Am I Jealous Of Natalie Portman? Of Course!

I just had to post these pictures I found from Marie Claire of the beautiful Natalie Portman.

Moving To Bagend

After watching the beginning of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, I've officially decided I'm going to retire to a hobbit hole. Old maps, stacked books, grass roof and all.

Avatar

This has to be one of the best movies I have seen all year. Considering the year is almost over and all the movies shown, that's saying a lot. After putting on the stylish 3D glasses I was pulled into the futuristic world in front of me. At first the 3D was a little weird but after a while it made the movie real, like I was a spectator watching everything from a distance. For those of you who don't know what the movie is about, here is the basic plot line...The story follows a future battle between Earth and alien moon Pandora. The Army is after rich minerals, mainly located underneath the Natives home tree. Jake Sully, played by the amazingly attractive Sam Worthington, who is confined to a wheelchair, is chosen to be part of the Avatar program,where his mind will control a healthy body on a remote world and sent to Pandora, a rain forest with a mix of beautiful and terrifying creatures known as the Na'vi. After being accepted into their world, Jake finds himself needing to decide where his allegiances lie, in a battle which will decide the fate of two planets...I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It had great characters and character development, a fantastic storyline, amazing scenery and even the Avatar's grew on me, they became more and more attractive as the movie went on. Everything about this movie was awesome, I left the theater in awe, I highly recommend it to anyone. Well done James Cameron, well done.

Christmas Is Coming, The Goose Is Getting Fat..

Please Put A Penny In The Old Man's Hat...The month of December has flown by and already the Holiday Season is upon us, with only 3 days till Christmas. I've got the majority of my Christmas shopping done. Need to finish up a few extra stocking stuffers today after work, for my brothers and myself. Also the gift making hasn't gone so well, I've had very little time to find patterns and fabric and actually sit down at the sewing machine. But I will give out the gifts probably in the New Year, which will still count as Christmas present to me. We have yet to put up our Christmas tree, but I am opting that it be set up today! And if my brother doesn't do it, I shall do it myself. So I will be wrapping presents, sipping hot chocolate and listening to Christmas music, getting ready for the last few days till Christmas.

RIP Brittany Murphy

At 8:00 a.m. on December 20, 2009 Brittany Murphy had apparently collapsed in a bathroom. Firefighters attempted to resuscitate Murphy on the scene, and she was subsequently transported to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Ca, where she was pronounced dead on arrival at 10:04 a.m. after going into cardiac arrest. She was one of my favourite actresses and I enjoyed her movies such as Just Married and Uptown Girls. Its always so sad to see a talented and beautiful actress pass away. She will be missed.

Bite Me Am I Dreaming...

Or is that little Miss Dakota Fanning all grown up? I just had to write a post about how gorgeous and mature Dakota Fanning looks at the Twilight: New Moon LA Premiere. Although the other girls looked good on the red carpet, Dakota won the race in black high heels. True I'm not a huge fan of the Twilight series and no midnight watcher of the movies, I am somewhat excited to see New Moon. Especially for Miss Fanning's role as Jane, a high ranking Italian royal vampire family named, The Volturi. The movie premieres tonight at midnight for all the Twifans. For the rest of us, November 20th.

MMMASON JENNINGS!!

Ben and I went to the Mason Jennings concert at In The Venue Saturday night. One word...Amazing. It was one of the best concerts I've been to. The doors opened at 7 and thankfully the opening band, The Wheel from Colorado, was on time and really good. The had a good keyboardist and a cool stand up bass. After they finished their 45 min music set they set up for the next band. Being told previously from my brother there was going to be two opening bands, when Mason Jennings got on stage I paused, did a double take and exclaimed "Wait that is Mason Jennings!" The crowd erupted and the show started. Mason Jennings was of course, terrific. He played a few of his older songs like Butterfly and Nothing and a lot of his newer stuff that I have yet to put on my ipod. But I literally fell in love with him and his music all over again. After an amazing show of course they came back for an encore, and then again for a second encore where they played two awesome sets. I especially liked when they played 'The Weight' by The Band while Mason Jennings sang the first verse, his bassist sang the second, his back up guitarist the third and his drummer the forth and finally they all finished the last verse together. The whole concert gave me perma-grin for the rest of the night. If you want a good natural high, go to a Mason Jennings concert.

P.S. Sorry the pictures are bad, once again I forgot my camera and my phone was the only thing I had

It starts with 'Today' and ends with MLIA.

My new favourite site is My Life Is Average. Its a website for people to post average things that happen to them in their normal daily lives. Much better than the emo loving FLM(F My Life), which is sad and depressing. MLIA is uplifting and makes me giggle at work. True, the website has been around for a very long time, but I'm just barly discovering the joy it brings me durring my boring and average days. Thank you MLIA, thank you.

