...and again!

The last couple months I have been extremely lucky I suppose. I have been asking for a Fujifilm Instax Mini camera for probably a couple of years at birthdays, Christmas, etc. and had unofficially given up. Then Trend Trunk had 8 days of contests this Christmas season and I won one! A white one to be exact and with extra film :D So happy!! Except that I can't bare to waste the film so I plan on doing some sort of photo challenge over a period of time and putting each of my credit card size polaroids to good use! Then I'll compile them in a scrapbook or something. I am so very excited... thanks Trend Trunk!

-xo L. Adelle

I Won Again :D

A couple months back I won a $150 gift card to Value Village through a Pinterest contest where you had to create a DIY Halloween board. This holiday season I entered another contest Dynamite's Pin the Halls, where you had to create a holiday wishlist with Dynamite items in it. Annnnd just found out a few days ago that I won that as well :D $150 gift card to Dynamite!

And I must say, as a full time University student working part time to pay my tuition in full - while also working my butt off at school! - I see a lot of my money come in one end of my bank account and right out the other at the beginning of the next school year. So it's sort of nice to earn some money that can only be used for shopping... looks like I will be doing some much needed wardrobe refreshing ... also possibly quitting school and taking up full-time Pinning as my career.. umm we'll see. ;)

L. Adelle

Holiday Things I am Excited For!!

Thought I would share some of the holiday things that I've been seeing/buying recently that are making me super excited for the Christmas season! :D You know, that giddy feeling where you forget how much it sucks to go outside and stand with your teeth chattering at the train station every single morning...

Holiday PJs :) I just got a wonnnnderful fleece button up pajama top

with reindeers and snowflakes on it to match some snowflake pajama

pants that I have - it's so warm and cozy I can't stop wearing it!

Tim's holiday cups! I couldn't find a picture of the 2013 but it's out!

I had one last week with my peppermint tea :) Love the scenes on

them, they make me feel totally warm and fuzzy

These big tins of assorted European cookies/Belgian biscuits that

always come out around the holiday and are soo addictive.

Starbucks holiday flavoured drinks - I don't buy too many Starbucks and I

think we all know why, $$$, but I'm pretty sure their peppermint mochas

and eggnog lattes could get anyone in the mood for tree trimming ;)

Candy Cane Chocolate Fudge Crackle ice cream.... or any flavour

with mint, chocolate, and a little holiday cheer involved. So delicious,

mint chocolate chip is my favorite flavour year round but it's always

improved somehow during the holidays with After 8 or candy cane.

Annnyways, as these things start arriving... I start getting the tinsel and white lights out :) Having said that, those bell ringing salvation army people and Christmas music in stores in November still make me rage just as much as the next person... save those parts for December okay people?

xo L. Adelle

A Few of my Favourite Things...

This post was supposed to be about some of my favorite things on Trend Trunk. I ended up getting into a big thing about what Trend Trunk is and what is so great about it, but I do eventually get to my favorite listings so bare with me... :)

If you haven't heard of Trend Trunk, or you've heard of it but haven't checked it out, and you live in Canada, you should go and sign up immediately! I just saw an ad in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago and I have been officially addicted since later that day when I first went to the website.

Trend Trunk is a site where you can buy and sell pre-owned clothing/accessories/beauty items/whatever to other people all over Canada. There are so many wonderful things on there, a lot of them at really great prices. It is somewhat similar to Kijiji if you've used that, because of the way that ad's are free, you can easily change prices and bargain with people, etc. But what's different from Kijiji is that Trend Trunk provides fixed rate shipping all over Canada. So while on Kijiji, if you find something you want to buy, you have to arrange for pickup yourself and you can only really shop within your local area. With Trend Trunk, every item on the site ships for $8 and $8 only!! I really love this because it means that if you see like 5 things in somebody's closet (that's what each person's shop is called) and you decide you want them all, you can ask the seller to combine all the items into one listing, and when you purchase it you only have to pay 8$ total shipping for all of those 5 items!

