It sure is starting to look like Christmas here in Vancouver with a beautiful dusting of snow on the ground already. Like many of you, Christmas is my favourite holiday and it’s no secret that I love winter (although Fall is still my favourite season).

I’m so incredibly backed up on blog posts that I thought I’d give you a little mini preview of what is coming down the pipes on my blog this holiday season, complete with some seasonal photos!

VANCITYALLIE.COM HOLIDAY SEASON 2009 BLOG POST PREVIEW:

Many cooking and baking related blog posts (Christmas cookies hello!), especially as we get closer and closer to Christmas… including *gasp* a fateful attempt at making homemade croissants…

Winter wonderland photos of Vancouver and around our beautiful province…

A gear and gift guide for snowboarding just in time for last minute Christmas shopping… plus lots of snowboarding posts including our upcoming Sun Peaks and Mount Washington trips.

Family, friends, parties for Christmas and New Year’s related posts…

How Allan and I attempted making a 5-course fine dining meal for both our sets of parents when they met for the very first time…

And of course, our last blog post to highlight our time in Kicking Horse and Golden… plus the HD video of the trip!

Hope everyone is enjoying getting ready for Christmas and the holiday season! I know I am!

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…

When Allan and I first started dating about 2.5 years ago, we spontaneously decided to go on a road trip to La Push, Washington. At the time, all Allan knew was that it was a fabled surfing destination. We really didn’t know anything else. So with a car, surfboards, camping gear, and a trusty old map (I didn’t have Google Maps on my phone back then), we set out for La Push with no plans, no accommodations, and no idea of where we were going to end up.

It was an exciting adventure, and was the first step towards us really getting to know each other, and figure out what it was like to travel together. It is funny when I look back on those times… how it was such a romantic trip… and I look at how we are together, today. I’m grateful that we are still adventuring together and exploring new places.

It was about a 7 hour drive down there. We took ferries, crossed many bridges, and eventually found our way to the right road.

La Push was a small fishing village at the time. Today if you go there, it’s completely Twilight-itized. When we visited 2 and a half years ago, we had never heard of Twilight and neither had the town it seemed. It’s funny that when I was reading the Twilight books I was relating many moments in the book to our experiences a couple years ago. I’m sure it would be a very different scene today.

We surfed (well, I surfed for the first time in my life), we stayed at the Quilete Reservation there, we explored the beaches and the forests…

We traveled up to Hurricane Ridge and saw snow at the lookouts and tons of deer, tried the mineral hot springs in the Olympic National Park, and went on many nature walks.

Allan and I considered that trip to be the mark of our relationship, so we still use the date of that trip as our anniversary. I have to admit I feel a bit sentimental looking back on these photos. It would be great to visit that region a few years from now, to see how it has changed and to share that special place again together.

The forecast for the weekend: Rain, rain and more rain. But when you’re in a wetsuit, surfing in the ocean in the rain is a glorious experience. Who cares about rain when you are already wet?

Our tarps and tent have always been 3-season and very waterproof, so rain isn’t much of a downer when we are out there. Another side benefit is that there are always less people out camping and surfing when it is raining. I love waking up, hitting the surf on the rising tide (whenever that may be), and then spending the day in the tent with Allan… reading books, watching movies on my Zune, or just being together. I sleep best when there is rain pattering on the tent.

If you’re going to live on the “Wet Coast”, then you have to suck it up sometimes, let everything go… and just enjoy the rain for what it is.

In other news, this past weekend I picked up an underwater housing on clearance from Leo’s Camera. I purchased the Ewa-Marine U-AX housing for my Nikon D90 DSLR, but really any DSLR should work in this case. Everywhere I looked online the prices were $250-500 US. And amazingly… it was only $175 CAD at Leo’s on Clearance. No returns, but hey… at that price you just can’t say no. (They still have some if anyone is looking for one!)

I actually have a Fantasea (har har) brand camera housing, but it’s quite heavy and bulky… and as I realized, best used for scuba diving. The real problem is I couldn’t adapt the housing from my D50 to the D80 and eventually my D90… and so the video controls don’t work on it.

So this new housing will hopefully give me the flexibility of changing the video settings and other controls, while still leaving open the possibility of later changing cameras.

So let’s hope the surf videos and photos turn out with this. I’ll let you know the full review when I get back!

