Toronto & EGLX Haul!

We sneaked off for a little work and play trip to Toronto to cover EGLX and explored a little. To be accurate, we were in the surrounding Toronto areas and stayed in Markham. And of course, we met up with Drew from Drew’s Movie Reviews, my darling Ultimate Decades Blogathon co-host like the past two years for celebration and fun friends hangout. This year, we decided to not go to Toronto Comicon and switched it to EGLX (Enthusiast Gaming Live Expo…something like that).

With that said, we picked up a few things here and there.

First stop: Pacific Mall

Glasses at Noble Optical

I have gotten my last three pairs of glasses here and my husband got his last pair here so when time to change, we got our new prescriptions and came to look for a new pair. He ended up with his 4th pair in a row of Hugo Boss glasses (never intended) and I had some struggles with this year’s style and ended up with a slightly bigger frame Ray-ban. Never thought I would get Ray-bans but they had a lovely matte finish and looked pretty good. I am still adapting to this new look but it happens all the time after a big purchase.

Noble Optical is pretty cool because they can get the glasses done the day of purchase which is useful for us because we come from out of town so we wanted it to adapt to new glasses over the weekend with our new prescriptions and everything worked out great.

The Best Shop

A little houseware shopping here as we picked up some kitchenware and a shower curtain. Nothing special just a little random purchases we found.

Egg Rolls

A staple of Toronto is picking up these sweet egg rolls usually as a little gift. They are delicious.

Location: Toronto Zoo
Toronto Zoo Cap

My husband loves caps. He gets a good few every year and the Toronto Zoo one had nice colors and the logo was really stylish. So it worked well for him.

Victoria’s Secret

I initially went into Victoria’s Secret to see what style of sports bras were available and whether they were on sale. To my surprise, the quality and design just wasn’t what I wanted. Walking out I saw these T-shirt bras that were so cute plus they had a 2 for $55 sale so I went for it, considering one is usually $43.

LCBO

It wouldn’t be a trip to Ontario without stopping at LCBO for some VQA wines which we can rarely find in SAQ stores. First one is the seasonal rose wine called Sibling Rivalry. The next is a new tasting white Moscato wine called Fresh Beginnings. My husband chose the Innis and Gunn ale beer and I chose a local apple cider drink called Queen Street 501 by Brickstreet Ciderhouse. The next wine recap will review these ones.

Location: EGLX 2018

Studio VTAS

The big day for the trip was definitely EGLX for myself since it is kind of work and play. We didn’t pick up any games however, we did have a goal to fill up a few walls in our house with art and we found two places that we just loved. I had never seen these two artists either so it was a lovely find. The first above is from Studio VTAS. Not sure what the name is exactly but you can find her on Instagram and Twitter. The silhouette ones are beautiful. She also has a fantastic Studio Ghibli collection. Lots of great art here.

Mariya Haponenko

The second artist created these original art called Crystal Monsters at least the one on the right is that. There is an obvious influence for its general design but its inspired by the galaxy and botany for artist Mariya Haponenko. They were slightly pricey but I do love to support indie artists and they were just too awesome to pass up. I love the design of the galaxy one but the botany ones have a really cool technique of pressing glass together or something like that. I’m not artist but the way she described it was very cool.

Location: Vaughan Mills
Disney Store

In theme with yesterday’s Moana review, I actually picked up Pua. There was a sweet deal on plushes at the Disney outlet there and I just couldn’t resist. On a side note, over on Avenue of Daydreams, I will be archiving my Disney plush collection. Still thinking of how to structure it but it will happen soon.

Location: Big Apple

Final stop whenever we go to Toronto by car is The Big Apple where they have a ton of pies and other apple baked goods. This, time, my husband wanted the brownies (not apples at all) but he said it tasted delicious. I got the Apple Strudel and we got an apple pie for my mother in law.

Thats it for this Toronto and EGLX haul!
Enjoy this post as I sort through 1000+ photos for the trip to share!

Toronto Finds (Take 3) and more!

This week just started and its been pretty awesome!

I went really chill with Toronto and managed to survive the weekend, eating/drinking and shopping for about $250, which is absolutely amazing, seeing as I used to easily spend double that amount.  I’ve tamed myself a bit 🙂 My self-control was in full mode.

Still, I think I managed to get some good stuff…

First up, lets check out MOVIES!

Movies!

I snuck in my Les Miserable 25th anniversary soundtrack.  They were on sale at Pacific Mall so I grabbed World War Z and Pain and Gain Blu-ray. I already saw World War Z and if you’re interested, you could check out the review HERE! As for other movies, last time in September, I had wanted Unbeatable but they weren’t available yet.  This time, I managed to get it.  Special ID is the new Donnie Yen movie (YAY!) and Floating City was the buffer to make the deal look better and I realized that Netflix just added it.  Feels a bit like a fail but thats okay.  Ending off is one of my long time faves that I’ve been wanting to add to my collection and Costco in Ontario had it for a decent price: Anne of Green Gables 🙂 No one does Anne as well as Megan Follows.

