If you can’t buy it, make it!

We spent months looking for the exact furniture that we wanted, but nothing surfaced. Despite checking almost a hundred furniture stores in Vancouver (and calling others in nearby cities), we just couldn’t find a good match.

Okay, so we’re not *making* furniture, but we did find what we wanted in the style we were looking for… we’re just going to strip the furniture down and re-paint and re-finish it.

Thanks to Craigslist, we managed to pick up some very good quality furniture at bargain basement prices (we’re talking under $100 per piece). I love sticking to our budget!

We managed to find a lingerie chest with the exact dimensions we were looking for. We also found two gorgeous night tables.

We went to Lee Valley hardware and picked up some gorgeous new matching handles for both the lingerie chest and the night tables. Pics coming soon (those are the old handles).

This weekend we sanded down every imaginable side of the furniture (phew!) and primed it.

The final look will be all antique white paint, and matching French handles. I’ll definitely post photos when finished! Next to find… a king bedframe, and the rest of the decor (lamps, curtains, etc).

How did you spend your weekend?

Yes, I FINALLY had a chance last night to edit together the ridiculous amount of footage we had from multiple surf trips to Tofino this summer. Sadly, I didn’t have much footage from the spring and we haven’t started our fall and winter surf trips yet, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to combine all the summer footage into one nice tiny package with a bow on top.

So here we go, HD video footage featuring…

• Several surf trips to Tofino this summer with friends, and by ourselves
• Underwater housing footage (in-ocean shots)
• Long lens surf shots
• GoPro camera footage (camera attached to the board)
• Us reeling in crabs off the dock and cooking them
• A few different timelapses
• Us doing stupid stuff
• Allan, J, Venus, Trev, and myself
• Fantastic music from the Planet Smashers (thanks guys, how could I NOT use your song) …

Click the video above to view. Short vid, about 3 minutes. Safe for work.

It’s about 30 hours of footage rolled into one tiny video. You’ll also notice the underwater housing fogs up… yeah, we accidentally tore the new housing and tried to patch it up with tent glue. Then we used it in the ocean anyway. Well, it leaked. Haha. And uh, I kind of broke my Nikon. Soooooo, now I have to get it fixed.

So stupidity aside, let me know what you think!

Thanks for watching!

It’s no secret to readers of my blog that I am often late in putting together posts. I have a huge backlog of photos and posts to be made. And I’m trying to get through them methodically. In this case, I am 8 months overdue…

So yes, here we are in September, and I am finally putting up our Valentine’s Day getaway weekend on Vancouver Island with Allan.

Our first stop for the weekend was Victoria. Victoria has charm, no doubt, but really I love to travel there for the food, and for the accomodations.

One of my favourite places to stay in the whole world… the Fairmont Empress Hotel. Yes, it is old, traditional, and a little bit stodgy… but that’s why I love it.

It’s all about attention to detail. Beautiful fabrics, wallpaper, patterns, furniture, lighting, moulding…

The rooms are small and simple. Ours had a great view of the Victoria harbour…

A quick walk on some cobblestone streets in the moonlight for some fresh air, and then off to dinner…

Victoria is well-known for its fantastic restaurants… but my favourite happens to be right in the hotel. The “Empress Room” is the main dining room at the hotel. Whenever I eat here, I am whisked away to another world from another time…

Nothing is modern here. There’s nothing innovative or unusual about the decor or the food. This isn’t a trendy place to go. It’s not the place to see-or-be-seen. This is where you go if you want delicious, traditional food that is incredibly rich with absolutely the best service in all of BC.

The Empress has recently reworked their drink menu and their bartenders have gone through extensive training to mix drinks the “classic” Victorian way. I don’t know what that is, but each drink we had was strong, clean, fragrant, and tasty.

The food is SO good here. While it may not be for everyone’s palate, it really does suit mine. The flavours are always spot on, and their menu is always local and seasonal. But best of all, it’s always extremely rich. Nothing subtle here. I can’t say enough about the service. Although we always try to be seated at Earl’s table (my favourite waiter), every member of staff is impeccable and courteous. Yes, the silver platters are an over-the-top traditional touch. I don’t care. It’s awesome.

Dessert is always amazing too. This time Allan tried a peach cobbler, and I had the chocolate marshmallows with gold leaf. No ordinary marshmallow, it was filled with homemade marshmallows, hazelnut filling, and a crumbly dark chocolate crust at the bottom… then dipped in dark chocolate. Mmmmm.

You can’t help but feel a little small in the room. All the furniture, lighting, wallpapers and fabrics are ridiculously decadent. But there’s a large wood burning fireplace at the end of the room that softens it all and makes you feel like you’re at home. It’s kind of like being in your rich grandma’s house from another life.

Every floor has different patterns, decor, and antique pieces and fine art on display.

We love to wander the hallways in the hotel.