And yes, that HD surf video I promised… it’s still coming I’ll combine the footage with the stuff I get this weekend to put together something cool.

Hope everyone has a fabulous long weekend!

An unusual tree.

Bird in palm.

Reserva Conchal Golf Course.

Pool Chairs.

Iguana.

Ocean vs. Rock.

Red Flower.

Feet on Brasilito. Pedicure, still going strong after 7 days!

Flowers hidden in foliage.

Leaves.

Bar.

Fire Pit.

Reeling in..

Just before the sun disappears…

Where Sky meets Ocean…

See for yourself!

Taken out in Brasilito, Guanacaste Coast, Costa Rica… off a boat, of a boat!

Sadly, I have had to return back from Tofino early. Yes, I had a crazy surfboard incident. 11 stitches on my forehead. If you’d like to see the stitches, click here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! So it’s back to work for me.

Pictures from Tofino coming up soon.

So yesterday, instead of surfing and being on the beach, I spent the day with Allan and my Dad in the garden and in the kitchen for Canada Day. We made hamburgers, garden vegetables, spring salmon, and potatoes. Yum!

My Dad has been meticulously taking care of a garden for as long as I can remember. When we lived in Australia for several years, I remember eating oranges right out of our garden. It’s been a long struggle for our family to make ends meet, but somehow my Dad has always found time to take care of the garden in the morning before work and after working 12 hours a day. I remember helping out in the garden when I was growing up, and eating fresh vegetables and fruits throughout the year.

Here’s just a sampling of pictures from our garden from yesterday, and the meal that we cooked up:

Freshly picked veggies and fruits from the garden: HUGE raspberries (my favourite), boysenberries (they are basically large and juicy blackberries), new potatoes, peas, basil, mint, and cilantro.

A view from one side of our garden, click to see where everything is located. Click All Sizes to see the large size.

The view from the other side of our garden, again, click to zoom in.

I used to have a rooftop patio in the west end but had to move all my planters to my family’s house when I moved into Allan’s apartment with no patio for a couple years. Fortunately, our new place has a patio so I’m planning on moving my planters over soon so I can start gardening again.

Lilies…

The blueberries starting to come out…

The plum tree, still green… but they will be ripe and juicy soon!

Fuji apples starting to ripen…

Tomatoes starting to get ready!

Garden-grown garlic drying out (shame I didn’t get that bug in focus!)

Green grapes starting to form on the vine…

Dill! I love eating herbs straight from the garden.

Flowers in the garden…

Our family’s secret recipe for hamburgers! Lots of fresh herbs and onions from the garden, and lean organic beef.

Hamburgers all cooked up from the charcoal BBQ with hickory smoked chips.

New potatoes and fresh garden vegetables (all except the broccoli)..

Grilled spring salmon (just caught last week) on the BBQ and grilled zucchini from the garden! Yum!

Yes, we definitely enjoyed some home grown and home cooked food yesterday!

How did you spend your Canada Day?

So here’s some photos from my Montreal trip… I had an hour yesterday to walk around, so sadly these are the only real photos I got from the trip!

Hope you enjoy

The entrance to my hotel…

The outside of my hotel..

Moody lights… seems to sum up the feeling in many parts of the city…

Beautiful church windows and doorways…

Old streets with character…

My hotel was right beside this famous church in Vieux-Montreal..

Beautiful masonry…

What a row of buildings!

Their Canada exists beside our Canada…

Street names in Vieux-Montreal…

Building face…

Bluebird sky…

Beautiful flowers by windows…

I’m actually feeling really terrible today so I need to get back to bed. Thank goodness I prepared this post last night all ready for the morning.

Anyway.

The photographs here are a mix of my old and new shots. I wanted a theme, so I went with “things with wings”. When the sun starts coming out more frequently and we start transitioning into spring and then summer… I really look forward to seeing all the butterflies, birds, and other critters coming out of the woodworks.

These photos taken with a mix of the Nikon D50, D80, D90 and way back when my Olympus C3030Z.

Yellow Butterfly by a Yellow Flower

Hummingbird, Still

Kissing Butterflies

Kookaburra Bird

Butterfly on a Pink Flower

Wasp

Butterfly with Camouflaged “Eye”

Bee Covered in Pollen

Thanks for looking! Hope you liked them.