Here Come The Holidays!

I'm officially welcoming the Holiday Season with open arms! True its not even Thanksgiving yet but I can't help but secretly listen to Christmas music and write up my Christmas lists. The first for what I'm getting people the second for myself. Surprisingly this year the list for what I'm getting people is longer than my own list. But I have decided to try something new for gifts this year. I am attempting to make them, yes I said make them. I will post about how they turn out and what I will be doing. Also here is a list of the Christmas presents I would like...-Simple Sewing With A French Twist
-Ikea Bed
-Anthropologie Dress
-Boots from Urban Outfitters
-Everwild by Neal Shusterman
-Wallet from Urban Outfitters

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope everyone had an amazing Halloween. Mine was very good! Ben and I, or Solid Snake and a hockey player, went out on all hallows eve to enjoy the festivities with some friends. We spent the night hanging out, playing beer pong, Rock Band and dancing in a strobe light. Other than that my Halloween was uneventful, sadly no pumpkin carving or Trick-or-Treating for me. But the next holiday is Thanksgiving and I cannot wait!

P.S. Pictures coming soon!

The Host & Hostess

Jessica Szohr and Ed Westiwick attending LA's Confederacy for artist Todd DiCiurcio's new show Heartstrings sponsored by Rag & Bone. Ed also hosted the event this weekend. Jessica stood out in her beautiful pinstripe suit and chunky chain necklace. You can find the whole story and more pictures here.

Toe Pick

My official winter sport is now ice skating. Yes, although snowboarding should be number one because its my favourite, its also a lot more expensive than ice skating. After my brother sharpened up his new hockey skates and I rented my figure skates we spent our Tuesday night skating around the rink. Although I was a bit shaky at first, my feet quickly remembered the smooth strides of my skates on the ice. So as Ben practices for the UVU hockey try-outs, I will be spending time getting reacquainted with my Canadian roots on the ice.

Back From The Mother Land

No not Russia, but my homeland, Canada! Last week I got to go home and spent Canadian Thanksgiving with my Dad. First I was almost late for my flight, the Delta employee was nice enough to let me still check in and I ran to the gate. After a quick layover in Cincinnati I almost didn't get my flight to Buffalo because my flight was over booked. Luckily the lady at the desk was so nice and got me a ticket, seat A1, right by the cockpit, it was awesome. The whole trip was so much fun, just spending time with my family, seeing my aunts, uncles, cousins and new babies of cousins. The first couple days were spent hanging out with my dad around my aunts house, stopping by Tim Horton's a little too often. But on Wednesday we went to Toronto! It was so much fun. Walked up and down Queen W. street and looked at all the vintage shops. Then walked around Toronto and shopped at the Eaton Centre for a good while. Finally after a long day we drove down town a bit to meet my cousins and have some delicious dinner at The Keg. I had a wonderful Zesty Salmon - a grilled fillet basted with a sweat and mildly spicy sauce. Served with chili mayonnaise and rice pilaf and for dessert, apple crumble and crème brûlée. On Thursday we ventured to Niagara-On-The-Lake walking around all the little shops, grabbing hot chocolate at a cafe, and eating yummy pub style fish and chips at the Angel Inn. The next 2 days were spent with family and finally the long flight home. I also got a lot of fun souvenirs and such! I am missing Canada so much and hope to go back soon!

Happy World Vegetarian Day

October first is officially World Vegetarian Day and the kick-off of Vegetarian Awareness Month. Make a difference and explore the variety of tasty and healthy meat-free foods and informing others about the vegetarianism benefits. Help create a better world with the vegetarian diet. They have proven health benefits, saves animals and helps preserve the earth. And for those who are meat eaters why not try a meat-free diet for 24 hours? Just to see that it can be done. Well once again I want to wish everyone, vegetarian or not, a Happy World Vegetarian Day!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEAGHAN!

Today is my dear sister Meaghan's 23rd birthday! Although she is kinda lame to be spending it at her house in LA and I wish we could hangout today, I still would like to wish her a Happy Birthday! So Happy Birthday Meaghan! Everyone loves you so much!! and if people actually looked at my blog I would make everyone leave a comment for you but....Happy birthday to my wonderful, kind, beautiful, amazing, fun, hilarious best friend and sister Meaghan!

A Must See

On Tuesday I was able to see a special screening of the new movie Zombieland. I was hesitant to go see it but considering it was free I couldn't pass it up. So with a large popcorn, two soda drinks, and my brothers, the movie began...Its a hilarious horror movie with heartwarming characters and excellent dialogue. Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), is a big wuss and spent most of his free time playing World of Warcraft in his dorm room before the zombie apocalypse. At the beginning he establishes his own set of "rules" for surviving the zombie infection which are soon tested with his new found companion and bad-ass zombie slayer Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson). They eventually team up with Wichita (Emma Ston) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) who have their own unique take on zombie surviving. I literally laughed out loud almost the entire movie at the zombie killing, the characters and my favourite part, the Bill Murray zombie. Josh also made me giggle with his loud infectious laugh. Needless to say my opinion of the movie changed, Its easily one of the funniest movies I have seen this year.