I loved this lamp in our room.

Of course, no Valentine’s Day is complete without a little cherry-red lace!

I fell in love with this antique armoire in our hallway.

The morning came a little too early and of course we had to order room service.

Then it was off to the Empress Spa for a couple’s massage and some rest and relaxation in their mineral pool. We definitely felt pampered.

We said goodbye to the hotel. Opened in 1908. It’s one of those places you go to visit because you know everything is going to stay the same.

And well, as for the rest of the weekend? I had already covered that in a previous post. It was off to Mount Washington near Courtenay on Vancouver Island to visit friends and snowboard our little hearts out.

I’ve spent the last 5 days or so laying in bed, taking it easy at home without leaving the house. Let’s just say for someone like me… I got pretty stircrazy!

I despise being sick, mostly because it keeps me from doing all the things that I love to do!

Short and sweet photo post today.. I wanted to share with you some of my photographs that I’ve taken while traveling abroad. Laying in bed made me dream of traveling again and everything I love about seeing new places.

Nice, France

Barcelona, Spain

Rural Japan

Seoul, Korea

New York

Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Lisbon, Portugal

I’ve plotted out all the places I’ve traveled so far on this map… still so many places I want to see!

Of course, nothing compares to home… and while I do love traveling, I will always be a Vancouver girl, a West Coast girl. Living on the West Coast… there really is no places like home…

It’s the new sets for Eclipse that I find truly exciting! Being a fan of the books and the movies, it’s always interesting to see how the scenes change from the books… as well as see what each Director’s style is from one movie of the Twilight Saga to another.

I had a chance to see a new set being filmed for Eclipse… the scene where the newborns arrive in Forks. It’s a picturesque scene, with mountains and water framing the background of the shot, and a sparse unoccupied beach for the newborns to arrive on… then they disappear into the forest. The vampire newborns looked absolutely chilling, and their rugged military-like outfits along with steely, determined glares just added to the mood. Filmed early in the morning, this scene was designed to look as if it had been shot at night, possibly just after dusk or just before dawn.

Riley (Xavier Samuel) and Bree (Jodelle Ferland) were on set as well as a number of newborn vampires we have NEVER seen before.

I’m always amazed at what a huge production it is to film just a few seconds for these movies. Second Unit Director EJ Foerster was on set, calm but directive… doing dozens of different takes for only a couple scenes. An amazing number of people involved plus tons of equipment and hours of filming from so many different angles just to get a 5 second shot… wow. Check out all the equipment on the shore, including the scuba diving gear and the dinghys. You can also see some of the shorter fake trees they used in the foreground on the beach.

There are two distinct scenes… scenes where the female newborn is talking to a male newborn, and the main scene (which they spent most of the time shooting) where there are three newborns including Riley coming out of the water onto the shore. They don’t come out of the water in the books, but I think it is a nice dramatic addition.

The water here was quite cool in temperature, so I’m not surprised at all to see the actors with thin wetsuits on under their costumes. They were also given small weights under their clothing to help keep them weighed down under the water before the “take”. I have my PADI scuba diving license so I was really curious about how they were using the divers for the filming. The scuba divers served two purposes: One, to give their extra regulator to the actors so they could breathe underwater when necessary… and two, to help give the actors cues and guide them to certain checkpoints when necessary.

HD video coming soon (tomorrow night… sorry guys, I got really sick tonight).

In this scene in the video (coming soon), you’ll see the Director ask them to go underwater (”Under water!), then he counts as they are rolling with the movie cameras “OK, Riley”… then the first actor emerges (my guess is they were using “Riley” as the code word, since the first actor that emerges is NOT Riley). Then the Director calls them out “2…. and 3″… and the other actor and then Riley emerges from the water. The vampires moved slowly, slinking through the water but very clearly with purpose.

You can see from the camera that it is going to be a very tight shot with how close some of the production members are standing in the water.

Several iterations of this shot continued, with different combinations of the newborn vampires in the water. They also tried different lighting setups, either with a white sheet to bounce water off in the water, or with a large spotlight shining through a diffuser straight at the actors. The camera rig was very flexible, above to move up down and really get around the actors in any angle necessary for the shot. The actors had very pale makeup on.

I also had my suspicions confirmed by one of the PAs that the entire scene was being shot with no sound. Music and effects were to be added later in post-production. Good thing — because an entire squad of geese started squawking their hearts out during the middle of several scenes. It was hilarious.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to see Jodelle film any of her scenes (that’s not her in the water), but you can see her here grabbing some food. Her makeup was already done though, as you can see how pale she looks.

I absolutely loved visiting this set. It was one of the coolest I have seen in a while, at least since New Moon

Hope you enjoyed the photos and the video! You can always follow me on Twitter for more updates, or check here to see my other blog posts with Twilight cast members and live set filming.