EXP Experience

Went to the famous video game restaurant in Vancouver today with my lovely coworkers.

The restaurant was located in a shady area on Pender St., but the inside of the restaurant was pretty neat to look at. They had many decorations on the walls with different popular video game characters and objects. There was also a big wall that played clips of video games which helped to entertain us as we tried to guess the characters in the clip.

We shared the deep fried pickles and it was amazing! I found it a bit salty but the sourness made it sooooo yummy. I don't know if I will order this again as I feel like I can make this at home....

For the entree, I ordered the GanonPork Sandwich ($13) pictured below. Described as "slow roasted pulled pork with deep fried avacado, bacon chive sour cream, and gerudo nacho chips."

The sandwich came and it turned out looking like a burger. To my taste, I think the "sandwich" sour cream sauce and deep fried avacadoes were too much for me as the pulled pork was already pretty greasy. The nachos in the sandwich was a nice touch to make the overall flavours less greasy and oily, but I still prefer to have lettuce instead. The fries I added $3 to make it into a poutine. This was a bit more on the salty side, but it was pretty tasty. I liked the fries very much because the cut reminded me of McDonald's fries. Another thing I liked about this was the jalapenos on the side. I LOVE jalapenos!!

For a drink, I had the virgin Shirley Templar ($7.50) which was bottomless. Described as "orange juice, sprite, and grenadine. I finished my first one and got a refill. When the waitress came back with my drink, my coworkers and mine got swapped. My coworker was sick! My pet peeve is that I don't like to share things that have direct contact with anybody's saliva.... That was sooooo bad on the waitress' part. She should have given us new straws when she did the refill. I had to ask for a new straw even though I wasn't sure if the cup was mine originally.  Not sure if the waitress was new or that's just the way they serve it here.

Overall experience was good, but it did make me wonder about the quality of food and the people that were handling it. The price was pretty high for a burger place. Not sure if I would go back again....

Ambiance               4

Quality of food        3

Quantity of food      4

Price                      3

Service                   2.5

Overall                    3.3

www.expbar.ca

309 West Pender St. Vancouver

http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/14/1702130/restaurant/Downtown/EXP-Restaurant-Bar-Vancouver

Lest we forget

On this day it is a time for us to remember those that have sacriced for us. 

They gave us peace and hope for new lives. Let us remember.

Please pray for those survivors and the fallen soldiers' families. May you have peace in your heart and know that you are worthy of our prayers.

Thank you for things you have done. You will be remembered. 

Pray that God will protect us and your survivors.

Happy Halloween!

So this Hallow's Eve was interesting.. its the first time I dressed up for it on a work day. Yup! You guessed it! I am a minion!! And yes I am one in a minion! :) I got the minion goggles from watching the movie in theatres in 3D! Best movie ever!! I can't wait for the Minion movie to come out in 2015! My friend Saya even sent me a vocab list to learn.... trust me its hard! Good luck to you if you wanted to become a true minion! It is definately fun for kids to learn though!




This was a great lazy costume! I didn't have to put on any eye make up as the goggles covered my eyes the entire time anyway! it felt like I was wearing PJ's the whole day. So comfy! I got the minion shirt from Ardenes for $10! It was a steal :) The dress I already had from years ago which I bought from the Aritzia warehouse sale for $20. Then with my dollar store gloves, the look is complete.

My coworkers were awesome and many of them dressup too! We had so much fun just looking at each other. There was also a pumpkin carving contest! Check out the carving design on my jack-o-lantern! I just got it from Google (aka my best friend). :P



I also made mint Oreo cheesecake for my family halloween party :) Just a regular cheesecake recipe that i added mint Oreos to in the batter.

You just need sour cream, cream cheese, and a crust.








I added the melted chocolate for a spider web effect. When you cut open the cheesecake, the green from the mint Oreos will make it look like mold for extra creepy effects. I didn't bake it very well. As you can see the top cracked which means I overcooked them. I will not give up! Next time I want to make it with a different ingredient which I have yet to think about. Any ideas?

Dim Sum at Pink Pearl

Dim sum on a weekend is the best time to spend with family and loved ones! This is my second time at Pink Pearl for dim sum. There was a line to get a table as it was Sunday fun day. Many families were there for dim sum. I was pretty surprised about it because the prices here are not that cheap just average. 

At first the dim sum came slowly which I do appreciate because I like to savor my food and when it comes out too quickly from the kitchen, the dumplings get cold and the skin starts sticking together. 