Love Is All You Need

On 9/9/09 Rock Band released their newest game The Beatles: Rock Band. Yes its been out for almost three weeks now, but I only had the money to buy it yesterday. Being a fan of Rock Band and The Beatles, made this game so very appealing. You get to see and listen to The Beatles making music history as they take you along their journey. They provide you with an amazing song list, with songs such as: Hard Days Night, Back In The USSR, Day Tripper, Eight Days A Week and much much more. You also get to play all the different places the actual Beatles got to play like, The Cavern Club, Shea Stadium, and on the Apple rooftop. I cannot wait to go home and play some more great Beatles tunes on the X box!! Hurray!

Playground Workout

Jessica Szohr and Self Magazine put together a fun workout full of swings, slides and monkey bars. You can look at the magazine steps or watch the video here, either way they are very helpful. These unique moves will help you tone up while using your own body as the resistance. I think I will definitely be trying this workout when I go running, it looks like so much fun! So get out play and tone up those muscles for a full body make over.

Meet the Meat Puppets

Yesterday my brother Ben, his friend Jared and I all went to the Meat Puppets concert at The Urban Lounge. It was a late show that's for sure. The doors opened at 9 o'clock, the first band from, Austin, Texas with an amazing chick guitarist who really rocked it on stage, came on around 9:45. After a Blue Moon and orange slice the second band came on around 10:30, a little more harder, exciting. Then finally at midnight The Meat Puppets came out! The crowd was a smaller one, not too out of control except for the cougar in the beige blazer who was doe-see-doeing with everyone, including our small group of three. It was an awesome and fun show ended at around 1:30. Where presiding we went out to Denny's for a 2 am breakfast!

Thanks Wisconson

True I've always been a Blair Waldorf fan but boy did Vanessa squeeze her way in unknowingly. With an amazing fashion sense, beautiful eyes, gorgeous hair and a hot body, no wonder Jessica Szohr won the hearts of so many fan boys, including her current boyfriend and costar, Ed Westwick. In season one of Gossip Girl she was the sweet puffy haired girl next door best friend of Dan Humphry. But come season three, shes turned up the heat to sexy girl from Brooklyn, now freshman at NYU! Shes appeared multiple times in Teen Vogue for her wonderful fashion sense, cute hats and new shopping partner, Style Blogger, Andrew Bevan. Also, Jessica has appeared in Lucky, Nylon, Men's Health, Rolling Stone and Ocean Drive magazines, all just this year. Shes just beautiful done up and au natural. So just a heads up I will be following her closely, in a non creepy way, and keep you updated on her events and fashion. Because yes she is my new favourite person to follow! Here are some pictures of the beautiful Jessica Szohr...

We Likey The Rafi

I've discovered a new celebrity crush. With an amazing jaw line, deep brown eyes and of course we all know I'm a sucker for the Brits. Please meet Rafi Gavron. After seeing him appear in Teen Vogue magazine I was hooked. First appearing in Breaking and Entering starring Jude Law, and good friend Ed Westwick (another hot British man on my radar). He also was in the TV show Rome, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and finally in Inkheart. He also did some Barney's catalog adds. He's just dreamy all around and I hope to see much much more of the dashing Rafi soon!

Stressed!

I am super stressed, hence the title of this blog entry. I have yet to send back my passport papers which came back on Friday with the photos being too bright. So after getting the wrong photos again and having to retake them again today, I cross my fingers in hopes I will get my passport back in time to travel up to Canada!! I will be sending it out today and hopefully by October 9th I will have my lovely passport in hand to travel back home for Canadian Thanksgiving! On top of that I've been wanting that amazing coat from ASOS.com which has yet to come back in the gray and my size...Please just kill me! Other than that things are ok, Thanks for asking.

L4D2

After my endless hours of playing L4D I'm in dire need of a new game, or expansion or something! Thank you Valve and EA for catering to my needs. The first-person shooter, multi-player zombie game, Left 4 Dead, is back with a sequel (I sat and watched the trailer at least a dozen times). The same story, a massive outbreak turning everyone into zombies, and you become one of the four survivors trying not to get infected and reach each safe house before getting rescued, but this time in the South. Starting in Savannah, Georgia and ending up in New Orleans, Louisiana. Almost like a $50 expansion, but with new characters, new campaigns and new zombies. Your characters are the usual random human survivors, Coach, a high school football coach, Rochelle, a news reporter, Ellis, a mechanic, and Nick, a gambler and conman. I must admit, my dear Louis and Zoey I shall miss, Bill and Fracis...not so much.To go along with the new location and characters, they have new campaigns such as 'Swamp Fever", "The Parish" and "Dark Carnival". The frightening sprinting zombies are the same but some new special infected have been added. There are still the regular scary specials, Boomer, Hunter, Smoker, Tank and Witch, but along with those there are the Charger, he can sprint and knock players who are in its path down, the Spitter, shoots balls of phlem, and the Jockey, can hop onto your character and control them. Heard they are super creepy, I have yet to actually personally witness them.

