Festivities

Chinese Dancers

by Carol Browne on January 30, 2012 · 0 comments

in Festivities, Photos, Vancouver

Chinese New Year

I love it when the dancing girls bust out the fans and the shiny costumes for the parade.
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Welcome to the Water Dragon

by Carol Browne on January 29, 2012 · 2 comments

in Festivities, Photos, Vancouver

Not only is the Year of the Dragon zodiac sign, but it’s the year of the Water Dragon. According to this website, this means the water will calm the dragon down, so that it’s not quite as tough as he usually is. Hooray! A friendly dragon? I’m in! I loved How To Train Your Dragon.
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Chinatown during Chinese New Year

by Carol Browne on January 25, 2012 · 0 comments

in Edibles, Festivities

Today’s post will mostly revolve around fruit, specifically Chinese fruit. My new buddy, Annie, picked up some frozen durian fruit in her travels. I didn’t take a photo of it because it was just in a package. Besides, the important part of this fruit is not how it looks as much as how it smells. WHOA. Now, I had heard that this fruit actually smelled of POOP, so before the package was opened, I was all, “YES! Please let me try the durian!” because I wanted to say I ate the poop fruit and liked it. A few big fans of the durian assured me it tastes delicious, but smells like doodie. I was so ready to like it. Instead, I learned:

1) Everyone perceives durian differently. Some people love it immediately. Some people just don’t ever love it.
2) Sadly, I don’t like the poo fruit. I really wanted to. But the fruit was just really weird.
3) It didn’t even smell like poo to me. Instead, it smelled like gasoline. Other people in the office commented it smelled like dirty socks, but no turd smell.
4) Durian gives me onion breath.

Tomorrow Annie is bringing in more fruit for us to try – a fruit called, longan. It looks like a miniature version of lychees. I’ll show you and give you a review of that fruit tomorrow. Welcome to the fruit review! I’ll be here all week.
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A visit from the dragon, and Justin Bieber?

by Carol Browne on January 24, 2012 · 1 comment

in Festivities, General

Chinese New Year

Today was one of the darkest, rainiest days I can ever remember experiencing in Vancouver. The sky was dark by 2:00 this afternoon and it felt like night time. Catherine and I headed over to the mall for some lunch and were happily visited by the Dragon! This whole week is Chinese New Year and there will be all sorts of surprises in the neighbourhood in celebration.
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I’m not the shmoopy type…

January 22, 2012

…and I don’t really care about Valentines Day, but for some reason, I do like hearts. Oh wait. I love chocolate and that’s very Valentines Day-ish. Other than that…I’d rather stay home and watch movies, edit photos or blog. Last time I got my hair cut, the hairdresser asked me, “How do you wear your [...]

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The boys are famous.

December 25, 2011

I would write more, but I’m so tired from all the festivities and all the drinking of hot beverages from our fancy kitty cat mugs. Today we drank coffee AND tea from these glorious mugs we got for Christmas from Mike’s mom and dad in Nova Scotia. We’ve been switching the mugs back and forth [...]

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Glossy icing

December 24, 2011

I made some sugar cookies for Mike to take to the office after seeing this super easy recipe for glossy icing. Spoiler alert – it’s corn syrup! You mix corn syrup with icing sugar and a bit of milk, and voilà! Pretty, shiny icing. I love how it looks.

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Advent Day 22 – Safe at the Solstice

December 22, 2011

We last saw the whole team making a quick get away from the violent potato gang… Dave: Woohoo! Take that, you bully spuds! Carol: Yah! See you later, taters! Mike: Phew! that was close. Thank goodness for Oscar and Donner. I know we complain about their sharp nails, but I’ll never complain again. Editor’s note: [...]

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It’s that time again…

December 4, 2011

It’s baking time, that’s for sure. I’ve got a party to go tomorrow and I’m bringing 3 dozen cookies. I finally found a recipe to use up nearly a whole box of candy canes. I had the candy canes with red and green stripes, you can see the green flecks in the cookies. Hooray! They [...]

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The anvil of foreshadowing

November 30, 2011

My sister sent me this cartoon today. I’m pretty sure this is what we can expect from Donner – our littlest kitty. Not good. That means no glass ornaments this year. And probably next year. Thank goodness I made that little Babushka ornament…she’ll be fine on the tree. She’s a very safe ornament. Guess what [...]

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