Not only is this great for buyers, but sellers too! I have always wanted to open up an Etsy store but the trouble of calculating shipping costs for each individual person was such a hassle. And, being in Canada, I found that often shipping was so high that I couldn't expect any reasonable person to want to pay that much on top of what they were already paying for the item. So with Trend Trunk 8$ is automatically added to every listing and when that is purchased, a shipping label is sent directly to the seller who then only has to print it off, tape it to a box and give it to the post office. Also Trend Trunk holds the funds from the buyer in a third party account with Escrow until the package is received (based on Canada Post package tracking not the buyer's word), and once the package arrives the funds are released to the seller, making sure nobody get's ripped off!

I will try to wrap up my blahblahblah-ing, but there is just one other feature on Trend Trunk that is great. There is an option to choose a charity and donate a percentage of the money you make from a listing to one of the many charities available. You choose the percentage and whether you want to do it for each individual listing. I think that's such a unique idea! So in exchange for all of this service Trend Trunk does charge a 20% fee per sold listing which I think is worth it for sure, much better than any consignment store and you are selling to all over Canada not just one little area, so much more likely to sell.

At the moment Trend Trunk is in a pretty early stage and they are really looking for help from investors to get going. They were on Dragon's Den this November and made a deal with Kevin initially but it turned out not to be suitable after the show, so they are now asking for customers to be the Dragons and help fund them, there are a number of options for donating money to help them get going and one option that is up for a limited time costs $25, for which you get $25 back in a gift card for Trend Trunk, so if you find that you like the service it would be a really great way to help out a small company from Hamilton, Ontario!

Annnnnnnyways, back to the original point of this post. Here are a few of my favorite listings on Trend Trunk right now. I almost didn't want to post some of them because I'm afraid someone else will buy them and I'll regret not getting them first lol, but here we go anyways...

I pretty much love everything about this adorable

vintage floral dress by Mine, which is only $25,

and that includes shipping! Can you see why I love this site?

This Kate Spade purse is brand new, going for $188,

unfortunately that is so far out of my price range :( :(

But I would just love one in this color... some day...

I think it's safe to say that Oxblood (burgundy) is the color

to wear this Fall. And I'm soo loving it. It's awesome.

This cap sleeve shirt by Twelve By Twelve is only $20+shipping!

A little more burgundy, although I'm not quite stylish enough

to pull off this felt cloche hat (okay not nearly stylish enough),

it reminds me of one Spencer Hastings wore on PLL,

and she knows hats. It's up for $17+shipping :)

Something about these satin Paris Hilton heels is soo lovely,

I can't seem to take my eyes off them. Especially with the adorable

toe polish she's got going on. They're only $53 but they're a half

size too big for my tiny little feet so unfortunately I can't buy them.

Okay this one isn't actually up there anymore cause I bought it ;)

But I thought I would still share because I spent my whole summer

searching for a vest like this and finally find out on Trend Trunk.

I didn't end up getting it til Fall... :/ but I'm still happy to have it.

It's a Gap 1969 denim vest and I got it for 5$+Shipping ...yeah! <3

So hopefully you can find some items you love on there too. Christmas presents perhaps?
(I bought some brand new, unopened BodyShop body butters recently as a present for
way cheaper than they are in store. Pretty please check out my own Trend Trunk closet at
https://www.trendtrunk.com/LAdelle and let me know if you make one of your own!

xo L. Adelle

I won a prizzze!! :D

Just thought I would share the fact that I WON $150 gift card to Value Village recently just for entering one of my Pinterest boards in a contest - how exciting is that?!

