The Less Spending Challenge?

This month of May we are super over our family budget. I can't blame it all on the family visiting even though it's easy to get carried away with buying things to make our guests feel comfortable like new towels, pillows, cookies and fancy soap. Not to mention all the restaurants we deliciously and lazily ate in. There is also what I coin the "turn of season" spending; garden supplies, new bicycles and tuning, sandals, patio furniture etc... How easily it adds us, and forget about that beaconing tax return. It's not there for that. It's to replace our lumpy mattress, to pay down our mortgage, to take a trip to Halifax this summer, to sock away for new floors, and for RRSPs. And in a flash, it's gone! Never to be seen again until next April.

So now what? I challenge myself, since I seem to be the keeper of the family finances, to spend less in the month of June. I could overwhelm myself with all the advice I could find online, but I choose simplicity. Here are my ideas which I will post on my kitchen cupboard.

• Ride my bike, unless it's pouring rain, which it mostly could be, but nonetheless.
• Leave my cards at home. This will prevent urges to go to coffee shops even though I like to keep the economy rolling with this slurge.
• Eat my cupboards clean. Look deep. Eat the tiny bag of leftover spaghetti, the handful of sesame seeds, and the last three dates.
• Fight the urge to run to the store every time we are missing something. Miss that thing for a few days, then it's so much better when you have it. This may cause cheese withdrawal panic for my husband, but too bad.
• Eat less. Duh.
• Think super creatively to make presents for birthdays and Father's Day.
• Drink cheaper wine.
• Keep my friend Carolina's tip in mind: Never buy any produce that costs more than $2/pound. (That's tough)
• No clothes needed. Nothing we own is thread bare.

Can I do it? We'll see. I'll keep you posted. Bring me wine and cheese if you feel sorry for me. wink. wink.

Circle Farm Tours

If you're getting the feeling like you want to bust out of town and you want to avoid the line-up at the border, head out on a Circle Farm Tour. These 5 self guided tours take you across beautiful farm lands in Maple Ridge & Pitt Meadows, Langley, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and Agassiz as you stop and sample all the wonderful local goods and produce this rich valley has to offer.

Here is a tiny list of what you will want to bring home for a most fantabulous outdoor meal: a bottle of wine from Le Domaine De Chaberton, cheese curds from Golden Ears CheeseCrafters, cranberry vinegar from The Fort Langley Wine Company, piles of strawberries and blueberries from Driediger Farms, and an antique table from Granny and Grumpa's to serve it on. Don't forget the organic Angus beef and a hand thrown salad bowl from Greendale Pottery, some blooms from Minter Gardens and freshly roasted coffee from The Back Porch. There are dozens of interesting places to stop, but my favorite tour is the Agassiz &Harrison Mills tour, the scenery and the proximity to Harrison Lake make the extra time on the highway worth it.

Visit www.circlefarmtour.com or pick up the summer issue of Edible Vancouver magazine at your local grocery store to find all the tour maps. Now is the time, the strawberries are here!

Family Month of May

I haven't posted at all this month, mainly because it's been a month of family visits. Some came to stay and I traveled back east to see some others. Mostly family I rarely see because of the distances and the price of air tickets. I do have to say though that a trip to Quebec, even with sitting in a traffic jam on a dilapidated overpass  in downtown Montreal is a breeze compared to the 24 hr, delirium inducing trip to Rio de Janeiro. Canada is just so darn big, and Brazil so darn far. I envy the folks in Europe who with such civility ride a cozy train across a picturesque country side while reading the paper and sipping on a spritzer, while us Canadians have to shlep our carefully weighted carry-on and sit behind a screaming child while picking apart a soggy, overpriced sandwich.

Canadian Airlines should offer a "buy 3 get one free" promotion for family members sharing the same last name and traveling domestically. That way we can all reunite more often and discover our own country. I've never been to PEI, the Yukon, Nunavut or the Northwest Territories. Most of the others were a drive though. One of my uncles has a family pool going for a lottery, and if we win, the money would be used to have a giant family reunion. I miss them, my family. I feel sad that I'm a long-distance aunt and sister-in-law.

My East Coast Brother, Julien

Unboxing Summer Clothes

Unboxing my summer clothes has unleashed a whole new a cascade of wardrobe malfunctions. In an effort to reduce the pile of laundry of these slightly box-smelling clothes, I've realized some of the reasons I've come to this point.

1. I'm fighting the fact that my uniform should consist of t-shirts with various mosaics of stains, and stop buying "prettier" clothes which inevitably get stained on the first day I wear them.

2. I'm a compulsive pattern shopper. Every item I own has a pattern, none of which go with any other pattern I own. Hence the pile of solid t-shirts, which I mentioned before get patterned soon enough.

3. I've lost the ability to make outfits which my sensible grandmother and mom have always done. This is lost mostly because I shop sporadically during the year, buying one item at a time and along with my pattern obsession, well, I don't want to repeat myself. It makes sense right? Wait until September, buy several items at a time that go well together, put down a healthy amount of money, and don't return to shop until May.

4. I just have too many clothes. 

The Hidden Cottages

As I was walking back from Clark Park one morning, I took this photograph of two small cottages and wondered, is this how Cedar Cottage got it's name?