Next up, Costco also had some pretty awesome deal on books so I grabbed these ones!

Books!

I’m a mega fan of  Amy Tan. The Joy Luck Club is one of my most favorite books and even the movie wasn’t such a bad one, in my opinion, but I haven’t seen it in ages. I will though, then I’ll review it.  As for Jodi Piccoult, I loved My Sister’s Keeper so I thought I’d give this one a chance.  I’ve read some good reviews of it.

Hmm…I actually think thats all I bought, other than a bunch of food that I ended up eating before taking any pictures.  It was mostly Dim Sum from T&T Supermarket and some Egg rolls.  Groceries, you know? I’m sure you don’t need to see that!

If I ended it here, this would be kind of a pathetic post so I figured I’d share some of my surprisingly quick arrivals 🙂

The first is something that I had bought on Groupon for a Photobook and I managed to finish it right before the deadline! It didn’t come with a lot of long hours looking through pictures and making hard choices for the layout.  It was supposed to be a surprise gift for my boyfriend, but he’s way more decisive than I am, so I asked him to help me and that really sped up the process!

Photobook cover

Random inside pages

Excuse my messy desk and all those newspaper snippets my mom likes to stick under the glass on my table! I’d say it looks pretty cool! The pages all of different layouts and pictures, its pretty  much the highlights of all our trips: summer vacations, day trips, weekend getaways, for the past 5+ years of our relationship.  I actually dug out a lot of pictures that I completely forgot I had and we had a good laugh while putting it together.  Fun times 🙂 That flew from Malaysia (according to DHL tracking) to here in just a matter of days, arriving on Friday (but I was out of town) so I got it on Monday.

Next up, yesterday’s one delivery turned into TWO! WHAT?!?!?!? Apparently all those random things I get over the months all came one by one. I had bought speakers from Groupon for my cellphone since I enjoy listening to music when I shower or work around the house, plus, its light and portable.

Veho Speakers

I listened to it for a bit and it seems pretty decent.  For the price I got it at, I wasn’t expecting anything grand and it turned out alright.  Always a plus!

I also ordered a shirt from These Quiet Sounds, which is also a clothing company owned by one of the Boyce Avenue brothers, Fabian.  I was curious a few weeks ago and went to check out the site and totally fell in love with this tank top! BUTTERFLIES 🙂

These Quiet Sounds package

Here’s what it looks like!

I LOVE IT! I was a bit nervous because the fabric they used usually makes me look fat but hey, it looks pretty decent to me.  Maybe it was the 400 crunches I did before I tried it on, but I’m going to take the positive side of this: I probably toned my body up.  Just have to make sure I keep doing it, right?

See, the post didn’t turn out to be that pathetic, right? I actually have one more package that should be on its way for a Kickstarter project.  After that, everything will calm down as I prep for Christmas gifts and crafts.  Then it’ll be my turn to send things out! Plus, I have to try to keep all expenses minimal…I’ll do a big reveal in December after the Nanowrimo November craze has passed!

Things are going back to some form of normality! I do have a movie review going up soonish, maybe tomorrow, maybe later today. I have a few movies on Netflix expiring on December 1st so I have to get those watched: Dead Silence, Children of Men & Martha Marcy May Marlene. Whether I get all those watched, I have no idea but I’ve read some positive reviews each of them so I’m going to try my best to see them all.  3 movies in 10 days sounds very doable in my mind at least.

Okay! I’m done rambling on! 

Any of the three, you’d suggest me to see more than the others? How’s your Nanowrimo going? Do you like to support Kickstarter projects? Have you started thinking about Christmas gifts already?

Toronto Food Frenzy! :)

I’m sure most of you know that I’m a foodie and well, I love eating Chinese food but eating Chinese food in Montreal is really complicated and difficult, not to mention full of MSG and unhealthy.  So, when I get to the awesome city of Toronto, I go all out and try to eat as much as I can! This time with my best friend, we really went completely random and just chose restaurants that we went by or heard of before.

First stop was upon arrival at Pacific Mall on Friday where we got our lunch at one of the fast food kiosks there.  Even these are quite impressive.  I tend to always go to  the same one.

With our meal we get Chicken Ginseng Soup (or Soy milk or soft drinks).  I had my favorite there, Yang Zhou Fried Rice.

Chicken Ginseng Soup

Yang Zhou Fried Rice

I have this unexplainable love for Yang Zhou Fried Rice.  When in doubt, I always pick it.  My best friend chose the Lohan style Vegetable Chow Mein. Sorry for the blur….

Lo Han style Vegetable Chow Mein

At night, after a really awesome horror movie, Rigor Mortis at TIFF (review HERE), we ate dinner back at First Markham Place and we chose Congee Wong. The crazy cold weather in Toronto had made us almost feeling sick so we thought some congee would be good.  Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the congee but we did have two dishes to accompany it.

Chinese Poached Chicken at Congee Wong

Enoki Mushroom with Pea Tips

They were really delicious.  I’m a huge fan of Pea Tips veggies.  These were made so good! The congee was also really good thats why I didn’t even take a picture and it was already gone.