I recently entered this contest with Value Village and Jenny On The Spot where you submit a Pinterest board which draws inspiration from their Halloween DIY board, so I entered my own Pinterest Halloween Board and it ended up winning for creativity and Pinspiration :D $150 that is! I love shopping at Value Village so I am suuuuper happy, can't wait to have a shopping spree this coming weekend...

http://www.jennyonthespot.com/crafty/halloween-decor-ideas-thrifted-finds/

See? :D Now who ever said that pinning all day doesn't pay off?! Anyways this will be my big excitement for a little while so I thought I should brag about it. Go ahead and check out my Halloween Board, and the rest of my Pinterest while you're at it ;)

xo L. Adelle

12 Days of Christmas Gifts (That Actually Go With the Song!)

So, now that it's the beginning of November, I think it's safe to say I can start admitting to all the Christmas planning I've been doing over the last few weeks. I know I'm a little early but Christmas always seems to come too fast and then it's over and I have no idea where it went! Well this year I already have all my lists made and have been pinning ideas like crazy...

One of the things I wanted to do this year is 12 Days of Christmas Gifts, I searched all over the internet (aka Pinterest) for ideas but on every post I found, they were just doing random gifts that didn't apply to the song, you know "on the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me..." People were just giving out things like cookies or whatever matched the number (Day 10... 10 items). Well for me, that kind of ruins the whole thing, so I decided to make up my own list of gifts to correspond with the gifts in the song as closely as I could. Believe me, as simple as they are, it was not easy to come up with some of these things! So I thought I'd share my ideas in case anyone was thinking the same thing as I was and needed a little help.

These gifts will be for my boyfriend but they are not specific to guys, and if they are I've added extra ideas that would work for anyone. So even if you want to do 12 Days of Christmas for your parent, sibling, kids, neighbor, friend, or boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife these gifts should work out juuust fine. Enjoy! :)

1. On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me... a partridge in a pear tree.

This one is pretty simple, I focused on the pear tree part and didn't bother to put anything in for the partridge since there only needs to be one present on this day. Of course if the person you are doing this for happens to like the Partridge Family, go ahead and buy them a copy, but that was not the case for me. So I went with pear flavored Jelly Bellies, you can buy these in bulk at candy stores that have each Jelly Belly flavor sold individually, I got mine at the grocery store (Sobey's - in Canada), but they are probably not hard to find. Other options that work: Pears soap bars, can of sliced pears, those fruit cup snacks that have pears in them. To make mine work better with the song I'm tying a sprig off one of my pine trees out back with ribbon around the bag of Jelly Bellies, then on the ribbon I'm tying a gift tag in the shape of a bird [partridge]. Each day I'll write the part of the song on the gift tag.

2. On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me... two turtle doves.

There weren't too many options for this. I wanted to get both parts in so I'm getting Turtles chocolates, you can buy a pack of 3 of them near the chocolate bars sometimes, or you could just buy a small box. And for the doves part I'm using Dove chocolates, again you can buy a small bag or a chocolate bar, depending on what you want to give them. Other options that work: Dove/Dove Men's products like deodorant, soap, body wash, body lotion, etc.

3. On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me... three french hens.

This one took me a while, and led me to wonder why there had to be SO many birds in the song! If you have the time and like to cook, you could buy three of those little "Cornish game" hens and cook and serve them, they probably aren't too hard to find, you should be able to get them at just about any grocery store, and they are very small so three wouldn't be too many. I, however, am a University student, during December I have final exams and I do not have time to be cooking all kinds of things. So I bought three cans of chicken noodle soup for the hen part, and to make it french I'm going to get a baguette of french bread, this is also more affordable than buying the game hens and my boyfriend really likes chicken noodle soup (who doesn't?) so it works out. I really couldn't think of anything else that would work for this.

4. On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me... four calling birds.

Originally (yes I looked up the origins), the words to this song were "four colley birds," which I guess means something like black birds, however in the modern version of the song, everyone says calling birds. Well I couldn't think of anything that would go with that so I gave him a pair of gloves and two hand warmer packets - those little things you buy at the dollar store and when you open them they react and get warm, these are great for sticking in your mittens or socks when skating, playing hockey, or just out in the cold. In order to make this work I'll write the part of the song on the gift card and then underneath... "to keep your hands warm while you call your bird ;)" it's a little far fetched and tacky maybe but nothing else seemed to be something my boyfriend could use. Other options that work: prepaid phone cards, international calling cards, new cell phone, cell phone cases (4), or candy that comes in a plastic cellphone. 

