This past weekend was fantastic! I am finally starting to feel like myself again. We went snowboarding at Cypress, saw Alice in Wonderland, did a ton of house cleaning, and booked up all our Greenpoint campsites for the entire year early this morning at 7 AM for surfing in Tofino this summer. I think I pretty much kicked my cold too, FINALLY.

Cypress was amazing. It was turn after turn in deep powder.

It was a little foggy, so we rode trees all day. Felt so good to get back in the snow again.

In other news, the costume design by Colleen Atwood in Alice and Wonderland is absolutely incredible.

I quickly decided that I am going to be sewing a dress from the movie for Halloween this year. The question is… which one?

The dresses are rich, lavish with tons of layering and detail. This “Alice Red Court” dress is stunning.

As much as I love the Red Court dress, I think the one I absolutely have to sew is either this “Blue Scrap” dress…

… or this off the shoulder piece. I can’t decide! They are both beautiful. Can’t wait till they release proper stills for the movie.

Believe it or not, I’m actually no stranger to sewing my own dresses and clothes. It’s true, they aren’t to the level of Colleen Atwood’s designs, but they were still fun projects to work on and wear!

I sewed this layered casual shirt and bow for a New Year’s house party one year.

Here’s a silk draped dress that I made in 10th grade in high school.

Yes, there were some fashion faux-pas that I unfortunately made in university for formals. Haha. But hey, I still sewed it!

But probably the most challenging project I’ve ever done was my graduation dress for the end of high school. We had no money to buy a proper grad dress, so I scrimped and saved and put together the dress of my dreams!

It took several months to sew all the tulle layers underneath the dress and drape all the satin.

It turned out though! And it held together for the event as well, which I was crossing my fingers for.

I still have it, and I am so glad that I did.

So, I’m really looking forward to getting back into sewing and putting together an “Alice” dress for Halloween… the only question is… which one?

Are you looking for my Olympic ticket giveaway? If so, you can find it here, just one post below this one. Also, don’t forget you can follow me on Twitter along with more than 3,000 other friends for Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games coverage and my West Coast tweets of course.

Just a quick post here on our last weekend before the Olympics start in Vancouver. We headed up to Apex Mountain (near Penticton, BC) for Allan’s outdoor ice hockey tournament with his team, as well as for snowboarding and fun! There’s so much to explore in BC outside of Vancouver… if you’re in town visiting, I highly recommend you check out other parts of our beautiful province of British Columbia!

Here I am snowboarding in the trees in the powder. We got so lucky with the conditions… it snowed all week and then dropped 15 cm of light fluffy BC interior powder the night before. Yep, we pretty much rode trees in the bowls on the backside of the mountain all day.

It was a beautiful drive up to Apex.

Every morning we woke up there is looked like this… gorgeous blue skies and lots of snow.

The snow was fantastic. (Yep, I’m actually in this picture although very, very far away)

I loved watching the boys play outdoor hockey. We don’t really ever get to see that in Vancouver, and it’s such a part of our Canadian heritage and culture! Definitely got me even MORE stoked for the Olympics if that is even possible.

We made breakfast a few mornings… lots of sustenance for the day! Can’t live without BACON!

We left a little surprise on a friend’s car.

Here’s the boys’ hockey team. They lost two games but won their last one, and they definitely played hard (although drunk). So much fun to watch… I love these guys!

View from my office window above. What can you expect from my blog in the upcoming weeks? Well, lots of Olympic coverage… definitely from the games/events/pavilions I am attending (see below) and tons of photos and HD video. I’ll be all decked out cheering Canada on as loud as I can, and I’ll be wearing my Canadian pride on my sleeve (and well, my face with tattoos).

GO CANADA GO!

P.S. I’m currently deciding what I should do… should I buy myself a ticket to the Men’s Gold Medal Hockey game? Each ticket is now over $2,200 and it’s a big expenditure… argh… help! What would you do?

This past weekend was a blast at Big White. For the past couple years, I have been organizing a Vancouver video game industry/tech industry ski and snowboard trip. We usually go to Big White, and every year I look forward to hanging out with friends, past and current coworkers, and meeting new people. Here are just a couple pics from our trip, but I have a pretty awesome video coming up with snowboarding footage and some funny moments… but I still have a Kicking Horse video to edit so that will come first.

Here we all are heading up on the bus… sold out again this year! 56 peeps.

Friends on the chairlift… Crista, Trevor, Allan, Greg, and Mozy.

Here I am on the chairlift looking all covered up. It was a bit chilly.

We had a big get-together on Saturday night after boarding… about 80% of the bus showed up which was pretty good! Lots of fun to have everyone together and have some drinks. You can see Rielly (thejerk) in the background here. He got some hilarious footage which I will edit into our video.