After a good night sleep at the hotel, we went out for brunch/dim sum at Ding Tai Fung Restaurant, a chain restaurant famous in Taiwan (I believe).  Its a bit more pricey than most restaurants but they made awesome cuisine.  I hadn’t eaten there in almost 10 years.

Warm Soy Milk

Steamed Soup-Filled Dumpling

Glutinous Rice Dumplings

Pan-Fried Chive Dumplings (I think)

Fried Rice with Shrimp and Eggs

You can’t get any more feeling like living in Asia than drinking some authentic soy milk, not the stuff out of cartons in the supermarkets.  Plus, this place makes some of the best Steamed Soup-Filled Dumplings I’ve ever tasted (the other place is Asian Legend that I’ve mentioned before a while back).  Our trial was the glutinous rice dumplings.  They were good but just not too tasty, coming from me, thats actually saying a lot because I’m used to eating everything low sodium, low oil, etc.  The fried rice was really to help us feel more filled to go for our shopping day 🙂

That evening, after our shopping, we decided to finish up the leftovers from the previous meals and also grabbed hot dog (for me) and hamburger (for my best friend) at Five Guys to complement everything. We also dropped by a Chinese herbal tea/dessert place called Pun Cao Tong Herbal to grab some deserts.  No pictures of those though…we had a bit of an accident and after the clean up, we just sat back to finish the movie (review going up later) we were watching and eat.  However, here was our very hotel room picnic style dinner setup:

Leftovers with Five Guys at the hotel room

For dessert, my best friend chose Stewed Egg White with Black Sesame Paste.  I chose my favorite Black Sesame Paste (that was also the culprit of the mess).  We also both had bought some Herbal Jelly to take home.

Typing this up just made me miss Toronto food so much. Although I do have something pretty huge planned in the baking department thats somewhat of a fusion.

This trip really helped me get back all the blogging motivation because right now, I’ve started about 10 drafts for the coming week and two ideas churning in my mind that I’m working on 🙂 Definitely back on track and it feels great!

Happy Wednesday! 🙂

Toronto Shopping Finds :)

For the record, I haven’t shopped with my best friend in ages.  We both are busy with our own lives and its been tough to even find time to hang out.  Just to mention it…our friendship started 10 years ago in mid August/September.  Maybe subconsciously we both felt it would be great timing and it may be for that reason ;).  I really don’t have too many friends that is still in my life after 10 years and keep constant contact.  This is actually the first road trip that we had just the two of us.  Things went great and we managed to not only see two wonderful movies at TIFF but we also managed to eat some delicious food (I will post soon) and lots of shopping.

We arrived in Markham at about noon and went straight to Pacific Mall to kill some time before we checked into our hotel at 3pm.  I always make the run to pick up some Hong Kong flicks and some blu-rays. I also go to get some dried plums and egg rolls, etc.  These are the movies that I got:

Any of the movies catch your interest? From the top we have Hansel and Gretel:Witch Hunter, Gangster Squad, John Dies at the End, Step Up Revolution, Ip Man: Final Fight (missed this at Fantasia Festival), Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Young and Dangerous: Prequel, The Lady, Drug War, Saving General Yang (missed this at Fantasia Festival), A Simple Life. There were two other ones that were chosen for Venice Film Festival but they weren’t available yet so maybe next time I go again 🙂

Saturday was our actual shopping day and we headed out to Vaughan Mills.  I remember having a lot of fun there last time and my best friend had never been before so we ended up hitting a lot of sales.  I ended up getting a lot of clothes.  The main goal was to get something warmer since Toronto was so very cold.

Aeropostale!

I bought mostly athletic clothes at Aeropostale.  It was a pretty sweet deal for all of that 🙂 Plus, I think they have super comfortable slim fit sweat pants.

Bluenotes!

I love Bluenotes to bits because they have such cute t-shirts.  I wanted to buy so many more.  These ones fit me better.

Disney outlet and Foot Locker

I know that I shouldn’t get anything at Disney outlet but Flounder was just too cute! I had to get it 🙂

That sweater is possibly the most expensive sweater I’ve gotten but its dri-fit and is super warm and water resistant.  I think I have an obsession over Under Armour clothes….okay..maybe I don’t think.

Aside from that, after a lot of self-control, I bought one type of tea at Teavana called Berry Kiwi Colada Herbal tea.

Berry Kiwi Colada (picture from Teavana site)

It smelled delicious and fruity.  Plus, they have some Perfectea rock sugar to add in to make it a bit sweeter to cover some of the tisanes sour taste in some.  Its made from beets so its supposed to be healthier also.

For Sunday, time was a bit tighter after the movie so we didn’t end up doing much shopping and rather left for home to get back so that we could both rest up for the next day since we both need to head out to work.

Shopping is always the best with my best friend and it was a memorable trip.  Thats the most important part of it 🙂

Drop by again to see some more of Toronto and especially for the movie review of TIFF 2013’s showing of Hong Kong Chinese vampire horror movie, Rigor Mortis. Its taking me a bit longer to put together the review but it will be up very soon.