A quick internet search and presto! According to the Vancouver Street Stories, it was named because the first settlers of this neighborhood built small cedar cottages along the rough roads and forests. It's funny, because just the other day, I mentioned to a neighbor that it would be fun to apply for a small neighborhood fund to have a historic plaque added to Commercial street to commemorate the rich history of this working class neighborhood. Turns out Vancouver Street Stories have already placed one at Brewer's Park on Victoria and 26th which talks mostly about the Cedar Cottage Neighborhood House which started in the 1950's when 5 dads wanted to get their boys out of gangs and off the street. This youth group offered sports leagues, and school and family support on the the grounds on Lord Selkirk School and was later moved to it's current location near Brewer's Park.

While reading more about Vancouver Street Stories, I learned a few more tidbits about Cedar Cottage.

Maybe you already knew that in the 1880's Vancouver was home to 50 wild salmon streams, but did you know several major ones ran through Kensington-Cedar Cottage, such as China Creek and Brewer’s Creek, making it an ideal place to build a brewery at Knight and Kingsway? (Wouldn't be cool if there was still a micro brewery on that same corner selling China Creek Cider and Cedar Cottage Beer?)

Did you know that there was a theater on Commercial Street?

Spend some time on the Vancouver Public Library Special Collections Historical Photographs website for many other beautiful photos of the past.

Cedar Cottage Brewery at Knight and Kingsway- Vancouver Street Stories

Theater on Commercial Street 1913- Vancouver Public Library Historical Photos Database

Cedar Cottage Station 1913-Vancouver Public Library Historical Photos Database

Looking More Prettier than Yesterday

"Oh, you look more prettier than yesterday! You should wear more make-up like today. You look like Michelle Pfeiffer!" exclaimed my female Korean co-workers as I walked in the staff room. "Are you insane? First of all, I wasn't wearing make-up yesterday, just like I'm not wearing make-up today, and every Westerner looks Michelle Pfeiffer to you." I thought to myself as I veered off to the male teacher's lounge.

Even after 3 years in Korea, watching women whip out their make-up powders and patting their faces during a meal at a restaurant, I still couldn't get used to it. That was more than 10 years ago and I had almost forgotten this "cultural difference" until a few weeks ago when I was riding a crowded skytrain and saw a young woman putting on mascara and using that curling-scissor thingy to curl her eyelashes. And then it all came back to me.

In the building where I worked, it wasn't uncommon to ride the elevator with a young Korean woman accompanied by her mother on the way to the underground parkade. Hiding her face with a baseball cap, she had finally received her high school graduation present: Double eyelid plastic surgery. Apparently a very common procedure to look more westernized before starting university. When I graduated I got a camera.

Korean ladies are not alone in bonding over beauty talk. Being married to a Brazilian man, I cannot attend a social function without the Brazilian ladies comparing notes about where to get the cheapest manicure, and isn't it super expensive in Vancouver? and on and on... this misconception of mine that Brazilian women are naturally gorgeous, sun-kissed and healthy from dancing the samba on the beach was wrong. It takes work! Naturally! Stupid me.

As I was researching cultural differences in beauty, I fell upon British photographer, Zed Nelson's book, Love me. It has beautiful and disturbing pictures collected over 5 years across 17 countries of cosmetic surgeons, beauty queens, anorexics, body builders, night clubbers, housewives and soldiers. These photographs clearly display our collective obsession with beauty, social approval and the beauty industry that governs us. I don't claim not to be influenced by media and the beauty industry, sometimes I am, but honestly, I'm one of those girls who has one eyeliner. I wear some on special occasions and wipe it off 'cause it's old and it itches and makes me look like I've been crying from one eye. I don't own a blow dryer, or a lipstick or perfume.  My daily beauty regime consists of a shower and a bit of blush to take attention away from the dark circles under my eyes. In the summer, I treat myself to one manicure/pedicure at the start of the warm weather and watch it disappear around Christmas.

Just this Friday, I went for my first manicure of the year at a little Chinese salon on Victoria Street. I took a deep breath as I spotted on the door a poster with different styles of lips and eyebrows you can have done with permanent marker (oops, I mean, make-up). I'll take the "Pretty Princess" lips and the "Happy Rainbow" eyebrows!  That poster scares me.

At the entrance two over-sized, space, recliner, massage chairs for pedicures took up most of the space. Along one wall, there were shelves with dusty knickknacks, and posters about fat-sucking robot machines. Large photos of the 2011 Miss Chinese of Vancouver pageant winners posing with the shop owner were hung randomly around the room. The windows were crowded with dusty pink blinds, Christmas lights and security bars. The two young women who greeted me were wearing matching polyester smocks and flip flops. Why are so many salons who specialize in beautifying, so darn unappealing?

I quickly zoned out on the mix of bad spa music and the buzz of a broken indoor water fountain while my young manicurist painted my nails. One tendon snapping arm massage later, and a pretty decent manicure, I was charged only $16.05 including tax. Okay, so I'm comparing like my Brazilian friends, but that sure beats paying $25 on the westside.

So where am I going with this? I guess it's a personal reminder to continue to love my body and my enjoy my beauty quietly. To keep it simple. To have a bit of humor with the ridiculous lengths the beauty industry will go to make us feel inadequate and to not propagate our insecurities among each other. To focus on each other's smiles and stick flowers in our hair.

Me, my boy and my sister in law looking good in Cabo Frio, Brazil

Under Construction

It seems like it's been two years now, that two townhouse complexes next to us and across the street have been under construction. It's dragging on. These 4-5 unit developments have taken longer to build than a 190 unit monster a few blocks away. Yep, there's noise, lack of street parking, garbage, and a massacred tree, but it will look great when it's done. Here's what I saw on the ground at the entrance of one of the buildings.  It made me smile.

Treats for the construction boys. Play nicely and no more water fights! :) M.