These new specials are also available to play in vs mode. If thats not enough they make it even more interesting. Along with new guns, scoped assult rifles and silenced submachine guns, you can also pick up regular house hold items such as a frying pans, chainsaws and even a cricket bat, for your melee weapon. Over all I cannot wait for the new game to come out on November 17th , OMG I can't wait. Perhaps demo it before that!

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

On Sunday, my brother Ben and I went to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert at In The Venue in Salt Lake City. We stood out in the rain playing Cash Cab on my phone for about half an hour before the doors opened. Ben happily got frisked down, we entered the venue and made our way up to the balcony to have ourselves a pint of Blue Moon on tap to wait for the show. After the opening band YACHT, who were very...interesting, and an hour or more of tuning instruments and sound testing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs finally came on stage. With an amazing stage presence and fantastic music it was one of the better shows I have gotten to see live. Karen O's outfits are always outrageous and fun, while her band mates, guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase, looked and played amazing in their all black attire. So we enjoyed the show on the upper balcony away from the shooving crowd, the crowd surfers and passing out people from dehydration. We did have some annoying girls pushing us a bit from behind and some very hot lesbians beside us. But over all we had so much fun! I hope everybody gets to hear them live because they are amazing! Here is a bad version of a video and a picture I took with my phone, I didn't bring my camera :(

Another Friday

I am bored at work with nothing to do but look at clothes online or write a short story, which Meaghan has advised me to do. But all I can do is sit and wait for the clock to say 4:30 so that I might be able to pack up my grapes and water bottle and make the drive home listening to my new book on disc, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. 4 months in three different cities: Italy, India and Indonesia, her search for everything. Its become my daily routine to and from work listening to her calming voice tell the amazing stories and glimpses into her personal life. But no, my weekend has not officially started so I will waste my last 2 hours listening to the Amelie soundtrack, thinking of eating delicious crème brûlée, which I tried for the first time in Monterey and absolutely fell in love with. Its climbing the charts on my dessert list, right at the top after tiramisu. So after writing this blog, its now almost 3:00 so I shall finish my work, order some much needed jeans offline and I will be headed home to, hopefully, an eventful and relaxing weekend...till Monday! Au Revoir

Fall Essentials

Its Fall, yet again, with the changing leaves and brisk autumn air just around the corner, we need to be well prepared for the months ahead. Before we all get too caught up in school work and popping the cold medicine, I decided to make my list of Fall Essentials for 2009.

Coat: Probably the most important item to keep the colds away. From across the pond I chose my number one fall must have from ASOS, their Funnel Neck Pleated Swing Coat. A wool-mix loose fitted coat with double breasted thick black buttons is perfect for the British fog or the Utah snow.


Boots: You can't go through the fall without a good pair of boots and I've spotted the perfect pair for any fall outfit. Urban outfitters suede studded boot in chocolate brown.

Movie: Coco Before Chanel - Coco Before Chanel is the story of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, who began her life as headstrong orphan, and through an extraordinary journey became the legendary couturier who embodied the modern woman and became a timeless symbol of success, freedom and style. The film portrays the formative years of Chanel's life, the years of Chanel spent discovering and inventing herself (rottentomatoes.com).


Recipe: Vegan Pumpkin Cheesecake

• 12 oz. firm silken tofu, pureed
• 8 oz. non dairy cream cheese (try Tofutti brand at Tofutti.com)
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 3 Tbsp. flour
• 1/2 tsp. grounded ginger
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1 prepared graham cracker crust

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Puree all the ingredients except the pie crust in a food processor and pour into the graham cracker crust. Bake at 350 F for 50 minutes. Allow to cool for 30 minutes.

Handbag: From Anthropologie. Slouchy, roomy, seamed and soft, this cocoa leather bag leaves nothing to be desired. Ladies and gentlemen, the Covetous shoulder bag.

Activities: Who can resist the best fall activities of all fall activities. The leaves! Walking or collecting, or my favourite, gathering them up into a pile and jumping in!

Drink: Compliments of Starbucks, for a limited time only, their Pumpkin Spice Latte. A delicious blend of pumpkin and fall spices, made with espresso and topped with whip cream.




Book: Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol. Robert Langdon is at it again, but this time in America, following the Masonics. Release date is September 15th, 2009.