Many drinking games were played that night…

And I think we all had a great time!

There was also tequila…

… and then we headed out our “usual” bar there, Snowshoe Sam’s. It’s always a great time, and like every year, I ended up playing on the foosball table half the night.

The walk back from the bar is never a pretty one.

Allan somehow managed to find Christmas lights and he tied some randoms up. Haha.

Hanging out on the chairlift…

The snow was really great at Big White even though we didn’t have a dump of fresh snow. It’s so cold and dry up there that it stays really nice.

Crista looking cute!

Me and Trev vs. the dog. Not sure what it was doing up there!

We got some great video footage from the two days at Big White… we found tons of natural jumps and jibs… here’s a little teaser for the video… check out that awesome tree jib!

More to come soon. Thanks for reading!

Today is a bit of a weird blog post. I’m posting the winner of one of my contests, while also entering a contest myself!

First up, this is my contest entry for the Cat Skiing at Mustang Powder Contest. I’ve never been catskiing or catboarding before, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to try it out!

The contest asks for a blog post, but I also thought I’d include a video just for fun. It’s a little silly, it was filmed and edited late at night in the midst of chaos. Still, I think I’d be a great candidate to win the contest and I’ve put together some reasons why ( in text, just in case):

- I am extremely passionate about snowboarding and I’m constantly on the hunt for deep, fresh powder lines
- I’d love to take high quality photographs and videos of the catboarding experience; I’ve got a ton of equipment such as a DSLR with fisheye and telephoto, an HD video camcorder/DSLR, and a helmet mounted or board mounted GoPro HD camera which can help capture the experience
- I’m always on the lookout for new adventures!
- I have my AST-1 avalanche certificate so I know some of the basic safety principles for the trip
- I love road trips!
- I’d love to post about the experience on my blog and Twitter

Cross your fingers for me, friends!

ALSO, I thought this would be as good a place as any to post the winner of the contest I held for the Volcom Snowboard jacket!

Congratulations to the winner. Again, please excuse the silliness, as this was even later in the night. Winner, please e-mail me at allie@vancityallie.com. If I do not hear from the winner within 2 weeks I will do a re-draw.

Thanks to everyone for entering!

This past Saturday, Allan and I headed up to Whistler Blackcomb for a gorgeous, sunny blue bird day of snowboarding fresh powder. It was quite busy up there, but we still managed to find our stashes of powder.

We also brought along our new GoPro HD Hero helmet camera to capture some of the action. For those of you who have been following my blog for a while, you know that we had the regular GoPro camera before. I can say that the HD is a real nice upgrade. Much clearer photos and videos! Hopefully I’ll be able to edit the videos into a little movie soon.

Here I am wearing my new Volcom jacket and pants (both Gore-tex)… I’m loving how the wide angle really captures everything!

Powder spraying up on the sides.

Riding down one of the bowls on Blackcomb.

Even Allan got into the fun of it and attached it to his helmet for a while.

You’ll notice most of the shots are from the back of my board… we used the suction cup that we normally use for surfing to attach it to the back of the board… but be warned… sometimes it falls off in the deeper powder and you really have to keep an eye on it, or tether it to your board

All in all, a really fun day… and really nice to get back onto the mountain for some boarding. And, I thought this would be a great time to give away a BRAND NEW Women’s Volcom Snowboard Jacket on the blog! It’s the same jacket I am wearing in the photos above, but of course brand new with tags. All you have to do is leave a comment below, and I’ll pull a random winner on Sunday evening. If you remember my last contest, we gave away a snowboard outfit. Here’s the winner Rosy, who sent me a photo of her in all her new gear!

2010 Volcom GORE-TEX Satellite Snowboard Jacket Contest:
Sponsored by Volcom

Prize: 2010 Volcom Satellite Nimbus Women’s Snowboard Jacket in Bluebird, Size Medium
Value: $500 CAD
What you have to do: By Sunday, January 24th before 10:00 PM PST… just leave a comment on this blog post!
Who can enter: Anyone! You can enter for yourself, or for a friend, significant other etc etc…
Details: I will draw a random winner Sunday night, and I will ship the prize to the lucky winner anywhere in the world!

About the jacket: Yup, it’s totally GORE-TEX so awesome waterproofing. It’s got the works… fully taped seams, pant-to-jacket zips, Recco® avalanche system, Riri® waterproof zippers, a hood, a chin guard, vents, a powder skirt, a goggle pocket and audio pockets. My two favourite features? The built-in face mask and the Lycra hand gaitors to keep your hands warm in your gloves (you can see these in one of the photos above over my hands). Plus… I love the liner pattern!

That’s it! Good luck to everyone