 The dumplings are good. I really enjoyed the chewy dumpling skin. We ordered the spinach, squash, scallop and beef dumplings. All were decent sized dumplings.

At first bite the Chen's Village noodles were really good, but later I bit into a metal thread. It could possibly be from washing the wok and the chef didn't notice. Regardless, we returned the plate of noodles and didn't order anything else from the Chef's choices menu selection. I think if I didn't find the metal thread, I would have really enjoyed the noodles. There was a decent amount of shrimp, bean sprouts, eggs, and veggies.

This is the 3 kinds of mushroom rice noodle wrap. I'm not that fond of this noodle wrap because the noodle was too soft. After the first bite, the noodle wrap turned into mush. 

The beef rice noodle wrap was needless to say the same as the mushroom rice noodle wrap.
Service here was so-so. It was hard to wave down a waiter because it was so busy.


Ambiance 3
Quality of food 3
Quantity of food 3
Price 3
Service 3
Overall 3

October Has Arrived!

I cannot cannot cannot believe how quickly fall has arrived in Vancouver!

The sun is still here, but the weather is rather chilly. 

This nail color is perfect for it. OPI Brown with Essie gold sparkles to bring out the theme of changing fall colors. 

I have started to wear my scarves and a thicker jacket to cope. I think I am pretty sensitive to the cold weather and even in my office, I have to keep a blanket/scraf around my body.

Lately, I have been drinking coffee and tea again to warm and energize myself up in the mornings. I like the Pom Tango tea from David's Tea Store and the pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks. Even though there are no whip creams on the Via packets which make it less calories all together, the taste is rather different. 

Hopefully, the rain doesn't come too soon so we can enjoy the change in color in the trees.

Have a great day!

Joe Fortes Buck-A-Shuck

It had been a while since I last had a girls night with Mouse Mouse and Red Bean. It was a-buck-a-shuck night at the famous Joe Fortes. Mouse Mouse had suggested it. It was a surprise as I have never heard that they have that special! It was a nice treat! When we first arrived, the hostess said there were no more seats inside the restaurant so we sat on the patio. It was a nice atmosphere and good for people watching if you are into that. 

Even though we were there for the raw oysters which were super juicy and went well with all the three sauces, we had ordered other dishes to eat. There was the deep fried oysters, tower of onion rings, seafood linguine, and tempura prawns.

The deep fried oysters were crispy on the outside, but the after taste wasn't very good. It almost tasted as if the oyster was about to go bad. I would much rather have had more raw oysters, but it is not good to eat too many raw oysters just in case!

The tower of onion rings was sooooo yummy! They were a bit on the oily side, but the batter was great! I do prefer the white sauce more than the red sauce to go with it. We forgot to take a picture of the tempura prawns before we started to devour them. I believe there was 4 or 5 pieces of prawn for this dish. It was so good. I think the batter was the same as the onion rings. This was also a bit on the oily side.

Red Bean had the seafood linguine and it was pretty tasty, but we were already pretty full from the other appies.

Overall experience was good, really liked how the waitress kept coming by to ask if we needed anything. She was very nice and we gave her a nice tip. The price was pretty expensive, but that was expect from a high quality restaurant. I will definitely go back again, but perhaps on a live music night.


Ambiance 4
Quality of food 4
Quantity of food 4
Price 3
Service 4.5
Overall 3.9

www.joefortes.ca

777 Thurlow St, Vancouver, BC V6E 3V5

BABY SHOWER TIME!!

We did DIY diaper cake for our friend's baby shower.
It was super easy to make and supplies won't cost a fortune.
First, we (Honey and Veggie and I) made the base with a piece of card board paper and wrapped it in tissue paper from the Dollar Store. In order to make the diaper cake more stable, we used taped a card board roll in the center of the base. Then, we used elastics to wrap up the diapers and used a ribbon to tie it to the base.

The stuff animals on the side of the "cake" are actually hand puppets! They are super cute and totally soft to touch!

We started to fill the basket with baby clothes, books, and other baby things but it was over load so we had to make a bigger box to store everything. In the end, we wrapped everything with cellophane and tied bows to make it look really pretty. 

Mid Autumn's Festival

Happy Mid Autumn Festival everybody!

This is the Chinese version of Thanksgiving celebrations.

Today is is the day we eat dinner together and have moon cake for dessert.

