not while I'm out of the country.

Last weekend I happened by a Corona advertising crew handing out bags of limes. Not being a beer drinker by any means, I wondered what I could do with them. I found a lime pudding recipe that I tried, but it came out less than stellar. Then the idea of key lime pie popped into me head.

I searched around the internet for a good key lime pie recipe. But after realizing that most of them had quite a bit of sugar in them, and were usually accompanied with some sort of milk product (cream cheese, condensed milk, cream, etc) my searched turned to vegan options.

I found the Post Punk Kitchen's Latchkey Lime Pie. I cringed a little at the agar (vegan gelatin) and flour, because that just seemed like filler to me. Turned out that I couldn't make it any how (even after getting all the ingredients ready) because I had turned my oven on to self clean not realizing that I would loose the stove top functionality of it while it was doing it's thing for 3 hours.

In my search though I remembered having seen some sort of healthy avocado lime pie, previously tossed aside for it's somewhat unusual nature. Avocado with lime? Who would have put those in a pie? Turns out there are avocado lime pies out there and they're a quite popular and are a (slightly) healthy pie option. Vegan Yum Yum has a good Avocado-Lime pie recipe. I can't speak for their pistachio crust (I cheated "veganese" by using graham cracker crumbles + margarine) nor their Coconut Cream topping (only had the one can of coconut milk on hand) but their coconut avocado filling is very scrumptious. I made some tweaks, and here's what I ended up with:

( click for the recipe )

In other news, I think I'm getting sick. I haven't been sick this year (after that awful bout at Christmas) so maybe I'm due. Just sucks because I have a lot of work to do, and I'm more or less the only person on my significantly understaffed team that can do it ~_~

I picked up snowboarding at the start of the season to prepare for a big family trip to Le Massif in Québec. By the end of it, I was good enough to keep up with my sis and cousin on the black diamonds :D


( More pictures from my life )

I've always wanted to cosplay my favorite summon Valefor from FFX. I've thought about it over the past years, and I've finally committed to doing it this year.

Buuuuut, I've never done a big, bulky mascot costume before and have very little experience working with foam to emphasize shapes. I'll be pushing myself already considering this will be my first time making large wings. Add in the fact that FFX came out in North America in 2001 (has it really been 10 years?!), and it's never been a popular cosplay choice *cough*Yuna*cough*, so I decided to kind of tone the costume down a bit and design a more modern version or a more human version of the summon. Also Valefor to my knowledge has only ever showed up in FFX, so she could be considered obscure, which gives me all the freedom I need to go crazy.

Unfortunately I can't really upload my design sketches because I lack a scanner, but to give you an idea, my current version includes purple Converse sneakers.

I thought it would be kinda cool to do a small group thing so I was wonderding if anyone else is interested in cosplaying a humanistic/modern/anthropomorphic version of any Final Fantasy summon. I plan on having this done for AN this year. I know most people have already made their plans for AN, if not starting sewing already, but I figured I'd just do a shout out anyways.

I like backgrounds... wallpapers... the image on your computer, whatever you want to call it. I like to browse for funky pictures on the web, sometimes tweak them a bit, and put them up as my wallpaper. But I get bored and change them after a while. Usually after a couple of months. Here's the one I just did (I have 2 monitors):

( WARNING: really big images lay underneath )

I'm also really interested to see what other people are using as their background image. If possible link it! I wanna see :3

I like things that are tiny, cute and (in terms of food) bite sized. I bought wee tiny cupcake liners that I've been itching to use. I've also had this craving to make mint chocolate cupcakes ever since I first made that batch of vegan chocolate cupcakes... so instead of hemming some pants that I should have been hemming, I made cupcakes instead. I present to you in itty bitty format, chocolate mint cupcakes!



Really should have gotten a perspective shot, but the bigger cupcakes shown are probably 2/3 the size of proper sized ones which makes the itty bitty ones even tinier!

I used the Vegan's basic chocolate cupcake which is very similar to this recipe for the cupcake and found an interesting recipe for peppermint frosting. But I used margarine instead of butter which had the unfortunate effect of leaving the icing with an artificial minty buttery flavor... but it worked... I guess.

Very yummy. Stranger neighbour who is no longer a stranger agreed.