5. On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me... five golden rings!

Well unless you want to buy real golden rings (which my boyfriend would have liked), you have to find something that plays off the song. I used the search on my liquor store's website to find beers with the word "gold/golden" in the name, and bought five individual cans, the one's I bought were called "golden pheasant" which I thought fitted pretty well since there are so many birds in the song! lol. But any will do. Of course you may not want to give beer to the person you are doing this for so... Other options that work: golden [tone] rings or earrings, five 'golden' donuts (honey crullers, original, old-fashioned glazed) - I really like this one because they are actually ring shaped but I didn't want to have to pick them up the day of because I would be busy studying for exams. 

6. On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me... six geese-a-laying.

More birds... well I sort of took the geese/laying part from this verse and got gifts that had to do with eggs. I bought three packs of Cadbury Mini Eggs and three Kinder Surprise eggs. Thank goodness for that because I don't know what I would've done with geese! lol, a goose feather pillow??. Other options that work: Cadbury Cream Eggs (I didn't get these because we think they're gross), or you could make recipes with eggs like a six egg omelette, soft/hard-boiled eggs, etc. These can be pretty easy to do and you could make them over the day since probably nobody would eat six eggs at a time. 

7. On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me... seven swans-a-swimming. Okay well... I got lucky with this one. We have a nice restaurant in a small town about ten minutes from our house called 'The Swan' and they sell gift certificates. So I got him a gift certificate to there so we can go during the Christmas season for a date sometime after my exams are over. Of course you may not have a restaurant called the Swan near you... Other options that work: a paper gift certificate (or seven) folded like an origami swan (trust me it's not that hard, just Google it), or maybe some sort of gift certificate or membership/month pass to your local swimming pool (get it? ;) ). 

(obviously I was a little forgetful with taking the photo on the day 8!)

8. On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me... eight maids-a-milking.

You have 'maids' and 'milk' so there are all kinds of things that work for this: DairyMilk chocolate bars, SunMaid raisins or raisin bread, MinuteMaid juice boxes/bottles, Milk Duds candies, cartons of eggnog, or those little boxes of Nestle chocolate milk you buy in the juice isle that come in three packs. I'm doing an assortment of these to make a total of eight gifts.

9. On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me... nine ladies dancing.

Okay these higher numbers get really difficult because they are people... how am I supposed to do that?! Well my boyfriend and I really like Tom Jones so I found a Tom Jones CD with 10 songs and wrote on the gift tag "Nine songs to get the ladies dancing, and one song for you ;)." This applied to us the best but you can personalize this with another CD that has dance music. Other options that work: a dance video game (we like Just Dance for the Wii), a Christmas movie with dancing in it (White Christmas, Holiday Inn - write on gift tag "There are probably nine ladies dancing in this movie."), or if you are lucky, tickets to a local show that has dancers in it - I wanted to go to something like the Nutcracker ballet but there was nothing going on at theaters near us during this time of the year, everything was at the beginning of December, look up your local theaters and see if you can find anything.

10. On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me... ten lords-a-leaping.

This is another weird one haha, how was I going to get ten lords-a-leaping? Well I got five pairs of long johns and five pairs of socks. Since they are pairs you could just get five pairs to equal 10 total but my boyfriend needed both, long johns come in handy when playing hockey during Ottawa Winters. Other options that work: leggings/stockings/nylons for girls/women, a Lord of the Dance DVD if they happen to be a fan of him, my mom is the only person I know who likes him! :P