This is the zong zi which is a sticky glutinous rice wrap homemade by my mommy. This wrap will take a whole day to prepare for just 30 pieces and takes 8 hours to bowl until it is fully cooked. One day I will learn this technique, but it is so difficult to learn at this point. It is super yummy this year because she put my favourite marinated shitake mushrooms and chinese sausage in it. Other ingredients include fatty pork meat, salted egg yolk, and peanuts. This dish is highly thick and will make you super sleepy after.

My favourite kind is white lotus with no egg yolk. It is sweet and has a thick texture. This particular one is from Fortune House Seafood Restaurant. So yummy!

A few days before today, was my mom's birthday. My brother cooked steak and seafood salad. There were also mushrooms, and onions for the steak. There were smoked salmon, imitation crab meat, lettuce, and carrots. The salad dressing was asian sesame which was perfect with the salad. 

80's Partayyyyyy

Soooooo.... it was an 80's birthday party!!

Inspiration was from Googling "80's costume".

There was a lot of afros, blings, and neon colors!

My make up was normal but with more highlighting since I was planning to wear a pair of frames. Don't forget to frame your eye brows really well. You can also add some neon eye shadows, but I didn't have any available.

I didn't want to spend any money on my costume so I just dug out anything that was bright coloured.

My outfit:

Head: baby blue fat hair tie, purple headband, yellow Hello Kitty fake glasses

Top: Hello Kitty top from H&M from high school days

Bottom: Espirit skirt from their closing sale, purple stockings, black leg warmers, hot pink Nine West heels

BC Day Holiday

The sun is shining bright, and it's sooo hot outside!!

It's a nice makeup day!

First, I used the Prime Time from Bare Minerals and then Ultra Moisturizing BB cream from Aiyaya which was purchased in China. I found that the bb cream was moisturizing but at the same time i didnt like the smell of it. It was a bit chemically smelling. As the day went on my face was starting to melt and color coming off from the bb cream.

Today I decided to go with a nice brown and green for the eyes that looks playful. I used the Smashbox Studio Pop Ultimate palette eye shawdows that I purchased from Nordstrom Rack in Seattle for $30 last spring.

As usual, I use my Smashbox eye brow tech in dark brown with a wax that comes with the 2 brown shades. I love it! It was purchased when I walked into a Shoppers being bored for $12 on sale! It was a great deal and I am very happy about it. I used a Boxum lashliner gel in Sequins which is waterproof, but it will still smudge at the end of the day.

Bliss color to cover the entire eye lid, Camel in the crease area, and Pacific for under the eye line. The shadows are very pigmented with no fallouts even though it was in a palette. For mascara I used the MUFE Smoky Extravagant from Sephora's birthday gift with my Dior lash primer.

For blush i used my Tarte blush in Blissful which was a gift from my friend and lips i used a MAC lip pencil in Spice, and my Sephora Birthday gift lipstick. I found that the lipstick was very moisturizing and the color looks nice with my skin tone.

Today's Outfit

it's a special day.

My college friend's wedding and it's my honour to be standing next to her as the maid of honour.

In preparation for this day, i did a facial mask every day for a week before the wedding. I like the My Scheming Hyaluronan Hydrating black mask I had purchased from TnT market ($11.99 on sale).

My long purple dress with heart shaped chest, silk chiffon is flowy and light. I love the dress and how it makes me look so slim... back lace up is a romantic touch to the dress

my shoes were purchased on a sale occasion at nine west for $78 after taxes.. it was my lucky day

nails are done by me: OPI Chip Skip, OPI base coat, The Face Shop Crystal Peach x2 coats, Essie a cut above glitter, Nicole Top coat

My hair is set with 1 inch curls thanks to my talented cousin Angela Chau...

Make up is done by the talented Angela Chau   https://www.facebook.com/aaangelachau

face: BareMinerals Prime Time foundation primer, no name brand bronzer, Tarte blissful clay blush, MUFE full cover camouflage cream, Laura Mercier tinted moisturizer

eyes: Urban Decay Anti-Anging eyeshadow primer potion, Urban Decay Naked 2 palette, Dior Diorshow Maximizer, Lancome Hypnose waterproof mascara, GOSH Extreme Art eyeliner in #19, Smashbox brow tech dark brown for eyebrows

lips: Too Faced Lip Insurance lip primer, Sugar Rose tinted lip treatment, MAC Spice Lip pencil, Marc Jacobs paint it lust for laquer lip gloss 

Tips for a good make up and hair special event day:

1) sleep for the full 7-8 hours for 7 days before 

2) apply a facial mask every day for 7 days before

3) do not use any new products on the face and spot test product on arm first

4) do not wash your hair with conditioner 2 days before

5) take care of all personal hygiene