11. On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me... eleven pipers piping.

Umm this one took me a while. Unless you want the sound of a bagpipe Christmas music CD in your house, which probably wouldn't be that bad but who knows, then this might take some time. I got an assortment of gifts that work: licorice pipes (great at Christmastime because they look like Santa's pipe and you can eat them), Popeye cigarettes, a bubble pipe and bubbles, all of these work but you have to get eleven! Well I was lucky because my boyfriend has a wooden pipe that I got him for Christmas last year (looks just like Santa's!) so I bought him some pipe screens,  and liquid pipe cleaner. You can buy flavored tobacco at specialty stores that is meant to be smoked in a pipe and can be quite nice but it really only applies if you are giving this to someone who already likes it, otherwise this would be an odd gift.

12. On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me... twelve drummers drumming. Made it all the way to the final day and then you get this... what are you supposed to do with this?! Well my boyfriend happens to really like drumming so I am getting him a Buddy Rich CD (a jazz drummer he really likes) or a Benny Grebb CD hopefully with twelve songs on it. You could also get: a 12 Pack of Drum Stick ice cream treats (not the best at Wintertime but always yummy), chicken or turkey drumsticks, or if you're giving these gifts to a drummer you could get them drumming lesson books, pairs of drum sticks, or pads to put on their drum set. If it's for a child you could give them a toy drum set. 

Well I hope you enjoyed these gift ideas and use some of them for your own gift giving! I'll start giving the presents on December 12th so that he gets the last present on December 23rd, then has Christmas eve in between before he gets his other presents on Christmas day. Happy Holidays! 

Time-Saving Tomato Bisque Recipe

A few years ago my family and I went to the Medieval Times restaurant/theatre and I tried tomato bisque for my first time. Up to that point I had never liked tomato soup of any form but from then on I lovvvvved it. I've been planning to make some tomato bisque ever since but I never seem to have all the ingredients in the house at the same time and so it's been about a thousand years now..

Since it's Autumn :)... I've been thinking about making some type of delicious soup and yesterday I reduced the price a whole bunch of different kinds of soup at work. I picked up a few cartons of this V8 Herbed Vine-Ripened Tomato Soup and thought I would see if I could make a good tomato bisque by taking a shortcut and using the soup to start off with. After looking around at different recipes on the web I couldn't find one that was quite what I was looking for so I made this. It's easy and quick to prepare, and it's delicious...

Time-Saving Tomato Bisque
preparation time: about 10-15 minutes
cooking time: 10-40 minutes (depending on whether you choose to let it simmer or not)
(overall this dish can be made very quickly if you want to get it on the table or you can let it simmer and get all kinds of flavor if you have the time or are waiting for other things to finish cooking!)

Ingredients:
-one medium Spanish onion
-2-3 cloves garlic
-1-2 tbsp olive oil
-500 ml carton V8 Herbed Vine-Ripened Tomato Soup (or something similar)
-1 cup half & half or 35% cream
-½ can diced tomatoes, with the juice
-1/3 cup chicken stock (optional)
-½ teaspoon each of dried or fresh basil, rosemary, paprika, salt (I used a grinder of roasted garlic and sea salt which was very tasty)

-mince/dice onions and garlic as finely as possible
-heat olive oil in large pot
-add onions and garlic and sauté until browned (about 5 minutes)
-add V8 soup, cream, tomatoes, and chicken stock to pot
-when the mixture is hot add in herbs and spices and turn to lowest heat, simmer for 30 minutes (or you can eat it sooner if you want this to be a quick dinner!)
The longer you leave it the more flavor it will have but it was already very flavorful as soon as it was hot enough.

There are a number of things you can add to the bisque for extra flavor. Try chopping up a few slices of bacon, or dicing celery and carrot and adding it in with the mixture. Croutons, parmigiano reggiano, and sour cream are some popular ways to garnish your bowl. If I do it again I will add a little more cream, probably half a cup, and leave out some of the rosemary. Try out some different versions and let me know how you like it!
Enjoy! Happy Autumn :)
-L. Adelle